Stop, thief!

Despite being busy doing other things, my brain had registered the whole "end of the season" concept, but it wasn't until I sat down and watched last night's game that it really hit home - 160 games played, only two left to play. While I was looking elsewhere some bugger apparaently ran off with the 2006 baseball season. As of tomorrow evening, it's over. Shit.

Sure, there'll be other games played throughout the month of October, but not involving the home nine, and so although I'll no doubt watch some of them, my heart won't really be in it.

I think this is one of the real downsides of baseball. I used to get depressed when I followed my local soccer team over 40 games and nine months, but baseball is worse - more games to get you hooked on the team, and more downtime between seasons. Baseball is so present for six, seven, even eight months of the year that when it goes away, it leaves this big, gaping hole. We find ways to fill up the hole (regular folks call it "having a life"), but there's always an eye on the start of Spring Training and another 162-game marathon.

So all that's left for me this weekend - outside of hoping that Papi hits another couple out of the ballpark - is to savour the final two games in the company of Don and Jerry, take a last look at our stellar infield and raise my cap to those we may no longer see in a Red Sox uniform. Come Monday morning, Tito and Theo and the Red Sox staff will be back in the office looking forward to 2007, and we'll be looking back on a season that might have been.

Oh well, never mind, we'll get 'em next year...

Ain't over...

For those who may be looking for evidence that baseball is the greatest sport there is, I'd like to present Exhibit A: the Dodgers, trailing the Padres 9-5 in the bottom of the ninth, hit four consecutive home runs to tie the game. Then, after having given up the go-ahead in the top of the tenth, they won the game in the bottom of the inning on a walk-off two-run homer from Nomar.

It doesn't get much better than that.

Update: I don't know about better, but there was a game in Atlanta on Sunday that was just as crazy, with the Braves overcoming a four-run deficit in the tenth to win by one run. (Thanks to Joy of Sox for the link).

Voices Inside My Head

"So, now that's out of the way the plan is: go back to Fenway and sweep the Twins. Detroit sweeps the White Sox in Chicago, and we're half a game back of the White Sox and 4 1/2 back of the Twins. Then the Orioles and the Mariners decide to disprove the vicious rumours circulating around Major League Baseball that they've forgotten how to play the game by trashing Minnesota and Chicago respectively. We beat up on the Blue Jays and go into next week with a shot at the Wild Ca..."

"Iain...IAIN...IAIN!!!. Wake up - it's time to get up and go to work, honey!"

"Oh man - just when things were starting to get interesting..."

Making your mind up

There are myriad reasons why I dislike the YES Network - the main one being that it's the broadcast network of the New York Yankees - but the thing that pisses me off above everything else is the inconsitsency of the announcers. It's not just a YES Network thing - it pisses me off generally in my dealings with other people. I can deal with points of view which are different to mine, but I want the people holding them to at least try to be consistent.

With Papi back in the lineup, today's topic du jour is of course the MVP award. Personally, I don't give a crap who wins the MVP award, but they've got to talk about something, so let's go with that.

If you're going to argue the case for Jeter being MVP, fine. If you're going to use the importance of defense as part of the case, that's fine, too. Of course, as the YES announcers themselves (Murcer and Singleton, I think, but I'm not 100% sure) said, nobody really knows what the hell MVP voting is supposed to be based on, but you can make a good solid case for hitting and defense, so I'm happy to go with that argument. However, what you can't do at that point - as you gloat over the fact that the Yankees are going to the postseason and the Red Sox are not - is then say: "I think that MVP clearly means Most Valuable Player in helping your team to the playoffs."

There are two reasons why you can't say it: 1) there's no justification for it - you just made it up since it conveniently fits this year's scenario; and 2) your own friggin' third baseman won the MVP award in 2003 whilst playing for a team that not only didn't make the playoffs, but which finished 25 games out of first place in the AL West and had the fourth worst record in the league.

As Jere would say, TJ, YES, TJ.

Mystic Tito

On why Papi remained on the bench in Game 2:

"Probably under any other circumstances, we would hit him to tie the game," Francona said. "But with 18 innings of pitching ... it's hard not to hit David and lose. I thought we needed to try to win. We tie it, we're looking at more pitching. I just didn't think it was our best chance to win."

It's been a long season, and Tito has had to deal with a lot of crap - which he has done with great patience and good humour - so he gets a free pass on this impenetrable explanation as to his decision in the late innings of last night's game. I guess if we are to read anything at all into what he said, it would be something along the lines of: "I really need a long vacation in the sun. Starting yesterday."

Still, all things considered, I'll settle for one game out of the two. Rinse and repeat this afternoon.

Make mine in a double

A double double, in fact. Four baseball games in the space of 36 hours is the kind of mid-September shake-up of the schedule that makes you glad your team is no longer in the running.

I just hope it's not the mighty ass-kicking that Beth fears. With the Yankees' magic number standing at 6, they have a very realistic chance of clinching the division this weekend, so the Sox' goal is to win at least two to prevent them doing so and having Yankee fans rub our noses in it.

Bear with me

No sooner had I menioned the desert than my blog decides to flood the screen with an ocean of blue. I don't know what's up with the colours, but please feel free to enjoy the late-summer seascape until I get the problem sorted out.

Update: The layout and colour scheme is back. I guess Blogger was having a bad hair day.

Before the evening steals the afternoon

It seems strange to think that exactly four weeks ago today I drove home like a madman to catch the first game of the Yankees-Sox series, confident that we would take 3 of the 5 games, hopeful that we might actually take 4 and praying to the gods of baseball to grant us a magical 5-game sweep. It would be fair to say that that didn't happen, and that since then the Red Sox' season has pretty much been flushed down the toilet. You can look at the numbers and tell me that, on paper, the Sox are not yet eliminated, but to quote my Dad (who no doubt stole the quote from someone else): "They don't play on paper - they play on grass," and the Sox are, to all extents and purposes, cooked.

So the question is: "What's left?" The obvious answer is that there's Papi's chase ofJimmie Foxx's home run record, but these last few days have had me thinking beyond that, and even beyond the Sox. I looked at the schedule earlier today, and there are 16 games left - that's all there is left of 6 solid months of almost daily baseball. There will of course be games beyond Sunday October 1st, but unless hell freezes over between now and then, they won't involve the Boston Red Sox, and although I will - like Paul - be watching them, I won't be watching them with the same interest and enthusiasm with which I watch Sox games.

Last night I watched the Dodgers vs. Cubs game, and as I write this I'm watching the Reds play the Cubs (Bronson shutting out the Cubs and throwing his breaking ball for strike after strike after strike - keep moving folks, there's nothing to see here, no lingering regrets, nope, none at all...). After a baseball-free week, these games have helped me to take a step back and just appreciate all the stuff that attracted me to baseball in the first place, but it's not the same as watching your guys. And for me that is true whether they're doing well or not, whether they're playing in the ALCS or just playing out September in the hope of salvaging some seriously wounded pride.

The Red Sox are not going to be playing playoff baseball this year, but the issue for me is less one of prestige and success than it is one of there simply being no more meaningful games in just over two weeks' time. I love this game and this team - enough to get me out of bed in the middle of the night something like 80 times since April - and I'm just flat out depressed that the season is coming to an end, and a premature one at that. I don't follow football or soccer or hockey or whatever other sports are out there over the winter, so all I see ahead of me are five-plus months of waiting for spring training. Those months are easier to get through and seem much shorter when the team has had a good season. My only consolation this winter will be that this train-wreck of a second half could only have been avoided with some serious divine intervention. The front office has taken a lot of heat for failing to make the big signing at the trade deadline, but not Bobby Abreu nor indeed any major league baseball player in the history of the game could have dug the Sox out of the hole they found themselves in in August. Pretty much everything that could go wrong did go wrong, so the only reasonable thing to do seem to be to gently close the book on '06 and look forward to whatever '07 will hold for the Sox. And so I'll do what I can to savour these last 16 games - starting with the Yankees tonight - taking from the oasis of summer whatever is needed to help me through five long months in the baseball desert.

Short and sweet

I can't do any better than Jerry Remy's mid-game analysis: big-time ugly.

Forget it. Move on. Bring on the Royals...

To whom it may concern:

Dear Practical Joker,

It may have seemed funny at the time, whisking away our rag-tag bunch of dodgy relievers and stop-gap starters and replacing them with a set of lookalikes, but now we have a problem, bcause we really don't want the other guys back. We're actually starting to like this whole shutout performance thing, so we'd like to ask you to take good care of Julian and Kason and whoever else you might have stashed away. In return, we promise to look after the clones - we'll feed / oil / water them as appropriate and make sure that they're returned in pristine condition once the season is over.

Give the guys our very best wishes and tell them we're thinking of them. Thanks a lot.

Red Sox Nation

Terry's take

Exhibit no. 37 in the ongoing "Why Tito Is Perfect For This Town" case:

"The news was a huge relief," Francona said. "He has a 'transient subluxation.' We all know what that is. I thought it was a guy who lived under a bridge."

Hometown hero

A walk-off win? A genuine, bona fide, extra-inning, come-from-behind,
walk-off-homer-from-the-local-guy win? Yup, we'll take one of those any day of the week.

Those who might have doubted how the rest of the Sox season will play out only had to look at the faces of David Ortiz and Trot Nixon as they sat in the dugout during the 9th and 10th innings to see that the Red Sox were not giving up on the game or on the season. They wanted this win as badly as the fans in the stands, and thanks to Carlos Pena they got it.

Due to the vagaries of baseball's scoring system, Mike Timlin got the win, but it ought to go to Tavarez who pitched a great game. He was not, however, quite ready to tip his cap to the fans. In most cases this would get a "WTF?" from me, but Tavarez has a point:

"I love our fans but I’ve never played for a city that booed the players when you’re five or six games ahead and in first place."

There are times in the season when he - and others - have sucked mightily, but I will never understand the booing:

“I don’t think it is right,” he said. “We all go out there, try to do the best we can for our career, for our job, for this city, for the fans. We want to do good for them. I just wish they understood a little bit about that, that we try really hard out there to bring the ‘W,’ to bring the World Series to the city.”

Last night the trying hard paid off with a 'W', and I hope the Sox have a few more of them in their bag between now and the end of the season. Because, as Denton said:

I try to just watch for some good baseball over the next few weeks, but that little something inside me can't stop thinking that good baseball turns into wins and wins turn into hot streaks and hot streaks get teams back in the hunt. I guess that is the part that makes me a Red Sox fan.

You never know - stranger things have happened.

Everything is relative

Well, the Sox played another great game tonight to beat the Blue Jays 2-1. Of course, in a season where every silver lining seems to have its cloud, this victory came at a price: Jonathan Papelbon had to leave the game in the ninth with what looked like a shoulder injury.

However, although I hope Papelbon is OK, that news pales into relative insignificance when stacked up against this. All we can do is cross our fingers and hope that Lester is OK.

Vital signs

Last night's game ressembled one of those scenes in ER where the doctors check out a trauma patient by reeling off a list of mainly incomprehensible medical terms. In this case, the terms were things we can understand, even if we haven't seen much of them lately:

Decent pitching: Assorted relief pitchers - check...
Timely hitting: Mike Lowell - check...
Good defense: Pedroia, Kapler - check, check...
A little bit of luck: The Two Alexes Show - check...

The patient may not leap up off the operating table and start singing tunes from "Oklahoma!", but the good news is that he is still alive and kicking.

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In other news, the Sox traded David Wells to the Padres for a player to be named later.

I like Boomer - always have, even when he was with the Dark Side - and liked seeing him pitch for the Sox. When he's healthy, he's a great lefty to have on the mound, and he leaves a respectable 17-10 record behind him in his time with the Sox. And beyond the pitching, there's always the added bonus of never quite knowing when he's going to go head-to-head with a second base umpire or even with the Commissioner himself. Now Wells will get a final chance to pitch in a pennant race in his home town, and I wish him and the Padres well.

English-Spanish dictionary

Entry: Rí·os
Pronunciation: 'rE-"Os
Function: transitive verb
1 : to juggle a ball, in slightly comical fashion.