Grand salami

Listening to the air go out of a Fenway Park crowd is almost as satisfying as listening to the air go out of a Yankee Stadium crowd. Yesterday, Travis Hafner afforded me that feeling, and to the Pronkster, I say "thank you."
Hafner didn't need a grand slam in the ninth inning Tuesday night. The game was tied 8-8. A single would have sufficed. But Hafner strikes me as the kind of guy who considers a slice of pizza to be somewhere between one-fourth and one-half of the whole pie.
The Hafner slam, which gave the game its final score of 12-8, was the most satisfying moment of the game. But it might not have been the most important.
Boston used a five-run sixth inning to turn a 5-3 Indians lead into an 8-5 Red Sox cushion. In April and May, when Cleveland's offense was all but comatose, that would have been lights out. But once Arthur Rhodes was pulled after his second straight brutal outing against the Red Sox (three runs allowed in one-third of an inning), the bullpen shut Boston down the rest of the way.
It allowed the Tribe's offense to chip away at Boston's lead. An eighth-inning rally provided two runs and forced Boston manager Terry Francona to go to closer Keith Foulke earlier than he probably wanted to.
The game was a tense 8-7 score when Foulke allowed Jody Gerut to double off the Green Monster with one out in the ninth. Jhonny Peralta, quickly becoming one of Cleveland's best clutch hitters, worked the count full off Foulke and delivered a game-tying single to right field. Coco Crisp scored as a pinch-runner for Gerut.
Noticeably rattled by the blown save, Foulke's pitch count skyrocketed as he walked Grady Sizemore and Casey Blake to load the bases for Hafner.
Foulke got Hafner to 0-2 before leaving a pitch over the inside half of the plate, which he turned on.
As the line drive sailed down the right field line, I had visions of the game I attended last week at Jacobs Field. Same hitter, same pitcher, same inning, and Hafner hit a long drive that hooked foul.
I waited for Hafner's ball Tuesday night to hook foul, but, luckily, it never did. The ball would have been a double into the corner in Jacobs Field or most other parks, but thanks to Fenway's short right field wall, and the curve that leads to the ultra-short "Johnny Pesky Pole" in right field, Hafner's line drive was a grand slam.
It was Cleveland's first slam of the year. That it came against Jimmy Fallon's favorite team and clinched a series victory made it all the sweeter.