Sports
Boston’s season gets more implausible. Plus: What a wacky home run
The Windup Newsletter 
The Red Sox keep rolling, we got a bizarro home run in Miami and Jayson Stark spoke to Dave Dombrowski about the Phillies’ communication style. Plus: Our Baseball Card of the Week!
I’m Levi Weaver — welcome to The Windup!
(Another) Instant Classic: Boston tops Chicago in 13-inning marathon
Thirteen innings, 23 runs, 29 hits, three errors and 17 pitchers. That’s what the dueling Sox teams did last night. Boston finished the sweep of Chicago when Caleb Durbin’s single brought home Nick Sogard, four hours and 23 minutes after the first pitch, for the 12-11 victory.
After a 15-game winning streak resurrected the Red Sox (63-51) into relevance, they’ve now won another eight straight and are just a half-game behind the Yankees (64-51-) for the top AL wild-card spot.
And since July 1, the Red Sox are 26-4. 
That means the Red Sox were 37-47 when June turned to July. And that wasn’t even the lowest point. The Red Sox fell 14 games under .500 a few times in June (on the 18th, 22nd and 24th). Remember, when they were 10-17 and fired manager Alex Cora just 27 games into the season?
Premature? Maybe so. But that’s the move of a front office that expected a lot more from the team this year, even at the start. And over the last six weeks, the team has proven that expectation to be reasonable.
One major factor? A trade that looked disastrous in the first half — Kyle Harrison to the Brewers for Caleb Durbin, Anthony Seigler and Andruw Monasterio — has been essential to Boston’s recent success.
Jen McCaffrey has more here on last night’s back-and-forth game, in which the Red Sox overcame four different White Sox leads from the middle of the ninth inning onward by scoring one run in the ninth, two in the 10th and one each in the 11th-13th to lock down the win.
The Red Sox will get a chance to extend the success over the coming weeks. The next time they face a team currently in a playoff spot isn’t until Aug. 17, against the Diamondbacks (who hold just a one-game lead over the Padres after a 5-1 loss to the Dads last night).
More of this color: The Reds were dead in the water a week ago. Are the “cockroach” Reds in the middle of another improbable resurrection?
Middle Relief: Inside the Dombrowski-Harper talks
Today, we have an excerpt from Jayson Stark’s article on the upcoming episode of “Starkville.” Phillies president of baseball operations Dave Dombrowski spoke openly about his communication with star Bryce Harper, and the trade that shook up the Phillies’ defensive alignment.
It was nothing personal.
That was, essentially, the money quote when the two most visible faces in the Phillies’ cosmos — Harper and Dombrowski — finally had That Talk last Friday night in Baltimore.
Or at least that’s how Dombrowski, the Phillies’ president of baseball operations, recounted it to me and Doug Glanville during his upcoming appearance on The Athletic’s “Starkville” podcast. The full show will drop tomorrow morning, but you can hear Dombrowski’s take in this clip.
So why did Dombrowski and his biggest star even need to have That Talk? Let’s recap how they got there, for those who haven’t kept track.
Last fall, after the Phillies got bounced from the postseason by the Dodgers, Dombrowski publicly questioned whether Harper was still an “elite” player. Though Dombrowski said the two had a “good conversation” about it weeks later, the storyline has persisted. And, nine months later, Harper flipped that challenge back onto his boss’ shoulders.
On July 28, just a few days before their chat in Baltimore, it was Harper’s turn — to seemingly suggest it was time for Dombrowski to prove that he, too, was elite at what he does.
The Phillies’ soon-to-be right fielder stood at his locker after a painful loss in Miami. The trade deadline was less than a week away. His words were pointed: “I think we need some help,” he said.
Those words spent a few days ricocheting off every sharp angle in Philadelphia, from Independence Hall to the pizza ovens at Chickie’s & Pete’s. But three days later, Dombrowski sought out Harper after another difficult defeat, in the Phillies’ series opener against the Orioles. Here, Dombrowski said on “Starkville,” is how that conversation went:
“I talked to him on (Friday) night when we were in Baltimore, and just had a chance to chat with him,” Dombrowski said. “And he said, ‘Dave, I didn’t mean … that wasn’t a personal comment. I just felt we needed help.’ And I said, ‘You know, I get it.’”
Whoops: What should we call this play?
Earlier this year, in the olden days when Jo Adell was still an Angel, we showed you his Jose Canseco moment: a ball that bounced off his head and into the stands for a home run (in the ensuing days, the call was changed to a four-base error).
But last night, we got a variation of the theme that I never saw. In the third inning in Miami, the Braves’ Ronald Acuña Jr. hit a fly ball to the wall in left-center field. Marlins outfielders Heriberto Hernández and Esteury Ruiz converged at the landing point, and …
This one was also ruled a home run in real time, and will probably stay that way, because who would you charge the error to? It hit both gloves!
My initial thought was to call this a “Double Canseco,” but that doesn’t really work — the ball didn’t bounce off anyone’s head! So … I’m open to suggestions. If I hear a clear winner, I’ll let you know in a future Windup edition.
Just for fun, I looked it up, and Acuña’s fly ball would have been a home run in 13/30 parks. And no, the Marlins’ loanDepot Park is not one of them:
More baseball silliness: In a play reminiscent of Adrián Beltré’s peak entertainment years, Luis Arraez managed to jump over a tag at home plate, but when the ensuing cat-and-mouse game became too obvious a lost cause, he simply gave up and jogged back to the dugout.
Greg Maddux would never. (To be fair, Nats catcher Keibert Ruiz played it better than Don Slaught.)
Baseball Card of the Week: 1979 Topps Len(ny) Randle
I don’t know why this is true — I am, in real life, a near-complete pacifist — but when I’m watching baseball, there’s not much more that perks me up like the benches clearing. So of course, I’ve been watching Jon Bois’ brilliant “History of Charging the Mound” series over on Secret Base.
I’m a little behind, so I just now got to the episode that focuses on Randle and his role in the brawl that came about on 10-cent beer night in Cleveland in 1974. It is titled: “Baseball’s Agent of Chaos,” and while I knew some of the stories (Randle is the third baseman you’ve seen in highlight reels trying to blow a grounder into foul territory), I didn’t know them all.
With that fresh on my mind, I went with this card, from Randle’s Mets years.
More Randle: Entirely by coincidence, I picked this card on the same day that Tyler Kepner’s “Sliders” column starts with 50 memorable Mariners who won’t make the team’s all-time top 50 this year. Randle is, of course, mentioned.
More benches clearing: After Wednesday’s light dust-up against the Tigers, Mariners reliever Gabe Speier has been suspended for three games.
Handshakes and High Fives
Given Ken Rosenthal’s reporting in his post-deadline rundown, maybe we shouldn’t be giving the Brewers such a hard time for not landing more of a difference-maker at the deadline. A little, still, but not so much.
Meanwhile, Andy McCullough’s latest MLB mailbag on the post-deadline landscape starts with Tarik Skubal and ends with the Red Sox, with much thoughtful pontification in between the two.
Two broadcast-related notes for you, running the gamut of emotions:
Another themed duo: Two teams with big playoff hopes have some interesting decisions ahead. The Cubs may soon have more pitchers than roster spots, while the Yankees could face a couple of logjams once Giancarlo Stanton and Carlos Rodón return.
And the Guardians acquired some bats and brought back two stars off the IL. They’re still struggling to score enough runs, though. (Foster Griffin’s Cleveland debut didn’t go so hot, either.)
Tired: Being hit by a pitch. Dire: Being “beaned” by the catcher’s return throw.
Most-clicked in our last Windup: The story on Jefry Yan’s strikeout celebration.
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