Fenway Park Boston, Massachusetts
| Team | R | H | E | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
 | Tampa Bay Devil Rays | 1 | 4 | 0 |
 | Boston Red Sox | 2 | 7 | 0 |
Highlights
If you’ve been following these synopses of the games we’ve attended this summer, you’ll remember that I recorded that I thought it would be difficult to top the excitement we witnessed at the very first game back on April 6 at Tropicana Field. And as that was a fitting game to start our summer long adventure; this one was a perfect contest to end it on. For those of you who have not had the opportunity to attend a game at Fenway Park, it’s impossible to recreate in print the absolute electric atmosphere that exists here but this one seemed to have a little extra edge as the sold out crowd of 36,837 (365th sell out in a row) welcomed starting pitcher Jon Lester back to his first home start since overcoming his battle with non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma. Needless to say, the stage was set. The game quickly settled into a pitching dual between Lester and Rays ace Scott Kazmir. The Rays scored first in the top of the fourth with Carl Crawford reaching on a leadoff double. Center fielder B.J. Upton followed with a single moving Crawford to third and then Carlos Pena delivered Crawford home with a sacrifice fly to center to give the Rays a 1-0 lead. Kazmir went the first 6 innings giving up 1 hit each in the 1st, 3rd, 4th & 5th while striking out 8 and walking 3 and left the game in line for a victory with a 1-0 lead. Gary Glover and Dan Wheeler followed with 1 inning of perfect relief each to carry the 1-0 lead into the ninth. Lester went the first seven innings and gave up only 2 hits and 1 run in the 4th. He was otherwise hitless while striking out 4 and walking 1. Things got a little shaky for the Sox in the eighth when reliever Manny Delcarmen was greeted by a leadoff base hit by Jonny Gomes and then followed that up by issuing a base-on-balls to short stop Josh Wilson. The catcher Josh Paul then delivered a perfect sacrifice bunt to move Wilson and Gomes to 2nd & 3rd with only 1 out. The lead off batter Akinori Iwamura was up next and hit a shallow fly to left that was not deep enough for Gomes to attempt to score. Delcarmen then walked Crawford intentionally to load the bases and was lifted in favor of veteran reliever Mike Timlin who came in and retired Upton on strikes to end the threat. Newly acquired Eric Gagne pitched the ninth for the Sox and struck out the side sandwiched around a double by Brendan Harris. Then came the bottom of the ninth! Manny Ramirez lead off the inning and promptly went down on strikes but the crowd was still cheering madly for a rally and they got part of their wish when the next batter Mike Lowell crushed a 2-0 pitch from Rays’ closer Al Reyes over the “Green Monster” to tie the score at 1-1. Kevin Youkilis followed with a strikeout leaving the fate of the game to catcher Jason Varitek and he almost ended the game with a deep fly to the right field corner which initially looked as though it might sneak by the Pesky Pole for a game winning homer but ended up bouncing into the stands for a ground rule double. Coco Crisp followed with a game winning single to right scoring Varitek and as they say, “The crowd went wild!”. We saw 30 games at 30 stadiums this summer and it seems fitting that the first and the last of these games were not decided until the final at bat.