OAKLAND, Calif. -- This was not something the Red Sox merely imagined in their sleep-deprived state, like Terry Francona arriving at the team's hotel after its all-night flight yesterday morning and mistaking the mirrors that lined the corridors as the way to his room.
Dan Haren, as he has all spring, did indeed pitch like a 21st-Century Walter Johnson for the Athletics last night, while second baseman Mark Ellis became just the sixth player in Oakland history to hit for the cycle.
But at the end of a 30-hour cycle in which the Sox squeezed in four excruciating hours Sunday night in Boston against the Yankees, a cross-country trip that landed in San Francisco around dawn, then an 11-inning ordeal against the Athletics, they can take a small measure of comfort in knowing they didn't just merely turn off the lights and roll over for their hosts here last night.
On the contrary. Before succumbing to the Athletics, 5-4, on Eric Chavez's walkoff home run off Kyle Snyder, the Sox nearly pilfered a game begun by their No. 5 starter, Julian Tavarez, who was once again matched up against the other team's ace, with their bullpen short-handed, and with four regulars on the bench.
"We showed up and did a very good job of playing, which is what we set out to do,'' Francona said. "We lost a heart-breaking game. It won't be heart-breaking tomorrow. It'll be over.''
The Sox were down to their last out in regulation when they scored twice to tie it. They then survived a bases-loaded, no-out jam in the bottom of the ninth and took a shot at winning in the 10th, when Dustin Pedroia was cut down trying to score on David Ortiz's two-out double, which just missed being his second home run of the night, before Chavez did them in.
"I left a ball up over the plate...it was a mistake, and not a very well-timed one,'' Snyder said of that sudden bolt from Chavez, on a night that the Athletics had managed just one hit in 15 chances with runners in scoring position, including two futile attempts against Snyder in the 10th with two men on, one of them being Ellis, who blooped a single to complete his cycle.
Was it a mistake for third-base coach DeMarlo Hale to wave home Pedroia, who had singled to extend his hitting streak to 14 games, when Ortiz's ball caromed true to center-fielder Mark Kotsay, the subsequent relay enabling Oakland catcher Jason Kendall to apply a necktie tag on the Sox rookie? Only because it didn't work out. The rationale was sound.
"I didn't have much of a lead at first, because the lefty (Athletics reliever Ron Flores) has a good move,'' Pedroia said, "and David's hitting, too, so you've got to be kind of heads up there.
