The No-Look Fits--Peter

Tonight the Sox had Wake on the mound and although Papi missed his second consecutive game due to his wrist injury (more on that later), Manny was holding up the offense, getting a homer for the third consecutive game, something he last did in '06, and adding a single in five trips to the plate.

Wake's flutterball was doing its thing, so much so that Cash got his eighth passed ball of the season. That's a league high. In his defense, he also threw out one of the O's two attempts to steal, not very easy when the ball only travels to the plate at a max of about 72. I mean when your fast ball is pretty much like the tortoise rather than the hare, your pickoff chances are pretty limited.

However, Wake was pretty much sailing along through seven, having given up only two runs--his second consecutive low scoring start. In came Okajima. Now, if you've ever watched Oki pitch, about the best thing you can say about his delivery is that neither you nor anyone else can figure out how he even keeps it in the park, let alone gets it over the plate. He winds up, moves toward the dish and releases--with his head turned completely to the side, away from the direction in which he's throwing. Somehow, it not only gets there, it usually does so in such a way that, going into tonight's appearance, he had an ERA of 0.72. He can't explain it. Tito can't explain it. Hell, nobody can tell you why his delivery works--but it does!

Except for tonight. In came Oki for the 8th. Get another H and then turn the ball over to Laserman for the 9th and the win streak will reach four. Not so fast! Three batters up--three batters on base. A sac fly, by the former Sox guy Millar, no less, and now he's got a blown save. The O's manage to load the bases and then Jones, a career .242 hitter, works the count to 3-1 and drops the next pitch into the outfield for a three run double: 6-3 O's. Tito's seen enough and has Lopez come in to close out the inning, but it's too late.

We get a couple of guys on base in the 9th after the first two guys do nothing more than create a good breeze with their sticks and Manny comes up.

Now, I'm thinking that even though he's already clocked one tonight, he's on a typical ManRam surge, eight game hit streak and all, and multi-homer games are nothing new for him. So it's really possible. Manny will drop one in the cheaps, the game will be tied and the Sox will go on from there. Uh Uh! Not tonight. He did work the count, but when contact was finally made, the ball was just a little short. It finished nestled in an outfielder's leather glove, somewhat shy of the wall. Game over. What's really frustrating about this is that every Sox starter except Cora got at least one hit, and the Hose outhit the O's 10-9 and got the only roundtripper in the game. In fact, if every player on both teams had scored, no LOB's, the Sox would have won, 13-12. True, Jacoby didn't steal a base, but even Cobb, Brock and Henderson had days when they didn't run. Even a thoroughbred needs a day off once in a while.

Beyond the game the Sox announced that Papi will go on the 15 day DL tomorrow because the strain or sprain, depending on who you talked to, was really a partially torn tendon in his wrist. How you can tear a tendon swinging at a pitch I don't know, but that's what we've got. Tito's saying there won't be any knife in play on this one and I hope so. Papi was really getting back to normal when he was hurt and is one of the league leaders in both HR's and ribbies. Hate to lose that bat for any serious length of time.

Oh, yeah! One more VERY IMPORTANT thing! There is a national election for a kids version of Red Sox Nation going on. Called Kids Nation, it allows you to vote on who you'd like to see as the Captain of Kids Nation. I'm supporting Ben B. (that's how the names are on the ballot & web site). You can too! Go to www.voteforben.org & vote.