Saturday Slugfest

Sox: 16 Yanks: 11

Was this Fenway or Yankee Stadium II? The score would suggest the latter, but it was, in fact, the former. The pitching matchup: Josh Beckett vs. AJ Burnett. While Beckett struggled from the very start, allowing 8 earned runs and having only one clean inning, Burnett cruised through the first three innings. It looked like a long day for the local nine. In the fourth inning, the wheels started coming off for the guy who, until today, owned the Sox at Fenway. He loaded the bases on a Pedey walk, Papi foul out, a Youk single, and a JD walk. Bay singled to drive in one run. Lowell whiffed, then up came Tek with two outs. The Sox were hungry for some salami and salami the captain delivered! Right into the Yankees bullpen! Sox now within a run. Beckett has his one clean inning and Jake knots the score in the bottom of the fifth with a long ball of his own, his first of the year. Pedey singles, and up comes Papi, who had lately been looking as if maybe the 100-year-old batboy Big Pappy should be pinch-hitting for him. That is, until he hit a wall-ball double and advanced Pedey to third. Youk got plunked and the bases were loaded again. This time, JD was up. He put one on the ground right at Teixeira, who pulled a Pedey and threw home. Posada threw back to first to complete the double play, the third one JD's grounded into in this series. Luckily for JD and the rest of the team, the inning wasn't over; there were only two outs. Here comes J-Bay. He knocks one high off the wall for a 2-run double. Sox are now ahead for the first time in the game.

Had the rest of the game not proceeded like it had, Tito would have come under a lot of fire for what happened in the sixth inning. After a quick fifth, Beckett came back for the 6th, even with a pitch count topping 100. He walks Jeter, which I thought would mean the hook for him, but he was left in to face another batter. Johnny Damon, the former Sox outfielder who went to the dark side three seasons ago for more dough, took Beckett's 3-2 offering deep, tying the game again. I know it's April, but raise your hand if thoughts of Grady and Pedro didn't enter your mind at that moment. Manny Delcarmen came to the rescue and retired all three batters he faced and the Sox were on to the bottom half of the inning, trying to break another tie.

The rest of the game was a back-and-forth off the two bullpens. Mikey launched a three-run blast in the 7th and a bases-clearing double in the eighth. Pedey knocked Jacoby in before Mikey's 8th inning three-ribbie double. Paps made things interesting in the ninth, as he's been known to do lately, but he kept the score at 16-11 and the Sox come out of the four-hour slugfest with a series win and a nine-game winning streak. Tomorrow night, will Masterson be masterful in front of a national television audience, and will the Sox bats make Pettitte's stay on the mound a short one? Having taken the first two games of the season in comeback fashion, anything can happen for these Red Sox. Even when they get buzzsawed early in games, they've been coming back and claiming these games for themselves.

LET'S GO RED SOX!!!!! CONGRATS ON OUTSLUGGING THE BRONX BOMBERS!!!!