"I'm not saying what I think," Sox catcher Jason Varitek said after a 1-0 Sox win, the second time in the last nine days they've won by that score.
Neither was Bonds, who left without a word to the scrum of reporters who watched him dress after the game. For the second straight day, he hit a ball home run distance in his first at-bat, although yesterday's off Daisuke Matsuzaka veered well wide of the foul pole, and he remains at 747 home runs, eight shy of Aaron's record. In his last 122 plate ap pearances (87 at-bats), Bonds has two home runs, dating to May 9.
The deciding swing of the day was taken by that other slugger of some renown, Manny Ramírez, who unloaded on Matt Cain with a home run in the fourth, accounting for the day's only run. Cain took the loss. In 10 of his 15 starts, the Giants have scored two or fewer runs.
"Today it meant everything," Francona said of Ramírez's home run. "He seemed to know he got it. He may have been the only one in the ballpark who knew it. That was a lot of hands and wrists in that swing. Like maybe only he can do."
It was back on June 7 that Curt Schilling beat the Giants' neighbors across the Bay, the Athletics, with a one-hit, complete-game, 1-0 outing. Matsuzaka's pitching line wasn't quite as dramatic as Schilling's, but it was just as effective on an afternoon in which the hitters on both side were unhappy with the size of the strike zone, David Ortiz launching into an expletive-filled description of Charlie Reliford's zone the day after he was ejected by another member of the umpiring crew, Tony Randazzo.
Matsuzaka allowed the Giants just three hits in seven innings, walking three and striking out eight. His moment of truth came in the sixth, when he set down Bonds on a groundball with two on and none out, retired Bengie Molina on a liner to short, then after hitting Nate Schierholtz with a pitch to load the bases, struck out Rich Aurilia. Reliford rang up Aurilia on a 3-and-2 slider that looked suspiciously out of the strike zone.
