Sox Sweep At The Fens--Peter

Well, it was only the lowly A's, but for the second time in a week, the brooms were out at Fenway, and this time they were in the right hands. Continuing the momentum they built in successive wins on Friday and Saturday, the Sox finished the sweep against the A's with a workmanlike 5-2 victory. The W featured a good combination of timely hitting, including a pair of hits by Jason Bay and doubles by Yooouk, Dusty and Lowell with a pair of sac flies from Coco for good measure; and good pitching from start to close.

The Sox scored the first run to open the first with a two bagger by Dusty followed by a hit by Yoouk. They closed out the scoring in the 6th with a sac fly by Coco to expand the lead to three runs.

Pitching was pretty solid for the entire game. Dice-K started and rebounded from his last start by pitching a solid six innings. Although he gave up the A's only two runs on a pitch he left out over the middle of the plate, he looked good: eight K's and only two walks and four hits in six innings. His countryman, Okajima followed and pitched a scoreless 7th. Continuing the quality, Delcarmen came on for the 8th and surrendered only a single free pass in an inning of shutout work. TOM was then followed in the 9th by Pap. Laser did what he's expected to do and emphatically slammed the door on just 11 pitches, three of them for a K, while allowing no-one to reach at all--save 31 for him this year.

Only two things broke up the flow of the game: a 37 minute rain delay during the Sox half of the 6th and Papi's first stolen base since last September. He had such a huge jump on the Oakland battery, he didn't even draw a throw--in fact, the A's catcher was so stunned by the sheer audacity of the move, he fumbled the ball and couldn't even cock his arm to consider a throw.

Now, it's off to KC and hopefully, the Sox can reduce their road W-L deficit by a substantial margin. It would be a great help to them in getting back on top of the Rays and keeping ahead of the Stripes. By the way, if it needs emphasizing, the final three games of the year for our heroes are at Fenway against the very same Stripes. So building up a lead of more than three games going into those final ones would basically slam the door on any Yankee hopes for the year as far as the rivalry goes.