Baseball News - Red Sox Sweep Angels, Earn Spot in ALCS


A sweep was in the air Friday night at Fenway Park. However, no one said it would be easy. Leading 6-1, in the bottom of the 6th, Boston seemed ready to get out the brooms. Not so fast. After a bases loaded walk to Darin Erstad, Mike Timlin gave up a grand slam to AL MVP candidate Vladimir Guerrero that nodded the game up at 6.

Fenway Park would remain silent until the bottom of the 12th, when the silence turned into pandemonium. David Ortiz stepped up to the plate against the new Angel pitcher Jarrod Washburn. Ortiz hammered a first pitch fastball in to the second row of the Green Monster seats in left-center field for a game-winning home run.

"I just (didn't) feel like going back to California," Ortiz said.

Ortiz also had a pair of doubles as Boston rode starter Bronson Arroyo to a five-run lead after six innings. The 27-year old Pittsburgh castoff pitched six innings of three-hit ball and was given a thunderous ovation from the sold-out crowd at Fenway Park when he left with a 6-1 lead in the seventh.

Johnny Damon got the winning rally started by smashing a leadoff single up the middle against Francisco Rodriguez. Damon was thrown out at second on a bunt by Mark Bellhorn. After K-Rod struck out Manny Ramirez looking, Angels manager Mike Scioscia brought in Washburn to face Ortiz. The southpaw, who lost Game 1, made the pitch that ended Anaheim's season and enabled the Red Sox to advance to the ALCS for the second year in a row.

The Boston bullpen got big contributions from Red Sox closer Keith Foulke and Derek Lowe, who got the win in his first relief appearance since last year's postseason.

With the sweep, the Red Sox have four days to rest for the AL Championship Series that starts Tuesday. Their opponent will be either the archrival New York Yankees or the Minnesota Twins. Either the Yankees or Twins will have to face co-aces Schilling and Martinez in Games 1 and 2 of the ALCS.

The Angels will get no sympathy from Boston, which has been hoping to repeat its magical year of 1918 ever since Babe Ruth was sold to the Yankees for $100,000.

Should the Yankees advance, it would give the Red Sox a chance for revenge against the team that has won 26 World Series since Boston last won it all. The Yankees knocked the Red Sox out of the ALCS last year when Pedro Martinez couldn't hold a three-run lead in the eighth inning of Game 7 and Aaron Boone homered in the 11th to send New York to the World Series.

"We want to get to the World Series, whichever way we have to," Arroyo said.

Last year's Red Sox used the theme "Cowboy Up" in the regular season, before they were defeated in the playoffs against the Yankees. Center fielder Johnny Damon declared this week that they were down on "Cowboy Up" and instead were just "idiots" with bad hair and dirty uniforms who were out for fun on the field.

"It's like a big frat house," Damon said during the postgame celebration. "We have a lot of fun. We enjoy each other."

Friday's victory capped Boston's first postseason sweep since the 1975 American League Championship Series against Oakland.






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