"Against any team, when you give extra outs, you can get burned," manager Terry Francona said. "Against the Yankees, you can't do that. You've got to play good games and clean baseball to beat them. We didn't do that, and they took advantage of every mistake we made."
Maybe now that filmmaker Michael Moore has finished skewering the auto industry ("Roger and Me"), the gun lobby ("Bowling for Columbine") and the Bush administration ("Fahrenheit 9/11"), he could turn his attention to the Sox. After all, he seems to have finished rolling film on the likes of vice president Dick Cheney, who stopped by 161st Street to witness the latest act of futility by the Sox.
"It was just not a good day for the Sox," said first baseman Kevin Millar, who committed one of the team's three errors. "We didn't catch the ball and we just couldn't seem to get out of those big innings."
Thanks in part to Millar's miscue and a pair by shortstop Nomar Garciaparra, the Sox surrendered four more unearned runs, extending their major league lead to 58. They have committed 65 errors this season, a full 20 more than their opponents, and their latest blunders hardly could have come at a more inopportune time as they tried to narrow their gap with the division-leading Yankees.
"We're a much better defensive team than we've showed," said Johnny Damon, whose two home runs went for naught. "We booted a couple of balls and those guys will make you pay."
With starter Derek Lowe providing little help -- the Bombers torched him for nine hits, including a three-run homer by Gary Sheffield and a two-run shot by old friend Tony Clark, and a walk over five innings -- the Sox slipped 6 1/2 games off the pace as they continued to hover closer to the third-place Devil Rays than the leaders.
"Sometimes when you get beat, you have to take it like a man and move on," Lowe said. "That's all you can really do. They beat us in every facet of the game."
