His day on the mound began as follows: Placido Polanco ground single up the middle. Chris Shelton single to third baseman Bill Mueller. Dmitri Young lined single to left (scoring Polanco). Magglio Ordonez bloop single over shortstop Edgar Renteria, loading the bases. Craig Monroe laced double to right (scoring Shelton and Young). Brandon Inge shuttlecock single -- a slow, soft blooper -- to right (scoring Ordonez).
Finally, on his seventh batter, Wells recorded an out, getting Vance Wilson looking at a curveball. But Connecticut's John McDonald (3 for 4, three singles) came up and dropped down a squeeze bunt. Monroe scored, and McDonald reached when John Olerud fielded the ball, turned to first base, and Tony Graffanino was late arriving at the bag.
''I wasn't expecting that in the first inning," Wells said. ''Why would you bunt when you're hitting the hell out of me?"
Wells, at long last, escaped on his 34th pitch when Nook Logan popped out to Renteria, who doubled up Inge to end the inning.
''Sometimes, if they don't know you're sick, you still have an advantage," Wells said. ''[But] I wasn't fooling anybody."
Detroit ace Jeremy Bonderman (14-9, 4.02 ERA) wasn't fooling the Sox as much as he was limiting the damage. Boston tagged him for nine hits, and he walked four, but the Sox turned that into only four runs, largely because Bonderman got three double plays.
The Sox hit into five yesterday. Kevin Millar (0 for his last 13 before an eighth-inning single) grounded into a double play with no outs in the second inning. Olerud, who'd missed the previous 13 games with a strained hamstring, hit cleanup in his return to the lineup in place of Manny Ramirez, who asked for a day off. Olerud singled twice and knocked in a run, but also grounded into an inning-ending double play in the fifth.
