Ouch. This one really hurt. It seems that for the Sox to have a real chance to come back after going down 1-2 yesterday, they would have had to win tonight and Thursday before heading back to Tampa for the series-clincher. And as you all know, they didn't win tonight. In fact, they got smoked. Like, 13-4 smoked.

Yeah, I know. They came back from being down 1-3 last year and in '04, but that seems increasingly unlikely this year. In my humble opinion, it's like having sex several times without a condom - sure your girlfriend/wife/mistress might not get pregnant by some stroke of luck the first or second time you decide to go jimmy-less, but do you really wanna tempt fate and go bare-back that third, fourth, or 244th time? Highly doubtful, but that's exactly where the Sox find themselves (and no, I'm not saying they put themselves in this position by choice, as my somewhat-inappropriate analogy would seem to imply).

Tonight, Wake and Delcarmen combined to give up 10 earned runs, with Carl Crawford and Willy "Please stop calling me Erick" Aybar racking up nine hits and seven runs batted in apiece. Like I said before, ouch. The Sox' only hope now is for Dice-K to spin another gem and limit the damage enough over 7 innings or longer so that 4 or 5 runs will be enough to win the game. He'll take on James Shields, whom he beat in their Game 1 matchup.