I’ll be frank
"You messed up, dood."
The hotdogs
were cheaper.
It seemed
so logical at the time.
By the time
Sox Blogette met me at the Lower Depths last
night, Charlie
Zink had already retired the side in the top of the first. I had half a
beer left. Rather than book it on over to Yawkey Way and pay four bucks for a
Fenway Frank, we figured we’d just stay put, order another quick round, watch
the bottom of the inning on TV, and avail ourselves of the Depths’ dollar hotdog
deal.
In
retrospect, that was a mistake.
A walk, a
single, a home run. 3-0.
A single, an
error, a steal, a double. 5-0.
A walk, a
single. 6-0.
A single.
7-0.
Another
homer. 10-0.
“Man, I’d
hate to have tickets and be late to this game,” said the guy next to me.
I couldn’t
help but agree with him.
So we head
to the park, anticipating more fireworks. Instead, then it all started falling
apart.
We got a
couple runs in the bottom of the third, and they got eight in the fifth. We got a couple more in the bottom of the
inning, and they got five more in the top of the next one.
If the
first inning was exhilarating, by the seventh, the game was getting excruciating.
The
bullpens couldn’t get anyone out. The at-bats were long. Things were dragging.
(One of the
few bright spots was the discovery that Jed Lowrie uses the Undertones classic
“Teenage Kicks” as his at-bat music. Derry punk
power pop forever! John Peel, RIP!)
It was past
10:30 now. Sox Blogette had to get up early the next day. And, truth be told, despite
getting a run in the seventh, I was not especially confident that we could pull
this one out. So we did something I’ve never
done before in my long baseball watching career: we left early.
My reward?
By the time we got home and scrolled back the TiVo a bit, Don Orsillo was
losing his shit: “You kidding me?!?!”
Nope.
And yes. Yes,
Pedroia had notched his fifth hit of the night, an RBI double. Yes, Youk, who’d
struck out twice in the first inning, had blasted his second homer of the night,
a three-run shot. Yes, the Sox were back on top. And yes, with a little
difficulty, Papelbon finally closed it out.
Yes, I had
tickets to the wildest win of the year and missed pretty much all the good stuff.
Oh well. On
TV or in person, it sure was one for the books.
The Sox gave
up 17 runs and still won. They scored 19 runs and still got out-hit. You don’t
see games like that come around very often. More, from the official post-game
notes:
* Boston
and Texas
combined to score 36 runs, tying the single-game A.L. record set on June 29,
1950 when the Red Sox beat the Athletics, 22-14
* The Sox set a season
high with 19 runs, the club’s most since scoring 25 on June 27, 2003 vs. Florida. (And Boston’s 10 runs in the
1st inning tonight are the club’s most in a single frame since scoring 14 in
the 1st inning of that game.)
* Boston
blew a 10-0 1st-inning advantage, matching the largest lead lost in club
history, done June 4, 1989 vs. Toronto
* It was the Red Sox’
30th inning of 10 or more runs, a major league record.
* David Ortiz became the
4th player in Red Sox history with 2 home runs in an inning …he’s the first
Sox player to accomplish that since Nomar in 2002.
* Ortiz’s is the 3rd Sox
player with 6 RBI in a single frame, the 1st since Carlos Quintana in the 3rd
on July 30, 1991.
* Ortiz now has 224 home
runs in his Red Sox career, passing Jimmie Foxx (222) and Bobby Doerr (223) for
sole possession of 7th place on the club’s all-time list.
* David Aardsma and
Charlie Zink became the 1st pair of A-to-Z Red Sox teammates to appear in the
same game since Harry Agganis and Norm Zauchin on June 2, 1955 at Chicago.