The Indians should be no less an adversary - they won 96 games in the regular season, just like the Sox - but in one important respect, the Sox should find it less perilous to be in Cleveland. It's a shorter cab ride to Jacobs Field than it is to the Bronx.
"We got in an accident the last time," said third baseman Mike Lowell, who was riding with Curt Schilling at the time. "Schill asked the guy for a pen, and he runs into the car in front of us. Crushed the car in front of us. We were all right."
The Sox worked out yesterday at Fenway Park, where Terry Francona announced that he was shuffling his pitching rotation. Josh Beckett will still pitch the opener, but Daisuke Matsuzaka and Curt Schilling have been flip-flopped. Schilling will pitch Game 2 Saturday, with Matsuzaka scheduled to pitch Game 3 in Cleveland Monday.
Francona said he would like Tim Wakefield to pitch Game 4; to that end, Wakefield, who was off the Division Series roster because of soreness in the back of his shoulder, threw 65 pitches in a simulated game yesterday.
But Francona also left open the possibility that he would bring back Beckett on three days' rest for Game 4. With TV dictating the addition of a day off between Games 4 and 5 next week in Cleveland, that would put Beckett in line to pitch Game 7 on regular rest, which would seem to be a tantalizing alternative to giving the ball to Matsuzaka, who was shaky in his playoff start against the Angels last Friday.
"The only way that can happen, at least looking at it quickly, is if Wake wasn't OK," Francona said. "We talked to Wake today already and we want Wake to pitch Game 4. [But] we don't need to go into Game 4 of a playoff game experimenting, regardless of who it is. That's a difficult situation. We need him to be OK, and he understands that.
"If he isn't OK, we could possibly move Beckett up and throw short, realizing he would come back the next time on regular rest. But there's also some ramifications. If you do that, everybody else is on their normal day, which is OK, but we prefer to give them an extra day.
