Renteria Is A Hit Again
By Adam Kilgore, Globe Correspondent
August 05, 2005
The signs offered nothing but uncertainty. "Fifty-fifty" was how
Edgar
Renteria assessed his chances of playing yesterday. Doubtful was the
word used
on the injury list to describe the Red Sox shortstop's status.
His teammates knew better.
"There was no question in my mind," captain Jason
Varitek said
afterward, "that Edgar was going to be out on that field today."
And he was. Less than 18 hours after his harrowing
collision with Manny
Ramirez in shallow left field, Renteria played yesterday and played
exquisitely,
going 3 for 4 with two doubles and four RBIs in the Sox' wild 11-9 win
over the
Kansas City Royals at Fenway Park.
Renteria went to bed Wednesday night unsure if he'd play
yesterday. When
he arrived at Fenway, he felt sore, but after receiving treatment he
"felt much
better" and decided he could man shortstop for the 100th time this
season.
"I don't think Edgar felt real good," Sox manager Terry
Francona said. "He
knew his responsibility to go out there. On top of that, he played a
whale of a
game."
The other participant in the collision, no stranger to
uncertainty, sat
out. Blurry vision sidelined Ramirez, Francona said, but the absence
apparently
won't last long. Ramirez experienced no structural damage to his right
eye,
which was bruised and bloodied by Renteria's flailing arms when they
collided.
"His ribs are OK," Francona said of Ramirez before the
game. "He's a
little sore, but he's OK. His eye is real red. I don't think it's a
scratch. It
's just got a little blood."
Still, as a precaution, Ramirez visited Massachusetts
General Hospital
yesterday morning to check his vision one last time before the Sox'
road trip.
"I think as far as the future, he's all right," Francona added after
the game.
While the slugger sat, his mates picked up the slack,
Renteria chief among
them.
"That's a winning team," Renteria said. "Everybody does a
little bit every
day."
Renteria's biggest blow came in the fourth inning, when he
came to the
plate with both the bases and the scoreboard's out lights loaded, and
greeted
Kansas City reliever Leo Nunez with a rope down the left-field line. As
Royals
left fielder Terrence Long booted the ball against the wall abutting
the Green
Monster, Bill Mueller, Alex Cora, and Johnny Damon raced home to tie
the game,
5-5. The hit set the table for Jason Varitek's pivotal blast three
batters
later, a grand slam to right.
Before Varitek's smash, Renteria was the lone Sox player
with a hit. His
first double came in the second, which scored Damon with Boston's first
run.
Renteria capped his day in the eighth with a nifty bunt single, placed
so
perfectly that it came to rest on the dirt next to the third base line
as
pitcher Jeremy Affeldt and third baseman Mark Teahen stood over the
ball,
hopelessly wishing it foul.
Perhaps a little of the left fielder's golden swing
transferred to
Renteria when they struck.
"You have to touch Manny to get a base hit," Renteria
joked.
Renteria tallied one fewer RBI yesterday than he did all of
July, a month
in which he hit just three doubles and no home runs. His last game with
multiple
extra-base hits was June 22, when he hammered a double and a home run
in a 5-4
victory in Cleveland.
While his power cooled, his glove a source of frustration
for much of the
season heated up. He entered yesterday having committed only one error
since the
All-Star break. That run of success came to an end in the seventh
inning when he
made his 19th error, but that miscue occurred only because of his
athleticism.
Renteria fielded a ball deep in the hole off the bat of
Angel Berroa and
acrobatically fired to first base fill-in Roberto Petagine, who cost
Renteria an
E6 when he couldn't snare the eminently scoopable throw out of the
dirt. Berroa
wound up on second base, where he was stranded.
Of course, to fault Renteria for the play would be
nitpicking. In the
midst of a stretch where a different Sox player has risen to turn
adversity into
victory seemingly each game, Renteria didn't miss the chance to become
the
latest.
"We know what kind of player Edgar is," Damon said. "It
showed when he
stayed in the game for a while [Wednesday] night, and it showed today.
He's a
ballplayer. He does what he needs to do to win."
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