Severna Park's Mark Teixeira reached base four times, scored three times and drove in the tying run in the bottom of the eighth inning with a sacrifice fly to keep the Angels alive after they fell behind the Red Sox by four in the first inning. But the Red Sox returned to Boston in complete control of the best-of-five series because the Angels squeezed the absolute minimum out of a string of promising opportunities.

The Red Sox have been in complete control of the Angels for some time now. The 7-5 victory, made possible by J.D. Drew's two-run homer off Francisco Rodriguez in the ninth inning, was their major league record 11th straight postseason victory over the Angels. They'll hand the ball to Josh Beckett on Sunday with a chance to make very short work of this series against the team with baseball's best regular season record.

The winningest team from each league is on life support. The Cubs will try to keep their season alive tonight, when Rich Harden takes the mound against Hiroki Kuroda at Dodger Stadium.

Both teams are inadvertantly making the argument that it isn't necessarily so good to lock up your division early. The Angels, in particular, didn't play a truly meaningful game in the second half of the season.