BOSTON – For 247 minutes Monday afternoon, a neat little slice of October baseball, rich with the tension reserved for later in the month, unfolded underneath an overcast sky that a hacky writer might use as foreshadowing. Aces pitched out of the bullpen, and leads changed hands, and a kid not old enough to legally drink hit an inside-the-park home run, and a guy throwing 90-mph curveballs couldn’t do his job, and rendered to practical afterthought was the tenuous future of the Boston Red Sox manager, who barely saw the game after getting ejected in the second inning.

In history books, the box score will look the same as any other. It will say the Houston Astros beat the Red Sox, 5-4, in Game 4 of the American League Division Series. The Red Sox’s season is over. The Astros’ will continue in the AL Championship Series. Fin.

The story behind the story – the one of how Chris Sale and Justin Verlander, starting pitchers extraordinaire, wound up coming out of the bullpen, and of how the tenure of World Series-winning manager John Farrell may have ended getting run from a game he needed to win – makes Game 4 just a little different, a little more special than a run-of-the-mill postseason showdown.

Because it was close, and because the Red Sox spared themselves the indignity of a sweep with a Game 3 win, this didn’t have nearly the solemn feel of past Red Sox seasons, when the end of the year had all the charm of a whisky-less wake. No city takes losing worse than Boston, and if that comes off as both a compliment and slight, well, good. It is simply the reality for the Red Sox, who bring out levels of parochialism and zeal unseen elsewhere in sports. They are not the heartbeat of this city; they’re all four chambers.

And when something goes wrong, or at least as wrong as it can coming off back-to-back AL East championships, out come the daggers, for the Boston Red Sox are not an organization that divorces itself from anything tidily. Players, executives and, in Farrell’s case, managers all get the same treatment on their way out of town – and, at this point, it would be no surprise if the Red Sox offered him a kindly pat on the back with one hand and a one-way ticket with the other.

Asked postgame if he expected to be back next season, Farrell demurred: “We just walked off the field 10 minutes ago.”

Asked if he would discuss Farrell’s status, team president Dave Dombrowski shook his head and told Yahoo Sports: “I have things to do.”

Asked if he thought Farrell should return next season, Dustin Pedroia, the closest thing the Red Sox have to a captain, answered: “I think John did a great job. We won the division. There was never any quit in this team. I’m proud of everybody in here. We dealt with a lot. And our fight continued every single day. I know we didn’t achieve our goals. But I’m proud of how everybody went about their business and showed up for everybody and played to win.”

Boston Red Sox manager John Farrell, left, argues his point to crew chief umpire Ted Barrett after he was ejected during the second inning in Game 4 of baseball’s American League Division Series against the Houston Astros, Monday, Oct. 9, 2017, in Boston. (AP) More

Nowhere in that answer to a binary question was the word “Yes.”

Which may be getting semantic and all, but it’s important, because Farrell finds himself in a surprisingly awkward situation for a manager with consecutive division titles. Dombrowski gutted the Red Sox’s farm system to surround a homegrown core with frontline talent, and for it here is what he has to show: two first-round exits. Before that, Farrell presided over a pair of last-place finishes, and the question about whether he is the right manager to lead this team forward is perfectly reasonable.

That he wasn’t there to lead it for the final seven innings of the season was almost fitting. Bench coach Gary DiSarcina took over in Farrell’s stead and matched wits with A.J. Hinch, the Astros manager whose contempt for orthodoxy plumped this game with the pressure every instant classic needs. Sale, the Red Sox’s ace, had spelled starter Rick Porcello to start the fourth inning. Hinch knew this meant the spotty weather that had spit on the field for most of the game would hold, since there was no way Boston would burn Sale only to have a weather delay knock him out of the game. With one on in the fifth inning, Hinch yanked starter Charlie Morton and countered with Verlander.

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