V Goes Both Ways

Well, tonight the Sox could have dropped another, but hung in there and took the W. What made it interesting was that after leading 3-0 and then dropping behind 5-3 (shades of Saturday), Lester hung tough and gave the Hose a couple of good solid innings, limiting the damage. He appears to be just a few innings away from the Lester we've come to expect the past several years. Hopefully, he gets all the way back before too much longer. Anyway, V announced before the game that, for the time being--at least a couple of games--he was sending Bard to the pen to try to stabilize the group of firemen that have morphed into the Arson Squad. Bard was, understandably, less than enthusiastic, commenting he wasn't going to get eight other guys to start winning just by being in the pen. Yet when the time came, he came in with a man on third, score at 6-5, Sox,(complements of Ross' pair of bleacher shots --more later on that), and got the first two batters without giving up a run. Then, what does V do? He's got things going well--just one more batter to get. Does he do the logical & leave Bard to close things out? Are you kidding me? No, he brings in Aceves. Now, I grant youy Aceves has had some success so far this year as the de facto closer, but, at this moment it was starting to resemble Saturday's removal of Dubronte while he was cruising along over thye Yankees. And we all know ehere that brilliant idea went. This time we got lucky; Aceves closed out the game on a simple grounder and the Sox were back in the winning column, albeit quite a bit deeper in last than when they last had won.
Back to Ross. He got his 4th & 5th shots of the young season to put himself squarely in the race for the HR lead for the moment. These two made the diff tonight. Perhaps the magical thong has been reactivated (You'd have to look back two years to the Giants' Championship history to understand the connection). Papi and Sweeney, with a pair of knocks apiece, remain at or near the top of the league in the batting race, and Ross jumped into the fray for league lead in ribbies at 13.
A good night, all things considered, but let's hope it's just the first in a long run.