With everything in order, it may be just the start they needed

July 07, 2004|Bob Ryan, Globe Columnist

What do you call a game in which your leadoff man has five hits; your eighth and ninth men score six runs combined; you bat around in successive innings; you send 39 men to the plate in the first six innings; you never go down 1-2-3; you make the opposing pitcher throw 102 pitches in four innings; you almost have as many hits and walks (22) as outs (24); you catch every ball you should and Manny Ramirez catches one he shouldn't; your starting pitcher throws seven shutout innings and his mopup man isn't bad, either; and, oh yeah, you win 11-0 over a serious wild-card rival?

A good start.

"This is the game people expected us to play 162 times this year," mused Curt Schilling. "That's not realistic."

Ah, Curt, this is Boston. What's realism got to do with anything?

We do not know what this game means for sure, other than it's baseball, and there is no more meaningless sampling in American sport than one baseball game. All we can say is that was an evening in which the 2004 Red Sox, universally acclaimed as baseball's biggest bunch of underachievers in the months of May and June, put together an unbeatable combination of pitching, batting, defense and luck (a Doug Mirabelli grounder going through Scott Hatteberg's legs in advance of a Bill Mueller homer). It was also game No. 81, the season's official halfway point.

Is all the bad stuff out of their system?

"We played a real good ballgame," said manager Terry Francona. "But one game doesn't make the season. That's how I feel after a loss, as much as those hurt, too. But you've got to start somewhere. You can't start anywhere until you get a win."

See. He said it. "Start." He said it twice. This was a start. Good for him. No one wants to hear any more talk about how good this team should be, and what it can accomplish. We need to see it.

In their defense, last night was one of the few times this season Francona was able to write down all the names onto the lineup card that he wanted. Nomar's back. Trot's back. And now Mueller's back. The defending American League batting champion settled into the ninth spot ("He's more comfortable down at the bottom of the order," the skipper had said prior to the game) and reached base three times, the highlight being a three-run homer in the second inning off Barry Zito that got the Red Sox off to a nice, yup, start. Mueller would later single, walk and score twice more.

"This is the team we wanted to have on the field every day since spring training, but it hasn't worked out that way," pointed out Mirabelli, who, as usual, caught Tim Wakefield (three hits in seven superb innings) and who, as has become his 2004 custom, contributed to the offense by reaching base three times -- once on, believe it or not, an infield hit -- and scoring three runs.