Just-in-time management

My internal alarm-clock didn't go off last night, so I didn't join the game until about 3:30 CET. It was already the bottom of the 7th inning, and the Sox were down 3-2. I almost didn't hang in there, but I was awake and unlikely to drop back off to sleep, so I figured what the hell...

One inning later, Papi tied the game and Manny worked yet more of his unbelievable early-season magic.

(photo: AP)

In any other situation, a quote like this:

"[Ortiz is] going to come through," said Ramirez. "If he doesn't hit, I'm going to come through for him,"

would just sound like a player trying his hardest to support a struggling teammate, but looking at what Manny has done this past week, you can't help wondering if he hasn't slipped through a crack into some strange, parallel superhero universe where he is actually trying to do this...and succeeding. A bad man indeed.

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Whilst Manny's game-winning blast is quite rightly going to get all the headlines, the former center-fielder in me would like to say that without Jacoby Ellsbury's running catch in the top of the 8th, the Sox wouldn't have been in a position to win the game at all. So consider it said.

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Stat of the game: thanks to baseball's sometimes bizarre accounting system, Ellsbury's catch allowed Javier Lopez to record the win with the sum total of one pitch. I don't care where you work - that's a pretty efficient day at the office.