King Kaufman's Sports Daily
Beckett shuts down Indians, sends ALCS back to Boston. Plus: Torre, McCarver, Lofton. And: NFL Week 7.
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Oct. 19, 2007 | Josh Beckett threw a wrench in Major League Baseball's apparent plan to have more off days than baseball games during the playoffs by shutting down the Cleveland Indians and extending the American League Championship Series with a 7-1 win.
The Indians' lead over the Boston Red Sox is now three games to two, with Game 6 scheduled for Saturday at Fenway Park.
Beckett was nasty as he outdueled C.C. Sabathia in a close game the Red Sox broke open in the seventh and eighth innings. He struck out 11 in his eight innings, allowing a run on five hits and a walk before turning the ball over to Jonathan Papelbon, who got some work in by protecting a six-run lead.
Kevin Youkilis homered in the first inning and drove in the Sox's first insurance run in the seventh when he tripled off a diving Grady Sizemore's glove. Manny Ramirez broke a 1-1 tie with a single that just missed being a homer in the third.
The Red Sox win and the continuation of the ALCS should go a long way toward preventing total sports-media saturation coverage of the Joe Torre story in New York, though they'll have their hands full on that score. Torre turned down the Yankees' offer of a one-year contract with a big cut in his base salary but incentives that could have paid him more than he made this year if the 2008 Yankees reached the World Series.
That ends by far the longest, most stable and most successful managerial era of the Steinbrenner era for the Yankees, and it probably would have totally overshadowed the ALCS if the Red Sox hadn't been playing. As it is, ESPN is playing it cool, though it has commissioned Philip Glass to write an opera about Torre's contract negotiation that will debut Sunday afternoon.
Beckett's dominance revives the question of whether Boston should have had him start Game 4 on three days' rest, both to give the club a better chance of winning that game and tying the series and also to have had him available for a possible Game 7 on his regular rest. Beckett was reported to be stiff with a sore back Wednesday, when Game 4 was played, but he showed no ill effects Friday.
Unlike many of his contemporaries, Beckett does not have ugly numbers on three days' rest, though he has rarely tried it. In the regular season he has pitched twice, started once, giving up one run in eight innings.
In the postseason he's started on three days' rest once, the famous clinching Game 6 shutout in the 2003 World Series for the Florida Marlins against the Yankees. He also turned in a four-inning, one-run relief appearance on two days' rest in the NLCS against the Chicago Cubs that year.