When John Lackey walked out to the mound Tuesday to make his first start in Los Angeles since leaving the Angels, the boos rained down from the crowd. They did not go unnoticed.
“I definitely heard a lot of them, yeah,” Lackey said of the fans. “I don’t know. It is what it is.”
It was Lackey who laughed last, however. Pitching into the eighth, Lackey allowed only two runs in his outing to help clinch the series for the Red Sox, pushing the Angels another game back of the Rangers in the American League West. As Lackey put it:
"The scoreboard talks the last."
Still, it’s not over between Lackey and the Angels. He’ll have to come back to Los Angeles at some point in the future, and when he does, he’ll be trying to repay those boos all over again.
"That won’t be forgotten, for sure."