Zeroes and Heroes

Sox: 3 Tribe: 1

What do you get when you pit a veteran knuckleballer against the reigning AL Cy Young winner? A pitcher's duel, naturally! Tonight's game was easy on the ERAs of both starters, who blanked their opponents for seven innings (Wake) and eight innings (Lee). Delcarmen threw in a shut-out inning of his own to keep the duel alive. So, the "zeroes" I refer to are those put up by Tim Wakefield and Cliff Lee, as well as Manny Delcarmen. Watching the game remain scoreless for so long, I began to wonder if they would have to go into extra innings before a run would be scored. Leave it to the closers to open the doors! Kerry Wood came on in the 9th and the Sox, happy not to have to face Lee for another inning, put the first two on via a walk (Pedey) and a hit (Papi). Youk, having an unusually quiet night at the plate, flied out on a bat-buster and up comes J-Bay, who takes the Tribe's closer deep for a 3-run tater. Scoreless tie broken, Sox on top. Mikey follows up with a triple that, due to a bobble in the outfield, could have been an inside-the-park home run had it not been hit by a guy coming off of hip surgery. JD comes in to pinch-hit for Bailey, but strikes out. Kottaras makes the third out of the inning and in comes Paps for the save. Paps must have attended the Dice-K School of Pitching in the off-season because he keeps letting runners on base, either via walks or hits, but manages to escape with little to no damage. Tonight was no different. The Indians stroked three hits off of him, scoring a run. Paps got out of it only allowing the one run and earning his fifth save of the season, but I'm hard-pressed to remember the last clean inning he's had.

The "heroes" of this game, for the Sox, are Wake, who, combined with MDC, one-hit the Tribe over eight innings, and, of course, Bay. Because the tie was broken after Wake left the game and MDC had pitched an inning, Wake couldn't pick up the win, but the Sox extend their streak to 11 games. Tomorrow night, they try for 12, with Penny facing some pitcher I've never heard of named Anthony Reyes.

LET'S GO RED SOX!!!! KEEP THE STREAK ALIVE!!!!