Lopez should have known what Malaska learned at the batting cage and others have realized since Ortiz began contending for last year's MVP award.
"He's one of the best lefthanded power guys in the league," Kevin Millar said. "David Ortiz is not a guy to be messed with."
The victory spared the shorthanded Sox from a long spell of gloom on their offday today. Ortiz's homer, the first of the season over the Monster, capped the team's first come-from-behind win and first triumph in the last at-bat. He knocked in Bill Mueller, who had walked leading off the 12th against Lopez in the final scene of the 3-hour, 53-minute affair.
"It's good to go into the offday with a dramatic victory like this," general manager Theo Epstein said. "If we lost this game, it would have not been a good night's sleep for a lot of us. It was a big win at a time when we needed it."
It was especially big for Malaska, the 26-year-old former Devil Ray who earned the win by recording the final six outs. Malaska entered the game after Bobby Jones put the Sox in peril by walking the first two batters in the 11th on eight pitches (Jones has walked the last five batters he faced, including the final three in Baltimore last Thursday when he forced in the winning run in the 13th inning in a 3-2 loss). And Malaska sparkled, retiring all six batters he faced, including the dangerous Frank Catalanotto, Vernon Wells, and Carlos Delgado with the go-ahead run on second in the 11th.
As the youngest guy in the Sox pen, Malaska has been assigned by the veterans to tote a tackle box bearing some of their bullpen needs, such as chewing tobacco. But he looked nothing like a rookie with the game in jeopardy. The first six batters in Toronto's order managed to get only one ball out of the infield against him.
