A couple of weeks ago, Sparky Anderson, angered by some misfortune that had befallen his Tigers, yelped something about burning Fenway Park down or bombing it flat or otherwise making it vanish forever.
The Boston Red Sox, given their mood, might supply the match.
The White Sox added a little incendiary incentive Saturday night when they beat the fading Beantowners 7-4 to complete a sweep of a day-night doubleheader.
They won the wild opener 10-8 in 14 innings and almost five hours after trailing 8-4 at one time.
”A long day,” said Bobby Thigpen, whose saves in both games gave him 22. ”A good day.”
A good day for a lot of people.
Frank Thomas, who hit his first homer in nearly two weeks, had five hits for the day, drove in three runs in the second game and pushed his average back over .300. ”This was the longest day in the ballpark in my young career,” said Thomas.
Robin Ventura had two homers, one of them tying Game 1 with two out in the ninth. ”It seemed like the never-ending game,” Ventura said. ”Just one long game.”
Ramon Garcia won for the second time in his last three starts. Melido Perez lifted his record as a reliever to 5-0 with seven innings of two-hit pitching.
In all, not counting a token halftime, it was more than eight hours of baseball. For the White Sox, it was winning baseball.
”Everybody really did a super job,” said manager Jeff Torborg.
The second game was kind of a mess. The demoralized Red Sox committed four errors, which helped provide the White Sox with four unearned runs. Garcia (2-3) escaped despite giving up 10 hits in 6 1/3 innings, a tribute both to his courage and Boston`s continuing inability to get a clutch hit.
”He battled,” said pitching coach Sammy Ellis. ”One notch tighter, he`d be all right.”
The opener, on the other hand, may not have been art, but it was classic Fenway. Six home runs. Big leads, blown leads, rallies, errors, drama, tingles and silliness.
Dan Pasqua won it for Perez (6-4) in the 14th with a bases-loaded single to left off Dana Kiecker (2-2), the fifth Boston pitcher in relief of Roger Clemens.
”He just left a sinker out over the plate, and I hit it hard,” said Pasqua. ”I tried to stay with it.”
He stayed with it. Clemens (six innings) and White Sox starter Greg Hibbard (4 1/3) didn`t. But while they were in there, they saw some amazing things.
In the first inning, Tim Raines singled om Clemens` first pitch. Before he could throw his second pitch, the Rocket was joined on the mound by that well-known, well-built kissing woman.
By the time Clemens finished the inning, he had thrown 44 pitches and trailed 4-0.
Then things really got bizarre.
With two out in the Red Sox second, Carlos Quintana hit a grounder to the rain-soaked left side that Ventura cut off and threw into the Boston dugout.
”It was kind of like Jell-O in the first game,” Ventura said of the infield dirt that had to be patched up, delaying the start 25 minutes. ”Then it turned into a bad mattress in the second game.”
Jack Clark followed with a smash past Ventura-and into the thigh of umpire Mark Johnson behind third. A break for Hibbard. Then Joey Cora gave it back with a wild throw on Mike Greenwell`s hopper that should have ended the inning but instead sent Quintana home.
Back-to-back homers in the second by Ellis Burks and Tony Pena made it 4-3. And in the third, the Red Sox took the lead, but not without another curious incident.
Clark was on second when Tom Brunansky hit one over Lance Johnson`s head in center. Johnson played it off the wall, Brunansky sped into second, and at third, there was Clark, shrugging his shoulders. He thought there was one out, so he stopped to watch Johnson. There were two out.
Many of the Fenway fans, having gone to Harvard, knew that. So what began as ”Brooos” for Brunansky quickly changed to ”booos” for Clark. Burks saved him by crashing a single against the Monster that scored both Clark and Brunansky.
Now it was 5-4 Boston. Hibbard hung on until he walked Quintana with one out in the fifth. Torborg, wary of a Clark-Hibbard matchup, brought in Donn Pall. Clark hit one to Kennebunkport, making it 7-4. A long Brunansky double and a hit by Pena made it 8-4.
The White Sox, helped by a Luis Rivera error, made it 8-5 in the sixth against Clemens. With two out in the seventh, Ventura sent a Tony Fossas pitch into the seats in right for his 12th homer, his second against left-handed pitching, and it was 8-6.
Boston manager Joe Morgan switched to Jeff Gray, and Thomas greeted him with a home run, his 17th. It finally came down on the roof of a garage beyond the wall, over the net and across the street in left-center.
”That,” said Thomas, not given to boasting, ”was smoked.”
And it was, amazingly, a one-run game. Ah, Fenway.
With two out in the ninth, Ventura faced Jeff Reardon and hit his second homer. The game was tied.
”I didn`t think it was going out,” said Ventura. Yet, he was advised, he made a little leap as the ball cleared.
”Because,” he explained, ”I didn`t think it was going out.”
Then the White Sox won it in the 14th, rewarding Perez for his shutout stint.
”Melido was unbelievable,” Torborg said. ”I wonder if any clubs in the major leagues have a reliever who can do what he`s done for us out of that role.”
The Red Sox just need relief.
Between games, outside Boston`s closed clubhouse, the shouting could be heard through the cracks. When the doors opened, a portrait of Greenwell-without an RBI in 14 games-had been smashed. In a real sense, so had this team.
”You saw it,” said Pena. ”There`s nothing to say. We stunk.”
He could say that again. He probably did.
