Pedey’s Big Adventure
The middle game of this series turned out to be a tug-o-war of wills between the two lineups. Manny Ramirez led off the second with a single, swiped second, and scored on a single to right by the reanimated corpse of Garret Anderson that Bill Hall failed to stop from skipping past him.
Of the myriad positions Hall can field, right field is the spot he has played the least; in 821 games started Hall has a mere 15 starts in right. Add to that novelty the difficult sun field of late afternoon games at Fenway and unsurprisingly Hall had two errors.
The second error came in the seventh. Anderson, still powered by some dark art, lifted a ground-rule double to right and scored on Blake DeWitt’s double to right. Hall incorrectly played the carom of DeWitt’s ball, following it too closely as it hugged the curve in the wall rather than allowing the ball to come to him. Anderson scored to cut the home team’s lead to a run and DeWitt made it to the hot corner.
Tim Wakefield was in line for the win when Manny Delcarmen took the mound with one out in the seventh. Maybe the reliever, a Massachusetts native, was still experiencing an emotional hangover from the Celtics’ robbery of its 18th championship title defeat. Delcarmen allowed the tying run to score with a sacrifice fly off Matt Kemp’s bat to Hall. If J.D. Drew were in right DeWitt likely wouldn’t have been sent, so yet again the ad hoc outfield led to a run for the opposition.
With two out Delcarmen walked Russell Martin and Terry Francona called for Hideki Okajima. The southpaw induced a ground out off the bat of Andre Ethier to the Dodger right fielder’s best friend, Dustin Pedroia.
Pedroia nearly collided with Marco Scutaro in the eighth inning; fortunately for the second baseman his double play partner weighs about 30 pounds less than Adrian Beltre. Both Red Sox middle infielders were in hot pursuit of a Ramirez pop-up and Pedroia prevailed.
Pedroia proved superior to Dodgers closer Jonathan Broxton. With two on and two out Pedroia was briefly ahead of the rotund reliever when he let a slider slip by low for a ball. Broxton thought he overpowered Pedroia with his fastball and slider combination, but the two pitches seemed to help the batter time his next swing. Sure enough, Pedroia went with the fastball and lined a single to the opposite field, right to his vacation buddy Ethier.
Daniel Nava slid head-first for the winning run and was congratulated, this time avoiding the brunt of his teammates’ overzealous affection. Instead, it was Pedroia who found himself picked up like a latter-day Nelson de la Rosa.
| Game 70: June 19, 2010 | ||
| Dodgers 38-30 | 4 | L: Ronald Belisario (1-1) |
| 2B: Garret Anderson (4), Blake DeWitt (11) HR: Manny Ramirez (8) | ||
 Red Sox42-28 | 5 | BS: Manny Delcarmen (2) W: Jonathan Papelbon (2-3) |
| 2B: Daniel Nava (5) HR: Victor Martinez (9), Kevin Youkilis (14) | ||
