Sports Redux: One Week Till Football Season

Scoring two runs a day isn't any way for a team clinging by their fingernails to the pennant race to vault themselves back into the contention. Especially if it takes 18 innings to score them. The Red Sox lost 3-1 to the White Sox yesterday afternoon, then went back to work at night and lost 3-1 again. Even with Tampa Bay losing, the Sox still lost ground, and their tragic number is down to 20.

The Pale Hose, rejuvenated with the addition of a proven postseason slugger (more on that soon), took it to the Red Sox early, got to Clay Buchholz early in the first game. Clay was told he was only going to pitch five innings, so he could start on short rest in the Last Stand against Tampa later this week. But since the Sox could only scratch out one run against Chicago's John Danks. They floundered again in the nightcap, mustering only an RBI single from Marco Scutaro before Chicago scored twice of John Lackey in the seventh for their second straight insurmountable 2-run lead. "When you don’t have a lot of opportunities, you have to cash in when you can and we didn’t," said a glum Terry Francona. Josh Beckett will try to salvage the series this afternoon.

Manny Ramirez, back in town again, went 3-for-8 in the doubleheader, and was loudly booed, though again, we think most of that came from the press box. Dan Shaughnessy, who's seemed subdued lately for a guy who treats Red Sox collapses like Christmas morning, brought out the knife for Manny one last (we hope) time. because we apparently can't get enough hurt feelings from Dan about the 2004 team derailing his gravy train. No link.

You know things are upside-down when your local baseball team can't score in two games as much as your local soccer club does in one. But that's what happened, as the Revolution exploded for a 3-1 win in Foxboro against Seattle. You'd forgive the Revs for being tired after two games in a week, but they rose to the challenge. And all within 11 minutes, as Chris Tierney scored his first MLS goal in the 70th minute, followed by scores from Marko Perovic and Kheli Dube. Tierney: "We knew that if we just stuck to it the way we were playing, creating chances, we were going to score, eventually." Someone needs to call Terry Francona for a pep talk.

While we have to wait another week for pro football to kick off (get it?), there was plenty of action around if you're into the college game, which if you live around here, is kind of questionable. But the locals comported themselves well: BC devoured their early cupcake, beating Weber State 38-20. Bob Ryan profiles the day that Mark Herzlich had in his first game back from cancer treatments, which is the kind of column that separates Ryan from other Globe columnists we could name. UMass won an upset against William and Mary (it's a tough game; Mary's pretty tough on defense) and Holy Cross beat Howard in the first game without super QB Dominic Randolph. Nationally, most of the big-time schools were "battling" groups of middle-school kids bussed in for the traditional opening game, and most of them summarily destroyed these "foes". So no fun upsets to report.