Damon takes the lead

The spark is back.

Johnny Damon ignited the Red Sox last night with his left-field double in the first inning off Woody Williams that put the team on its way to an 11-9 win over the St. Louis Cardinals in Game 1 of the World Series.

"I thought I had three good at-bats, anyway," Damon said. "I've been working a lot with Papa Jack [hitting coach Ron Jackson] on some things with my stance just to make sure I stay on top of them. It's important for me to have good at-bats and get on base and get us going."

Damon knocked in Boston's fifth run in the third inning on a bases-loaded single to right field, and his ground ball in the seventh moved Mark Bellhorn to second base and started a two-run inning.

There were certainly other more important hitting stars for the Sox last night, including David Ortiz (four RBIs) and Bellhorn (game-winning two-run homer), but Damon, who was horrific in the ALCS until his two-homer blast in Game 7 against the Yankees, feels he might finally be on the right track.

"This is the World Series, so you want to make an impact out there," Damon said. "You don't want to let your team down in something like this. I know what my job is and I never want to go back to what happened in the ALCS where I just didn't get the job done until the end. I don't want that to happen in this series."

Damon said he was happy the Sox pulled out the win last night, but he understood they might have stolen one, considering they committed four errors.

"We have to shore up our defense," Damon said. `We have to tighten things up out there. We can't do this again and expect to win because that puts a lot of pressure on our pitching staff and our hitters. But the thing you love about this team is that everybody recognizes we didn't have a good night in the field and we went out and everyone pitched in in a different way."

Damon admits he was more concerned with Manny Ramirez' health when he saw the left fielder catch his leg in the grass on an ugly-looking play on Larry Walker's fly to left that allowed the Cardinals to score the tying run, 9-9, in the eighth inning.

"Fortunately, he just dropped it," Damon said. "From my angle, his foot got stuck in the ground. I thought for sure Manny had hyperextended his leg and that we might lose him for the rest of the World Series the way he went down, but he's OK."

Damon said Curt Schilling has to come up big today, noting the Sox need to be 2-0 heading into St. Louis next week.

Damon thought the Sox' scouting reports on the Cardinal pitchers were beneficial. The team, though, didn't have much information on Danny Haren, who pitched 3 2/3 innings of scoreless relief.

"But it was a good game just to watch some of their guys come out of the bullpen," Damon said. "You can see a lot of scouting reports, but actually facing guys is much more advantageous. Now we've had a good look at Haren and [Cal] Eldred and [Julian] Tavarez, and we'll be that much better against them when we face them again."

Damon was happy for Bellhorn, saying, "Bellhorn's my boy. He's the type of guy you root for. He's had some big hits, hitting home runs in back-to-back-to-back games. That's been huge for us."