Red Sox hold on with what they've got, win

MINNEAPOLIS -- Curt Schilling looked calm, sitting in the dugout after having been removed after his command unraveled in the seventh inning. The game was left in the hands of Hideki Okajima and, eventually, Jonathan Papelbon, and the Red Sox ace appeared resigned, seemingly concealing his disgust at how a masterful outing had nearly become a tie game.

He wasn't. He was, to put it into PG terms, ticked off.

"Just a bad . . . game management those last three, four hitters on my part," Schilling said. "It's just inexcusable at that point in the game, with that score, that situation.

"I let it slip. That's disappointing."

Not as disappointing as it would have been had Okajima not ridden to the rescue again, recovering from allowing his first inherited runner in the United States to score (after stranding his first five) and bridging the gap to Papelbon and a 4-3 win that gave the Red Sox the rubber game of the three-game set in the Metrodome in front of 27,807.

"The psychological effect of losing a game that you have a three- or four-run lead after the sixth inning is much bigger than one game in the standings for some teams. To not have to endure that is huge," said Schilling.

But he was left with a bitter taste only because of how sweet his pitching had been over the first 6 2/3 innings. ("He was painting from the get-go," Alex Cora said.) To that point, Schilling hadn't allowed a batter past second base, with runners reaching second just three times over the first six.

Then, with two on and two out in the seventh, Luis Castillo singled to left to load the bases, and Jason Tyner followed with a ringing single to right that scored two on Schilling's 99th and final pitch of the afternoon.

"For six and two-thirds, I felt really good," said Schilling, who tied a season high with seven strikeouts. "Good command. Lot of first-pitch strikes. Executing. I'm glad we won it. Let's put it that way."

With Schilling sailing and the Twins flailing throughout the first six innings, it hardly appeared a couple of missed chances for the Sox would be quite as glaring in the final tally. But the caught stealing of Coco Crisp to lead off the game, the 8-6-2 in the first on J.D. Drew's double that resulted in David Ortiz being thrown out at the plate, and -- certainly the most egregious -- the out at second base made by Cora in the sixth just a fraction of a second before Dustin Pedroia crossed the plate with what would have been the Sox' fifth run of the game, loomed larger at the one-run end.

A run manager Terry Francona said after the game he wished he had in the ninth.

As Manny Ramírez and Julio Lugo sat this one out, Pedroia and Cora combined for five hits and three runs, even without that last run from the second baseman, whose average surged to .239 with a 5-for-6 weekend in Minneapolis.

"It was bad baserunning," Cora said of the play on which he headed to second on what would have been a sacrifice fly to left by Ortiz. "That was a mistake. I thought about tagging and I made up my mind too quick. In that situation, with one out, you just go as close to second [as you can]. If he drops it, you're going to be able to score. If he catches it, you go back and our fourth hitter's up. It was a mistake [on] my part."

It's one of few mistakes the steady Cora has made, especially as his playing time has soared with his batting average, which is now up to .405.

Having started the scoring when he came home on Drew's double after getting on base when Sidney Ponson plunked him in the backside, Cora also scored the third run of the day in a two-run fifth. He singled to lead off that inning, then scored after a walk to Ortiz, a fielder's choice by Kevin Youkilis, and a throwing error on Ponson on a ball hit by Drew. Youkilis later scored on a single by Jason Varitek.

Those runs seemed like they would be enough. That was until Schilling, as he said, "let it get away," nearly undoing a start that gave Red Sox fans at least a slight boost amid the news Roger Clemens had brought his white horse with him to Yankee Stadium.

"Besides the seventh inning, the first six innings, to me that was as comfortable as [Schilling's] looked in his delivery all year," Francona said. "I'm not necessarily talking about velocity, but just comfort in his delivery and throwing his fastball without effort and locating and then throwing his split and offspeed, again, without the effort. I think that was the best he's been all year."

Amalie Benjamin can be reached at abenjamin@globe.com.