After some back and forth action in which Lackey wasn't so Lacktastic, Bard gives up the tie-breaking dong, and we end up losing 9-6. The homer, hit by the Azz Man, Asdrubal Cabrera, was a line drive down the right field line. It appeared to hit on top of the wall before bouncing all the way back to Reddick in right field. But if it did, why would it bounce left like that? Because it didn't hit the front corner, it seemed to hit beyond the wall slightly, like maybe off an armrest. The umps review it and call it a dong. A few minutes later, NESN's roving camera shows a close-up of a woman in the front row down by the pole, and she's got stitch marks on her black and blue knee! So the evidence was there, and it turned out to be the game-winning runs for Cleveland.

The stupid White Sox just lost 3-2 to the Yanks, so we're a mere one game up. (To the delight of NESN, who made a commercial saying the Yanks come in Friday with "the division lead on the line." We were up at least 2 games when they made the ad, and there were at least 4 games to be played before that series! We could have been more than 3 games up heading into the 3-game Yanks series, meaning the division lead wouldn't have necessarily been on the line. But this ad was in the same family of NESN preview ads that called the Yanks the best in the east (or something) when they were tied with the Red Sox.)

More on tonight's game: Crawford needs to get some practice playing that Wall. He had the one ball where he thought he was right at the wall but wasn't, and knocked it in the air before catching it. Could have easily dropped. Then later there was one that he again thought he was so close to the wall, and gave up on the ball, which hit very low on the wall. Practice makes perforated edges.

You know how Fenway plays that song "9 to 5" when we're up 9 to 5? Tonight they did it when we were down 9 to 5. Seems odd, why would you want to celebrate a losing score?

NESN noted that the Red Sox are 17-19 in series-opening games tis season. That's crazy. Kinda. In an essentially random sampling of 36 games from a team that's won at a .617 rate over 107 games, you should see 22-23 wins. We're 5 worse. Okay, maybe not that crazy at all, but unexpected--unless you factor in that whole "you just took a flight before a bunch of those games and therefore might be extra tired or something" thing. But the point is, this means that in non-series opening games, we're playing .690 baseball. So once we get to know a team, we dominate them. If that's how you wanna look at it. (I would like to know the MLB average record for series openers.)

On Joy of Sox tonight, a woman who goes by the name of Kathryn mentioned that she was at the Manny 500th dong game in Baltimore, and that she saw Dough Flutie there. I was at that game, too, and Flutie was right behind where my seats were. So I produced some crowd pics from my gallery of that game for her to look for herself in--and it turned out she and her family were in my shots! That's what I love about...life, I guess.