SWEPT AWAY BY A "RALLY MONKEY" ...
Mike Lowell provides the
late inning heroics in a marathon

April 25, 2009 ... Gold medal sprinter Usain Bolt threw the ceremonial first pitch (to Jamaican-born Justin Masterson), and before the night was through, Yankees manager Joe Girardi wished Bolt were available in his bullpen. New York has allowed 38 runs in its last two Saturday games.

Despite looking bad on two strikeouts and a fly out to right field, and despite being tied for the major league lead with five double plays, Mike Lowell deposited yet more goodwill into the Monster seats. His three-run home run in the seventh inning, after the Yankees had taken a 10-9 lead in the top of the inning, put the Sox up by two, which narrowed to one in the eighth on Robinson Cano's second homer of the day. It was that kind of game.

So 4 hours, 21 minutes after it began, the Sox had pulled off what looked unbelievable when they were down 6-0 in the fourth: a 16-11 win in front of an ecstatic 37,699.

Lowell added an extra bit of flare, too, steps from Mark Teixeira at first base. About halfway down the line between home plate and first, the third baseman raised his fist in the air and waved it. He could have kept waving that fist, as his next hit, a double to the Wall in the eighth, cleared the bases of being loaded and extended the Sox' lead to 16-11.

His six RBIs, pushing his season total to 22, were nice, although not necessarily on the upper portion of his life list. Though Lowell's homer and double highlighted the game as the shadows deepened into darkness, there would have been nothing without Jason Varitek. His primary duty behind the plate might not have been going as planned, with Josh Beckett allowing eight runs in five-plus innings, but he made up for it in the fourth.

With one run in on Bay's one-out single to left, Lowell struck out with the bases loaded. All it took was one pitch, one 96-mile-per-hour fastball from Burnett, and the deficit was one. Grand slam into the Yankees bullpen, Varitek.

So, the scoring went as such: three runs for the Sox in the fifth, highlighted by Jacoby Ellsbury's solo homer and Bay's two-run double. Two runs for the Yankees, highlighted by Johnny Damon's Beckett-busting two-run shot in the sixth. One run for the Sox in the sixth, on a sacrifice fly double play by David Ortiz. Two runs for the Yankees in the seventh, on a two-run error by Dustin Pedroia. Three for the Sox on Lowell's Monster mash. One for the Yankees in the eighth, on Cano's second homer. Four for the Sox, on Pedroia's single and Lowell's bases-clearing double.

First pitch seemed long ago. The starters, Beckett and Burnett, are pitching under contracts worth a combined $122.5 million, though two-thirds of that goes to the one in the Yankees' road grays. And yet, as Beckett left the game after the home run by Damon had disfigured his ERA (now at 6.00), both pitchers had allowed a stultifying eight runs apiece. Neither had gotten more than 15 outs, leaving far too much to bullpens already overtaxed by 11 innings the night before. And so, more than two hours into the afternoon game, with night games around the country starting, it was a new game after all. And a game that would last far beyond what it seemed at the beginning, including plays odd (Pedroia's base-running gaffe and error in back-to-back innings) and exhilarating (Varitek's and Lowell's homers).

It left the Sox with nine straight wins. Hard to believe they've got 16 more of these between now and October.

David Ortiz has a 20-game homerless drought, the sixth time in his career he's gone 20-plus without a home run. It's his longest stretch as a member of the Sox, though his career longest was 42 games with the Twins in 2002.