CHICAGO -- Morning having broken long before David Ortiz was prepared for it, the Red Sox slugger showed up for work yesterday and told his boss that he dreamed he'd overslept and that Terry Francona was mad at him. The kind of dream, he said, that had him sleeping with one eye shut and one eye checking the alarm clock.
``I swear to God, bro, I was dreaming like I was going to be late," Ortiz said. ``So I kept waking up and pretty much every hour was like a time bomb, you know."
These days, that is as close to a complaint as you're going to hear from Ortiz, who fought off fatigue long enough to hit his 31st home run, and eighth in his last eight games, in the Red Sox' 9-6 win over the White Sox, their second straight win over the defending World Series champions before another sellout crowd of 39,497 at U.S. Cellular Field.
``We have pretty much the worst schedule ever in baseball," said Ortiz, worn down by a three-city trip that included middle-of-the-night arrivals in Miami and Chicago, and a 12:26 local start yesterday after a night game. ``[Friday], I was very sleepy, and today it seems like we were gone from here for just an hour."
If anyone should have wished he could have stayed in bed, it was Red Sox starter Josh Beckett, who gave up three more home runs and, like Ortiz, leads the majors in long balls (26 allowed, an incomprehensible 22 in 64 innings on the road). But the Red Sox played alert, inspired baseball. No one more so than the bullpen employees who rescued Beckett when he loaded the bases with no outs in the seventh, the iron in the White Sox lineup due, and the Red Sox holding an 8-5 lead.
Left hander Javier Lopez, who was buried in the minors with the White Sox before Theo Epstein liberated him in a June 15 trade for David Riske, struck out Jim Thome, who earlier had hit his 30th home run, one of three tape-measure shots off Beckett, the other two coming off the bat of Jermaine Dye. (Dye's first landed between the hedges, and if you think that means Athens, Ga., you wouldn't be off by much. It traveled an estimated 456 feet.)
Francona then went to rookie Craig Hansen, who retired cleanup man Paul Konerko on a fly ball that right fielder Trot Nixon grabbed in foul territory and held onto despite an unintended hip check from second baseman Mark Loretta, and ended the threat by inducing Dye to line to Alex Cora at short.
Beckett, who'd been cheerleading from the dugout since his removal, leaped from his perch on the steps and enthusiastically slammed Hansen with a high-five. Tears of gratitude would not have been surprising, except Texans don't cry, even when they know their 11th win would not have been possible without some help.
