I watched that game too, Jim, and yes, I've been a die-hard Sox fan for ages. Watching Chris Sale pitch is baseball bliss, I think. Of course pitching like him is an art, if art has anything to do with well-timed legerdemain and telling the truth with beautiful lies.
You must know this poem by Robert Francis, another Massachusetts poet who loved baseball:
Pitcher
His art is eccentricity, his aim
How not to hit the mark he seems to aim at,
His passion how to avoid the obvious,
His technique how to vary the avoidance.
The others throw to be comprehended. He
Throws to be a moment misunderstood.
Yet not too much. Not errant, arrant, wild,
But every seeming aberration willed.
Not to, yet still, still to communicate
Making the batter understand too late.
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