Chien-Ming Wang brought a no hitter into the seventh inning, Robinson Cano homered twice off of Curt Schilling and the Boston Red Sox fell to the New York Yankees 5-0. With the loss the division lead has dropped to 5 games over the Yankees.
Not only was there some great play on the field with Wang’s no hit bid, but there was also an overturned call and some head hunting drama as well.
Kevin Youkilis was called safe originally on a ground ball hit to Alex Rodriguez who failed to tag him out but the safe call was overturned by the umpiring crew leading to the ejection of Red Sox Manager Terry Francona. It was ruled that Youkilis went outside of the baseline as he touched the grass trying to avoid Rodriguez tag.
In the ninth inning Yankees relief pitcher Joba Chamberlain was ejected for tossing two pitches at Youkilis’ head.
Mixed with drama the whole way Boston did not scrap a hit off of Wang until Mike Lowell singled to right field breaking up the no-no. Lowell kept his hitting streak alive bringing it to 12 games by breaking up the Wang no-hitter.
Wang earned his 16th win of the season pitching for 7 innings, allowing one hit, no runs, four walks, and five strikeouts.
Meanwhile Curt Schilling got rocked by Cano twice hitting his first homerun to left center on a first pitch fastball and later homered again off of Schilling to left field in the fifth inning making it 2-0 Yankees and bringing his homerun total to 16 on the season.
Schilling, 8-6 on the season, pitched for 7 innings, on six hits, two runs, one walk and four strikeouts pitching well but not well enough as Wang cruised through the Boston lineup dominating them for six straight innings as back-to-back Yankees’ starters brought no-hitters against the Red Sox past the fifth inning of each game in two days.
After some stellar pitching the game broke open as Hideki Okajima for the first time this season allowed more than one run to score in any relief appearance he has had for the Red Sox.
Okajima only pitched for 2/3 of an inning yielding three runs to the Yankees on an RBI double by Bobby Abreu and a throwing error by Red Sox captain Jason Varitek scored Rodriguez and Abreu. Both runners took off attempting a double steal on Varitek and with the error both runs were charged to Okajima as earned runs.
