Sports Redux: Sox Pitchers Are Giant Flirts

A lot of Dates With Destiny from the Red Sox lately. A lot of good signs about the pitching. REALLY good signs. Tim Wakefield flirted with a no-hitter early in the season, Josh Beckett got a phone number in Detroit last week, and last night it was Jon Lester who was just an appletini away from a no-hitter. It wasn't meant to be, but his brilliant pitching and some powerful offense led the Sox to an 8-1 crushing of the Rangers at Fenway.

Lester, a year and change away from his no-hitter over Kansas City last season, and seemingly miles away from the struggling pitcher we worried about, was perfect into the seventh inning, before Michael Young doubled to the wall. Shucks; at least it was a good clean hit.

It was a close game for a while; until the fifth, only Mike Lowell's solo HR stood between a perfect game and a tie. But the Sox took care of that in quick fashion, as RBI singles by Pedroia and Bay made it 4-0. The Fenway crowd got a moment of sheer delight in the sixth, as David Ortiz his his second long-awaited home run of the season to key a four-run inning that settled the final score and left Lester's perfect-game bid the only suspense left.

With the Yankees' loss to Tampa Bay, the Sox are now half a game in front for the AL East, the best record in the AL, and home-field advantage throughout the playoffs, pending the All-Star Game. Not that we're suddenly feeling overconfident or anything.

Let's check in again on the two Finals rounds that are going on in our "winter" sports. The Red Wings shellacked Pittsburgh, 5-0, to take a 3-2 lead in the Stanley Cup Finals. And with the extra day off in the NBA, calculated to make even pretty sincere hoops fans lose interest and wander off, Bob Ryan reminsces about the '84 Finals, when the Garden nearly literally melted and the Lakers were desperately sucking on oxygen masks to stay alive. Unfortunately for posterity, if not for the players, LA and Orlando are both comfortably air conditioned.

Photo by Mary Schwalm/Associated Press.