Winning Again--With An Unusual Twist--Peter

Well, the Sox headed to the Pacific Northwest and are back in the win column, although still a half game behind the Rays for the Division lead. For seven innings, we had a classic pitching duel going on. Hits were basically scattered and the few that occurred only resulted in a 1-1 tie through seven. Papi accounted for the Bosox' run singlehandedly by depositing a pitch in the far seats for his twelfth fourbagger of the season.

But it wasn't until the Sox 8th that things got going. Our heroes sent ten men to the plate and scored four runs, basically winning the game. Pedroia came up, hitless to that point, with a couple of baserunners and promptly drove a ball deep into the outfield for a double and the second Sox run. After Papi reached base, Manny brought Dusty home with a solid single and made it 3-1. This was followed by Ortiz being plated when Lowell eked out an infield single: Sox 4-1. Drew got a base hit, loading the sacks and a few minutes later Manny came home on Tek's RBI free pass. That was all the scoring the Sox would need. For that matter, it was all they'd get as well.

Oki came in and tossed an inning of one hit shutout ball, followed in the 9th by The Saver, Papelbon. That's where things got unusual. That's unusual as in rare. Now, it's true that Pap occasionally gets hit, maybe even giving up the long ball. It's also occasionally true that he even gives up more than one hit in an inning, win or lose (usually the former). But tonight, he was outdoing himself. Firing his usual assortment of laser beams, he struck out two batters and eventually closed out the win. But, he also gave up two hits, threw a wild pitch and made an error on a bad throw to first on a simple grounder. All this in an inning.

Well, it did make things a bit more interesting. But that kind of interesting is like the kind that developed eons ago in ancient Rome when an augurer would gut a chicken and watch which way the guts fell out as a way of forecasting the future. It's the kind of interest that you'd just as soon not have to be interested in.

Anyway, due at least in part to the wild throw, and also in part to the wild pitch that followed a few batters later, the M's got two runs in the 9th, both unearned, and made what had appeared a sure thing for the Sox "interesting". Fortunately, Pap recovered before things got too interesting and finally put the M's out of their worst in the league misery.

Overall, Sox got nine hits, two of them for extra bases. Colon pitched his second consecutive excellent start, going seven and picking up his second victory in two decisions since making it back to the Show. If he keeps pitching like this, it will become one of the best out of the blue acquisitions that Theo's made since plucking Papi off the roster of the Twins five years ago.