Red Sox Win A Sixteen Inning Masterpiece, 1-0. Beckett Brilliant..Lester and Crawford To Return Soon

Josh Beckett is back and back feeling good. His performance yesterday was almost indescribably delicious. He went eight glorious inning and gave up no runs and one hit. while walking not a soul and whiffing six. The relievers who followed were every bit as good. Bard, Albers, Morales, Aceves (3 IP!) and Paps for the save were goose-egg perfect. I fell asleep early but I woke up at one AM and was glad I did. Pedey knocked in the winning tally in the top of the 16th. Here's Big Papi on Pedey, the Muddy Chicken...

"Just put it down in the newspaper, I wouldn't trade Pedey for nobody in this league right now"

Either would I, Papi. It was Boston's 13th win out of 14. Amazing stuff! I also have a couple pieces of good news. One, expect to see John Lester on the mound in about a week, after the Baltimore series that begins tonight. Here's the Sox skipper, Terry Francona...

“That’s good news for us. He must feel good. But we need to give him a chance where he can go out and not be stuck on 60 pitches. I think we caught it quick enough where he didn’t go out and throw another inning and do some damage.

The other bit of good news concerns Carl Crawford. For those of you going to the game tonight or watching it on NESN, the left fielder with be none other than Carl Crawford. His ex-manager, Joe Maddon, said this...

“We just haven’t been able to replace Carl and the things he did and the clutch hits and the production. That we haven’t been able to do, and I didn’t expect we were going to unless we had Manny here all season. He had his times here when he’d start to dip and we kind of knew when it was going to come and how long it would last. But Carl always picked it back up and at the end of the year his numbers were always where we expected them to be."

Boston will throw Wakefield, Weiland and Miller down in Maryland. I don't know what to expect will happen with Weiland and Miller and Timmy is always an early mystery until he sorts things out. But first place is ours. Let's keep it!

Thanks for stopping in on this soon to be scorching Monday. Click on the title of this post for all the riveting highlights from last night's specialness and as always, BE WELL.