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REVERSING THE CURSE,
PART 2
PEDRO
& TEK COME TO TOWN
Another last moment game winner for the Sox
April 27, 1998 ... Midre
Cummings, took the curtain calls, and Darren Lewis, a defensive
specialist whose name is linked to home runs only because he sits
next to Mo Vaughn, won a game by curling a ball around Pesky's Pole
as the anything-goes Red Sox did it again.
Down four
runs on a night fit for ice fishing, the Red Sox came from behind on
back-to-back home runs by those noted long-ballers, Cummings and Lewis, to beat
the Detroit Tigers, 6-5, for their seventh straight win and 14th in 15 games.
The season
turns four weeks old, and the Red Sox already have won eight games in their last
at-bat, seven here at Fenway, where they are 10-1. There are three more games to
be played this month, and the Sox already have matched their record for April
wins, with 17.
The win went
to back-from-exile Dennis Eckersley, who pitched a scoreless eighth, and the
save to Tom Gordon, who now is tied with Cleveland's Mike Jackson for the league
lead with eight.
The
ice-breaker came in the seventh, when Tigers ace Justin Thompson left after a
double by Damon Buford and a four-pitch walk to Mark Lemke, who is 0 for 18
against lefties. Nomar Garciaparra hit Doug Brocail's first pitch for a double
that made it 5-2, and Brocail's next pitch was wild, scoring Lemke to make it
5-3.
The bonfire
came in the eighth, which followed a script that Damon Runyon would never have
written but Tigers rookie Sean Runyan wound up pitching. Brocail got the first
two outs easily, Vaughn and Jim Leyritz popping out. But after Troy O'Leary
floated a single up the middle, the game turned "X-Files" for a crowd of 18,456
in frosty Fenway.
With Buford
due to hit, Jimy Williams called upon Cummings, who had done nothing but
stretching exercises since beating the Tigers in Detroit last Wednesday with an
upper-deck blast in the ninth. Tigers manager Buddy Bell countered by calling
for Runyan, a 23-year-old lefty who spent last summer in Double A. Cummings, who
admitted he was looking over his shoulder for Williams to take him out for
righthanded-hitting Mike Benjamin, hit a fastball from Runyan that was tailing
away into the Red Sox bullpen, where it was caught by catcher Scott Hatteberg.
With the
score tied at 5, Bell could have lifted the shaken Runyan for a righthander, but
that would have brought in Reggie Jefferson or Darren Bragg to hit for Lewis.
Bell stayed with the kid. Williams stayed with Lewis, who never has hit more
than four home runs in a season. Lewis drove a 1-and-1 changeup from Runyan down
the line, barely clearing the wall.
After Gordon
worked a 1-2-3 ninth, it was time for everyone to go home. |
