His fortunes changed in hurry
BALTIMORE -- The numbers were verging on the unsightly. Over his last 25 at-bats, including the first three against the Orioles last night, center fielder Wily Mo Peña had struck out 14 times. Breaking balls were bedeviling him. All he needed, really, was a nice, fat fastball.
Meet Chris Ray, the Orioles closer who predominantly relies on fastballs.
With the bases loaded in the eighth inning of a game the Orioles led, 2-1, after Ray walked Jason Varitek intentionally to face Peña, the reliever left a 2-and-1 fastball over the plate, right where Peña wanted it. Except he thought it was a slider. Even so, Peña unloaded.
He shot the ball high into the air, mashing it 430 feet, where it landed among the standing throng camped in the left- center-field stands for the third grand slam of his career, and giving the Sox a 5-2 lead that would prevail for Josh Beckett's fifth win of the season.
"I just tried to go inside and I didn't go inside far enough," Ray said. "He was probably sitting fastball. You don't want to get beat with your second-best pitch."
Of course, you probably also don't want to get beat on a fastball to a dead fastball hitter.
"It feel good," said Peña, who was 2 for 4 last night. "I've been struggling. Everybody knows that. So I just had to keep my head up, just go down there and play. I just had to say thank you to [manager Terry] Francona for putting me in there every day, for the opportunity.
"It was tough. The last couple of weeks I don't be swinging good. My bat, I don't know where it is. Tonight I found a little bit of my bat."
The weight of the world seemed to drop off Peña as he circled the bases with Manny Ramírez (walk), Mike Lowell (ground-rule double), and Varitek ahead of him. He clapped much of the way, happiness and excitement vying for emotional superiority.
He had been spending much of his time analyzing his practice swings, or in front of the video screen, trying to figure out what he was doing wrong. Exactly why all those swings were resulting in all those misses.
It started out well for him last night -- well, sort of. Peña smashed a liner off starter Adam Loewen in the third inning, but the ball found the glove of Aubrey Huff, who was playing on the bag with Varitek at first after an error. The liner took Huff toward first, with a hard-luck double play the result. Peña followed that with a swinging strikeout in the fifth. But he smacked a double to left-center in the seventh, a prelude to the fireworks in the eighth.
"He seemed frustrated," Francona said. "But the good thing is he's such a strong kid, that if you get one pitch -- and I thought he took better swings tonight right from the get-go -- he's so strong that if he gets the head of the bat to it, that's what he can do."
Though Peña wasn't quite right about the statistics -- he estimated he had 19 strikeouts in his last 20-something at-bats -- it must have felt about that bad. And, because of that, he was hardly surprised when Varitek was walked ahead of him. It made sense.
"I was swinging, swinging, all those bad pitches," Peña said. "I just have to be patient, more patient. They're just trying to get you with a slider away, away, away. Just be patient and wait for your pitch."
The last thing he wanted to do with the bases loaded and only one out was swing at something low, grind it into the ground, and hit into another double play. He needed something he could lift, something that would at least deliver Ramírez from third with the tying run.
And, as soon as Peña hit it, he knew. It just felt good. Not like most of the balls coming off his bat lately. Much, much better.
"I was doing nothing," Peña said. "I just wanted to get in there and do something for the team and for me."
