"We needed to win that game," Dustin Pedroia said of the Sox' 7-5 victory in the nightcap. Simple, and true.
Welcome to September baseball. What was true a moment ago is not necessarily true now. The Sox, who lost a game to the Rays in the standings in the afternoon, suddenly had life again. Two doubleheaders, two tied scores, two teams fighting for a chance to win the American League East.
The Sox had squandered a prime opportunity, scoring just one run on a bases-loaded, no-outs situation in the sixth, but they won Game 2 on an unpredictable occurrence. Jacoby Ellsbury bounced a ball down the first-base line, and reliever Scott Downs fell on the way to pick it up. The ball stayed fair as Lowrie scored easily from third to give the Sox a 6-5 lead in the eighth.
"It would have been a real tough play for him," Ellsbury said. "Lefthanded pitcher, coming off the mound like that right down the line. If he would have made it, it would have been a web gem. I saw him slip. At that point I was just hoping it was going to stay fair."
It did. So a day that nearly ended in disaster - the Sox could have fallen five games back in the loss column with 14 to play - ended with the Sox and Rays exactly where they started. Two games (three in the loss column) still separate the teams in a division that remains up for grabs.
"I think when you look back there was a lot of critical points," manager Terry Francona said of the second game, ticking off Ellsbury's hit, Bay's hit, and a take-out slide by David Ortiz in the seventh that kept the Sox from a double play and allowed Ellsbury to score, a run that cut the Blue Jays' lead to 5-4. "We kept getting turned away. We talk all the time about handling frustration and how we handle it. We kept plugging, and kept plugging, and we got close, couldn't tie it. We stayed at it.
"A lot of things happened to give us a chance to win that game."
Dustin Pedroia recorded his 200th hit of the season and 50th double - and scored in the first when he followed Ellsbury home on a wild pitch/error by the catcher. Plus, starter Bartolo Colon made a nifty pirouette grab on Alex Rios's one-hopper to the mound that left the hefty righthander laughing.
