Out of touch

When the majority of baseball games are played in the middle of the night, it's very easy to become out of touch with the team you follow. Combine five days away from home, a 4am CET start on the West Coast, a Fox late-nighter and an ESPN midnight start, and you suddenly look up and find you missed the Home Run Derby, the All Star Game and three Sox games in Anaheim.

Given that I don't give a crap about the ASG and that the Sox got swept by the Angels, it's actually probably not a bad time to be away from baseball for a while. However, when these barren periods do occur, I always find myself - whatever the current status of the team - longing to just get back to the game. I love the Red Sox, and I love even more when the Red Sox are doing well, but at times like these, I find myself just longing for the game itself, for the way it reminds us that summer is here and vacation is just around the corner.

Of course, that 'just around the corner' is a problem in itself. Just as I'm getting back into a rhythm which would allow me to devote a little more time to the game, the Sox are on the West Coast and then it's my turn to head out to the West Coast (of France) to charge the batteries. So the Mariners, Yankees, Angels and A's will all have come and gone before I get chance to see another game, but I'm fine with that. All in all, this has been a bit of an off season here in the Desert - dating back to last October - but fortunately the tide is starting to turn. Between now and the end of August, I should be in a position to once again strike the right balance between work and life, and the Sox will be back in their rightful place, somewhere near the top of my day-to-day agenda.

There are others, you know...

Those with good memories might recall a couple of Bill Bryson posts on here a while back. Well, the man is back with a brief appearance.

I was on the Eurostar to London the weekend before last, and actually had the time and inclination to sit down a read the Sunday Times (a real, get-your-hands-dirty newspaper, like in the good old days), which is where I came across the article in question. However, I think the whole 'reading a newspaper' thing took a toll on my poor old brain: I tore the page out of the paper, tucked it away in my suitcase, took it into the office, scanned it into a JPEG document and was just about to post the image here on the blog when I thought "Hmmmm...maybe it's online in some form or another." And, of course, it is (see the last paragraph).

After years of following the game at a distance, I'm used to having that feeling of vague disconnect combined with immense pleasure, but it's always reassuring to know that you're not alone, and that there are others out there getting excited about being able to turn on the TV and watch a midweek game between the Sox and the Twins.

Snapshot, 3.30am

"WTF is Manny doing swinging at the first pi... Oh - two-run game-tying homer. Sweet..."

Pinch hits

Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't the key word in the term "pinch hitter", "hitter"? Pinch is the situation, but hitting is what you're supposed to be doing.

If that is indeed the case, someone needs to talk to Manny, who came in in the 9th, looked at 3 strikes from Rivera without swinging at a single one and went back to his seat in the dugout. Fellow pinch-hitter Jason Varitek didn't fare much better with his broken-bat grounder to the mound, but at least he took a swing at the damn ball.

The loss wasn't all Manny's (or even Varitek's) fault. They were both aided and abetted by some careless pitching and a bad ricochet, but having stayed up until 5.30am on a workday morning to watch another gift-wrapped Yankees win, I'm not looking to discuss the finer details of the situation. I'm just looking for a scapegoat, and since Manny was apparently "just looking" too, he's it.

Things'll be better later today, I'm sure, but in the meantime, if you need me, I'm the guy sat over there in the corner, quietly fuming.

Turning gold into lead

Rivera faced four guys in the top of the ninth, giving up the following sequence: single, HBP, RBI single, HBP. Sox down by one, bases loaded, nobody out, and three chances to score. I know how tough the gods of baseball can be, so I wasn't asking for a grand slam. I'd have settled for a sac fly, another HBP, a suicide squeeze, an opposite-field bloop - anything to get at least the tying run home, get Rivera out of the game and maybe have a crack at extra innings. Instead, what we got was the Black Hole of Hitting - Coco, Varitek and Lugo. Strikeout, popup, strikeout - Yankees win.

Next time, I'd like to suggest that Tito just throw in the towel in a situation like that, instead of letting us all sit on the edge of our seats, hoping that maybe, just maybe, this one time, one of those three guys is going to come through in the clutch. I know it's Rivera, and I know there's a reason he's got 466 career saves, but four consecutive guys had got on, and the Sox couldn't get the ball out of the infield. I'm pretty sure that we'd have had a better chance sending my Auntie Hilda up there, and she passed away in '95 (God rest her soul).

Every time these guys come up, I can't help thinking of this theory.


The Sox could send three monkeys up there, and they'd probably have as mch chance of getting that key hit as the guys we're currently using. Wikipedia tells us that the chances of a monkey typing the complete text of Hamlet is approximately one in 3.4 × 10^183,946, which is almost exactly the same as Jason Varitek's current batting average, so the question is: what do we have to lose?