It's best not to mess with Embree

By Gordon Edes, Globe Staff, 8/15/2003

OAKLAND, Calif.-- He makes his living, Alan Embree said, trying to clean up messes.

"I like it messy," he said, "but not that messy."

He was knee-deep in it yesterday afternoon, a mess of his own making. This was an oil spill, a dropped tray of dirty dishes, an overflowing toilet. The kind of mess where you wish you were somewhere else.

The Oakland A's had runners on second and third in the eighth inning with a 2-1 lead. There were no outs, and they were on the verge of sending the Sox staggering out of town to Seattle.

Embree rolled up his sleeves, took a deep breath, and grabbed a mop and bucket.

He broke Frank Menechino's bat on a little tapper to third. One out. He struck out Eric Byrnes. Two outs. He struck out Billy McMillon. Then he swung his fist triumphantly, punching the air with almost as much force as Manny Ramirez would drive a Keith Foulke fastball into the left-field stands to tie the score in Boston's next at-bat, setting the stage for Bill Mueller's go-ahead sacrifice fly in the 10th.

"The hero of the game," said Tim Wakefield, who gave the Sox a gallant six innings in their 4-2 win, "should be Embree. Second and third, nobody out, they don't score. That was a huge momentum swing."

The A's vaunted starting rotation performed pretty much as advertised this week. But the reason the Sox headed for Seattle with a one-game lead in the wild-card race -- same as when they arrived here -- after splitting four games with their closest pursuers is that the much-maligned Sox bullpen is forging a new identity, one that bears little resemblance to its sorry predecessor.

"We not only have a good bullpen, we have a great bullpen," said Scott Williamson, one of general manager Theo Epstein's imports who held the A's scoreless while the Sox mounted their comeback.

This bullpen will undoubtedly have failures between now and October -- Byung Hyun Kim threw a scare into the Nation yesterday until Gabe Kapler pulled Eric Chavez's bid for ninth-inning homer back into the ballpark -- but please take note.

After Casey Fossum gave up a two-run homer to Terrence Long in the sixth inning of Monday night's 4-0 loss to Tim Hudson, the Sox bullpen pitched a dozen innings, allowed just six hits, a walk, and one earned run. That's an ERA of 0.75. They also struck out 14, none bigger than the ones Embree recorded yesterday.

"We're at the point of the season now where you have to win the games you're in," Embree said. "You want to get a little separation between you and the teams you're battling with.

"This was a big series. The way we looked at it, in the first three games we faced extremely tough pitching, the best rotation in baseball. To walk out of here with a split after losing the first two is huge. It shows the kind of resiliency this team has."

These Sox like playing with a chip on their shoulders.

"Everybody after two games had us counted out of the wild card," said Embree, who fortunately was not asked to produce evidence of these supposed write-offs.

Granted, had they lost three out of four in Oakland, the inclination in New England would have been to go heavy on the melancholia.

And there were only grim faces when Embree opened the eighth by giving up a broken-bat single to Ramon Hernandez, followed by another base hit by Scott Hatteberg, who took second when Ramirez threw wide of third in a futile attempt to catch the advancing Hernandez.

"You give up two hits to the first two hitters, you bear down and see what happens," Embree said. "When it's that messy, it makes you concentrate a little harder, so you don't make a mistake over the plate. Then when you escape that and get out of it, it's `Wow, that's pretty special.' "

It would have all meant nothing, of course, had Ramirez not battled Foulke through a 10-pitch at-bat, fouling off four two-strike pitches, before launching his second home run in two games. Two nights earlier, Foulke had pulled a similar second-and-third, no-out escape act in the eighth. He couldn't get past Ramirez yesterday, though.

"That was an extraordinary feeling," Embree said. "They bring in their ace bullpen closer and to get to him like that, it was an awesome, great feeling. You could see the weight lifted off everybody's shoulders."

An inning later, after the Sox scored twice against Jim Mecir on Kapler's infield hit, Damian Jackson's sacrifice, Johnny Damon's single, Mueller's fly ball, and a three-base throwing error by third baseman Chavez, the Sox were stepping even more lightly.

"People all around realize when the Red Sox are in town," manager Grady Little said, we aren't going away."