With two on and one out in the eighth, Sox second baseman Dustin Pe droia grabbed Corey Hart's smash, whirled, and threw to second, where shortstop Alex Cora flashed across the bag and gunned out Hart at first to complete the inning-ending double play.
"Hugest part of the game," manager Terry Francona said shortly after midnight. "It's hard to win two games."
The most grateful recipient of that glove work was Sox reliever Javier Lopez, whose stumbling effort on Ryan Braun's tapper to the mound had resulted in the game's seventh error, a mistake he compounded by walking Prince Fielder. The Sox already had blown a 5-0 lead, Craig Hansen undone by Mike Lowell's throwing error and a tough error charged to Cora on a high chopper before giving up a two-run single to Craig Counsell that gave the Brewers a 6-5 lead in the seventh.
But not to be outdone in generosity were the Brewers. Second baseman Rickie Weeks couldn't handle Jacoby Ellsbury's leadoff grounder in the bottom of the inning and was charged with an error. Pedroia followed with a ground ball to third baseman Bill Hall, who threw wildly to second base, both runners advancing a base. David Ortiz brought home the tying run with a grounder to short, and a bloop single by Kevin Youkilis into short right field scored Pedroia with what proved to be the winner.
"It was one of those games where it seemed like it took forever and you've got to scratch and claw," Youkilis said. "By the end of the game you're dragging, your bat's dragging. Your body.
"You have to try to will yourself through the end of it."
The sweep eased the migraine-inducing problems caused by the short turnaround between games, which, because of TV obligations, could not start before 3:55 p.m.
Somehow, within no more than 15 minutes, max, the stands were emptied of 37,409 people after the Sox' first win, and a small army of people picking up the trash won their battle to clean Fenway before 37,847 elbowed their way in to see the Sox win the second game.
