On The Road At Home!--Peter

Well, here we are after a pair with the Halos--two more in the loss column. And at home--where we're not supposed to lose! It's starting to look as if our road performance has seeped into the friendly neighborhood of the Fens! Last night, we were manhandled by the Angels' lineup, mainly by a pair of homers off the Diceman. True, Manny did get his 20th of the year, but it was too little, too late; and the result was still a loss.

Tonight, everything seemed to be in deuces. The Halos scored all of their six runs in deuces: 2, 2, and 2, while the Sox got only a pair of hits for the entire evening--and only scored a deuce. The good thing, if there is one, about the whole sorry affair, is that our deuce came with us down to our last two batters of the game.

Facing Lackey, who had seen his quality of pitching go dramatically down hill the past two months, the Sox found themselves on the short end of a potential no-hitter after one out in the bottom of the 9th. Pedroia ended that worry fast. Rifling a shot into left field, breaking up the no-no, he was followed by Yooouk. Yooouk launched one over the Monster, scoring the Sox deuce on his 18th of the year. Prior to the Sox mini-eruption in the 9th, they'd only managed two (another deuce) baserunners--a walk and a hit batsman--all night.

One other good thing for the Sox (you can tell I'm reaching here): by preventing Lackey's no-hitter, they kept the string of no visiting pitcher tossing a no-hitter in the Fens going. The last time it happened, a guy who now sits in Congress representing Kentucky did it--just a few days over 50 years ago. That's Jim Bunning, then pitching for the Tigers. For him it wasn't unusual either. He's one of the few who's pitched a no-no in each league in his career. One of the others is the recently retired former Sox pitcher, Hideo Nomo, who got one apiece for the Dodgers (Red Sox lite) and the Sox.