Injuries, especially to a pitching staff, make teams scramble to plug the holes. The Red Sox, four games in back of the Rays when the evening started and licking many wounds in their starting rotation, are not immune to this fact. So it was that the wonderfully-named Charlie Zink found his way atop the hill in Fenway for his first major league start tonight against the Texas Rangers. It was a performance he won’t soon forget.

Zink toiled in the minors for six years after being signed as an undrafted minor leaguer in 2002. The 28-year old knuckleballer looked good this year going 13 - 4 with a 2.89 ERA for the Sox Triple-A affiliate in Pawtucket, RI. The kid came recommended by none other than Sox great Luis Tiant so on Monday the Red Sox, having put knuckleballer Tim Wakefiled on the DL, ignored Zink’s pedigree (did I mention he graduated from the baseball powerhouse Savannah College of Art and Design?) and plopped him in the midst of a pennant race. But how bad could it be; the kid already had his own Wiki page.

The game began in a way which, if it were written for Hollywood, would have been laughable: the Sox posted 10 runs in the first inning including not one, but two, three-run homers by David Ortiz. The Sox offensive barrage offered up a new definition of the term “breathing room” for the uninitiated Mr. Zink. Now, it was up to him.

Having been untouched in the first Zink got rattled a bit in the second, giving up two runs but — given the pad — it was forgettable. You could almost hear Ortiz in the dugout approaching Zink afterward: “Forgehedaboudit man.” In the third and fourth Zink was on a roll: three up and three down in both innings. The kid might have something here.

But, in the fifth, the knuckler betrayed him. The first seven batters he faced went: double, ground out, single, single, double, double, double and then, he was done. Texas scored eight that inning to tie the game and the improbable appearance of the no-longer a kid from Carmichael, CA had ended. His final line for the night: 4.1 innings, 11 hits, 8 runs (all earned), one walk and one strike out. His ERA was 16.62.

Overall, a poor outing — one which might very well be his last in the majors — but for a few innings Charlie Zink lived a dream; Fenway Park in a pennant race with a 10-run lead and 38,000 people cheering his name.