OPINION
By Michael Ventre
MSNBC contributor
Updated: 8:15 p.m. ET Oct 7, 2007
   

Michael Ventre
The earth opened up Sunday and swallowed the Angels.

Actually, it just seemed that way. It was the Boston Red Sox who devoured them, and really Saturday was more like the final bite before the last burp. Rarely do you see an entire baseball team push itself back from the table, take a deep breath, loosen its belt, and reach for a mint.

The Red Sox advanced Sunday to the American League Championship Series by completing a sweep of the surprisingly submissive Angels with a 9-1 victory in the best-of-five division series. Although Stanford upset USC on Saturday, proving that just about anything can happen in sports, this result seemed as if it had been etched in stone, or more specifically, in Bill Stoneman, the Angels’ GM whose mantra is that the Angels don’t need another big bat.

The Red Sox are moving on because, at least in this series against Los Angeles, it seemed like the only kind of bats they have are big ones. They provided a glimpse of that Sunday in the fourth inning off Angels starter Jered Weaver when their prodigious third and fourth hitters, David Ortiz and Manny Ramirez, parked consecutive shots over the fence on a pristine Southern California afternoon for a 2-0 lead.

That held up until the top of the eighth. Perhaps figuring that it wasn’t enough to win, they had to also send a message to either the Indians or Yankees that a baseball tornado was on the way, so they hammered the Angels for seven more runs. That sent the sun-baked throng to the parking lots. It was one of those displays these Red Sox have become known for, even though wind conditions in Orange County and the absence of the Fenway faithful and the Green Monster made things a tad more antagonistic.

The contrast was startling, as it figures to be in the ALCS. The Red Sox had been sliding somewhat down the stretch in the regular season, allowing their formidable lead in the American League East over the Yankees to dwindle to a squirmy margin. But now that that nonsense has been dispensed with, it’s almost like they’re interested again.

Riding a potent surge of momentum, they have what teams making a run at the World Series crave. The pitching has been top notch, especially from their starters. Josh Beckett was masterful in Game 1, and the grandfatherly Curt Schilling was just as stout Sunday in mowing down the Angels, who have now lost their last nine postseason games against Boston.

Schilling went seven innings, giving up six hits and no runs, tossing 100 pitches, 76 of them strikes. He is now 9-2 for the postseason in his illustrious career, with an ERA of 1.93.

Relying on a relatively new philosophy that eschews heat and embraces artistry, Schilling was greeted enthusiastically by his scruffy dugout mates afterward, who then proceeded to pad the lead off the Angels’ once-proud relief corps.

“Their pitching probably doesn’t get as much notice as some of the guys on the offensive side of that team,” Angels manager Mike Scioscia said. “That’s the heartbeat of that club, and they pitched well in this series.”

Said Red Sox third baseman Mike Lowell: “Our main key is pitching. I knew we’d have to pitch well in order to be successful in this series.”

But the Red Sox also have the lumber, and they proved it again in this series. Unlike the Angels, who have to rely on generating runs in small increments through elbow grease, hustle, good fortune and prayer, Boston can light it up and bust open a game with sudden ferocity. For Angels fans, it was probably the ideal message to their club’s brass, a PowerPoint presentation to the corporate heads about what is possible if one only uses some imagination and parts with a little extra cash.

“Those guys are very special,” Lowell said of Big Papi and Manny. “When you’re in big games and you need your big bats, they have come through time and time again.

We’ll have to keep leaning on them if we want to go all the way.”