The Red Sox will wake up this morning still wondering how, exactly, it happened. Josh Beckett, baseball's reigning king of autumn, lost to a 25-year-old lefthander named Zach Jackson, who was making his ninth start of the season. The Sox stranded six men in scoring position in the final four innings.
But all of the oddities paled against what happened in the sixth, the play that sent Hale to the room above the clubhouse. Jeff Bailey came to the plate with two outs. The Red Sox trailed, 4-2. Jason Bay stood on second, Jason Varitek on first. The count climbed to 3-and-2. Jackson fired. Bailey smashed a rocket down the third base line.
Hale, standing in the third base box, watched the ball scoot past third baseman Jamey Carroll's dive and then fixed his gaze on Bay, who had bolted with the pitch.
"My read is to see if it's going to hit off that angled wall," Hale said. "That's kind of a tough read, with a man on second base and the ball hit down the line with that angled wall.
"I know I have to make a decision, in case the ball hits the wall. I can't put him in a spot where my decision-making becomes a problem. I kind of have to make that decision."
So Hale, wary of the jutting wall, windmilled Bay home. Still watching Bay and glancing at Varitek, Hale saw in his peripheral vision that the ball rolled into shallow left field. He thought, "It must have hit off the wall."
Bailey rounded first, glanced toward left field, and saw the ball, too. He suspected something strange had happened. "It couldn't have kicked back that far," he thought.
Of the principals involved, only Bay and Varitek saw what actually happened to Bailey's certain double - the ball smacked third base umpire Gerry Davis in his right thigh as he pointed "fair." When Bay saw the ball drill Davis, he didn't know how far it would bounce from Carroll. He stopped halfway to home plate.
