Winging It
John Lackey invented a new word with his performance in this game: lackeyluster. Terry Francona was slow to pull Lackey in the fifth as the Blue Jays scored runs in bunches. The skipper could have tried to keep the gap manageable, especially since at that point the Orioles were leading the Yankees at Camden Yards. But the visitors’ lead ballooned to four runs with Lackey on the mound and his replacement, Michael Bowden, allowed one more run to score.
Bowden permitted runs to score in both mundane and imaginative ways. In the sixth inning with Fred Lewis at third Bowden bounced a pitch to Jose Bautista off the dirt into the screen behind home for a run to score. That was the safest place for baseballs this season when they are thrown to Bautista; to end the at bat the right fielder blasted his 48th homer of the season over the left field wall. Bautista topped George Bell for the most home runs by a Blue Jay in a season.
The Red Sox rallied in the bottom of the eighth and ninth innings. Victor Martinez swatted his second longball of the game to bring his team within four runs. The rookie wrecking crew of Yamaico Navarro and Daniel Nava each drove in a run to narrow the gap to two runs, impressively productive in a late inning, two-out situation.
Martinez couldn’t go to the the well for a third time. With Nava at second, two out, and behind in the count 0-1 the catcher got under a cutter and popped out to short.
Sadly the local nine couldn’t pull together a win in a game where five players and one indelible moment were enshrined in the Red Sox Hall of Fame. The honorees were Eddie Kasko (represented by his sons Michael and Jim Kasko), Tommy Harper, Jimmy Piersall, John Valentin, and Don Zimmer. Tom Brunansky’s American League East title-clinching catch in 1990 was added to the vault of “memorable moments” while Zimmer was added to Most Valuable Rodent wing. Something makes me think Bill Lee, if he did attend, wasn’t there to fete The Gerbil.
| Game 147: September 17, 2010 | ||
 Blue Jays74-73 | 11 | W: Brett Cecil (13-7) S: Kevin Gregg (32) |
| 2B: Lyle Overbay – 2 (34), Adam Lind – 2 (27) HR: Jose Bautista (48) | ||
| Red Sox 82-65 | 9 | L: John Lackey (12-11) |
| 2B: Darnell McDonald (16), Adrian Beltre (43), Jed Lowrie (11), Daniel Nava (12) HR: Victor Martinez – 2 (17) | ||
