"But I wouldn't trade that feeling for any in the world," said Francona, who was still unable to exhale after Foulke struck out three straight batters in the ninth, including Edgar Martinez, who had taken him deep the night before, after putting the tying runs on base with no one out.
"It's agony," said Francona, whose team returns home to face Baltimore tonight having split the six games they played on this West Coast swing and remaining the same seven games behind the Yankees they were when they started this trip. "My stomach was in my throat. But I wouldn't trade that feeling for anything, not after a win like this.
"That was a lot of game, we have a long flight back, and there's still a lot of baseball to be played, but we survived today. That's all we needed to do."
While Francona was dealing with the anatomically impossible, Larry Lucchino's mother was in his ear. "She called me from Pittsburgh on my cellphone in the eighth inning," Lucchino said. "I didn't hear the phone ring, but she left a message. She said, `What's wrong with that team?' "
At the time, a good question. An 8-1 lead the Sox fashioned by scoring all those runs in one inning, the fourth, when David Ortiz and Manny Ramirez hit home runs on consecutive pitches, was all but history by the time Mama Lucchino dialed her son. The Sox had scored another run in the top of the eighth to take a 9-5 lead when Johnny Damon walked, Mark Bellhorn doubled, and Ortiz hit a sacrifice fly, but in the bottom of the inning, the first three Mariners reached against reliever Joe Nelson, and two runs were in and the bases were loaded before Alan Embree induced Jolbert Cabrera to fly out to end the inning.
Embree had gotten a force play on the first batter he faced, Scott Spiezio, but there was a walk and a single by Raul Ibanez before he could put down the Mariners.
"Those were the toughest two outs I've had to get all season," Embree said. "I felt like I was out there forever.
"We couldn't let another game like that happen after what had happened the night before. It would have been so demoralizing.
