No clock, but quite a time

"This team, the game is never over until it's over," Yogied Julio Lugo, who delivered the tying and winning runs with a bases-loaded, two-out chopper to first that Kevin Millar and pitcher Chris Ray, with an assist from the fear of Lugo's flying feet, turned into a single/error on the pitcher. Millar, moving to his right, fielded the ball cleanly, but he knew he'd have to hurry a throw to get the speedy Lugo and his toss was a tad behind Ray. The righthander was unable to catch the ball. Jason Varitek already had scored the tying run and Eric Hinske followed with the winning run, and the Red Sox had an improbable 6-5 victory we'll be referencing all season.

Now for every sports winner there is a sports loser and the man who was going to have a hard time sleeping after this one was Baltimore manager Sam Perlozzo, who was done in by both a questionable baseball custom and his own adherence to the relentlessly maddening 21st-century Book of Managing.

I shall explain.

The semi-unknown Jeremy Guthrie was on the mound to start the Sox ninth, and why not? He may have been a guy the Orioles picked up on spring training waivers from the Indians, but for 8 1/3 innings he had been an unfathomable mystery to the Sox, who had only managed three hits and who had not had a ba se runner since a one-out walk to Coco Crisp in the sixth put men at first and second. When Lugo grounded routinely to short to open the ninth, Guthrie was two outs from a career-first complete game.

But then Crisp lofted a pop fly to the left of home plate. Bear in mind that a ferocious wind had been blowing in all afternoon, making all balls hit in the air certified adventures. Guthrie moved toward it, as did third baseman Chris Gomez. But unofficial baseball law prohibits pitchers from catching popups unless it's an extreme emergency, and so Guthrie joined Gomez in watching catcher Ramon Hernandez circle under it. The backstop got his glove on it, but he couldn't hold it, and Crisp was safe at first.