One Swing By Drew--Sox Lead By Two--Peter

The title tells you the way the Sox closed out the Angels, and it was definitely as dramatic as shots in past playoffs against the Halos by Manny and Big Papi have been. But it was not the whole story—not even close!

Facing Ervin Santana—a damn good pitcher--for the first time this year, the Sox got two outs in the 1st and then teed off. A string of singles started by Papi led to one run. Then, two men on, the count 2-2, and Jason Bay, in just his second playoff game ever, launches one. Like Game One, this was a no-doubter from the moment it left the bat. It landed on the boulders beyond the center field fence, and bounced even further away. Instantly, it was Sox four zip.

The Halos got one back in their half of the 1st, but the Sox matched it in the 4th. Ellsbury chose the moment with Cora on base to slam a long double into the outfield and the four run Sox lead was restored. Even though the Angels scratched back and matched in their half of the 4th, the Diceman was doing his thing.

If the Halos got men on base, regardless how they got there, Dice-K would turn it up a notch and close them down. True, they had eight hits and three free passes in the five innings Dice worked, but all they could show for it was three single runs. Anyone else would have at least surrendered five or six. As Buck Martinez, the commentator, mentioned with a graphic, the more trouble Dice-K gets himself into, the tougher he gets, with opposing BA’s dropping as baserunners increase.

However, these Angels are not the Halos of years past. This season, they added some strategic players in the persons of Torii Hunter and Mark Texeira, both game changers on a single swing of the bat. They won 100 games in regular season for the first time in team history. So you expect them to keep chipping away, inning by inning. Sure enough, after Dice left, leading 5-3, the Halos turned a pair of singles into a run off Okajima in the 6th—5-4, Sox.

Although Masterson held them scoreless in the 7th, he opened the 8th allowing a leadoff triple. That was all Francona had to see. He called for Papelbon and the Laser came on. He immediately got the first batter he faced on a foul pop on just one pitch. But the next batter, Texeira, who is having an awesome series, added a sacfly to his 3-3 evening and tied the game. Blown save for Pap. Pap then closed out the 8th, setting up the Hollywood finish in the 9th.

Big Papi launched one to deep center that initially looked for all the world that it was going to untie the game in one fell swoop. However, it was about a foot short, bouncing off the outfielder’s glove and leaving Ortiz standing on second with a double, his second hit of the evening. Crisp came in to run, and Youk turned over on a K-Rod slider, grounding out to third. That brought J.D. to the plate.

Now Drew hasn’t played much at all for the better part of the last two months, his last homer coming in mid-July, all due to a combination of family problems and a ruptured disc. He had gotten a double in the first, but it was on a straight heater. K-Rod’s deadliest pitches are a pair of breaking balls thrown at very different speeds that have made him almost as unhittable as Papelbon. Not tonight. On a 2-2 count, he left one of these a bit further out over the plate than he should have and Drew put it well out of reach of anyone, fans included—7-5, Sox.

Pap then came on and nailed the Angels’ coffin shut, aided for the second out of the 9th by a spectacular play by Yooouk on a foul pop. Chasing a foul pop toward the seats along the third base line, Yooouk tracked the ball as it drifted closer and closer to the photographers’ box, saw it go over the box, and then, at the last minute, leaned over a cameraman and speared it with a solid backhand grab.

This is now eleven in a row in the post-season against the Angels. Two down, nine to go.