Boston Red Sox defeat Seattle Mariners, 7-6

This was all new to him, the visitor from Southern California said, this quirky regional holiday known as Patriots Day (''Got to have something to do with the Revolution, right?"), a ballgame that started before lunchtime and a walkoff home run by his son, Mark Loretta, who in nearly three decades of playing baseball -- Little League, high school, Northwestern, the big leagues -- never had ended a game like this.

''I just asked him right now," Dave Loretta said, moments...

There are few cliches more worn than the one Kevin Youkilis rolled out yesterday afternoon, saying of the season, ''It's not a sprint, it's a marathon."

Yesterday, however, that was as inaccurate and unintentionally humorous a statement as any, for it was Youkilis's bottom-of-the-ninth sprint that saved the day, and it occurred at about the same time as Robert Cheruiyot's gallop through the neighborhood on his way to a Boston Marathon record. With two outs and the Sox d...