Good, Bad & Ugly: Nationals Take Pounding from Red Sox Nation

"It's something that we're used to, but this seemed like a little more than usual." --Boston shortstop Nick Green, June 23, 2009. The Result In their first game in Washington, DC since 1971—when Ted Williams was managing the Senators—the Boston Red Sox took advantage of several fielding errors and mistakes and pounded five relief pitchers for eight runs, defeating the "home team" Washington Nationals 11-3, before a Nationals Park record crowd of 41,517. The box score shows a big, fat "6" in the column for the eighth inning for the Sox, but more important to the outcome was the single run they pushed across in the seventh. Starter John Lannan, on a night where he labored but kept his team in the game, struck out J.D. Drew for the third time to lead off the frame. Then, Julian Tavarez entered and Kevin Youkilis hit a routine ground ball to Ryan Zimmerman, who promptly slung a throw into the first at first that Nick Johnson could not scoop, and Youkilis was safe on the error. That ... (link)