SportsDystopia

The World Series is set to begin Wednesday night in Tropicana Field.  It has been said that the matchup between the Philadephia Phillies and Tampa Bay Rays will lay a ratings egg, for the stated reason that the lack of the Manny Ramirez vs. The Red Sox cash cow gives Fox a matchup that’s much tougher to sell.

But Tampa Bay just played in the highest rated baseball game ever on cable TV, and the confident way in which Matt Garza handled the Red Sox after Dustin Pedroia’s home run in the top of the 1st inning has brought the team alot of fans, and they are likely to be favored over Philadelphia.  Philadelphia is the 4th largest media market in the nation, and with a devoted and championship starved fan base, the ratings for the series will exceed expectations.

The Phillies face the ever present rust factor, with a full week off after their dominating 5 game win over the Dodgers in the NLCS. Cole Hamels is the best pitcher in the series, and will start game 1 on the road for Philadelphia.  Of ESPN’s baseball writers, only Peter Gammons picks the Phils to win the series.

I think I agree with him.  Both teams are similarly balanced offensively, but at this point, the Phillies bullpen is less taxed and less vulnerable than the Rays’.  And Hamels has been the ace of the playoffs so far, 3-0 with a 1.23 ERA.  The Rays’ Scott Kazmir had a strong start in game 5 before the bullpen melted down, but has had problems with control at times, and Joe Maddon usually watches his pitch counts pretty closely.

The Phillies will win game 1.

On Sunday night, the Tampa Bay Rays refused to be haunted by all the daunting history that wanted to rear it’s ugly head in game 7 of the ALCS.  When the likely AL MVP Dustin Pedroia homered in the top of the 1st inning, it looked like the game would be a repeat of the 2004 ALCS, when Johnny Damon homered against the Yankees to lead off game 7.  It also looked like a coming repeat of Saturday night’s game 6, when the Rays played nervous ball after their historic blown lead in game 5.

But Rays starter Matt Garza would not allow another hit until the 7th, and by that time, his teammates had begun to reflect Garza’s confidence, and broken the spell of the Red Sox. By then, Tampa Bay had taken a 2-1 lead, which they would extend to 3-1 in the bottom of the inning on a solo home run by Willy Aybar.  But their bullpen looked vulnerable, until September call-up David Price entered with 2 outs in the 8th. His 4 out save was the exclamation point on fine performance by a young team everyone doubted until the very last out.

The Red Sox finally looked too old, Jason Bay was not ready to fill the empty shoes of Manny Ramirez, and no one was able to match Pedroia’s performance on the night.

The 3-1 victory for Tampa means the World Series will start on Wednesday night at Tropicana Field.  Cole Hamels will start for the Phillies, and he has been nearly unhittable this postseason.  The Rays starter is likely to be Scott Kazmir.

In a previous article I discussed my view that the immediate financial future of the Cubs, especially their ability to change the on-field structure of the team for the better, is in a precarious position, because of the way their payroll was designed for the team’s open window for a title run to come in the 2007 and 2008 seasons.  The title didn’t come, of course, but now the Tribune Company is preparing to extend the contract of the architect of that design, General Manager Jim Hendry.

The writing for this move appeared on the wall after Cubs Chairman Crane Kenney gave Hendry a vigorous public vote of confidence last week, then earlier this week denied the Seattle Mariners permission to talk to Hendry in their search for a new GM.  The new multi-year deal for Hendry is expected to be announced at the Cubs organizational meetings in Arizona this coming week.

The question is, why?  Why give Hendry a multi-year extension when his current contract already contains a club option for 2009?  Well, there’s an answer, but it’s not one that Cubs fans are going to like to hear.  We’ll get to that in a minute.

It’s no secret that the Cubs will be sold sometime soon, either this offseason or next year.  Given that new owners in sports almost universally like to bring in their own front-office personnel, it makes no sense to extend Hendry now, if there’s a strong chance that a new owner won’t want to keep him around.

And as I’ve said before, Hendry was the designer of the Cubs contracts of recent years, a number of questionable deals that are all highly back-loaded, excepting Derek Lee’s, which runs at a clean $13 million per season through 2010.  The team’s payroll was a club record 118 million dollars this season, but that number is a mirage that hides the true nature of the team’s situation.  Alfonso Soriano, Aramis Ramirez, Carlos Zambrano, Kosuke Fukudome, Ted Lilly, and Jason Marquis are all getting big raises for next year.

The players named above, including Lee, accounted for 74.375 million of the 2008 payroll.  In 2009, those 7 account for 95.775 million.  Now take into account that the team has exercised Rich Harden’s option for ‘09, and has both Mark DeRosa and Jeff Samardzija signed through at least next year, and you’re already up to 111 million dollars in ‘09 for just 10 players.

Oh, and by the way, the club doesn’t have a single other player signed past 2008.  Not one.

Given that Jim Hendry was the architect of this whole hideous mess, it would’ve been appropriate for the club to give him his option year, and see if he could still bring back a competitive team next year, see if he could work deals with the young stars of the club like Geovany Soto, Carlos Marmol and Ryan Theriot to keep them in Cubs uniforms for relatively low prices.  A multi-year extension just doesn’t make any kind of baseball sense.

Which brings us to the answer you’ve been waiting for, and it should be no surprise to anyone who’s familiar with the way the organization opperates.  The Tribune Company just really doesn’t care what does or doesn’t happen with the team on the field, because they’re selling a product, not a baseball team, and given the economic state of the nation, they expect that product to remain in their hands for awhile longer.  Jim Hendry is a good company man, and the company intends to reward him, whether or not his decisions have been good for the baseball team they happen to own.

Since there was no baseball on tonight, no World Series preview to be written, and no part of me that felt like chiming in on the “will they or won’t they collapse?” debate swirling around the Rays at the moment, I decided to do something a little different.  The Denny Green tirade I included in yesterday’s game 5 recap got me hungry for some more classic coaching meltdowns, so I decided to track down a few more of the better ones.

We’ll start off with a Jim Mora classic that’s a favorite of mine, and I’m sure it’s one of yours as well.  Mora resigned as head coach of the Saints following the loss to the Carolina Panthers that sparked this one, back in 1996.

Thanks, coach.

Our next meltdown might be the only one on this list in which physical injury actually resulted.  It’s from Hal McRae of the Kansas City Royals back in 1993.

“Now…put that in your f***in’ pipe and smoke it!”  Russell Crowe and Naomi Campbell would both later draw inspiration from the ‘phone as projectile’ method of assault displayed here.

Up next is Jim Boeheim of Syracuse getting uncomfortably close to the microphone and inventing the word “unanamous”.  He’s at least relatively calm, but not calm enough to remember the word he’s looking for is “anonymous”.

This next one isn’t exactly a coaching meltdown, but I’ll never get tired of seeing Jim Rome get tossed by Jim Everett.  He deserved it.

To close out the list we have 3 minutes of high comedy.  Inspired by an article brought to Oklahoma State football coach Mike Gundy by a mother.  Of children.  He’s a man.  He’s 40.

That article had to have been written by a person that doesn’t have a child.  Gundy’s rant also inspired some fantastic spoofs by Chicago sports radio personalities Boers & Bernstein, in the form of Mike Gundy book reviews.  They did one for Moby Dick and another for Harry Potter .

Well, that’s all the ranting this post can take.  I hope you enjoyed the stroll down coaching tirade memory lane.

Thursday night’s game 5 of the ALCS had followed the script from games 3 and 4.  The Rays had jumped all over Daisuke Matsuzaka from the opening bell, as BJ Upton gave Tampa Bay a 2 run lead in the 1st inning with his 6th home run of the postseason.   By the time the bottom of the 7th rolled around, the Rays had built a 7-0 lead, and had outscored Boston by the unseemly sum of 29-5 across 25 innings of baseball at Fenway Park.

And following a Jed Lowrie double to lead off the bottom half of the inning, Jason Varitek and Mark Kotsay both flied out.  The Rays were a mere 7 outs from quenching the dry mouths of their fans, who had thirsted for a championship through 9 joyless years of heartache.

Actually, I’m still not convinced that there ARE any Rays fans out there.  Or if there are, they didn’t start attending baseball games or wearing team paraphenalia until about two weeks ago.  I think most of the nervous looking people in Rays jerseys that were shown on TV on Thursday night are just Yankee fans with enough disposable income to both attend a playoff game at Fenway just to try to thumb the eye of Boston fans AND to shell out $150 on sports apparel that means nothing to them.  Just last year, ESPN’s Bill Simmons posted a photo diary of his trip to Tropicana Field, for a game in which the Boston fans outnumbered the supporters of the home team by at least a 4-1 ratio.

Anyways, with 7 outs to go, the Red Sox finally sprang to life.  Coco Crisp hit a single to put runners on the corners, and Dustin Pedroia followed with an RBI single.  David Ortiz would follow with a 3 run home run, trimming the lead to 7-4.  In the bottom of the 8th, Dan Wheeler walked the leadoff batter, Jason Bay, and JD Drew promptly followed with a homer, cutting the deficit to 1 and sending the Fenway faithful into a frenzy.  Then, with 2 outs, Mark Kotsay doubled, and Coco Crisp followed with a single to tie the game, though he was thrown out at 2nd base when he tried to advance on the play.

In the bottom of the 9th, with the score still tied, the bases empty and 2 outs, Kevin Youklis hit a grounder to 3rd that should’ve sent the game to extra innings, but Evan Longoria’s throw bounced in front of and then away from Carlos Pena, and Youklis wound up on 2nd.  After an intentional walk to Jason Bay, JD Drew promptly singled to finish off the comeback.

I didn’t get a chance to see Joe Maddon’s post-game press conference, but if you substituted the words “Red Sox” for “Bears”, something like this might have been appropriate…

When all was said and done, the Rays vaunted bullpen had allowed 6 runs with 2 outs in the final 3 innings, and head back to Tampa Bay with a sudden and huge question mark hanging over their heads.  How could a World Series contender allow a game that was in the bankto slip away in such spectacular fashion?

I enjoyed the trip down memory lane with Denny Green, so let’s take a few more.  You have to go all the way back to 1929 to find the last time a team allowed a postseason lead of at least 7 runs to evaporate.  Fittingly, the Cubs were involved, as they allowed an 8-0 lead to turn into a 10-8 loss to the then Philadelphia Athletics.  (If you still think it’s tougher now than ever being a Cubs fan, just consider that from 1910 to 1945 the team played in 7 World Series and lost every single one.)

More worrisome for Tampa Bay is recent history, namely that just last year the Red Sox also rallied from a 3-1 series deficit in the ALCS, against Cleveland.  There was no point at which the Indians were just 7 outs away from spraying champaigne, however, so this game has to rank as a considerably larger gut-punch for the team than anything we’ve seen in the MLB playoffs in recent memory, aside from of course, the 2003 Cubs.

Joe Maddon is an excellent and capable manager, and its possible that he and his team will not allow this game to corrupt their confidence.  That’s not even taking into consideration that the next two games are in Tampa Bay, where the Rays have been one of the major league’s best home teams this season.  They will get to see Josh Beckett in game 6 on Saturday, who has looked anything but right this postseason.

But when your team is suddenly drawing unfavorable comparisons with the 2007 Indians, and the 2003 and 1929 Cubs, suffice to say, it’s a VERY bad sign.  Afterall, none of those teams went on to win the title.

The Philadelphia Phillies are the first and only team in professional sports history to lose 10,000 games.  They established the original record for championship futility, taking 98 years to win their first world series title in 1980.  Entering this postseason, they had won only 4 playoff series in 126 years of existence.  Now, they’re only 4 wins away from finally adding a second championship banner to the flagpole, as on Wednesday night they captured the NL Pennant with a 5-1 victory over the LA Dodgers.

The tone for game 5 was set by the very first batter of the evening.  Jimmy Rollins homered off Chad Billingsley with the count full, and the Phillies never looked back.  They would add 2 runs to their lead in the 3rd inning, on RBI singles by Ryan Howard and Pat Burrell, which was more than enough on this night, as starter Cole Hamels turned in another postseason gem.  Hamels allowed only 5 hits and 1 run in 7 strong innings.

The lone run for the Dodgers came in the 6th inning on a solo home run by, who else, Manny Ramirez.  Ramirez hit .520 this postseason, with 4 HRs, 10 RBI, 9 runs, and a .667 on-base percentage.  It is possible he has played his last game as a Dodger.  The word is that he and his agent, Scott Boras (insert Snidley Whiplash hiss), will be seeking a 6 year 150 million dollar contract in the offseason.  Though he is the greatest postseason hitter of his generation, and perhaps any generation, it will remain to be seen if anyone is willing to give the 36 year old 25 million per season.

But this is a question for another night.  Because on this evening, the Phillies once again left no doubt that they were the better and more complete team.  Their deep and balanced lineup and excellent bullpen will provide a serious test for whichever team emerges from the ALCS.  It’s likely that it will be the Rays, but that question won’t be answered until at least Thursday evening.

In spite of the impressive way that Tampa Bay had taken control of their series against the Boston Red Sox with an 11th inning win in marathon game 2 and a thoroughly dominating performance in game 3, you could see that the media coverage prior to Tuesday night’s game 4 wasn’t ready to jump on the bandwagon just yet.

Oh sure, the Rays owned Tim Wakefield all season, but the 42 year-old has been in this situation about a hundred times.  Yeah, his opponent on the mound, Andy Sonnanstine, hasn’t been rattled by pressure at all this season or against the White Sox in the clinching game of the Division Series, but he’s never been on this big a stage before, not facing the Boston juggernaut at Fenway in the ALCS.

For all the lip-service given to the young Rays in the last 24 hours, there was a palpable lack of respect behind it.  Well, your game 4 score was 13-4 Rays.  Respect must now be paid.  And the bandwagon just got alot more crowded.

Tampa Bay’s dominance was almost a replay of their 9-1 win in game 3, except on Tuesday they jumped on Wakefield in the 1st inning.  On Monday, it had taken until the 3rd to get the better of Jon Lester.  If Wakefield’s knuckleball had danced, the stories in the morning would’ve called him “ageless”.  Now, they’ll probably just call him “aged” or “aging”, after he allowed 3 home runs in his mere 2 and 2/3 innings.  For the 2nd night in  a row, the game was finished in the early frames.

Meanwhile, the man on the mound for Tampa might finally get some of the respect he’s due.  Sonnanstine has quietly been one of the best young pitchers in baseball this season, going 13-9 on the year.   The Sabermetricians yawned at him and his low number of strikeouts (124 in 193 innings), and his un-gaudy ERA and batting average allowed (4.38, .277).  The fantasy players waited for him to lose his spot in the rotation whenever the Rays called up young stud David Price.

Both seemed to ignore that Sonnanstine did the thing that’s most important for a pitcher, win games.  His total of 13 was the 2nd highest on the team this year, behind only James Shields.  And he never walks people.  He has issued only 63 free passes in 324 regular season innings.  In 54 career starts, he’s walked more than 2 batters exactly 3 times.  In all 3 of those instances, more than 2 has equaled 3.  In other words, in a league full of young pitchers who struggle with control, control is NEVER a problem for Sonnanstine.

And he was just as dominant in game 4 of this series as he was in game 4 against the AL’s other Sox.  In 7 innings, he had given up only 2 hits and 4 runs, but with a 13-2 lead, manager Joe Maddon allowed him to start the 8th inning to rest the Rays bullpen.  Sonnanstine would allow 2 hits, and get charged with 2 more runs (only 1 of them earned).

His final line read a nice 7 1/3 IP, 6 hits, 3 ER, 4 R, 2 K’s and 1 BB, but more importantly, he had gotten the one stat that means anything to him: the Win.

And with that win, the Rays have taken one more step towards a World Series appearance nobody would have predicted at the season’s outset.  Perhaps they’ve also finally taken a step towards the respect that has been too slow in coming.

Entering Monday, both the AL and NLCS had the appearance of series that would go deep.  The Rays and the Red Sox had staged 2 tight games across 8 hours of baseball to return to Boston with the series tied at 1-1.  The Phillies had looked impressive in winning the first two games against the Dodgers in Philadelphia, but LA had looked just as impressive at Chavez Ravine in game 3.  Now, just a day later, the Phillies and Rays have both taken clear control over teams that were supposedly better managed, more experienced, more prepared for the harsh October lights.

Philadelphia won game 4 the same way they won game 1, by taking advantage of the long ball at the appropriate time.  Entering the 8th inning, they trailed 5-3, and the Dodgers were just 6 outs from tying the series.  Instead, it was the game that would be tied, after a 2-run homer by Shane Victorino following a single by the slumping Ryan Howard.   Then, with 1 man on and 2 outs, Joe Torre inserted his closer Jonathon Broxton to try to salvage the game.  Matt Stairs, who has always resembled a baseball-uniformed beer keg with arms, legs and a head, responded with another 2 run home run.  7-5 lead, Phillies.

The Dodgers did threaten in the bottom half of the inning, after Charlie Manuel brought in Brad Lidge with 2 outs to face Manny Ramirez.  It was the first attempt at a 4-out save this season for Lidge, who entered the game 45 for 45 on the season in save situations.  Manny responded with a double.  He managed to strike out Russell Martin swinging, but the slider bounced in the dirt and skipped to the backstop.  In this kind of situation, it’s the kind of play that ALWAYS comes back to haunt you.

But not this time.  James Loney flew out to left, and the inning was over.  Lidge would pitch a perfect 9th to lock up the win, and a 3-1 series lead for the Phillies.

In Boston, BJ Upton hit his 5th home run of the playoffs, and the Rays jumped all over Red Sox starter Jon Lester, leading 5-0 after 3 innings en route to a 9-1 victory.  It was a thoroughly dominating performance by Tampa Bay, putting them in the driver’s seat of this series.  They will face Tim Wakefield in game 4, who has had his troubles against them this year, going 0-2 with a 5.87 ERA in 3 starts against Tampa in the regular season.  The Rays starter will be Andy Sonnanstine, who shut down the White Sox to clinch the division series.

In LA, the two teams will take Tuesday off.  On Wednesday evening, Phillies ace Cole Hamels will try to pitch the Phils into the World Series for the first time since 1993.  His opponent will be Chad Billingsley, who clearly felt the pressure in game 2, imploding in the 2nd inning.  After the failed start, Billingsley threw his catcher under the bus, blaming Russell Martin’s pitch selection for his troubles.  If he’s not in control of his pitches and his emotions from the opening, Philadelphia fans will get a rare chance to celebrate on Wednesday night.

You could be forgiven for thinking that the NLCS was all but over after the decisive way the Philadelphia Phillies took a 2-0 lead to open the series, the way they waited for their moment against Derek Lowe in game 1, then jumped all over Chad Billingsley in game 2.  You probably noticed how sharp their bullpen is, how their lineup has speed and power, and how they’d taken their game to a level no other team in baseball has played at this season since mid September.  You could be forgiven for thinking that the LA Dodgers were a year too young after you saw Matt Kemp and Andre Ethier looking impatient while striking out at crucial moments in game 2, or that their pitching staff just wasn’t quite sharp enough to contain the Phillies offensive juggernaut.

You could be forgiven for seeing all that, because it sure looked to be the case when these two teams were playing the first two games in Philadelphia.  It didn’t look like that at all when it shifted to Chavez Ravine for game 3.

The Dodgers played like they had something to prove on Sunday night, when they jumped all over Philly’s ageless wonder, Jamie Moyer, for 5 runs in the first inning.  3 straight singles by Rafael Furcal, Andre Ethier (Joe Torre just needs to let him stay in the number 2 hole for the remainder of the playoffs, he’s a whole different hitter with Manny batting behind him) and Manny Ramirez gave LA a 1-0 lead and set the table.  Moyer plunked the next batter, Russell Martin, to load the bases.  There was nobody out, and the entire sequence had taken all of 10 pitches.  He struck out Nomar Garciaparra, then allowed an RBI single to Casey Blake, who, in spite of Manny dominating the Dodgers’ headlines the last two months, has been a major midseason acquisition in his own right.

Moyer got another out when he K’d Matt Kemp, but then the real damage came.  Blake DeWitt ripped a triple to deep right, clearing the bases and giving the Dodgers a 5-0 lead that would be more than enough on this evening.  The inning only ended when LA’s pitcher, Hiroki Kuroda, grounded out to 3rd.

The Phillies got a run back in the top of the 2nd, but Rafael Furcal led off the bottom half of the inning with a home run.  Moyer would retire Andre Ethier on a long fly ball to center, but his night was over.  There was no way he was going to face Manny Ramirez, who has 10 career homers against the 45 year-old.  The point was moot, as Philadelphia would never get closer the rest of the game, eventually losing 7-2.

But in spite of the contest being essentially decided in the 1st inning, excitement still followed.  In the top of the 3rd, Kuroda threw a pitch over the head of Phillies center fielder Shane Victorino, seemingly in retaliation for Brett Myers having thrown a pitch behind Manny Ramirez early in the game 2 rout, and for Moyers plunking Martin in the 1st, not to mention Clay Condrey’s nearly hitting Martin with a high and tight fastball in the 2nd inning.

Victorino had to duck to avoid getting hit in the helmet, and pointed angrily to his head and chest, signifying his displeasure that Kuroda had tried to bean him rather than throwing the retaliatory pitch at his body.

“Someone was bound to get hit. The situation called for it.  Just don’t throw at my head.” Victorino said after the game.

Both benches were warned following the pitch, but when Victorino grounded out, he had more angry words for Kuroda at 1st base, and both benches and bullpens emptied.  No punches were thrown, though Manny Ramirez had to be physically restrained by Dodgers teammates and manager Joe Torre.

Russell Martin would be plunked again in the 7th, though this time nobody came out of the dugouts, and he calmly took his base.  In any case, serious hostility between the teams is clearly brewing, and it will remain to be seen if any of it spills over into Monday night’s game 4.

Derek Lowe will be pitching on 3 days rest for LA against Joe Blanton, who has gone 10-4 since being acquired from Oakland in July.  The tenor of the series clearly shifted on Sunday night, but the question remains whether or not either of these teams can win a game in the other’s ballpark.  Between the regular season and playoffs, the home team has won all 11 meetings between them this year.

Regardless, the stakes have been raised, and the mood in this series has taken on an ugly and personal tint.  It will be interesting to see how it plays out.

The Tampa Bay Rays finally won game 2 of the ALCS 9-8 in the 11th inning after 5 and a half hours on Saturday night, somehow overcoming 2 homers and 4 runs by likely AL MVP Dustin Pedroia and a 4-RBI showing by Manny replacement Jason Bay.  Their bullpen, one of the best in the AL this season, gave up runs in the 5th, 6th and 8th innings, after starter Scott Kazmir was chased after allowing 5 runs in only 4 and 1/3 innings.  How on earth did they win this game?

Well, tagging Sox starter and postseason ace Josh Beckett for 8 runs didn’t hurt.  It was a wild one in Tampa, only ending when BJ Upton hit a shallow sacrifice fly to right field.  Lightning fast pinch runner Fernando Perez sprinted home, and JD Drew’s throw to the plate trailed up the 3rd baseline.

In getting to that point, the teams had hit a playoff record tying 7 home runs, and momentum had see-sawed through the early innings.  The Sox jumped out to an early 2-0 lead in the 1st when Jason Bay doubled, scoring Kevin Youklis and David Ortiz.  The Rays answered right back in the bottom half of the frame, when Evan Longoria hit a 2-run home run to tie the game.

In the 3rd inning, Dustin Pedroia would hit a solo home run to push the Sox out to a one run lead.  Pedroia has been the Red Sox sparkplug all season, and posted one of the best offensive seasons by a 2nd baseman ever (and most unlikely, considering Pedroia’s all of 5′7 and probably 160-some pounds.  The Sox media guide lists him at 5′9 and 180, but that’s a laughably clear exaggeration) .  He richly deserves the MVP award, especially since the only other truly deserving player, the White Sox’s Carlos Quentin, missed the last month of the season with a broken wrist.

The game would see-saw again in the bottom of the 3rd, when BJ Upton hit a solo home run to tie the game, and later in the inning Carl Crawford would hit an RBI single to give the Rays the 4-3 lead.  The advantage was extended in the bottom of the 4th on Cliff Floyd’s solo home run, but the momentum swings were far from over.

In the fifth,  Pedroia led off with his 2nd homer, and after a David Ortiz flyout, Kevin Youklis added another solo shot to tie the game yet again at 5-5 and finishing Scott Kazmir’s night early.  Rays fireballer Grant Balfour entered and promptly surrendered a solo shot to Bay, giving the Sox another one run edge.  Again, the lead would last all of a a half inning.

In the bottom of the 5th, after Akinori Iwamura struck out, BJ Upton singled and stole second.  He then scored on a Carlos Pena single.  Evan Longoria followed with a double to score Pena.  Longoria scored when the next batter, Carl Crawford singled, and the Rays had taken a 8-6 lead.  Boston would get a run back the very next inning when Bay drove in his 4th run of the game, scoring Pedroia.

The Sox would tie the game up in the 8th.  Pedroia singled to open the inning, and David Ortiz walked.  Kevin Youklis grounded into a double play, but Pedroia advanced to 3rd, and then promptly scored on a Dan Wheeler wild pitch.  The score would stay 8-8 until Upton’s sac fly in the 11th.

One way or another, Boston has been involved in almost all of the dramatic games of this postseason, excepting the LA-Philly opener.  They are 0-2 in extra innings so far in the playoffs, also losing game 3 to the Angels in 12 innings, but in spite of the way this one ended, they have to feel pretty comfortable heading back to Fenway with the series tied 1-1.

Your game 3 starters will be Matt Garza (11-9, 3.70 ERA) for the Rays against Jon Lester (16-6, 3.21) for Boston.