Stalemate
Against every other team besides the Red Sox when CC Sabathia starts victory is a cakewalk. Sabathia has six losses; four of them were delivered by Boston, one by Detroit, and one by Tampa Bay. The hefty hurler pitched a Lackeyan line: 6 innings, 9 hits, 7 earned runs, 1 walk, and 6 strikeouts.
Part of the local nine’s two-run attack in the third featured one of Dustin Pedroia’s signature slides. The second baseman knocked the ball off the left field wall at that angle that is the difference between a single for a slow runner and a double for a swift one. Pedroia decided go for the double. He had to slide around the bag to avoid Robinson Cano’s tag, shifting from his right to his left hand to stay in contact with the bag as his momentum carried him past the keystone sack. Joe Buck, Tim McCarver, and the Fox crew desperately replayed every angle in slow motion to prove that Pedroia should have been out but to no avail. Pedroia pounded the infield dirt in triumph as Jarrod Saltalamacchia touched home for the second run of the inning.
The Red Sox pummeled Sabathia for five more runs in the fourth. Kevin Youkilis doubled to lead off the second half of the frame and scored on Carl Crawford’s liner to left. Marco Scutaro knocked a single up the middle to plate newcomer Mike Aviles. Jacoby Ellsbury capped off the barrage with a three-run homer to the right field stands.
While Sabathia had trouble keeping the ball in the park a beer vendor had difficulty keeping his wares out of the field of play. Since they don’t have regular gigs Buck and McCarver were ill at ease at keeping interest in a runaway game so they kept on harping on the spilled beers.
John Lackey continued the rehabilitation of his image as a workhorse pitcher by notching his fifth win in his past six starts and tallying his fifth quality start of the season. Lackey had a season-defining inning in the fifth. The pitcher got himself into a jam by allowing Francisco Cervelli to line a single to left and then hit Brett Gardner with a pitch (on which Gardner had squared up to bunt but it was not ruled as a strike). Lackey surrendered a single up the middle to Derek Jeter that made the score 7-3 with more damage in the offing.
It had all the earmarks of a typical Lackey collapse, but Curt Young’s visit to the mound seemed to do the pitcher well as he faced off against the heart of the Yankees’ lethal order. Both Curtis Granderson and Mark Teixeira struck out on four pitches and Cano grounded out to Adrian Gonzalez for the last out.
New Era released another Alec Baldwin and John Krasinski commercial dramatizing the Yankees-Red Sox rivalry, this one featuring Krasinki’s happy trail. It seems the writers on these commercials have a Yankee bias; I keep waiting for Baldwin to get his comeuppance but it has yet to happen. As long as the Red Sox keep winning on the field Yankee sycophants can write their propaganda.
| Game 112: August 6, 2011 | ||
| New York Yankees 69-43 |
4 |
L: CC Sabathia (16-6) |
| 2B: Francisco Cervelli (4) HR: Mark Teixeira (32) | ||
 Boston Red Sox69-43 |
10 |
W: John Lackey (10-8) |
| 2B: Carl Crawford (17), Dustin Pedroia (26), Kevin Youkilis (30) HR: Jacoby Ellsbury (19) | ||
