Oddly, Wright shook off that shot but his night was shortened by a couple of other relatively innocuous balls. He reached for Willie Harris' fourth-inning roller to short, and felt the groin muscle. Fielding Youkilis' leadoff comebacker in the fifth, he felt tightness in the same spot.
"I definitely wanted to keep going, but decided not to risk something bad happening," Wright said.
Torre and his pitching coach, Ron Guidry, decided that for him.
"He insisted on going back out," Torre said, "but we pretty much told him we didn't want him to do that. Maybe he has to break off the mound, then after all the work he'd done, it would be a step back."