Terry Francona was running out of pitchers fast. He was down to his last pitcher, Scott Kazmir of the Tampa Bay Rays. The Tampa Bay manager would have preferred that he not pitch at all, since he hurled over 100 pitches on Sunday and is scheduled to pitch again soon, but when you’re into the 15th inning of the All Star Game, a manager doesn’t have many choices left. Fortunately, Kazmir got through his inning and the Red Sox All Star Team, er, make that the AL All Star Team scored a run in the bottom of that inning to win the game.
Here’s what Francona had to say if he needed another pitcher after Kazmir:
"You know, you wait a lot of your life to do something like this," Francona said. "And in the last two hours, it wasn't a whole lot of fun. I was very nervous. I actually was more nervous before the game than I ever thought I would be. You know, but an excitable, you know, nervousness. It was fun to be part of something so special. And then later on, [I] started to have panic set in."
That's because he had run out of pitching. Rays lefty Scott Kazmir came on for the top of the 15th, and Francona had nobody left. And Kazmir was not in a position to throw all night, having thrown 104 pitches on Sunday.
In fact, Francona hadn't even planned on using Kazmir until the desperation set in. One thing nobody wanted was a tie.
So Kazmir blanked the NL in that top of the 15th, and Michael Young's walk-off sacrifice fly in the bottom of the inning prevented he ace from having to throw another inning.
"I mean, we got to the point where [Tigers manager] Jimmy Leyland saw him, came down to the dugout just to check, and I asked him if he could pitch," Francona said. "It wasn't a real fun situation. I mean, that's just it was you try so hard to win and get everybody in. I thought we excelled at that, because we used everybody. We did a great job of using everybody."
And if the game had dragged on a few innings more, Francona confessed that he might have been forced to put his right fielder, J.D. Drew, on the pitcher's mound and send Evan Longoria -- the designated hitter -- into the outfield. Drew wound up winning the Most Valuable Player by belting a two-run homer, adding a single and stealing a base.
"He might have been a little more of an MVP if we went a couple more innings," said Francona. "He might have pitched. He's been begging me a long time to pitch, and we almost got close. But we were still a ways away from that."
Drew would have welcomed the opportunity.
"I've given him a hard time for the couple years that I played for him, if he ever runs out [of pitching], just give me a holler out here," said Drew. "We would have seen what happened. But after it started to [become a possibility], I was a little bit nervous to be honest with you."
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