Texas is a AAA Battery; Sox' Energy Outlasts Rangers, 8-4

With the Sox up 8-0 in the 8th inning a day after giving up 17 runs, Orsillo cited "the old adage" that 'momentum is only as good as the next day's starting pitcher', suggesting, in so many words, that Lester's performance corroborated it.

Lester, pitching brilliantly through 7, had stopped the velocity, the forward motion of the Texas lineup. But I think I recall that momentum is mass times velocity. And the Texas' heavy hitters were still massive. And mass, among other things, is involved with (in some way I don't remember) potential energy. The Texas momentum, in an ill defined sense, was still there, latent, dormant, waiting to be unleashed.

So one batter after Don's hitherto accurate pronouncement, Kinsler rocketed a dong over the monster on a 3-2 fastball, making it 8-1, and then Young shot a liner to right on a cutter down and in. After Ellison's high chopper back to the mound yielded an Ellsbury single, Francona went to the ultimate momentum stopper, the immovable force, Mike Timlin (and his 5.23 ERA.)

Even Timlin's two championship rings didn't save him from boos after Bradley's 3 run blast and then Byrd's double employed some of the previous days' inexhaustible supply of latent momentum. Potential energy became kinetic, and the crowd became frantic, anxious, fearing the hidden potent forces that animate the universe might manifest, vengefully and angrily. And Timlin seemed as good a lightning rod as any.

(By the way, Benjamin Franklin was awesome.)

But Youkilis was a badass again, and the Sox offense generated its own force, and picked up another game in the WC race- now up 6- on the suddenly impotent Yankees.