"It was one part cheesesteak sandwich, one part expectation, one part execution, but one part of Adrian Gonzalez' first home run as a Red Sox at Yankee Stadium last night was not a conscious effort, and that's parking a baseball in the short porch here in right field.

No, if Gonzalez understands one thing about hitting — and he understands a great deal, we are quickly learning — it is that changing your approach to suit a baseball stadium's architectural quirks is one bad idea.

Let the pitcher make a mistake in a part of the strike zone where Gonzalez is expecting it, and Gonzalez will make him pay for it.

So when Yankees pitcher Bartolo Colon left a 91-mph, 1-0 fastball up and right smack in the middle, Gonzalez was waiting for it.

That it landed midway up the second deck was by Gonzalez' design, not the architect of the House that Jeter Built.

"Bartolo was going to pound me in, I knew that he wasn't going to give me much away to go the other way with so my game plan was to pick and choose my spots and try to look for a pitch that I could drive to right field," said Gonzalez, who homered to right center at the old Yankee Stadium while on the Padres during an interleague visit in June 2008. "After ball one, I thought that would be a good spot and he left it more middle than I think he wanted it.""