01:00 AM EDT on Sunday, September 28, 2003

For several years, the Red Sox coveted Yankee reliever Ramiro Mendoza.

That's because it seemed that every time the lanky right-hander came in to face Boston, his sinker effectively shut down the Red Sox.

So when New York let him go as a free agent after last season, Boston officials swooped in and signed Mendoza to a two-year deal, privately figuring they had just snatched a valuable piece of the Yankees' vaunted bullpen corps away from the "Evil Empire."

They were expecting that this year Mendoza would be able to duplicate his success -- only this year against the Yankees and not for the Yankees.

Instead, Mendoza came to become known derisively as the "Embedded Yankee" in Boston.

The Sox were paying him, but his performances for Boston were so awful, there were joking suggestions that George Steinbrenner must have been paying him, too, to serve as a double agent ultimately working against the Red Sox.

Mendoza, working out of the bullpen, never found any rhythm or confidence. The first sign of trouble came in his third outing, when he inherited an 8-3 lead in the ninth and promptly turned it into an 8-7 victory, with the potential tying run thrown out at the plate for the game's final out.

He had a couple of decent, albeit brief stretches of solid work, but by then he had long lost the confidence of manager Grady Little.

After being tagged for the loss in a 13-inning game against St. Louis, Mendoza was placed on the disabled list, ostensibly for right knee tendinitis, and shipped to Ft. Myers for rehab and mechanical work. He was 1-3 with a ghastly 6.81 earned-run average in 28 appearances at the time.

Mendoza resurfaced as a starter, getting wins in New York and Toronto just before the All-Star break. But he was tattooed for a total of 14 runs on 16 hits over only 8 2/3 innings in back-to-back starts in late July, and was yanked from the rotation. He worked once more before going on the DL again, this time on Aug. 8, with that right knee tendinitis supposedly flaring up again.

He was activated again in early September, but was just a body filling out a uniform in the bullpen.

-- STEVEN KRASNER