Blue Monday

Wakefield berated himself for walking Vernon Wells ahead of Thomas to open the inning.

"Shouldn't have happened," he said. "With Vernon's speed at first, I tried to be a little too fast. I tried to get Dougie [Mirabelli] a chance to possibly throw him out, and I just left the ball up."

Aaron Hill, who had four hits, belted a two-run home run in the ninth off Mike Timlin, who kept his head (literally) when he caught Gregg Zaun's savage liner at nose level. But after that play, Timlin served up an 0-and-2 pitch that Hill lost over the Monster in left-center field.

"That's the first hit he's had off me," Timlin said of the 25-year-old second baseman, one of the better young infielders in the AL, who had gone 0 for 6 against Timlin. "He's hot right now. He's swinging the bat well."

Timlin could be excused if he was still slightly dazed after being staggered by Zaun's liner.

"You just hope it doesn't catch flesh from the neck up," Timlin said. "I threw the glove up and caught it. It scared the [expletive] out of me."

The Sox gloves weren't quite as reliable when they weren't playing self-defense. A night after rookie second baseman Dustin Pedroia saved the Sox with a terrific catch, the defense turned wobbly. After Wells dropped a two-out double 6 feet short of the Wall over a shallow-playing Manny Ramírez, Mirabelli threw a ball past third baseman Mike Lowell in the first when Wells stole third, allowing Wells to come home.

"Frank Thomas is so big," Lowell said of the man who was at the plate when Wells took off, "it's almost impossible to throw around him."

To Mirabelli, the throw did more than allow an unearned run to score. "I kind of forced a throw that I didn't need to make," he said, "and that kind of set a tone that got us off on the wrong foot."

Lowell made a two-base error in the second inning, his sixth miscue of the season, matching his total in 153 games last year.

"It hit my glove and kicked up more than I thought it would," Lowell said. "The only saving grace is they didn't score. Trust me, I breathed a sigh of relief as big as anybody."