Giants top Red Sox in extra innings
BOSTON — Hall of Fame slugger Carl Yastrzemski stood on the grass at Fenway Park on Tuesday afternoon and explained that the San Francisco Giants were causing him to lose sleep.
Carl insisted he watches all of his grandson Mike’s games with the San Francisco Giants until the final out and still wakes up at 6:30 every morning.
The grandfather was thrilled to see Mike on Tuesday when the Giants arrived in the Eastern Time Zone, but Carl, 80, didn’t go to bed any earlier. The Giants and Red Sox locked horns in a 15-inning, five-hour, 55minute marathon that lasted past midnight and into Wednesday morning and finally ended when the relative of another Hall of Famer retired the Red Sox.
Giants reliever Dereck Rodriguez, the son of catcher Ivan Rodriguez, pitched two scoreless innings in relief and Alex Dickerson hit a pinch-hit sacrifice fly to score Donovan Solano in the top of the 15th to lead San Francisco to a 7-6 win.
The Giants set a franchise record by using 13 pitchers and tied a franchise record set in September, 1989 by mixing in 25 total players in Tuesday’s game. Manager Bruce Bochy got a workout strolling back and forth from the dugout to the mound, but earned his 1,999th career win and will now have 11 games to secure his 2,000th victory.
When the stands were mostly full at Fenway Park on Tuesday, Mike Yastrzemski and his fourth-inning solo home run were the talk of the town. When the stands were mostly empty, a ridiculous run of pitching changes and missed opportunities were all fans of either were left to think about.
The Giants held a four-run
lead after five innings and a one-run lead headed to the bottom of the 13th inning, but bullpen miscues cost the Giants chances to end the game without exhausting nearly their entire pitching staff.
Kyle Barraclough, the Giants’ 12th pitcher of the game, walked in the game-tying run with the bases loaded in the 13th inning, but escaped the frame by inducing a groundout that extended the evening.
The bullpen woes spoiled one of the unforgettable moments of the season, a fourth-inning home run from Yastrzemski in his Fenway Park debut.
With one sweet swing in the top of the fourth inning, Yastrzemski redirected a 96mile per hour fastball from Red Sox starter Nathan Eovaldi and launched a solo home run into the center field seats.
The home run bridged generations of baseball fans, including some at Fenway Park who remembered watching Carl during his 23-year, Hall of Fame career. It also made Mike the eighth rookie in Giants franchise history to hit at least 20 home runs in a single season and the first rookie to do so since Dave Kingman blasted 29 in 1972.
The Giants led 5-1 after four innings, but the Red Sox rallied to tie the game in the bottom of the sixth against reliever Andrew Suarez. After rookie Logan Webb allowed a leadoff double to open the inning, Suarez gave up three hits including a triple to pinchhitter Sam Travis that trickled off the glove of a diving Austin Slater in right field.
The tying run scored on a passed ball by catcher Stephen Vogt, who started in place of Buster Posey who was sidelined on Tuesday with back and hip tightness.
In the bottom of the 15th inning, Vogt’s glove broke and needed to be replaced. That’s a metaphor for how Tuesday’s game unfolded, but at this hour, it’s up to the reader to figure it out.