Game 20 - Red Sox
Red Sox 5, Texas Rangers 4
Record: 14-6
A bit of a heartstopper, this one. Glad I missed the whole thing while playing softball with the venerable 3 Angry Men and 10 Married Guys franchise in the Vienna Men's Softball Association. Pedro staked the team to a 5-1 lead, pitching seven innings of two-hit, no earned-run ball, despite walking a career-high six batters. Mike Timlin then self-immolated, giving up three earned runs in 2/3 of an inning to make the score 5-4 in the 8th. Chad Fox came in, somehow got out of the 8th despite walking the first two batters he faced, then faced Rafael Palmeiro with two outs and one on in the bottom of the 9th.
Right about this time, I walked into my living room and turned on the TV to see Palmeiro golf a low slider on the same sickening arc that Tampa's Carl Crawford golfed Fox's offering in the Game 1 loss. Luckily, Raffy didn't get enough of the ball, and it settled into Trot Nixon's glove on the warning track to end the game. Phew. Pedro might've suffered an aneurysm if the bullpen had blown another one for him.
Meanwhile, in Anaheim, the Yankees pasted another supposed contender, dropping the Angels by an 8-3 count. I'm thisclose to changing my philosophy and rooting for the Yankees to win every game they play, except those against Boston. By my reckoning, this will be good for the Sox, because it will cause harm to the Wild Card chances of every other team. Clearly, the league has decided that they can't beat the Yankees, so why fight it if they don't plan to? I'll take my chances with Pedro and Lowe pitching 5 times in a 7-game series against the Yanks' collection of geriatric starters at the end of a long season.
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