Baseball was back in Boston this afternoon for the first time since Monday’s bombings at the Boston Marathon. And the Fenway faithful went home happy.
Capping off an emotional day, Daniel Nava delivered a dramatic three-run homer in the bottom of the eighth inning to lead the Red Sox to a 4-3 victory over the Royals. The Red Sox have now won seven straight and sit at 12-4 on the young season.
Nava’s blast off Kelvin Herrera made a winner out of Clay Buchholz, who gave up two runs over eight innings. He’s now 4-0 with a 0.90 ERA and 29/11 K/BB ratio in 30 innings over his first four starts.
Andrew Bailey made things interesting in the ninth inning by giving up a leadoff homer to Lorenzo Cain and putting the tying run on second base with two outs, but he managed to get Alex Gordon to ground out to end it. He has saves in three straight games since blowing his first chance in the Patriots’ Day game on Monday.
After his pointed comments during the pre-game ceremony, David Ortiz went 2-for-4 with an RBI single in his season debut. Oh, and Neil Diamond also showed up to lead the crowd in “Sweet Caroline” in the middle of the eighth inning. All in all, a pretty great day for Boston.
