Put me in, Coach.

I may have some mystical powers here that I didn't fully understand until last night. A couple of days ago, I said some negative things about Kyle Snyder and then he goes right out and has a brilliant outing. Yesterday afternoon, I did the same thing before Julian Tavarez' start against the White Sox. He goes out and pitches six-plus innings of brilliance against one of the AL's best lineups. Who is pitching tonight? Kason Gabbard? What a bum! He's a...why, he's positively a belly itcher! As you know, we don't want that. We want, instead, a pitcher.

Last night's win was a great one. It wasn't enough, at least for me, to believe that the Sox can climb back into the hunt. Sure, we got Varitek and Nixon and Wily Mo and Alex Gonzalez and Manny back. Sure, we're getting Papi back as early as tonight. Sure, the pitching looked pretty good- Manny Delcarmen and Mike Timlin both did a fine job.

The best part of last night's game, for me, was Carlos Pena. Duh. That's not a hard choice, given that he hit the walk-off home run, his first as a member of the Red Sox and also hit basically as a defensive replacement for Kevin Youkilis. I'm a lot happier, though, than I would have been had that homer been hit by John Olerud or Doug Mientkiewicz or J.T. Snow or our other recent defensive replacement 1B. The reason, of course, is twofold. First, Carlos Pena is in need of redemption. He used to be this huge prospect- with Oakland and with Detroit, he was supposed to be this defensive wizard/slugger that never quite panned out. This year, he scuffled and found himself in the Yankees' minor league system. This is a big chance for him to redeem himself.

The second reason is of course that he's a local kid. As someone without a lick of athletic ability, even I know that hitting an extra-innings, walk-off home run for your hometown team is hard-wired into every boy's brain. It may be into girls' brains also, but I'll only speak for my sex at this point. Pena hitting that home run took me instantly back to the side yard of my old house on South 38th Street in Milwaukee, mumbling some play-by-play words to set up the situation and then tossing up the whiffle ball to myself and smacking it with the skinny yellow plastic bat. I can only imagine what the noise of the crowd's reaction as he trotted around the bases must have felt like- heck, I was only doing this for an imaginary Brewers crowd. Carlos Pena got to do it before a real Fenway crowd. No wonder he told Tina Cervasio, "it's a really good day for the Pena family."