When it was finally over, some four hours and 20 minutes after it had begun, there wasn't a whole lot to celebrate for the Red Sox as they came off the field at Wrigley Field.
They had, with considerable help from the Chicago Cubs, won in 11 innings. There was nothing artistic about it, nor anything particularly memorable, either. Had it not been for an errant throw by Cubs reliever Rowan Wick, who did the Sox the humongous favor of airlifting a throw to first down the right field line, the two teams might still be playing.
But Wick's throw was off the mark, enabling the Sox to plate two unearned runs, and that was all the Sox needed.
The victory did several things. First, it enabled the Sox to escape the embarrassment of being swept by a second-division team. Secondly, it sent the Red Sox home with a winning record (5-4) on their three-city, nine-game road trip.
Of course, a week ago, any suggestion that the Sox might need some cooperation from the Cubs just to end up with an above .500 mark for the trip would have been laughable. The Sox, still riding a winning streak they had begun on the previous homestand, swept the Guardians in Cleveland and despite a treacherous stopover in Toronto still ahead of them, it was reasonable to expect the Sox might win six or seven games on the trek.
That was before things started to veer in the wrong direction for the Sox -- before the offense dried up and before the bullpen began springing one leak after another.
And so, all things considered, a win over a bad team to finish 5-4 was a welcome bit of news indeed.
"We live in the now,'' said Alex Cora when he was asked about carrying some momentum into a hugely challenging homestand. "The big boys are scuffling now and we had to scratch and claw for this one and we got it.''
That may sound like someone setting the bar arbitrarily low, but it was that kind of weekend for the Red Sox. On Friday, they essentially handed the game over to the Cubs on a silver platter, complete with 10 walks. Then, on Saturday night, it was the Sox committing costly errors, leading to two runs.
All of which suffused the Red Sox with a sense of desperation Sunday afternoon. Were they really about to lose for the fifth time in their last six games, which would have represented their worst week of baseball since early May, just before The Great Turnaround took place?
For a number of innings, it sure looked that way. Harkening back to the offensive struggles that typified their play in April and nearly buried them for good, the Sox squandered one chance after another. They stranded two in the first, one in the third, two in the fifth and two more in the sixth. Even when they managed to break through for two runs in the fourth -- just their second and third runs since the fourth inning on Friday afternoon -- they left the bases loaded, and with it, a chance to put the Cubs away for good.
Connor Seabold gave them a quality outing -- one run allowed -- but it lasted just four innings. When he was lifted after 74 pitches, that left Cora and pitching coach Dave Bush trying to figure out how to get from the fifth to the finish line. Crossing the Rubicon might have seemed like an easier task.
Remarkably, the Sox got (mostly) good performances from a handful of relievers. Hirokazu Sawamura and John Schreiber took care of the fifth through the seventh before Matt Strahm, who has struggled mightily in the last month, yielded a tape-measure shot to Patrick Wisdom, knotting the game at 2-2.
From there, the game became a battle of attrition. From the seventh through the ninth, the Red Sox claimed just one baserunner. They then, with the help of the automatic runner, filled the bases in the 10th, but had a runner thrown out at the plate before Bobby Dalbec took a fastball down the middle, stranding two. For the game, the Sox would maroon 14 baserunners while batting an atrocious 2-for-19 with runners in scoring position.
Finally, in the 11th, the Sox caught a break when Wick, in a clear homage to a poor throw made by Josh Winckowski Saturday night, missed its target by 10 feet, allowing Dalbec and Christian Arroyo to scamper home. Improbably, Jake Diekman turned in a second straight scoreless inning and the Sox had the face-saving victory.
If they play like this for the next two weeks, when the schedule-maker has them playing seven games each against the Rays and Yankees, they could tumble out of the wild card chase again and undo whatever progress they had made before stumbling in Toronto.
But that daunting two weeks of games was far from their minds Sunday at Wrigley.
"It was a grind,'' conceded Cora, "but we ended up winning.''
There are a few of those on the schedule over the course of the season.
Sometimes you need to win ugly. Sometimes you need to survive rather than celebrate.