Red Sox cash in on second chance

"I got done with my clip, and on live TV [Jason] Varitek was hitting the ball," the Sox rookie said.

Not quite deja vu all over again. This time, on Varitek's hit to center, Manny Ramírez beat another Wells throw to the plate, sliding around Barajas, then popping up and slamming his helmet to the ground to punctuate another last at-bat win, by a 2-1 score, over the dazed Blue Jays.

"I didn't see that," Moss said of Ramírez's helmet dunk. "I was too busy screaming."

Along with 37,710 other folks in Fenway Park. If the last inning of the season's first month is any barometer, Sox fans are in for another enchanted summer. This was the Sox' second walkoff win over the Jays in two nights, and their eighth last at-bat win since Ramírez started that ball rolling with a two-run, 10th-inning double in the Tokyo Dome season opener in March.

"Late heroics are better than no heroics," manager Terry Francona said after watching David Ortiz homer to break a scoreless tie in the seventh, then hit a single through the Toronto shift that handcuffed second baseman Aaron Hill and began the winning rally in the ninth. "Our pitching has managed to keep us right there and allow one big hit or two to win a game for us."

And for the second straight night, the winner was closer Jonathan Papelbon, who punctuated his outing with the first regular-season pickoff of his career. Unlike his pickoff of Matt Holliday in Game 2 of the World Series, the brainstorm of bench coach Brad Mills, Papelbon did this one on his own, nabbing pinch runner John McDonald after Matt Stairs had opened the ninth with a single.

It should have been called a balk, said Toronto manager John Gibbons, whose team has lost eight of its last nine games in a rapid descent to the bottom of the AL East. Papelbon "flinched" his front leg, Gibbons said, before whirling and throwing to first.

The former Providence College star agreed with his manager, but said that didn't absolve him of responsibility.