CARVER, Mass. – Look, this ain’t all that easy to admit, but my pipes aren’t exactly what they were when I was a younger man. You know which pipes I mean. Sometimes I stand at the toilet just waiting. And waiting. And waiting. Then, finally, bam! Splashdown! (Two drops). And other times? It’s a cascade. Four cups of morning coffee just gushing out in a twisting stream of liquid relief.
The Sox batters have been working through one of those driblet kinda stretches right here. Frustrating. Demoralizing. Driblets. Every run is a drop in the bucket. Makes you do that thing where you shut your eye lids and roll your eyeballs up all the way into the back of your head until you’re basically crosseyed in unbridled relief.
Chicago’s bullpen tried to gift-wrapped the Sox this thing. That guy Cleto – he was one of Julius Caesar’s friends in one of Shakespeare’s plays or something, right? Philosopher I think. Yup, he was absolutely thinking a whole bunch. Three walks! Six from the pen overall. I’ll hit up Cleto next time I’m in an ethical dilemma for sure but maybe not the next time I wanna start rolling the credits on a tight lead in a baseball game.
Even after all that, I wasn’t POSITIVE that’d be enough, especially when Ortiz hit that fly ball to left.
But then Gomes chopped that pussy fart down the third base line. Better than a bunt. The Sox got the bases loaded and Sizemore hit the game-renewing sac fly.
Course, that little “burst” of late offense meant an extra five innings of baseball. I made it until about the 11th and once I saw Capuano warming I felt comfortable leaving it in his hands since he’s local. And Bradley Junior delivered. This is why we watch.
Ed. Note: Carver man and friend of the site Francis Flynn is an avid Red Sox fan, Boston-born and bred. Flynn’s day job is maintaining a 10-acre cranberry bog and tract of farmland that has been in his family for three generations. But his passion is following his region’s most beloved baseball team. Flynn recently agreed to provide Fenway Pastoral readers with his own recaps throughout the 2014 regular season. All we had to do in return was promise to publish his pieces unedited and to send him a case of Miller High Life (bar bottles were specified) every week.
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