Wednesday, July 19, 2006

As 39-year old Tim Wakefield rested his aching back, as 34-year-old Jason Varitek saluted the rapturous crowd cheering his 991st game as Red Sox catcher, the most by anyone in the entire 106-year history of the team, a 22-year-old rookie named Jon Lester took the mound for the sixth inning last night at Fenway Park and retired the side easily on 13 pitches.

“A combination of the new and the old,” Bob Ryan titles his audio profile of Terry Francona today, but the same could easily be said of the Red Sox’s win last night.

Lester’s been good in his major league career so far, but he’s never been this good. And he’s never pitched this deep into a game. But when you’re rolling like this, you’re gonna last a while.

He says he would have liked to go a full nine, but the pitch-count police said otherwise. As it was, just four walks and a single, measly hit in eight dominant innings and exactly 100 pitches is reason for celebration.

Like Obi Wan tutoring Luke, grizzled veteran Varitek guided his pupil, maneuvering Lester’s pitches all over the strike zone, up and down, left and right, back door and front door. It was mesmerizing.

And all we needed to do against the improbably dominant Brandon Duckworth was get a single RBI single out of our number nine hitter.

Done and done.

Mr. Automatic came on for the ninth, and finished it all off with just eight pitches.

Jonathan Pabelbon was happy.

And the Kansas City Royals were sad.

Does it concern me that both our wins against the worst team in baseball have been one-run nail-biters? A little. But as long as we break out the brooms this afternoon, I won’t complain too much.

And with the way these jerks are playing, we’d better win.

7/19/2006 11:31:07 AM by Mike Miliard | Comments [0] |  
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