Last Panels from the Peanuts Baseball Series

Sunday's World Series game was a little less dramatic then the one the night before:

ST. LOUIS — The man the St. Louis Cardinals respected was, understandably, David Ortiz, who commands respect in his own dugout and throughout baseball. In the fifth inning, he had addressed his own team – passionately and purposefully – in the dugout. When he came up in the sixth, the Cardinals sent their outfielders to the edge of the warning track, lest he hit one in the gap. Then they tossed him four straight balls. Ortiz scarcely looked tempted, and walked to first base.

By extension, then, the man the Cardinals didn’t respect was Jonny Gomes. And at this point why would they? When he came to the plate he was hitless in the World Series. He wasn’t even in the original lineup. He looked lost.

So Cardinals reliever Seth Maness fed Gomes fastballs. Trickery seemed unnecessary – until it was. Until, on that fifth fastball, Gomes unleashed a swing that spun the series back to Boston. Gomes’s three-run homer helped deliver a 4-2 victory for the Red Sox in Game 4, a victory started by ragged-but-ready right-hander Clay Buchholz, who was backed up ably by five relievers, including a particularly important effort from lefty Felix Doubront, an inning from Game 2 starter John Lackey – and a game-ending pickoff from closer Koji Uehara.