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THE SUMMER OF "MORGAN'S
MAGIC" ...
Mike Smithson pitches
a gem against the Champs
July
19, 1988 ... Mike Smithson and Larry Parrish
look like two of the best investments the Red Sox have made all year.
They stood out tonight in a 5-0 victory over the Minnesota Twins that
improved the Sox record under new manager Joe Morgan to 6-0 and
lifted them within five games of first-place Detroit in the American
League East. A Fenway
Park crowd of 32,036 fans watched Smithson flirt with a no-hitter for 6 1/3
innings while Parrish went 3 for 3, including his first home run in a Sox
uniform. Parrish played his second game at first base, left for defensive
purposes in the seventh inning but making a lingering impression.
Smithson,
the 6-foot-8-inch right-hander, who began the year as a free agent, gave up two
hits in 7 1/3 innings and dazzled the team that cut him loose last winter with a
sinker and slider that, while not overpowering, got the job done. Smithson lost
his no-hit bid when Kirby Puckett lashed a 1-2 pitch up the middle for a clean
single. The two former teammates exchanged polite acknowledgement after the hit.
The Twins
made contact against Smithson all night, and he wound up with only one
strikeout. That was fine with the 33-year-old veteran, who made the longest
no-hit bid by a Sox starter this season.
Morgan
wasn't worried about strikeouts, either, and had not expected a shutout against
the hard-hitting world champions. But that's what the Sox wound up with when Bob
Stanley finished the combined three-hitter, allowing only a single by Kent Hrbek
in 1 2/3 innings.
The
pressure was off long before the seventh. The Red Sox built a 5-0 lead, carved
on spurts of one-run offense in five of the first six innings. Parrish had a
hand in two runs. In the second inning, his single to left advanced Jim Rice,
who had doubled. Rice scored on a Wade Boggs sacrifice fly. Parrish's home run,
his eighth of the season, opened the sixth off reliever Jim Winn.
In winning
for the seventh time in eight games, the Sox got the only run they needed in the
first. Boggs and Marty Barrett opened with singles. Dwight Evans, playing right
field after missing two games with a sore right hamstring, flied to left. A
single by Mike Greenwell loaded the bases, and Alan Anderson balked home Boggs.
The surge fizzled as Ellis Burks hit a grounder to third on which Barrett was
caught in a rundown. Burks then got picked off first, ending the inning.
The Sox
loaded the bases again in the second and fourth and managed only run each time.
But that was more than enough to keep them rolling.
In winning their 11th straight game at Fenway, the Sox
pounded out 12 hits. The shutout was the team's eighth and only the second that
didn't involve Roger Clemens. |
