Great Day for Up!

Game 4 – Red Sox

Red Sox 5, A’s 0
Record: 3-1

The season’s only 4 games old and we’re already headlong into a neck-whipping spin cycle of yin-yangery. Yesterday, Best Case Jon Lester reported for duty, a week after his evil twin opened the season in Tokyo. Lester threw 6 2/3 efficient (for him) scoreless innings, allowing 3 hits and 3 walks to even his record at 1-1.

Meanwhile, rumored-dead Jason Varitek dropped his second consecutive 2-for-4 after opening the season with an ugly 0-for-8 in the Land of the Rising Sun. Varitek took Huston Street deep in the top of the 9th for his first homer of the season, matching David Ortiz, who broke out of a season-opening 0-for-12 skid to record a single and a 2-run homer. Papi’s 7th-inning longball scored the first runs of the game for the good guys and helped calm the nerves of Sox fans wondering how many more scoring chances the team would blow. After watching the Sox fail to tally with the bases loaded and nobody out in the top of the game’s opening frame, we could be forgiven for our angst.

For good measure, the Sox pulled the same trick in the 8th, failing to scratch with the bases loaded and nobody out – and Papi and Manny coming to the plate. This time, though, the little guys in the lineup had already managed 2 runs on 5 consecutive singles (a tour de force of station-to-station baseball – somewhere, Wendall Kim is crying), so the gnashing of teeth and rending of garments was kept to a minimum.

Sox head to Toronto for the weekend, playing in their third country of the young season before finally getting back to Boston next week.