Red Sox remain on roll

"He just asked me if I wanted him to smack me in the side of the face," Arroyo said. "He went, `You need to wake up and get things going.' "

Arroyo responded the best he could, which was good enough for a Sox team that seems to have magically turned months of mediocrity into something special. Treating one of Arroyo's rockiest outings of the season as if it were just another pebble on the basepaths, the Sox rallied behind the mighty bats of Manny Ramirez and Jason Varitek for their fifth straight victory as they snuffed the White Sox, 10-7, yesterday before 37,303 at US Cellular Field.

So it was that Arroyo went from barely escaping a smackdown to the winner's circle as the Sox improved to 13-6 in August, won a third straight road series for the first time this year, and maintained a share of the wild-card lead.

Life seemed so good in the heady aftermath that it even became acceptable to break a taboo and entertain a wild notion.

"It's a 6 1/2-game deficit all of a sudden," Kevin Millar said of the dwindling gap between the Sox and Yankees in the American League East. "And what do we have, six games left with them?"

Never mind that the Yankees have never relinquished a lead so large. The Sox suddenly felt strong enough to consider the implausible after they submitted the latest in a string of solid performances, this one powered by Ramirez, who knocked in five runs with a three-run homer and a pair of singles, and the white-hot Varitek, who scorched his 16th and 17th jacks of the season and has shown no sign of late-season fatigue.

"We're just confident right now," Millar said. "We're getting that swagger back . . . I don't think we've had that all year until this last couple of weeks. That's the swagger you need to take into the postseason."

So what if Arroyo lacked it from the moment he began warming up. He persevered to improve to 6-9 with a 4.29 ERA despite surrendering five runs on seven hits, three walks, and two hit batsmen over 5 2/3 innings.

"I felt bad from the get-go," he said. "Warming up in the pen, you know you don't look too good when you walk out and [Wallace] says, `You need to battle today.' I knew it was going to be a struggle."