I turned on the game briefly around 8:30 when the score was 12-2. Just before going to bed, I decided to check the final. The game was still in the seventh. I listened long enough to hear the Sox tie it at 15.

All sorts of records were tied or broken, including this 90-year-old oddity:

Rangers starter Scott Feldman became the first major league pitcher to allow 12 runs and not take the loss since Gene Packard of the St. Louis Cardinals got the win in a 16-12 victory over the Philadelphia Phillies on Aug. 3, 1918.

I feel for Charlie Zink. The boy wonder of Boston’s “Project Knuckleball” has been pitching great for Pawtucket – a 2.89 ERA and 13 wins in 25 starts. Though he lost his stuff in the fifth inning, above, the six (of eight) runs he gave up were greatly assisted by the ineptitude of Javier Lopez and David Aardsma.

This is what the New Yorker wrote about Zink back in 2004 when his major-league-ready knuckleball was still a gleam in Theo Epstein’s eye:

Zink was twelve when he first saw [Tim] Wakefield—then a rookie with the Pittsburgh Pirates—pitching in the National League playoffs, in 1992. Now, although he is capable of throwing standard-issue jock heat, Zink was trying to mimic the Wakefield delivery as well as he could, right down to the apparent lack of exertion and the junior-varsity speed. From a side view, there was nothing at all remarkable about Zink’s pitches, except that occasionally the catcher didn’t catch them… Zink, who went undrafted as a fastball pitcher, is, at the Red Sox’ urging, reinventing himself as a rare specialist: a knuckleballer. With Wakefield, one of only two knuckleball pitchers currently on a major-league roster, and now Zink, the Red Sox are cornering the market on low-grade weaponry. Project Knuckleball is only just beginning its second year, but, according to Baseball Prospectus, a leading baseball-analysis Web site, Zink is already the Red Sox’ top-rated prospect.