Who you gonna call? Tim Wakefield!

When you’re feeling bad, and you can’t beat O’s. Who you gonna call? Tim Wakefield!

Allright, just admit it. If the Red Sox had lost to Tampa last night, you would have been calling up Dan Aykroyd to figure out what kind of curse the ghost of George Steinbrenner put on the Boston bullpen, anyway.

Wakefield’s run at no-hit history was a nice reprieve from all the losing and doomsday prophecies, wasn’t it? Sure, Carl Crawford or the like was bound to get a hit at some point. In this case, the seventh. But eight innings of shutout ball - which makes the need for a bridge null and void - is a heck of a lot more than you can count on from a 42 year-old knuckleballer.

Then again, what can’t you count on this guy for? He wins with moxie and not speed. He keeps going out there start after start, even though he’s got a physique that proves he trains on PB&J, not protein shakes. And he has the facial hair and style sense of what, a 1980s David Hasselhoff? And to be fair, that might be slight defamation of the ‘Hoff.

Natural, the Jonathan Papelbon Fire Department was unhittable. Naturally, the Devil Rays came through with ineptitude when the Sox needed it most. And naturally, just to keep the heat on, the Yankees managed to scrape out a dramatic victory down the coast.

But that didn’t matter in the standings, thanks to a renaissance night from Timmy Wake, the man who sounds positively Irish, and looks like he’s been doing a lot of one-pint lifts to get ready for the game. It’s a comforting thought, isn’t it?

– Cameron Smith