Entries Tagged 'the game' ↓

Dice-K was more erratic than usual and he felt it. As he got out of the inning in the fifth, he waited for Crisp to catch the ball, hung his head down and walked, almost dejected, from the mound to the dugout. I’m sure that was a rough day at the office and, quite frankly, not the best way to “earn” his third win.

When people look at his record this season they’ll wonder how he did so well. He’ll undoubtedly do better than last year’s 15 wins, and it’ll most likely come from the run support the team has failed to show in a  consistent manner.

Some thoughts:

• Youk, Manny and Drew are carrying the offense right now.
• Delcarmen is still someone I want to hold on to. His fastball has good movement, so he definitely has the tools to set up Pap if Oki goes awry.
• Papi is having the worst statistical start to the season out of all major league players right now.
• Still uncertain about Aardsma. I’ll need to see him for a good month before feeling good or bad when he comes in.
• Yankees haven’t got it together yet, but they will, then they’ll be a totally different team next time around.
• Cleveland next. Getting out of Fenway for a few days might be a bad thing.

I joked with a friend yesterday that if the Sox lost and went down some sort of spiral baseball staircase and stayed in the cellar that it would dawn a new curse for the Sox.

Bill Buckner’s face after he missed the ball was as miserable as I had ever seen. He was in shock with what was happening as Wilson screamed towards home plate. He knew that moment was going to define him. Sad, miserable, ugly truth.

He said yesterday that he was bitter, not to the Boston fans per se, but to the media. He had to forgive the media. I can’t even begin to imagine what he went through, although there were many times where I would watch the replay and think that he was targeted and thank God no one killed him.

The game itself was great. Dice-K is seemingly pulling his other pitches and sticking to fastball, curve, cutter which is EXACTLY what John Farrel told him to do half of last year. So far he leads the league in strikeouts and he’s got an opponent against ERA of around 1.

So, the Sox win and the Tigers go to 0-7. They may just beat the hell out of the Sox and score 20 runs tonight (they can do it with that lineup), but no one will be beat up like Bill Buckner was for 20 years. Nor should they.

Yesterday afternoon’s game was filled with some great “stoopit” trivia stuff. As pointed out by Boston.com:

• Kevin Youkilis has broken the record for consecutive games without an error by a first baseman (194)
•  Jon Lester is the first left-handed Sox starter to record a win in Oakland since 1995.
• Terry Francona still misses chew. (Yes, I made that one up, but I guarantee you he does.)

It’s not a bad thing to take care of Oakland, regardless of their 1 and 2 starters. They needed to walk out of there with the series win and give the fans a nice start to the season.

With J. D. Drew starting last night, the team finally felt a little like normal, I suppose. Tomorrow night, Tim Wakefield gets the start in Toronto’s home opener and Kevin Cash will begin the campaign to prove he’s not Mirabelli.

First homers for Papi and ‘Tek felt good as well. Nice to see it starting to become a “regular” season.

The Sox are on their way. As the start of the regular season goes, it seemed like such a strange, non-regular-season-opener. In fact, with these first four games at such an odd time it feels as though Toronto will be more like the season’s beginning.

Dice-K is 1-0 after a terrific performance last night (I would still love to see him reach the 8th inning) and Paps has his second save in three games. Not a bad start.

HEY. The game is at 3:35 today, so let’s try to stay focused on that whole … job… THAT WAS A STRIKE… ahem.

It’s time! Time to start the regular season, the title defense, the sleepless West Coast games, the “marathon, not sprint”.

Tomorrow morning at 6:07 AM, EST, the Red Sox begin the ‘08 season and I couldn’t be more thankful. The weather has hovered in the 40s and the outlook isn’t much better than that for the next week or so.

Papi hitting 50?

Manny getting back to 100 RBI?

Lowell hitting 25?

Drew doing anything?

Good-bye to Mirabelli and hello, Kevin Cash.

Let’s… get… this… thing… going…