This is unreal.
Most of us just about to give up when Tampa Bay was
Leading the Red Sox 7-0
I did not watch the whole game,in matter of facts just
about to give up on them.No way that the Sox would come
back and win this game.
This has to break some record there in the league.
It was gettting late and feeling drowsy off to sleep.
When I woke up this morning and saw the Red Sox running
screaming for joy.Are they Serious'
Mike,Mike,they won whoooHOOOOO
I am not sure if they will go all the way.
But it will be fun if they do
Red Sox’s Mark Kotsay scores the tying run on a single by Coco Crisp in the eighth inning of Game 5 of the American League Championship Series last night in Boston.
Zoom





The magic that makes Fenway Park far more than a 96-year-old monument with tiny seats and terrible sightlines had gone missing for most of the week.

It was here in all its glory earlier this month, when its native Red Sox rocked its ancient foundation with a walk-off win, Jed Lowrie sending Jason Bay home with the winner to seal the Angels fate in the first round of baseball’s playoffs.

But for most of the American League Championship Series, the sport’s most loyal fan base, and its electric effect, were nowhere to be found.

At least until last night’s seventh inning.

If character is indeed measured by the way a person reacts when his back is against the wall, these Red Sox proved in amazing fashion that while 2004 was a team of characters, the 2008 edition is a team with character.

Assembling a four-run rally in the turning-point seventh to stir the sleepy sellout for the first time since Tampa Bay arrived on Monday, then adding three more to tie things in the eighth, and completing the miracle when J.D. Drew singled home Kevin Youkilis, the Sox rallied from a seven-run deficit with just seven outs remaining in their season. Claiming an 8-7 victory that will not only be remembered as one of the more remarkable contests in the history of the park, but allowed them to stave off elimination, the Sox sent the series back to Florida with the upstart Rays shaking their heads, and the ALCS having a completely different feel than it did as the stadium clock struck 11 last night.

At that point, the Rays didn’t only look like baseball’s unbeatable juggernaut, they looked like a team for all-time. Scoring twice before the game’s third batter set his cleats in the box, and slugging three home runs for the fourth time in four games, they took a wrecking ball to the record books and had left Boston’s nine all but dead and buried.

By the time BJ Upton lifted a two-run double off the left-field wall in the top of the seventh, and Tampa stormed further toward a rout at 7-0, they’d outscored the Sox by an aggregate of 29-5 since taking the field on Monday afternoon.

But they say champions die hard.

And baseball’s defending World Series winners certainly proved that.

"A loss and we stay home. I've never seen a group so happy to get on a plane at 1:30 in the morning in my life," said Red Sox Manager Terry Francona. "The first six innings they had their way with us in any way possible. Then this place came unglued.

"That was pretty magical."

After Scott Kazmir baffled the Red Sox over six shutout innings, Rays’ Manager Joe Maddon – whose decisions had been flawless to that point in the best-of-seven – opted to lift his lefty after a relatively easy 111 pitches, a point he’d surpassed just twice all season.

Maddon went to the bullpen to get Grant Balfour, who was greeted by a Lowrie shot that banged off the short wall in deep right. It went for a double, and sent some blood through the cold souls at Fenway, but didn’t seem much at the time.

The Red Sox had enjoyed baserunners over the course of the series, they just hadn’t had much success capitalizing upon them, or hitting the timely long ball, so the likelihood of that playing a major factor in the outcome of the contest seemed a bit far-fetched. It seemed further from reality after it was followed with consecutive flyouts, and the faithful wasn't exactly worked into a frenzy even after Coco Crisp’s single moved Lowrie to third.

But that’s when the old ballpark got loud. And when the Sox started to respond.

To that point, among the night’s loudest ovations came when a big-bellied man with a front-row box seat took off his shirt along the right field line and began twirling it around his head in an effort – unsuccessful as it was – to start the wave.

Though when Dustin Pedroia stepped to the plate with men on the corners in the seventh, and answered the “MVP!” chants with a run-scoring single to right, the place became legitimately loud.

And then it became downright explosive. Finally busting out of his playoff-long slump, and snapping a 61-at-bat stretch without a postseason homer, David Ortiz turned on an inside heater from Balfour and ripped it deep into the right field grandstands.

By then, the energy of the park was palpable. And its patrons, for the first time all week, were audible. The stands were rocking, the atmosphere returning along with the sense that hit-stringing rallies – typically part of the Fenway routine, but absent since Monday – were once again possible. That a comeback was possible. That anything was possible.

And that vibe carried into the eighth. First Jason Bay walked, then Drew – a man with an improbable knack for these sorts of dramatic moments – matched Ortiz by sending the ball sailing into the right-field seats.

With that it was 7-6. And the Sox weren’t done. The next two hitters were retired, but then Mark Kotsay, the fill-in first baseman who was in Atlanta until late August, lined a double over the outstretched glove of Upton, the catch-anything center fielder.

He stood at second for 10 pitches, waiting there until Coco Crisp, the Sox outfielder who lost his starting job in this same series last year, and was a reserve as recently as three days ago, stung a hard single into right. Kotsay dashed home, scoring without a throw, his slide minting him and Crisp as the unlikely heroes of a most unlikely comeback.

"Coco's at-bat was probably the best at-bat he's had as a Red Sox," Francona said.

After his clutch hit, Crisp was erased attempting to take second base. But the crowd didn’t much care. It stood. It jumped. It screamed. It cheered.

And, as it did, the public address system played the night’s most appropriate tune. Before could even receive his congratulations, the speakers were already spitting the opening notes of Journey’s “Don’t Stop Believing.”

At Fenway – even under circumstances requiring the greatest playoff comeback since 1929 – they never do.