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| Game 159: September 25, 2008 | |||
| Indians | 1 | L: Jeremy Sowers (4-9) | 79-80, 3 game losing streak |
 Red Sox |
6 | W: Jon Lester (16-6) | 94-65, 3 game winning streak |
| Highlights: Lester carried a no-hitter into the sixth. Right after Don Orsillo and Jerry Remy obliquely mentioned this and the cameraman panned the scoreboard Josh Barfield doubled into left field. It would have made a positional player sick to his stomach to fail on a close play, so at least Barfield got good wood on the ball and made it a no-doubt two-bagger. | |||
After a string a low-scoring games against aces and unknowns alike, the Red Sox bats have come alive in the last three games games against Cleveland. Jacoby Ellsbury and Jed Lowrie singled, setting up an RBI opportunity for Dustin “Little Papi” Pedroia.
I can only imagine Pedroia in the clubhouse upon seeing the lineup sheet. At the end of August the second baseman batted clean-up and last night he supplanted David Ortiz in the three-hole. Papi threatened retirement last month, goodness knows what last night did to his psyche.
Pedroia arced a sacrifice fly to center to plate the first run. Sowers went sour, walking the bases loaded and allowing another run to tag up on Jason Varitek’s high fly to center. Mark Kotsay confounded Jhonny Peralta on a ground ball with english to tally a third run.
Ellsbury and Lowrie paired up again in the second, this time with running doubles. Lowrie advanced on Pedroia’s flyer to right and scored on Kevin Youkilis’s single to the left-center gap. Youkilis also scored the last run of the game in the seventh: a soaring homer to the third row of the Monster seats.
Perhaps it wasn’t meant to be funny, but Jason Bay made me laugh in the eighth inning. He made a play on Grady Sizemore facing the wall of the left field stands. He continued on to walk into the wall unnecessarily and then fell down. Perhaps it was an ironic comment on Sizemore’s theatrical catches in center.
The lineup is stringing together hits, the pitching rotation is giving opposing batters fits, the relief corps is not getting lit, and the defense is making skits: all essential cogs in a playoff machine.
