BOSTON -- It was June, but the weather and intensity made it feel like October. It was 2002, but the pitchers made it feel like 1966. It was a loss for the home team, but no one in attendance felt terribly cheated.
A day after Frank Castillo labeled his outing "one of those you just want to forget," Curt Schilling and Pedro Martinez combined for one of those games you want to savor.
"It was a terrific baseball game," said Arizona first baseman Mark Grace after the Diamondbacks edged the Sox, 3-2. "Two very good teams out there, going toe-to-toe. I'd much rather play in a game like this, a pitcher's duel, than in a slugfest. That's the way it's supposed to be played. You're supposed to feel good if you score one run or two."
By that measure, the Diamondbacks exited Fenway with a bit more satisfaction. They handed Martinez his first defeat of the season, scratching out three runs in six innings, to take their second straight against the Red Sox, who dropped to 15-13 at home.
The Red Sox could muster just two runs off Schilling -- one in the first, and another in eighth -- as he ran his record to 12-1 and struck out nine.
The clubs swapped solo homers in the first two innings -- Carlos Baerga for the Sox, Jose Guillen for the D'backs -- before Arizona tacked on solo runs in the third and sixth.
Fatigued after throwing 114 pitches -- his second-highest pitch count of the season -- Martinez left after six innings with Tim Wakefield and Chris Haney combining for three shutout innings.
But the Sox squandered a bases-loaded, one-out situation in the eighth, getting just a single run, and could get no closer. A one-out single by Jose Offerman off closer Byung-Hyun Kim, a stolen base and a groundout to the right side put Offerman at third, representing the tying run.
However, Kim fanned Lou Merloni to notch his 16th save and second in as many nights against the Sox.
Arizona took the lead for good in the third on a single by Craig Counsell off Offerman's glove, a double to left by Junior Spivey and a swinging bunt from Luis Gonzalez that third baseman Shea Hillenbrand couldn't get out of his glove in time.
"You know, a hit is a hit," shrugged a philosophical Martinez. "There's no crying in baseball."
Martinez had a control lapse in the sixth and it cost him the game. He issued a one-out walk to Erubiel Durazo and a two-out pass to Grace. A two-out single up the middle from Steve Finley scored what proved to be the winning run.
"Besides our home run," said Luis Gonzales, "all our hits weren't that pretty. But we'll take the 'W.' That's all that matters."
But if Martinez was unable to beat the Diamondbacks, he succeeded in easing the minds of those who feared for his health after successive rough outings in Toronto and Detroit.
After giving up four runs in the first inning of each of his last two outings, Martinez surrendered just an opposite-field two-out double in the first before coming back to strike out Durazo for a scoreless first.
"I believe I had good enough stuff to compete against those guys," Martinez said. "They're a good team. They're very disciplined and they look a lot like the Yankees. They don't fall for bad pitches. They do the job. They scratch and play this game hard."
If nothing else, Martinez wasn't plagued with the kind of self-doubt that nagged him in his last two outings.
"In Toronto," said Martinez, "my arm just felt kind of weak, just like the symptoms I felt last year before I got hurt. All of a sudden in Detroit, I was just trying to be cautious in the first inning. I was wondering if I was going to feel the same way. Those are things that most of you don't understand because you don't feel it. But believe me, having pain in the shoulder is not something easy to deal with.
"Anything that goes wrong with that shoulder, it's not particularly easy for me to handle. I have to think. Sometimes I have to give away the focus in the game to focus on what going on in that shoulder."
Yesterday, Martinez seemed fully engaged, but cognizant that a sense of the unknown will accompany him to the moud, perhaps for the rest of the season.
"So far," he said, "I've been taking every outing and that's what matters. . . I know that I'm going to lose some games and not be capable of doing the things they expect me to do. But I'm going to be there and add a little to the pile that we're working on this year."
