With the pain came the pleasure.
A congratulatory high-five from Payton Tolle will do that.
"It hurt," said Red Sox interim manager Chad Tracy regarding the greeting given to his starting pitcher after Tolle punctuated seven innings of one-hit ball.
The always-enthusiastic Tolle was fun.
So were the Red Sox.
There was Tolle's pitching. There were actual runs. There was even a bench-clearing fracas (later classified by Tracy as a "picnic"). It took some doing, but by the end of the Red Sox's 6-1 win over the Yankees, there was at least a semblance of the usual spiciness that comes with these sorts of Boston vs. New York meet-ups.
It still wasn't perfect. It wasn't a sellout. The standings, which still have the Red Sox five games out of a wild card and 12 games under .500, are tough to ignore. And even the kerfuffle involving Willson Contreras after he took issue with Will Warren pitching too far inside amounted to jokes and hugs in and around first base after some initial yelling toward the mound from the Sox's first baseman.
"I think it’s good for baseball. It makes baseball fun,” Conteras said. “Everything you guys saw tonight is part of the game. I think so many people are trying to take that away from the game. I think we need a little bit more of that saltiness in the rivalry. I’ll say that."
The reason?
“Why? It makes baseball fun," he added. "I think it engages more people."
These days, Red Sox fans will take any fun they can get. This was, after all, just the third time this club has actually won back-to-back games at Fenway.
And as much as Contreras did his part in supplying the jumper cables for the festivities, both with the midgame jawing and a third-inning home run (he has a 1.013 OPS in his last 36 games), it was really an under-the-weather Tolle who served as chief party-starter.
Tolle retired the first 16 batters he faced, becoming the first Red Sox pitcher to post a perfect-game bid of at least 5 1/3 innings since Kutter Crawford did it on Aug. 13, 2024. He also became the first Sox pitcher to manage the feat within 15 career starts since Dave Morehead on July 2, 1963.
And, this time, he did it all while being powered by Fenway vibes and medicine.
"This morning, and a little bit yesterday, just had like a body ache, fever, head felt fine, not coughing or anything," said Tolle. "But I laid in bed for a good, long time this morning, and then got here, got some DayQuil in me, and I think that’s why I hit the wall so hard in the seventh, just not sleeping great, and being a lazy bum in bed all day."
"Awesome," Tracy said of his pitcher. "I don't really know much else to say about it other than awesome."
The Red Sox could use all the awesome and fun they can get.
