Red Sox Showing Critical Signs of Life vs Tigers

As far as introductions to the Major Leagues go, Junichi Tazawa’s has been anything but uneventful.

His first steps to a Major League mound came in the wee hours of Saturday morning, in the 14th inning of a scoreless tie at Yankee Stadium. And his first start in the bigs, not even four complete days later, included a bench-clearing brawl incited initially by one of his own pitches.

Any rational viewer knows Tazawa wasn’t trying to hit Miguel Cabrera, who caught a first-inning pitch off the heel of his hand, but the Tigers were hardly rational viewers. They followed by firing a bullet under the armpit of Victor Martinez before drilling Kevin Youkilis between the numbers with the first pitch of the second inning.

A frustrated Youk stormed the mound and kicked off a bench-clearing melee that ultimately seemed to spark the Red Sox to a critical win. Youkilis’ ejection even proved one of the better tactical moves of the night, as Mike Lowell took over and proceeded to jack two balls out of Fenway Park.

It wasn’t pretty—Sox skipper Terry Francona was later ejected, as well—but Tuesday’s win was the kind of victory Sox fans needed to see, if for no other reason than to prove the team still has a pulse after a weekend-long siesta in the Bronx.

Tuesday at least featured the fire the Red Sox were missing all weekend in New York. When Dustin Pedroia got drilled by the Yankees in Thursday night’s rout, Red Sox Nation spent the rest of the weekend waiting for the response and got only a bean ball from Ramon Ramirez on Saturday afternoon that got Alex Rodriguez in the tricep and earned Ramirez an ejection.

But there was no vitriol, no bench-emptying brashness. Where was the seething emotion?

It wasn’t hard to find Tuesday. In fact, given that the teams exchanged bean balls Monday night—with Youkilis and Cabrera again receiving the plunks—and again in the first two innings Tuesday, more blood has boiled over already in this series than in any one game in New York.

But it’s not the fight itself so much as the fight in the Red Sox that will prove critical the rest of the way. Monday night, they knocked the Tigers best pitcher out before the fifth; Tuesday they responded to a fracas with some game-changing fireworks at the plate. Those aren’t the actions of a team packing things up and heading home for the fall.

All I know is the series in New York left me with bitter memories of 2006, when the Red Sox were swept by the Yankees in a five-game series that was pure agony for all Bostonians.

What followed that year was a collapse large enough to keep the Sox out of the postseason. Though there were more than 50 games remaining this time around, I was worried a similar fate might be around the corner.

Of course, two games against the Tigers aren’t proof that it still might be. The Sox have only picked up one game on the Evil Empire. It’s a little early to be printing our A.L. East Championship T-shirts.

But there are encouraging signs. Jason Bay appears close to snapping out of a two-month funk. He’s hit two home runs already in the series, but it’s a pair of outs—one bomb that died five feet in front of the 420-foot mark in center on Monday and a laser to left snared for an out on Tuesday—that have me believing he’s rediscovered his stroke.

Tazawa looked strong after shaking off first-inning jitters Tuesday, even surviving a 30-minute wait in the dugout during the brawl. Clay Buchholz turned in his best effort this season on the big stage in New York last weekend, and Josh Beckett and Jon Lester pitched like the aces they are in critical spots.

It’s easy to look at things in a vacuum and come away from the weekend convinced the season is over. It sure looked that way at times. But there’s a lot of season remaining, and this team appears determined to at least make it a race to the finish line. With a handful of games remaining against the Yankees, the division is not out of reach.

It’s also not yet a truly realistic goal, given that the Sox are still five and one-half back and the Yankees are on a month-long tear. But at the very least we’ve started to see critical signs of life.

And let’s hope Tuesday’s fight was the start of a similar scrap to the finish line.