Was the streak too much to expect any newcomer to shoulder?
``There's a lot of pressure here to win, anyway," said Johnson, who hit two batters and walked another in a three-run first inning and threw a wild pitch that brought a run home in a two-run second.
He'd come from Cleveland advertised as a sinkerballer, but last night he left his two-seamers too high above sea level, forcing him to throw an assortment of curves and splitters that were no more effective.
``I definitely wanted to go out there and win, for the team and for myself," he said, ``and it's unfortunate that I got ahead of myself there the first two innings."
Also expiring last night was the Sox' 12-game winning streak against National League teams, though the Sox did set a major league record by extending their streak of errorless games to 17. That line drive that flew over the head of an immobile Manny Ramírez in the first inning? That went in the books as a Mike Jacobs double, the only extra-base hit allowed by Johnson but damaging in the first degree.
``He took one step in, and that was one step too many," Sox manager Terry Francona said of Ramírez, who was dealing with football stadium lights when he broke the wrong way on Jacobs's liner, which knocked in former Sox prospect Hanley Ramirez for the first run and set up the next two.
The Sox had entertained some hope that simply soaking up the atmosphere might have some benefit for a guy whose winning percentage of .367 (55-95) is the worst of any pitcher in the last 30 years who has thrown at least 1,000 innings. The one other pitcher who had exactly the same record was another one-time itinerant Sox pitcher, Matt Young, who called it a career when he hit those numbers.
``I've talked to him quite a bit," Curt Schilling, king of the Sox positive thinkers, had said the night before. ``He shouldn't have the record he has, not with that stuff. He's the kind of guy hitters come back and say, `This guy's filthy.' They don't want to face him.
