Rookies Help Put Red Sox on the Brink of a Sweep

Oct 28, 01:40 AM

Current Headlines: DENVER _ It has been 37 years since a team fell behind three games to none in the World Series before winning the fourth game to stay alive. But a three-game deficit is what the National League champion Colorado Rockies have on their hands after falling behind early and irretrievably, as it turned out, Saturday night in the first World Series game ever played in Denver.

The Rockies were bulldozed in a six-run third inning by the American League champion Red Sox, who scored their seventh consecutive World Series victory, covering four games in 2004 and three in 2007. Matt Holliday, the league batting champion and runs batted in king, brought the Rockies back with a three-run homer off Hideki Okajima in the seventh inning, cutting Boston's huge lead to 6-5. But rookies Jacoby Ellsbury and Dustin Pedroia, the first rookies to bat first and second for a World Series team, both contributed run-scoring doubles in a three-run eighth that finally did put away a 10-5 win for the Red Sox.

Ellsbury (four) and Pedroia (three) combined for nearly half of Boston's 15 hits Saturday night. The Red Sox have outscored the Rockies 25-7 in the first three games of the Series.

Not since the 1970 Cincinnati Reds has a team that was down three games in the Series won the fourth game. And that has happened only three times in the 22 occasions there has been a 3-0 spread. None of the three teams _ the 1970 Reds, 1937 New York Giants or 1910 Chicago Cubs _ won the fifth game.

The Rockies entered Saturday's game as the only playoff qualifiers not to have lost a game at home this postseason. But, on the other hand, Boston's Terry Francona never has managed a losing World Series game, even though this one took 4 hours 19 minutes, the longest nine-inning game in World Series history by five minutes.

The Red Sox are one win from their second World Series sweep in four seasons after going 86 years between Series triumphs before that.

Nearly half _ 25 of 54 _ of the pitchers who have started postseason games this year have not made it past the fifth inning and, after tossing 27 pitches in a scoreless first inning, Colorado's Josh Fogg gave strong indication that he wouldn't either, let alone make it out of the third.

That was the inning in which the Red Sox temporarily muffled the many fans seeing their first World Series game. It was the second time in the Series they had scored six or more runs in an inning against a Colorado staff which had been almost unhittable in the first two rounds.

That was the inning which left the Rockies' starter in a fog and then in the showers and featured two doubles by Ellsbury, who was just the second player in World Series history to accomplish the feat. But the highlight might have been the first stateside hit by Japanese-born pitcher Daisuke Matsuzaka, who was nothing for four in the regular season but jumped on a hanging curveball with the bases loaded to single in two runs.

Matsuzaka's hit was the first by a pitcher in the World Series since the Cardinals' Jeff Suppan in 2004, but history has recorded that Suppan didn't know the way home that night. Ellsbury, meanwhile, tied Arizona's Matt Williams (2001) as the only players to double twice in the same frame.

But Matsuzaka, after escaping the fifth with a good play by shortstop Julio Lugo, gave the Rockies another chance in the sixth by walking Holliday and Todd Helton with one out and that six-run lead. Francona brought in lefthander Javier Lopez, a former Rockies pitcher, to face lefthanded-hitting Brad Hawpe. Hawpe, who has struck out eight times in three games, delivered the first Colorado run with a single and Yorvit Torrealba followed suit.

Former Cardinal Mike Timlin relieved and hardly fooled anybody but the Red Sox got out of the inning at 6-2. Pinch hitter Ryan Spilborghs sent Ellsbury to the center-field wall for his long fly ball and then Lugo leaped to spear pinch hitter Jeff Baker's liner.

Timlin was gone after Kaz Matsui beat out a bunt single and Troy Tulowitzki delivered a more conventional hit in the seventh. Even though the righthanded-hitting Holliday was up, Francona went to lefthander Hideki Okajima, who retired all seven men he faced in Game 2.

But he did not face Holliday then and probably won't face him anymore this Series after Holliday cracked the Rockies' first homer of the Series, a laser over the center-field wall to make it 6-5.

Helton also singled before Okajima struck out Garrett Atkins and Hawpe and got Torrealba on a bouncer to the mound.

Lefthander Brian Fuentes, who has struggled several times in postseason duty, walked eighth-place hitter Lugo with one out in the Boston eighth and defensive replacement Coco Crisp singled. Ellsbury then got his third double of the night just inside the right-field line as right fielder Hawpe appeared to leave his feet too soon in a futile slide. That hit scored one run and Pedroia's double plated two more.

Boston closer Jonathan Papelbon got Holliday to fly out with two men on in the eighth to close out the last Rockies' threat.

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