David Ortiz singled with two outs in the ninth to put the tying run on base, but Ramírez popped to second off Royals closer Octavio Dotel, who has held the Sox slugger hitless in six career at-bats. With the Yankees winning their fifth in a row last night, the Sox' lead over the Bombers is now seven games, six in the loss column.
"This Red Sox-Yankees thing is something that consumes this whole city," said third baseman Mike Lowell, whose fifth-inning error greased Julian Tavarez's breakdown, the Royals scoring four times to match the four runs the Sox had scored in the fourth to take a 4-2 lead.
"And we're actually fortunate. I mean, we play .500 baseball for over a month and we're up seven games? We've got to be lucky. We could be down seven games. We're almost dodging a bullet. I don't think anyone expected us to be up seven games at this point of the season. [Curt Schilling] has been out for a while; he's coming back. That's like acquiring a front-line starter at the [trading] deadline. We've got to look at that as a positive."
It probably will be of small comfort for Sox fans to know that neither of the teams that met in the World Series last season, the Tigers and Cardinals, played winning baseball after the All-Star break, as one alert chat boarder noted yesterday on the Sons of Sam Horn. The Tigers were 36-38, the Cardinals 35-39, yet met for the big prize in October.
On a night when the Yankees staged another late-inning rally to win and edge even closer, no one thinks that treading water will keep the Sox afloat come this October.
"It always happens, it always comes out like that," Ortiz said of sighting the Yankees in the rearview mirror. "I always say, it's never over till the last month of the season. I never take the Yankees for granted. They always put a good team together, and they find a way to come from behind and win games. We've got to keep playing, baby. We got to do what we did in the first half, win games."
