Sox Sweep Twins

Napoli was the hero today with his seventh home run of the year

The Red Sox capped their three-game sweep of the Minnesota Twins in dramatic fashion today, overcoming a 1-0 deficit in the bottom of the tenth with back-to-back home runs.

Kyle Gibson and John Lackey squared off in what has been one of the best pitching duels of the season thus far. Gibson delivered seven innings of one-hit ball for the Twins, yielding no walks and striking out eight. Lackey was even sharper, keeping Minnesota off the board for nine innings and fanning nine.

The Twins finally broke through in the top of the tenth when Chris Parmelee launched his fourth home run of the season off Koji Uehara. The go-ahead tater capped a three-hit day for the Minnesota right fielder, who broke the scoreless tie with a two-strike, two-out line drive into the bullpen that just barely escaped the grasp of Brock Holt.

The heart of Boston's order wasted little time mounting a comeback in the bottom half versus Casey Freri. Dustin Pedroia flew out to lead off the frame, but that would be the last out Fieri would get. Bona fide Twin-killer David Ortiz followed with a game-tying solo shot wrapped around Pesky's Pole to put a charge into the Fenway crowd, and Mike Napoli sent them home happy with a wall-scraping smash to dead center. When it landed in the batter's eye, the Sox had themselves a rare come-from-behind extra inning victory, not to mention an even more unlikely sweep in which they scored only five runs to Minnesota's two.

It was fitting that, on an afternoon when the bats fell silent on both sides, all three runs scored on long balls that weren't particularly long. Put together, all three probably couldn't have cleared Fenway's green fences by more than ten feet. They were the definition of just-enough, in a game where two runs turned out to be just enough.