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SWEPT AWAY BY A "RALLY MONKEY" ...
The Sox sweep the
Rays via Buchholz and Lester
September 13, 2009 ...
With the first game of today's doubleheader tied at 1-1 in the eighth
inning, Dustin Pedroia surprised and delighted everyone, his two-run
shot helping the Sox to a 3-1 win that later became a sweep of a Rays
team that has utterly fallen apart with a Game 2 triumph (4-0).
With the sun
finally shining on Fenway, and the Sox finally able to play a full nine innings
(or, rather, 18), the team returned to its pursuit of the wild-card berth in the
playoffs. Thanks to Pedroia, that started off well. It continued going well in
Game 2, thanks to Jon Lester and another opposite-field homer by another
right-handed batter (Jason Bay).
Not that it
was easy, but the Sox were playing the Rays at exactly the right time, turning
Tampa Bay's eight-game losing streak into an 11-game slide by the time the Rays
slumped out of Boston.
By the end
of the three-game sweep, all played in about 24 hours because of weather issues,
the Rays had lost their season and the Sox increased their wild-card lead to
four games over the Rangers. With stellar performances from both Sox starters,
seven innings and one run from Buchholz and eight innings and no runs from
Lester, the Rays could never get any offense going, scoring just one run over
the 18 innings, and just two in the series.
But, even
with Buchholz having given up just the one run, it still came down to the end in
the first game. With Matt Garza still pitching in the eighth, David Ortiz
smashed a double to begin the inning after having come in 2-for-21 career off
Garza. Then, after pinch runner Joey Gathright was bunted to third, Pedroia
stepped to the plate trying for a sacrifice fly to get the run home. He missed,
at least on the sac fly.
And though
Pedroia didn't follow up his Game 1 with offensive production in Game 2, it
didn't matter. Lester wasn't giving the Rays anything. Lester finished the game
not having allowed a run in 17 innings, as he ran his record to 13-7 amid one of
the best stretches of his still-young career.
And the Sox
scored enough to pull out the game and the sweep. With a Mike Lowell RBI ground
out in the second inning, a two-run, bad-hop single by Jason Varitek in the
sixth that went skipping past Rays first baseman Willy Aybar, and a 303-foot
home run just past the Pesky Pole by Bay, they got everything they could out of
yesterday and out of the weekend.
The games
were 2 hours 45 minutes and 2 hours 35 minutes, but it all added up. It felt
like They had been there all day. A long day of baseball, but a good day of
baseball. |
