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Stephen Drew had an eventful night against the Twins on Monday at Fenway. Revenge can be taken two ways here. The Twins are the club that concussed him back on March 7, causing him to miss much of spring training and the start of the regular season. As for the other part, well, you'll see soon enough.
It all started so innocently, with an RBI single that cut Minnesota's lead down to 4-2 in the bottom of the fifth inning:
A bit of a bloop that scored Daniel Nava and put Drew on base for a controversial call that is essentially why the Red Sox found themselves in extra innings on Monday. Jacoby Ellsbury hits a double, and Drew attempts to score -- and does -- except the umpire didn't seem to notice:
It's hard to tell from the backstop camera angle, but that's not the umpire's view -- when you see things in the replay within the above gif, you can see Drew evaded the tag by sliding underneath it. Well underneath it, in fact. By the time the glove with the ball was low enough to tag Drew, he had already passed through to home plate. Check those shadows out.
Alas, he was called out, and Boston would finish the inning with two runs instead of three. Drew would make up for that in the bottom of the seventh, though, tying things up with this shot to right field that the umpires couldn't mess up:
Of course, since the earlier run he scored didn't count, this simply tied the game and allowed Boston another chance to win it later. Granted, you never know how things would have gone down had Drew's earlier run counted, but given Boston's bullpen is overworked of late and the schedule is doing them no favors, the botched call is still grumble-worthy regardless as there is even a chance it's responsible for the two innings of extra baseball on Monday.
Drew kept it to just two innings thanks to his walk-off wall ball:
It wouldn't be surprising to know that the combination of missed time and concussion caused Drew to have something of a slow start to his Red Sox career. His bat has woken up as of late, though, as, since April 22, he's hitting .317/.396/.585 with six walks, five extra-base hits, and 11 RBI in 12 games. This has helped jump his season line to .225/.317/.394 -- it's not quite there, but it's enough to push his bat over what Boston got out of short in 2012. That's without getting into the fact his defense looks much more like the Drew of old, now that he's even further removed from ankle surgery.