Power Outage
Since Jon Lester fell far short of tallying his 20th win of the season the story of the night was the power outage in the bottom of the sixth. Commonwealth Edison had an outage in the neighborhood, which caused a 21-minute delay in play.
Red Sox would have preferred the lights go out in the bottom half of the fourth. Lester struggled to maintain the 2-2 tie but allowed a double to Alejandro De Aza and bases on balls to Juan Pierre and Alexei Ramirez to load the bases for Paul Konerko. The Red Sox southpaw was far from lights out: his 95-mile an hour fastball was right down the middle of the plate and bottom of the letters high. It was Konerko’s ninth career grand slam.
Marco Scutaro, Mike Lowell, and Bill Hall provided some power, but only enough to cue the organ. While Lester didn’t reach his milestone of 20 victories, Victor Martinez clouted his 20th home run in the third inning.
The Red Sox didn’t produce a playoff berth but celebrated a bevy of births. Jon Lester and Clay Buchholz both welcomed their firstborns, Daisuke Matsuzaka’s wife Tomoyo had their third child, and now Adrian Beltre has flown to Los Angeles to be with his wife Sandra, who has gone into labor.
On Saturday the Red Sox will make up the postponed first game of their last series of the season. The league scheduled the games between Boston and New York probably thinking the match-ups would put the final touches on the playoff picture. The games’ results will be immaterial but at least there will a few celebrations. Mike Lowell’s baseball career will be honored, Johnny Pesky’s 91st birthday will celebrated, and the 50th anniversary of Ted Williams’s final game will be commemorated.
| Game 159: September 30, 2010 | ||
| Red Sox 87-72 | 2 | L: Jon Lester (19-9) |
| 2B: Marco Scutaro (38), Mike Lowell (12), Bill Hall (15) HR: Victor Martinez (20) | ||
 White Sox86-73 | 8 | W: John Danks (15-11) |
| 2B: Alejandro De Aza (2) HR: Paul Konerko (39), Dayan Viciedo (4) | ||
