Gritting his teeth and grimacing throughout, Curt Schilling willed away the pain in his right ankle and the Boston Red Sox got the benefit of two reversed calls to move within one win of the most shocking come back in baseball history.

For the second straight year, the Yankees and the Red Sox will play a Game 7, a winner-take-all battle for the AL pennant between baseball’s perennial pinstriped power and a Boston team desperately trying to win the World Series for the first time since 1918.

Pitching on a dislocated ankle tendon that forced him out of the opener, Schilling smothered the Yankees by allowing one run over seven innings to lead the Red Sox to a 4-2 win last night and pull Boston into a 3-3 tie in an AL championship series that was three outs from a sweep just two days earlier.

The Yankees were ahead 3-0 in the series before blowing a ninth-inning lead in Game 4 at Fenway Park and losing in the 12th Sunday night. The Yankees led Game 5 in the eighth Monday, then lost that one, too, another 5-hour marathon that stretched on for 14 innings.

Of the 25 previous major league teams that fell behind 3-0 in a best-of-seven series, none had forced a Game 7. But back in the Bronx, where they wasted a four-run lead in Game 7 last year, the Red Sox broke through with a four run fourth against Jon Lieber.

The team trying to reverse The Curse benefited from two big reversed calls.

In the fourth, Mark Bellhorn hit a ball over the left-field wall that was at first ruled a ground-rule double before it was correctly changed to a three-run homer that made it 4-0.

Then in the eighth, after Miguel Cairo’s double and Derek Jeter’s RBI single off Bronson Arroyo pulled the Yankees to 4-2, Alex Rodriguez hit a ball between the mound and first. Arroyo picked it up and ran toward first, where just before the base the striding A-Rod slapped the ball away.

Jeter came all the way around to score as the ball bounced down the right-field line. After Boston manager Terry Francona came out to argue, the umpires huddled, discussed the play, then called Rodriguez out for interference and sent Jeter back to first.

Rodriguez raised both hands and put them on his helmet, screaming about the reversal and the game was held up for 10 minutes while fans tossed debris on the field and Yankees manager Joe Torre argued. Gary Sheffield then fouled out to end the inning.

After Boston’s Orlando Cabrera was ruled safe at first base in the ninth, preventing the Yankees from completing a double play, public address announcer Bob Sheppard made his second announcement for fans to maintain order. The umpires talked with Kevin Hallinan, senior vice president of security in the commissioner’s office, as Yankees reliever Tanyon Sturtze warmed up.

Helmeted police then came on the field and kneeled in foul territory along the stands on both the left- and right-field sides in the top of the ninth.

Schilling, who accepted a trade to the Red Sox last fall for the express purpose of beating the Yankees, took a three-hit shutout into the seventh before allowing Bernie Williams’s solo homer. Arroyo allowed the run in the eighth and Keith Foulke pitched the ninth.

With the Yankees down to their final strike of the game, Ruben Sierra walked to make it first and second. Foulke then struck out Tony Clark, sending the Red Sox running out of the dugout for their third straight night of celebration.

Tim Wakefield, who lost Game 7 last year on Aaron Boone’s 11th-inning homer, starts for the Red Sox tonight, most likely against Kevin Brown or Javier Vazquez.

While the Red Sox looked loose, especially after the initial call of a double on Bellhorn’s ball was reversed, the Yankees looked tight, over swinging for the second straight night and never testing Schilling’s ankle with a bunt on the slick grass.

Boston’s big fourth began with Kevin Millar’s two-out double to the left-field wall. He took third on a wild pitch and scored on Jason Varitek’s single. Cabrera singled to put two runners on.

Bellhorn, in a 4-for-32 postseason slump, hit a ball down the left-field line and to the top of the wall. It bounced back on the field and left-field umpire Jim Joyce called it a double.

Replays showed the ball hit a fan in the first row in the chest, and Francona came out to argue. All six umpires had a conference near shortstop and they changed it to a homer.

Lieber, who beat Pedro Martinez 3-1 in Game 2, allowed four runs and nine hits in 7 1/3 innings, retiring 11 in a row after Bellhorn’s homer.