S*W*E*E*P....Clean And NASTY!

The Boston Red Sox put their mark in the record books with an 11-1 drubbing of the Chicago White Sox Sunday in the windy city. They dominated the four game series with precise pitching and brutally heavy hitting, scoring ten or more runs in each game. In a spot start, Julian Tavarez, who is so valuable to this club, dominated the ChiSox for six innings, allowing only one run and two hits while striking out seven. And the bullpen closed it out. Manny Delcarmen and Eric Gagne each pitched an uneventful inning, and Paps came in for the ninth and struck out the side, literally blowing them away. If anyone could imagine a better tuneup for the upcoming Yankee series, I'd like to hear it. Mike Lowell put it this way, from the Courant......

"It feels better to go in there (NY) playing the way we're playing, because we're really playing well," said Mike Lowell, who extended his hitting streak to nine games. "We're getting great pitching performances, we're swinging the bats extremely well and we're playing good defense. That combination, with our talent, is tough to beat."

Peter here. And those pinstripers wrap up their 4 game set with Detroit, behind by 7 1/2 games. It will be Mussina versus Verlander. With that matchup, don't be surprised to see that lead balloon to 8. How sweet it is, as the Great One used to say in his own inimitable way.

Some quick batting stats for the Sox in this series read like this.....Mike Lowell, 10-19, Big Papi, 7-17, Bobby Kielty, 5-13 and Kevin Youkilis, 6-16. Let's hope those bats, all of them, in fact, stay red hot for a while. And the starting pitching, starters one through five, has been impeccable while the bullpen quite simply is the best in all of baseball. I'm excited about the make up of this 2007 version of that team we love to love.

Click on the title of this post for Gordon Edes' take on the history-making series that was, maybe a turning point in this late part of the 2007 season. GO SOX. Forever. I'm so proud of them!