To the surprise of some, when it was time for the losing manager to appear on Zoom for post-game questions in the aftermath of a hideous, error-filled loss, Alex Cora's picture did, indeed, fill the screen.
And here we were, expecting Casey Stengel, manager of the legendarily inept 1962 New York Mets.
Stengel, forced to endure more bad baseball than anyone should be subjected to over that inglorious season, once expressed his understandable frustration thusly: Can't anyone here play this game?
It was a question worth posing after the Red Sox had managed to squander a 7-1 lead, leaving them with dispiriting 11-10 loss in 10 innings. The Sox committed four errors and could probably have been assigned at least a couple more. Perhaps the official scorer ultimately took pity upon them.
Aesthetics aside, there were some real effects from the loss. It gave the Rays the season series between the two teams, and of far more consequence was the team's inability to vault over the New York Yankees in the wild card race. As the Yankees were losing to Toronto, absorbing their third straight defeat, the Sox could have taken over sole possession of the first wild card spot in the American League, with a step toward securing home field in that one-game playoff. Instead, they remained a half-game in back of New York, saddled with a second straight loss of their own.
The standings, playoff participants and postseason seedings will be determined in good time. For now, there's the onerous manner in which the Sox lost, with Monday's setback a strong contender for Their Worst Loss of the Season. It's a category, sadly, with a number of strong contenders.
But consider:
* A ball got loss in the sun...and before the play was completed, four runs scored, every one of them unearned.
* In a one-run game in the ninth, the Sox allowed a game-tying inside-the-park home run in which both corner outfielders initially forgot to back up center fielder Alex Verdugo, who couldn't glove the ball at the wall, then compounded things by failing to see the ball at his feet. On a continuation of that play, two more miscues were made -- with a poor relay throw, which was, in turn, mishandled in the infield.
* With the the potential winning run on second base in the bottom of the ninth, Christian Vazquez popped the ball up in the air, behind the plate, caught by Tampa catcher Mike Zunino.
* The Red Sox had leads of 7-1 in the fourth and 8-6 in the seventh...and still lost.
Strangely, Alex Cora, who had not been afraid to show his displeasure after other similarly sloppy exhibitions, essentially shrugged this one off, noting that the team's suspect defense and fundamental play has been an issue "all season long.'' Perhaps he's become sadly accustomed to these kinds of displays. He noted, more than once, that bad things happen when you give good teams extra outs -- which the Sox did ad nauseam.
Either way, he labeled it a "great bad game'' -- signaling, one presumes, the entertainment factor with all the bizarre developments, and the competitive nature of a game that ended with the Sox having the potential tying run at third and potential winning run at second in the bottom of the 10th.
Chris Sale, while also crediting his teammates for battling back ("We fought to the end, which is a good sign...We showed some fight...We're still a gritty team.") and having a chance to win the game in their final at-bat, was less sanguine in his overall assessments.
Ultimately, though, Sale is hyper-competitive and exceedingly honest, and he couldn't paper over his disappointment with what took place at Fenway.
"Tough pill to swallow at the end of the day, honestly,'' said Sale, who was gone from the mound by the fourth inning. "We got a little unlucky, but we didn't help ourselves a lot...Obviously, an ugly loss in the grand scheme of things.
"Days like this hurt, there's no getting around it. It's a gut punch. We lost a game we should have won easily, honestly. I mean, we had a 7-1 lead, we gotta have that one. There's no doubt, this one stings. Losing games the way we just lost this one isn't fun.''
Sale then took a turn for the philosophical again, noting that unpredictable things happen in games and "if the outcomes are supposed to be known, then we wouldn't even have to play the game. And that's why we play the game, because crazy stuff like this can happen.''
But for a team with playoff designs, "crazy stuff like this,'' has happened far too often.
So, yes, you can credit the Sox for not giving up, for putting themselves in position to claim what would have been the ugliest win imaginable.
But as the postseason crystalizes over the final four weeks, it's worth asking: Even if the Red Sox gain entrance into the postseason, how far can they be expected to go, given their habit playing games like the one they played Monday?