September 11, 2007: Championship-bound Red Sox rebound from 7-run deficit to a 16-10 win over Devil Rays

“This was a mess of a ballgame” wrote one Boston-area sportswriter, “but a beauty to behold just the same.”1

Coming into their Tuesday night home game on September 11, 2007, the Boston Red Sox (87-58) held a five-game lead in the American League East Division.2 The New Yankees were in second place; no one else was even close. The Tampa Bay Devil Rays were last, 25½ games behind. There were just 17 games remaining on the schedule.

It was the second game of three against the Devil Rays, whose Scott Kazmir had beaten Curt Schilling the night before, 1-0.

Both teams broke out the bats on September 11. Starting for Boston manager Terry Francona was knuckleballer Tim Wakefield (16-10, 4.39). Tampa Bay’s Joe Maddon selected rookie right-hander Andy Sonnanstine (5-9, 5.73).

The 41-year-old Wakefield had been the league’s winningest pitcher against Tampa Bay, as he compiled a record of 19-2 against them over the years. Sonnanstine, 24, had made his big-league debut in June. He came into the game having won his last three starts; he had beaten the Red Sox, 6-5, on August 15.

Neither team scored in the first inning, but the Devil Rays put four runs across in the top of the second. The first came on a one-out, solo home run to left by Brendan Harris, his 11th. Jonny Gomes singled, stole second, and scored on a single by Dioner Navarro. After Josh Wilson doubled, Akinori Iwamura singled into right for the third run. The fourth came on an infield groundout by Carl Crawford, scoring Wilson.

The Red Sox scored their first run on rookie Jacoby Ellsbury’s third career homer, hit to right field in the bottom of the third.3

Tampa Bay immediately upped the ante, adding four more runs in the top of the fourth. Navarro led off with a ground-rule double. On the next pitch, Wilson singled to right, and on the pitch after that, Iwamura doubled, driving in Navarro. Francona called on Kyle Snyder to relieve Wakefield, who was knocked out in the fourth for the second successive start.4

Snyder retired Crawford but surrendered a three-run homer to Carlos Peña, his 39th of the season.5 That made it 8-1, Tampa Bay.6

The Red Sox comeback began in the bottom of the inning. Five of the first six batters singled: Mike Lowell, J.D. Drew, Coco Crisp, Julio Lugo (one RBI), and Kevin Cash (two RBIs).7 Maddon had seen enough, and Scott Dohmann took over from Sonnanstine.

After the game, Sonnanstine said, “Whenever you get eight runs early, it’s my job to protect that lead and get us back in the dugout, and I didn’t do my job.”8

Ellsbury walked, and Dustin Pedroia drove in Boston’s fourth run of the inning with a sacrifice fly. David Ortiz made the third out on a fly ball to right, but it was an 8-5 game.

With two outs and two on in the top of the fifth, lefty Javier López relieved Snyder and Iwamura doubled in Navarro, pushing Tampa Bay’s lead back to four runs.

Down 9-5, Boston pulled within a run in its half of the fifth. Singles by Lowell and Drew and a walk to Kevin Youkilis loaded the bases with nobody out. Crisp’s sacrifice fly produced one run. Lugo’s double to left produced another. Another sacrifice fly–by Cash–produced a third. Ellsbury swung at the first pitch thrown by incoming reliever Jon Switzer and grounded out.

Brian Corey replaced López after Peña’s leadoff single in the sixth and got the Red Sox back in the dugout unscathed with a strikeout and a double play. It was time for another big inning.

Pedroia, headed for AL Rookie of the Year honors, led off the bottom of the sixth with a solo home run into the Green Monster seats in left field, his seventh of the season, and the score was tied, 9-9.

The Red Sox kept coming. A single to left by Ortiz prompted Maddon to bring in Grant Balfour from the bullpen. There followed a single to left by Lowell, a walk to Drew that loaded the bases, a bases-clearing triple to center by Youkilis “off the base of the wall by the 379-foot sign,” per the Boston Globe,9 and a double to right by Crisp. Juan Salas replaced Balfour, got two outs, then saw Boston score its sixth run of the sixth on a single by Ellsbury. When Pedroia popped up to first to end the inning, Boston led 14-9.

Manny Delcarmen became the fifth pitcher of the evening for Boston. He allowed a couple of singles in the seventh but worked a scoreless frame.

Salas returned to the mound for Maddon and was touched for two more runs. Ortiz hit a leadoff home run into the Red Sox bullpen, giving him 29 for the season. A flyout denied Lowell a five-hit night,10 but Drew then connected on his eighth homer, a solo shot to center. The Red Sox had surged for 15 runs in four innings for a 16-9 lead.

Mike Timlin worked a scoreless top of the eighth for Boston; B. J. Upton’s ground-rule double to right was the only hit.

Eric Gagné threw the top of the ninth for the Red Sox, their seventh pitcher. Harris led off with a single to center. After one out, with Navarro at the plate, Harris took second on defensive indifference. Recording his fourth hit in four at-bats, Navarro singled and Harris scored. That made it 16-10, Boston still holding a comfortable six-run lead. After a flyball out, Iwamura came up looking for his own fourth hit of the game but struck out swinging.

The 16 runs were Boston’s most since a 17-1 pasting of the Yankees in July 2005 and the most the Red Sox scored all season in 2007. The 20-hit attack was second-best for the ’07 Red Sox after their 21-hit performance in a 15-4 win over Tampa Bay on June 5.

Every Red Sox starter had at least one hit; Cash was the only one with fewer than two, but his three RBIs tied him with Youkilis for best on the team.

Corey got the win, having faced only two batters but being the beneficiary of being the pitcher of record when the Red Sox took the lead. He had pitched well, though, striking out the first batter he faced and getting the second to hit into a double play. He thus became 1-0 on the season, while Switzer bore the loss, becoming 0-1.

Wakefield had not succeeded in pinning a fifth loss on Tampa Bay. “But that was the extent of the good news for the Rays,” wrote the Tampa Tribune’s Carter Gaddis. He quoted Maddon: “We’ve been playing at a very high level. There is a lot of positive energy going on. And to get that type of lead here against Wakefield, we cannot give that up. That’s unfortunate. We just did not pitch well tonight.”11

Francona said: “You don’t like to play seven runs down, but we didn’t roll over or give at-bats away. We kept the pressure on their pen.”12

The Yankees also won, beating the Blue Jays, 9-2, but the Red Sox retained their five-game lead.

The Orioles lost to the Angels; had Tampa Bay won, they would have escaped last place–.4275862 to Baltimore’s .4265734. At season’s end, they came in three games behind the Orioles.

The Red Sox finished two games ahead of New York, then swept the Los Angeles Angels in the AL Division Series, took the AL Championship Series in seven games from the Cleveland Indians, and swept the Colorado Rockies in the World Series.

Acknowledgments

This article was fact-checked by Troy Olszewski and copy-edited by Mike Eisenbath.

Photo credit: Mike Lowell, Trading Card Database.

Sources

In addition to the sources cited in the Notes, the author consulted Baseball-Reference and Retrosheet. Thanks to Wes Singletary for providing access to Tampa Bay newspaper coverage.

https://www.baseball-reference.com/boxes/BOS/BOS200709110.shtml

https://www.retrosheet.org/boxesetc/2007/B09110BOS2007.htm

Notes

1 Mike Fine, “Rally Boys,” Quincy (Massachusetts) Patriot Ledger, September 12, 2007: 19, 23.

2 The Red Sox had been in first place since April 18.

3 It was Ellsbury’s 24th birthday, and he continued what was an 11-game hitting streak since the Red Sox recalled him from Triple A on September 1. “We could have quit,” Ellsbury said afterward. “To see guys with such heart is fun.” Fine, “Rally Boys.” Ellsbury’s hitting streak eventually reached 13 games.

4 Wakefield had beaten the Rays four times in 2007 but was deprived of the opportunity to become the first to top them five times in one season. Indeed, he looked likely to suffer defeat. It was Wakefield’s shortest outing for nearly four years–since September 28, 2003. “I left the bullpen feeling good,” he said, “I had good stuff. Got through the first inning, then the wheels kind of fell off for me in the second. I have no excuses. I just didn’t make good enough pitches when I needed to.” Amalie Benjamin, “Knuckleballer needs to straighten it out,” Boston Globe, September 12, 2007: D6.

5 At season’s end, Peña had 46 homers, placing second in the league behind Álex Rodríguez, who had 54. Peña’s 121 RBIs at season’s end set a Devil Rays franchise record that stood as of 2026. He finished fourth in the AL in RBIs.

6 It was the second game of 2007 in which the Devil Rays lost an 8-1 lead. On June 5, in Toronto, they led 8-1 after 3½ innings but ended up losing to a six-run onslaught by the Blue Jays in the bottom of the ninth. Not one of the four Devil Pays pitchers who had contributed to that loss appeared in the September 11 game. 

7 Cash was catching Wakefield, filling in for the injured Doug Mirabelli. Cash came into the game batting .100, in his ninth game since being called up in mid-August.

8 Eduardo A. Encina, “Like old times, regrettably,” Tampa Tribune, September 12, 2007: 1C, 3C.

9 Amalie Benjamin, “It’s raining runs at Fenway bash,” Boston Globe, September 12, 2007:  D1, D6.

10 For Lowell, it was his sixth four-hit game of the 2007 season, leading the majors.  Benjamin, “Knuckleballer needs to straighten it out.”

11 Carter Gaddis, “Devil Rays Unable to Seal Deal,” Tampa Tribune, September 12, 2007: 1C, 3C.

12 Garry Brown, “Runs galore,” Springfield (Massachusetts) Republican, September 12, 2007: C1, C3.