One more to go for two in a row: Bulls lead 2-0

With one swing of the bat, Jeff Liefer went from goat to hero, and the Durham Bulls pulled to within one victory of their second consecutive championship in the Triple-A International League's Governor's Cup.

 Liefer's two-run home run in the bottom of the seventh inning broke open a 3-3 deadlock and powered the Bulls to a thrilling come-from-behind, 5-3 victory over the Pawtucket Red Sox, sending the team to Rhode Island with a commanding 2-0 lead in the best-of-five championship series.

 It was sweet redemption for Liefer, who earlier in the contest twice killed rallies by popping out to shortstop with a pair of runners on base. The squandered opportunities loomed large in the neck-and-neck game--until Liefer himself turned them into a distant memory.

 "If you go up there thinking about your failures, you're not going to have any chance at all," said Liefer, who played with the Chicago White Sox from 1999 to 2002. "You have to go up there and try to be aggressive."

 Though Liefer's home run put the Bulls in the driver's seat, they still had to escape one final scare in the ninth inning before they could start packing their bags for Pawtucket. With one out, right-handed closer Lee Gardner gave up a walk and a hard single, bringing the go-ahead run to the plate. However, Gardner got Lou Collier to hit a soft liner right at second baseman Brooks Badeaux, who doubled off a diving Trace Coquilette at first base to close out the contest and send the Bulls back to a clubhouse blaring with rap.

 "We're relaxed, but we can't get too relaxed," Liefer said. "They're a good ballclub and they could easily win three. We're going [to Pawtucket] with the same intensity as we had in the games here, and hopefully we can take the first one."

 The Red Sox jumped out in front in the third inning, as a two-out rally victimized left-handed Bulls starting pitcher Jim Parque with a pair of runs. With two men down and nobody on base, shortstop Kelly Dransfeldt hit a looper into shallow rightfield that fell beyond the grasp of a diving Matt Diaz, allowing Dransfeldt to cruise into second base. Adrian Brown followed with a fly ball down the rightfield line that again eluded Diaz, giving the Red Sox back-to-back doubles and the first strike on the scoreboard. After Parque hit Coquilette with a pitch, Collier roped an RBI single into left-center. Parque was able to stop the bleeding there, stranding runners at first and second; this was a theme throughout the night, as the Red Sox repeatedly wasted chances by stranding runners on base.

 After the Red Sox tacked on an additional run in the fourth, the Bulls started to chip into the lead. Centerfielder Jason Smith led off the bottom of the fourth with a double and came around to score on a Chris Truby infield single. The Bulls then loaded the bases and scored their second run on another RBI infield single, this one courtesy of shortstop Jorge Cantu.