Forget the score.
Omigawd was that tense!
At least until the little guy unloaded.
But then it got tense again.
Until the Wild Thing Closer got out of the eighth.
And then things got real comfy when the little guy unloaded again in the six-run eighth.
Omigawd, what a ballgame, what a glorious night at Fenway, what a way to enter the World Series.
The Red Sox did it. They beat the Cleveland Indians, 11-2, last night. They came back from (yet another) 3-1 series deficit, which is becoming routine for them, since that's the way they got to the World Series in both 1986 and 2004, if you recall. They did it by getting the requisite starting pitching and by getting needed offensive contributions from people not named Papi or Manny.
For those of you scoring at home, they outscored the Indians by a 30-5 margin after losing Game 4. I guess we know who deserves to be playing the Rockies.
On Saturday night, it was the reviled J.D. Drew who came up with the game's biggest hit, that first-inning grand slam. Last night it was the beloved Dustin Pedroia who brought the adoring crowd of 37,165 to its feet with a seventh-inning two-run homer off Cleveland reliever Rafael Betancourt, who had been magnificent in the regular season and absolutely invincible in the playoffs. The little California second baseman with the big-man swing turned on one of Betancourt's heaters and deposited it into the Monster seats, turning a 3-2 game into a 5-2 affair.
But the - allow me a bit of literary license, please - Toy Cannon II was not done. Pedroia came up in the eighth inning with the bases loaded and one out. The Red Sox had already produced a run on a Mike Lowell double and vicious Drew (would I make this up?) single, so it was 6-2 and essentially tension-free. Some Betancourt impostor was still out there, and Pedroia punished him with a bases-clearing double. Jensen Lewis relieved him and Kevin Youkilis said "Howdy" with a blast off the Coke bottles in left.
The last bit of real drama came in the Cleveland eighth. For some odd reason Hideki Okajima was sent back out there after pitching scoreless innings in the sixth and seventh in relief of countryman (and winning pitcher) Daisuke Matsuzaka. It's evident by now that seventh games play with the minds of Red Sox skippers. A Grady Sizemore bunt single and an Asdrubal Cabrera sharp single to center later, there were men on first and second with none out. At this point Terry Francona summoned one Mr. Jonathan Papelbon, unaccustomed as he is to a) two-inning appearances, and b) inheriting base runners.
