Red Sox 9, Phillies 4
FORT MYERS, Fla. --A traffic tieup kept the Philadelphia Phillies on the road for more than five hours Friday, then they had to face Tim Wakefield's knuckleball.
Not even Ryan Howard's continued hot hitting could overcome that.
Wakefield pitched four shutout innings, David Murphy hit two homers and the Boston Red Sox won 9-4 in a game whose start was delayed by one hour, 32 minutes after a truck spilled its contents on the highway just after the Phillies left their spring training base for the 125-mile trip.
"I don't even know if we had gotten out of Clearwater before it was bumper-to-bumper," Phillies backup catcher Chris Coste said. "Right when we got on (Interstate) 275 it was instantly like that and, before you know it, it was two hours later and I don't think we got two miles."
Cory Lidle, the scheduled starting pitcher, couldn't get loose and didn't enter the game until the third inning. He allowed four runs on five hits in three innings, including Trot Nixon's solo homer in the third and Murphy's three-run homer in the fifth that made it 5-1.
Murphy, who played at Double-A Portland last year, added a two-run homer in the seventh. But he had struck out in all four of his at-bats in his first exhibition game and entered Friday's game with one hit in 11 at-bats.
"I just forced myself to relax today. I've been very tense up at the plate," Murphy said. "A lot of guys will tell you when you're going bad to just slow the game down a little bit."
The Phillies have a more highly touted young player, first baseman Howard, and he went 2-for-3 with a double and a solo homer that made it 6-2 in the sixth. So far this spring he has 11 hits with four homers, eight RBIs and six runs.
"He's going to be fine," Phillies manager Charlie Manuel said. "I'm sure the talk (of his potential) always comes into play, but if he can handle it he can handle anything they throw up there if he just keeps playing baseball the way that he's been playing."
Wakefield allowed two hits, doubles by Howard and Danny Sandoval, and struck out two. He also threw two wild pitches past Josh Bard, who is competing with Ken Huckaby to be Wakefield's personal catcher after Doug Mirabelli was traded to San Diego.
"I'm comfortable with (Bard) back there. I threw some balls in the dirt today that he did a good job of blocking or trying to block," Wakefield said. "I threw a couple fastballs and the one ball that got hit to the wall was a curveball. I wanted to try to mix one in. I just hung it."
Said Bard: "Every pitch is going to be a learning experience."
The Red Sox took a 2-0 lead on Coco Crisp's RBI single in the second and Nixon's first exhibition homer in the third. Shane Victorino's RBI single cut that to 2-1 in the fifth before Murphy's three-run homer in the bottom of the inning and Nixon's run-scoring double in the sixth made it 6-1.
The Phillies' other runs scored on Howard's homer, Abraham Nunez's sacrifice fly and Michael Bourn's single. The Red Sox scored their last three runs in the seventh on Murphy's two-run homer and Enrique Wilson's RBI double.
Notes:@Crisp went 2-for-3 with two stolen bases and is 8-for-13 in five games in his first exhibition season with Boston. ... Curt Schilling pitches for Boston on Saturday against Pittsburgh in Bradenton. Josh Beckett will pitch at the minor-league complex in Fort Myers. ... Zack Segovia started in place of Lidle and allowed two hits in one scoreless inning.
