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THE SOX WIN THE AL EAST IN
SPECTACULAR June 27, 1990 ... By the seventh inning, with the lightning dancing outside, Red Sox fans were leaving Fenway Park, safe in the notion that a team that is piquing a region's curiosity with each passing day had a 9-5 victory over the Blue Jays well in hand. The Sox won their sixth straight game, expanded their lead over second-place Toronto to 2 ½. The win took a long while because of a 1-hour 40-minute rain delay at the start. Mike Boddicker improved to 10-3, going seven innings, allowing all five runs but only three earned. He struck out six as he won for the ninth straight time and remains unbeaten in his last 12 decisions. He did it with a tender right elbow he said hurt even before the game and that he felt throughout his stint, especially when he threw changeups. The offense exploded for 13 hits, six of them in a six-run fifth inning in which the Red Sox transformed a slight, 3-2, lead into a gargantuan 9-2 bulge. Stars were many. Carlos Quintana, with three hits and an RBI, and Wade Boggs, Jody Reed and Tom Brunansky, with a pair of hits each, led the assault. Even Luis Rivera found a little happiness. Jeff Gray picked up his second save, pitching 1 2/3 innings in relief of Boddicker and Rob Murphy. Gray, who has come out of nowhere, entered the game in the eighth with two runners on base that Murphy had put there. He served a double-play ball, got out of the inning and then blew past the Blue Jays in the ninth. He has prevented eight of eight inherited runners from scoring. Junior Felix had one of his throws sailed to the top of the third-base dugout, costing Toronto a run. He ran past a routine fly ball, then watched it fall for a triple. At the plate, he couldn't quite communicate with Boddicker's breaking stuff. He was hitless in his first three at-bats, striking out twice, before Quintana tried to get Felix to bite on a fielding contest when he muffed Felix' grounder in the seventh and threw from his knees to a guy in the first row. That led to a Tony Fernandez single and Toronto's fourth and fifth runs. The Sox struck for one run in the first on Brunansky's single up the middle, scoring Reed. Reed doubled past a diving Gruber at third base with one out. The Sox trailed, 2-1, but tied it in the third on Reed's golf-swing single to right. Felix, who usually kills the Red Sox at the plate, helped them in the field when he unloaded a rising throw from right on Reed's hit. The ball sailed well over Kelly Gruber's head at third, hit the top of the Toronto dugout and bounded back on the field. Gruber belted his 20th homer, a first-pitch, two-run shot off Boddicker in the top of the third, giving the Blue Jays a 2-1 lead. It was the first home run Boddicker had allowed in 44 2/3 innings. Fernandez, who had tripled, was aboard. The Sox broke a 2-2 tie in the fourth on Boggs' two-out RBI single to center field, scoring Quintana, who singled to left. With Boston leading, 3-2, against lefty Jimmy Key, who had a 4-0 record at Fenway, Brunansky began the fifth-inning onslaught with a triple to right field. It wasn't your prototypical triple. It was a fly ball that Felix ran hard to reach, toward the railing, but he went too far and couldn't backtrack. Dwight Evans knocked him in with a single to right, on which Felix made the play. After Tony Pena singled to left, Toronto manager Cito Gaston made the move for righthander Frank Wills. Quintana struck for his third hit, a vicious line-drive double to left field that George Bell couldn't prevent from hitting the Wall, scoring Evans with the fifth run. Mike Greenwell, who was supposed to get the night off, pinch hit for Kevin Romine, who went 1 for 2 in a cameo appearance. He was walked intentionally, loading the bases for Rivera, who never thought he'd get another hit. He was in a 2-for-46 funk before lining a single hard off the Wall, scoring Pena and Quintana. After Boggs doubled to the left-field corner, scoring Greenwell, the third Blue Jays pitcher, righty Duane Ward entered to keep the peace. He did, but not before Reed's ground out scored the ninth Sox run. |
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