If your attention lagged a time or two yesterday afternoon while the Red Sox were beating on the Orioles, 13-4, you weren't alone. Even the Sox acknowledge their win was hardly a four-hour-and-four-minute exercise in nonstop excitement.
"Terrible," third baseman Mike Lowell said of the game's flow. "It just wasn't a good pace.
"But you're not always going to have a nice-paced game. It's better that you win. I'll take a slow-paced game with a win rather than a great-paced game and lose."
When it mattered most, the Sox clearly were paying attention. After Curt Schilling uncharacteristically squandered a 4-1 lead in the sixth at the only juncture in the game striking for its suddenness -- the Orioles loaded the bases on just three pitches, Schilling giving up three straight singles, and all three runners eventually scored -- the Sox scored nine unanswered runs in their last three at-bats.
They were ably assisted by an Orioles pitching staff that heaved 209 pitches, only slightly more than half of which were identified as strikes (114). Jason Varitek was hit by a pitch by Jon Leicester to open the sixth and came around to score the go-ahead run on Kevin Youkilis's two-out single. Leicester then walked the bases loaded to start the seventh, misfiring on 14 of 16 pitches, before clutching the back of his shoulder in pain. He left with what was called a strain.
While Javier Lopez and Hideki Okajima succeeded in rescuing Schilling, Orioles reliever Todd Williams could not escape the hot bat of Alex Cora, who delivered a two-out, two-run pinch single after Coco Crisp's ground ball had brought home one run. Sox pinch hitters had been called upon 18 previous times by manager Terry Francona, and not one had returned to the dugout having produced a run. Cora knocked in two.
The Sox piled on for five more runs in the eighth, helped by some sloppy Orioles fielding. Williams took a 9.45 ERA back to the team's hotel. He'd begun the day at 3.60.
Cora, who remained in the game at second, had an infield hit in that rally, and is now batting .475 (19 for 40) in his last 16 games. He politely declined to pick the winning numbers in last night's lottery drawing, though Lowell objected to the invitation even being posed to him.
"That would means he's lucky," Lowell said of Cora, who also pulled a sleight-of-hand double play with Julio Lugo when the Orioles were making noises about mounting one more comeback with back-to-back singles off Okajima to start the eighth.
"[Cora's] on a good roll," Lowell said, "but he's putting together good at-bats. Sometimes you create your own good luck, and he's doing a really good job with his at-bats."