The Baseball Desert

Saturday, October 01, 2005

One Step Up

One down and two to go.

Outside of a shaky first inning, Wells pitched a great game - he kept the Yankees guessing over seven inning with a mixed bag of pitches and great location. The bullpen was lights-out, again - Bradford came in to get Sheffield, Myers had an epic 11-pitch struggle with Matsui, which ended with Matsui striking out, and Timlin struck out three of the last four batters whilst giving up just one hit.

And what about the bats? Well, the bats were occasionally big (Varitek's go-ahead home-run), but mostly they were timely. With a one-run lead going into the sixth the Sox went: single, stolen base, intentional walk, single, walk, error, sac fly to put three runs on the board, and that was pretty much the ballgame.

Tonight the Sox go with Wakefield. If there's one guy you'd want out there with the season on the line, it's Wakefield and his knuckleball. I'll leave the Yankees to ponder the words of famed hitting coach Charlie Lau:
"There are two theories on hitting a knuckleball. Unfortunately, neither of them works."