GIRARDI

NEW YORK — This was supposed to be the year the Yankees got young, remember?

This was the season when they would win with Joba Chamberlain and Phil Hughes and Ian Kennedy on the mound.

They wouldn’t trade Melky Cabrera because Cabrera was going to be their next great center fielder and Robinson Cano was going to win a batting title at second.

But reality has a way of laying to waste well-made plans. It’s July now and Cano and Cabrera are hitting .249. Phil Hughes is on the DL, Kennedy has been back and forth between the Bronx and Triple A and Chamberlain is transitioning from reliever back to starter.

Yes, the Yankees are hanging around — even if they did dip percentage points behind Baltimore this weekend — but they’re doing it mostly with help from their veteran guys, some of whom were nearly written off.

Take yesterday’s 2-1 squeaker over the Red Sox. Mike Mussina, age 39, won it. Thirty-eight year-old Mariano Rivera (barely) saved it.

There was no infusion of young blood. The Yankees won because Mussina, who made his debut when Joe Morgan was still managing the Red Sox, tossed six shutout innings and because Rivera, the longest-tenured Yankee, cleaned up his own mess by striking out Julio Lugo with the bases loaded in the ninth.

The future has been put on hold in the Bronx. Jason Giambi and Bobby Abreu lead them in RBI. Mussina and Andy Pettitte have combined to win 20 games.

The other day, general manager Brian Cashman was asked how aggressive the team planned to be at the trade deadline.

“Most of the answers,” Cashman told The New York Times, “are right here in front of us. Our players are better than this.”

And, he might have added, older.

Last August, Mussina looked suspiciously close to being done and suffered the ignominious fate of being removed from the rotation in favor of Kennedy — right in the middle of the playoff race.

Rivera? He wasn’t nearly as suspect, but last winter, there was talk that it would only be a matter of time before Chamberlain replaced him as the team’s closer.

But yesterday, desperate for a win, it was Mussina and Rivera riding to the Yankees’ rescue.

“This was a big game for us,” said manager Joe Girardi. “Obviously, this has been a tough homestand. We needed a win.”

Mussina made sure they got one. He got Mike Lowell to chase a pitch out of the strike zone in the first, leaving the bases loaded. He had just one clean inning, but the Sox never got a base runner into scoring position after the first against Mussina.

“He still has good stuff,” said Girardi. “He didn’t forget how to pitch. I look at his 11 wins and he could have 13. Moose has been huge for us.”

Back in April, the end looked near. In back-to-back starts against the Red Sox, he pitched a total of 8 2/3 innings and was tagged for 15 hits and nine runs.

“I’m not the same pitcher I was in those games,” said Mussina.

Now, Mussina is healthy. He’s commanding the strike zone (one walk yesterday) and artfully using what he has.

“If you go back and watch every pitch of the game,” said Red Sox manager Terry Francona, “there was very few misfires. He cut it in. He would go away. He changed speeds and he would flip the breaking ball. Even the balls that weren’t called strikes were close and you could see him out there, wanting them for strikes, but he set up the next pitch. Nobody was ever able to get real comfortable and take a big swing with something over the middle, because there weren’t any.”

“He knows how to read swings,” said Girardi, “and he knows what pitches to make.”

Then there was Rivera, who was uncharacteristically off in the ninth, allowing the first four hitters to reach — two by hitting them.

The Sox had a run in, the bases loaded and no out. But Rivera didn’t break. He made Coco Crisp look like a contortionist, reaching out to flail at strike three. He jammed Jason Varitek and got him to pop meekly to first. Then, he overpowered Lugo.

Dramatic? You bet. But great, again, when he had to be.

“He’s great,” marveled Girardi, “and I think he showed that with the last three hitters.”

There will be time, still, for Hughes and Kennedy and Chamberlain and Cabrera and Cano to carry the Yankees.

But in this, the final year of Yankee Stadium, perhaps it’s fitting that the Yankees are counting on their past to make them great again.

smcadam@projo.com