Only two more days must pass before they finally get to settle this, properly, it seems, face to face.
''We know it's going to come down to this weekend," Johnny Damon ventured. ''It's the master plan. God's way. Yankees-Red Sox."
This, however, was an opportunity lost, which Damon acknowledged, calling yesterday ''very disappointing."
The Sox began the day half a game behind in the AL East but made up that ground in a mere 2 hours 23 minutes. Tim Wakefield spun seven calm innings, the depth and trap-door break on his knuckleball limiting Toronto to three hits, all singles. The Sox scored in the first inning for the fourth consecutive game, all wins. They led 2-0 after four batters -- a Damon single, Edgar Renteria double, David Ortiz RBI ground out, and a Manny Ramirez RBI single.
Toronto scored its lone run off Wakefield -- unearned, at that -- in the fifth. Wakefield pitched scoreless sixth and seventh innings, leaving Francona with a difficult decision. Bring back Wakefield, who was sitting on 108 pitches? Or turn to 24-year-old rookie Jonathan Papelbon, preserving Wakefield's strength -- he's thrown a career-high 220 1/3 innings -- to come back Saturday on three days' rest against the Yankees?
''I talked to him between innings," Francona said. ''That's a tough one for me. Under ordinary circumstances, we could have sent him back out and he would have been fine. I don't think these are ordinary circumstances.
''We have guys out there [in the bullpen] who should get them out. And they did."
Papelbon pitched a scoreless eighth, though it was by no means easy -- he allowed a leadoff walk and a one-out single. With runners on the corners and one out, he popped up Vernon Wells in foul territory, then threw a fastball by Shea Hillenbrand for Strike 2 and a slider by Hillenbrand (seven strikeouts yesterday) for Strike 3.
