A SEASON IN THE DRINK
(CHICKEN & BEER) ...
Ellsbury does it again on the second night in a row

August 3, 2011 ... The meteoric trajectory of Jacoby Ellsbury's 2011 All-Star season seemed to follow the same arc of the first walk-off home run of his career in the ninth inning of tonight's 4-3 victory over the Cleveland Indians.

After driving in Jarrod Saltalamacchia with a walk-off single in Tuesday night's 3-2 victory, Ellsbury made it a smashing encore performance tonight before 38,172 at Fenway Park. Only this time, he did the honors himself. In both situations, Ellsbury came to the plate hitless in his first four at-bats.

Ellsbury clobbered his 18th homer of the season to straightaway center off reliever Joe Smith with two outs in the bottom of the ninth. It kept the Sox (68-41) a game ahead of the Yankees in the AL East. While Ellsbury said he wished he could have delivered career win No. 200 for Sox starter Tim Wakefield, his homer did give closer Jonathan Papelbon (4-0) the victory for the second night in a row. After they were unable to produce more than one run in Wakefield's initial bid to record his 200th win the Sox scored two early ones.

Starting for Cleveland was Carlos Carrasco, who pitched while appealing a six-game suspension handed down Monday for throwing at the head of Kansas City's Billy Butler after giving up a grand slam to Melky Cabrera Friday. Carrasco kept his cool last night after giving up a pair of two-out runs in the first inning as the Sox played with a sense of urgency in hopes of giving Wakefield a big enough lead to work with.

David Ortiz gave the Sox the early lead, delivering a two-run single to left, though he later had an RBI taken away when the official scorer ruled that Kevin Youkilis scored on an error by left fielder Austin Kearns.

Still, Wakefield had the lead. The 45-year-old knuckleballer, the oldest active player in the majors, retired the first eight batters he faced before catcher Lou Marson reached on a fielding error by Sox shortstop Marco Scutaro with two outs in the third. Unfazed, Wakefield got out of the inning when Carrera laid down a bunt in front of the plate and was thrown out by Saltalamacchia. After Kipnis took Wakefield into the visitors bullpen, Asdrubal Cabrera singled to center and scored the tying run on Travis Hafner's double to right. Wakefield retired the next three batters, striking out Carlos Santana, and getting groundouts by Kosuke Fukudome to second and Lonnie Chisenhall to third.

The Sox came back in the bottom of the frame and pushed across a run to take a 3-2 lead on Scutaro's fielder's choice with the bases loaded. Ortiz got things going by drawing a leadoff walk and went to third on Carl Crawford's double off the wall. After Saltalamacchia fanned, Josh Reddick was intentionally walked to load the bases for Scutaro, who grounded sharply to short but beat the throw to first to avert the double play.

Wakefield, however, squandered that lead in the seventh. Chisenhall hit a leadoff double to left, and after Kearns grounded to second and Marson struck out, Carrera ended Wakefield's night when he hit a ground-rule double to right. He departed after throwing 99 pitches (64 strikes) and surrendering three runs on five hits and two walks while striking out six.

Randy Williams took over, and after walking Kipnis, he got out of the inning with a punchout of Cabrera that had the Indians shortstop spiking his helmet in disgust. Papelbon came on in the ninth and, like the night before, threw a perfect frame and was the good-fortune winner.