By TYLER KEPNER
 
It is the great question of the Yankees' season. Where would they be without Orlando Hernández? Second place, of course.

As the Boston Red Sox charged through August and early September, the Yankees held on to first place largely because of Hernández, El Duque of all people. Hernández, signed as merely a lifeline for the rotation, has kept the team from sinking.

"He's our ace right now," catcher Jorge Posada said. "He's the guy we want out there. He's done some amazing things."

Hernández, who is 8-0 in 12 starts, will try to spin more magic tonight at Yankee Stadium in the first of three games against the Red Sox. The Yankees lead the Red Sox in the American League East by three and a half games.

The Yankees and the Red Sox always expected a Cuban defector to play a major role in their race, but neither team knew it would be Hernández. Two years ago, the Yankees outbid the Red Sox for José Contreras. But after repeated failures against Boston, Contreras was traded to the Chicago White Sox in July.

A smaller-scale competition for Hernández took place last winter. By Hernández's count, 22 teams showed up for his first workout in January after shoulder surgery the previous May. His meager fastball scared off most clubs, but the rivals kept watching.

"Only the smart teams stayed there," Hernández said through his interpreter, Leo Astacio. "I wouldn't have offered me anything, either, throwing 84 miles an hour."

The Red Sox attended all of Hernández's open workouts and believed he was throwing with severe shoulder restriction. But Boston needed insurance for its rotation, and Red Sox management knew Hernández's history.

"Despite the shaky workouts and the questions about his shoulder, we thought it was a gamble worth taking with a relatively low risk," said Theo Epstein, the Red Sox general manager. "We simply offered everything we had left in our budget for that spot."

It amounted to a $500,000 guarantee, and performance bonuses. The Yankees knew the Red Sox were involved, and they countered with essentially the same offer.

"Did I think about a healthy Duque, and what he'd be like in Boston? Yes," Yankees General Manager Brian Cashman said. "But did I make what I felt would have been a bad offer? No."

The Yankees had an obvious advantage over the Red Sox, because Hernández had pitched for them from 1998 through 2002. After missing the 2003 season with the Montreal Expos after the Yankees traded him, he wanted to come back.

This was obvious to Damon Oppenheimer, the Yankees' vice president who saw Hernández's workouts with another scout, Jeff Wetherby. They brought along Astacio, who had been Hernández's interpreter before he was traded and remained a close friend. Hernández was buoyant.

"He was happy to see us, full of hugs and jubilation that we were there to see him," Oppenheimer said. "He basically wanted to come home."

That was true, Hernández said, but he did not rule out signing with another team.

"I thought about getting a job, and if it was going to be with the Yankees, even better," he said. "But I needed a job. You can't be picky when you need something."

The Red Sox knew they would have to far exceed their first offer to have a chance at Hernández. They passed, believing the risk to be too great, and Hernández signed with the Yankees in early March.

Seven days a week, at 7 a.m., Hernández reported to the Yankees' minor league complex in Tampa, Fla., for training. His doctor, John Uribe of the University of Miami, and his trainer, Ray Jaffet, had told him he would need 18 months to recover from his surgery. Hernández would have missed the 2004 season on that timetable, and he refused to accept it.

Ferociously competitive on the mound, Hernández channeled that drive into his rehabilitation.

"That was my goal, to prove them wrong, to not let it be 18 months," Hernández said. "That was my big battle. I wasn't able to compete against hitters, but I was able to compete against time in my rehab. But I definitely missed baseball, because baseball is part of my life. It runs neck and neck with my family."

On July 11, the day before the All-Star Game break, Hernández joined the Yankees to start in place of Mike Mussina, who had stiffness in his elbow. Hernández was supposed to make at least one more start for Class AAA Columbus, but he beat the Tampa Bay Devil Rays with five solid innings. Afterward, he said in English that he felt delightful.

Hernández seemed to be glowing, a bundle of positive energy. He looked nothing like the moody pitcher who had a clubhouse shoving match with Posada in his final month with the Yankees in 2002. "He seems more at peace," Cashman said.

Told of that observation, Hernández was bemused. He is always at peace, he said, because he understands himself - even when others do not.

"When I don't respond the way people would like for me to respond, I can read it in their faces," he said. "It's not just here, it's in life. My mother sometimes doesn't understand me, too. It's from birth."

Hernández enjoys cultivating an air of mystery. He is enthusiastically contrary. Presented with Posada's theory - that since the surgery, Hernández treats every start as if it were his last - Hernández again resists.

"Why would I think that?" he said. "My last one will be at 105 years old. That's how long I'm going to live."

Some might wonder if Hernández is halfway there already. He claims to be 34 years old, but government documents have said he was born in October 1965, which would make him 39 next month. His age will have an impact on his value as a pending free agent, but Hernández insisted he has not thought about this winter. The season is too much fun.

Before a recent game at Yankee Stadium, catcher John Flaherty noticed Hernández bouncing around the outfield, eagerly pursuing batting practice flies with the verve of a rookie.

"I asked him, 'Where do you get all that energy from?' " Flaherty said. "He just said he had a greater appreciation for baseball and being in the big leagues."

Hernández went 53-38 in his first tenure with the Yankees, and 9-3 in the postseason. But he often complained of injuries despite his vigorous training, and by the end of 2002 he felt limited on the mound.

"What I couldn't do in the past, because of the pinching in my arm, was throw good sliders," Hernández said. "And now, the pain and the pinching isn't there."

Hernández's delivery - his left knee jabbing the air just inches from his face, his body uncoiling - is as distracting as ever. And with all of his pitches in working order, he can approach hitters as confidently as always. In 72 1/3 innings, Hernandez has 71 strikeouts.

"The way he changes speeds and moves the ball around the plate - in and out, up and down - it makes it really, really hard to hit," said Javy Lopez of the Baltimore Orioles.

"I've always had a hard time, because it's hard to pick up his slider. You see the slider and the fastball pretty much the same. You only can tell if it's a slider when the ball is almost right on top of you."

Hernández struck out Lopez three times in his last start, a victory in Baltimore last Saturday in which he allowed one run in seven innings and lowered his earned run average to 2.49. The Yankees have won 11 of his 12 starts, and none is bigger than tonight's.

No pitcher could relish the pressure more than Hernández. However old he is, he believes he is far from the end. He still wants to master a craft as beguiling as he is.

"Every day you learn something, and I think I haven't learned everything yet," Hernández said. "Pitching is a mystery."

INSIDE PITCH

The remnants of Hurricane Ivan could disrupt the series this weekend, though not as drastically as first feared. Rain is expected by the start of the game today, possibly turning heavy at times, according to forecasts by the Department of Meteorology at Penn State. Tomorrow, the rain should taper to showers that may linger into the early afternoon before ending. The weather Sunday is expected to be dry and breezy.