Gone was Colorado's 10-game winning streak and whatever aura of invinci bility they created by winning 21 of their 22 previous games, including seven in a row through the National League playoffs. The Rockies can only hope it was the eight days off between games that accounted for their play, because at this rate they'll be taking a much longer vacation sooner than they'd planned.
Very much alive is a five-game winning streak in the World Series for the Sox, who swept the Cardinals in 2004 to break their 86-year Series drought, then cuffed around Colorado with the same impunity that they finished off the Indians in the American League Championship Series.
"It's tough, obviously, to have eight days off, especially coming in and facing the best pitcher in baseball," said Sox rookie second baseman Dustin Pedroia, who made his first Series at-bat one for the Facebook, hitting a leadoff home run off Jeff Francis. "That's definitely not easy."
The Sox outscored the Indians by a combined score of 30-5 to win the last three games of the ALCS. Last night, the Sox looked like they might match that output in one game, as they welcomed the Rockies to sea level with Pedroia's leadoff home run and never let up. Francis was gone after a yield of six runs in four innings, and a seven-run fifth inning against an embarrassingly inept Rockies bullpen had Fox executives second-guessing their decision to preempt tonight's episode of "Are You Smarter Than A 5th Grader?".
"They're a hot-hitting team over there," said Francis, joining the list of pitchers with a pedigree shredded by the Sox this October, their victims including John Lackey of the Angels and C.C. Sabathia and Fausto Carmona of the Indians. "You can't make any mistakes."
Josh Beckett, meanwhile, struck out the first four Rockies batters he faced, and five of the first six, as he ran his October record to 4-0 with another take-no-prisoners performance, one in which he pounded the Rockies with fastballs (30 of his first 32 pitches) before mixing it up.
