Red Sox Not Dead Yet....Tampa Should Be Scared

They've been in this position before. They've come back from deficits of 0-3 and 1-3 before. Yet, heading into last night's game, I can safely admit that I had given up on them. This Red Sox team didn't have the same feeling, the same energy that the 2004 and 2007 incarnations had. They had looked utterly flat in those three losses to the point where it looked like they agreed with me.

That was right up until the seventh inning of game five. They saw they're previous comebacks and raised the stakes a little more. That's when the believer came back in me, and there's no doubt it came back in them.

For all intensive purposes, the Red Sox looked like their bags were packed after Scott Kazmir retired the last batter of the sixth and finished his night. Staked to a 5-0 lead at that point, there was little to believe that the Red Sox could pull themselves up off the ground long enough to make a game out of it. When B.J. Upton drove in two more runs in the top of the seventh, it was the equivalent of them stepping on the Red Sox throat and telling them to stay down. But how long can sleeping Sox lie?

Apparently that was the seventh inning, when the biggest beast of them all, David Ortiz, woke up and slapped this team back into series with a three-run home run to put the Sox on the board and give the home town crowd something to get behind. Another run at end of the inning made it 7-4 after seven.

The Sox put more pressure on Tampa in the eighth when J.D. Drew launched a two-run home run to make it 7-6. The tying run would come around to score later in the inning after a two-out double by Mark Kotsay and a R.B.I. single from Coco Crisp on the tenth pitch of his at-bat against Dan Wheeler. Add in two innings of lights out pitching from Jonathan Papelbon, who perhaps will go down as the greatest post season pitcher in Red Sox history, and the comeback was complete. Now the game was back to the beginning, tied and ripe for anyone's picking.

Tampa took their chances in the top of the ninth against Justin Masterson, a side-arming rookie has the Sox have been leaning on out of the bullpen, but failed to capitalize on a chance with runners on first and second with one out in the inning after Masterson forced Carlos Pena to ground into the inning-ending double play.

The game appeared to be headed for extra innings after J.P. Howell got the first two outs of the inning relatively easily. Then the luck finally turned for Boston. With two outs, Kevin Youkilis hit a grounder to third that was charged and fielded by Evan Longoria. But Longoria's throw bounced short of Carlos Pena at first and went into the stands, putting the winning run at second base with Jason Bay coming to the plate. Tampa manager Joe Maddon opted to walk Jason Bay to have the lefty-lefty match-up with J.D. Drew. After the first pitch to Drew almost hit him and Howell threw the ball into the dugout in disgust, you just knew that the game was going to Boston. A few pitches later, Drew lined a single over the head of Gabe Gross in right field plating Youkilis with the winning run.

This was truly a comeback for the ages. The seven run deficit was the second largest in playoff history, topped only by an 8-0 deficit overcome by the Philadelphia A's in the 1929 World Series. It is the largest deficit ever overcome by a team facing elimination.

With odds like that, there is no one in America that can honestly count the Red Sox out now. Every fan that had consigned themselves to waiting until next season has a glimmer of hope in their eye this morning. And with such a huge win under Boston's belt, most have to ask how Tampa will respond to such a resounding defeat. Will they come back and continue to put the pressure on the Sox or has the wind shifted and given the Sox the push they'll need to put themselves into their third World Series in five season?

Regardless of the outcome of the series, this game was one for the ages, and no Red Sox fan, this one included, is questioning the heart of this team any longer.