After an embarrassing loss, then a tough loss, then a rainout, the Sox put on an impressive demonstration of baseball in the Bronx last night. They went up 1-0, then fell behind 3-1. In the 6th, they put together a 3 run rally to take the lead.
Manny walked to lead off the inning, then Nixon singled. Varitek singled in Nixon. Lowell was brushed by a pitch to load the bases. Proctor replaced Wright, then Youkilis hit a fly all to center field that was deep enough to score Nixon from 3rd. Gonzalez came up with a big double just past the glove of a diving A-Rod to give the Sox a 4-3 lead that wouldn't go away.
In the 7th, the Sox had an even bigger inning. Ortiz led off with a double, and then Manny was intentionally walked. Nixon flew out, then Varitek stepped to the plate and knocked the ball out of the park for his 6th homer of the year. Coco Crisp added two more runs with a 2 out single to give the Sox the 9-3 lead that wound up being the final score of the game.
Schilling pitched very nicely to pick up win number 9 of the season. All three of his runs came off of solo shots which is good and bad. It is bad because he made three bad pitches to give up those homers, but it is good that there was nobody on base so he wasn't making too many mistakes. He only gave up 4 hits, only 1 wasn't a homer. He also didn't walk any so the Yankees never really had threat for a big inning. Schilling held the Yankees 2 thru 5 hitters to a combined 0 for 12.
Schilling possibly could have gone the full 9, throwing only 96 pitches thru 8. However, we had a 6 run lead, and it was also a good opportunity to give Papelbon some work.
The Man of the Game is Jason Varitek who went 3 for 5 with 4 RBI. He had an RBI single in the 6th, and a 3 run homer in the 7th. He also scored a run in each inning.
The Sox now return to the Fens for a brief 4 game, 3 day homestand against the AL West leading Rangers.
Vicente Padilla, formerly of the Phillies, takes on Tim Wakefield tonight. In Game 1 of Saturday's doubleheader, Jon Lester will make his Major League debut up against John Rheinecker. In the night cap, Josh Beckett will take on John "Way Back" Wasdin in his first start of the year. In Sunday's game, Clement goes against Kevin Millwood. We should be able to take 3 of 4 in this series. Hopefully Beckett and Clement will pitch as well as they're capable of.
AL ALL-STAR VOTING
The AL All-Star team still resembles a Yankee-Red Sox game with nothing but Yanks and Sox starting except for at one position.
Ortiz has a healthy 200,000 vote lead over Giambi at first base. Loretta remains 36,000 behind Robinson Cano at 2nd. A-Rod has a 414,000 vote lead over Lowell. Tejada is 240,000 behind Derek Jeter at short-stop. Sox fans have given Alex Gonzalez 173,000 votes that should have gone to Tejada or Jeter. Varitek hs a 50,000 vote lead over Ivan Rodriguez to catch the midsummer classic. In the outfield, Vladimir Guerrero leads with Manny and Damon behind him. Ichiro is in 4th more than 100,000 votes behind Damon. The All-Star game is shaping up to be an AL East dominated game.
The World Cup starts today with Germany taking on Costa Rica, and Poland facing Ecuador. If you're interested, I'm a member of a soccer blog, so check it out.
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