Being There......

 Sometimes...in sports...it seems the story is already written...but then along the way...the players re-write it...wrecking the by-lines that ESPN may have had in store.  Last night was one of the nights....the Sox were down to one out....two strikes in the 9th....and getting ready to fall behind in the wild-card standings.  To make matters worse they had blown several opportunities in the 9th...one was with newly cut Chris Woodward failing to move the runners over, and the other was a blunder by Terry Francona.  Franconca lifted Jason Vartitek for a pinch runner.....Clay Buchholtz.  It appeared from the replays that Buchholtz has NEVER run the bases in his life.

  None of those things however are factors this morning as the Sox rallied from two runs down in the 9th to score 6 runs against the Texas Rangers.  All of the runs came with two outs....and the Sox flair for the dramatic still seems to be in order.  Credit V-Mart for his ten pitch at bat.....where he saw 8 pitches with strike two hung on him.  Martinez crushed a Frankie Francisco fastball to right field and gave the Sox the lead, one they would not give back in the bottom of the 9th.

  For most of the night...it seemed like the song remained the same, as the Sox hapless offense was once again kept in check.  It did not help matters that they were trailing from the get go...thanks to a horrific inning by Jon Lester where he threw over 30 pitches and yielded two runs before the game was only a few minutes old.  Of course there were alot of the same old frustrations, as the Sox left alot of guys on base early, letting the Rangers and Kevin Millwood of the hook.

Once again the back story in the game was the continued failure of rookie Daniel Bard...once again...this un-tested ....un-proven pitcher found himself in the middle of a critical game...throwing critical pitches...and once again failing at the task at hand.  I wonder how many chances this kid is going to get at failing the Sox in bigtime games.  If you are scoring at home...this is the third in about a week that Bard has failed the Sox....luckily....this time the Sox dormant offense was able to bail him out.