“Good evening folks, hope you’ve had a wonderful Mother’s Day. It’s Sunday evening and we’re playing baseball at Fenway Park. Get ready folks – this is gonna be a fun one.”
I don’t know why, but for some reason the Sunday evening games excite me. It’s not like I enjoy listening to the John Miller and Joe Morgen talk about the same play for forty-five minutes, but something about the ESPN game really pumps me up.
What did not pump me up was seeing the Rays score in the first inning right as I was getting ready to leave for a friend’s house. At first I was just as confused as Joe Morgen as to why Jason Bay didn’t try to throw out Crawford at home. But then I saw the dozen replays and realized that Crawford made a mistake by not running hard as soon as the ball left the bat (with two outs, there’s really no excuse). As a matter of fact, I was very intrigued by this and didn’t mind the first thirty minutes of ESPN’s replay of Carl Crawford running from first – after that it got a little tedious.
There was another thing that bothered me, but I can’t blame ESPN for this because every television network (including NESN) has been bringing it up. Big Papi hasn’t hit a home run yet. Here’s a newsflash – We know Papi has not hit a homer. And if we forget, we get constant reminders of this every time he comes up to the plate. You know what I’m more focused on right now? That Big Papi won the game for us last night with his double to center in the 8th. In 116 at bats, Papi has hit 10 doubles. Last season, Papi hit 30 doubles in 416 at bats. Which means (you guessed it) he’s on track to hit even more doubles this year. So maybe we can ignore the fact that he hasn’t hit a homer yet, because as far as I’m concerned, I don’t want anyone else batting third for the Sox.
And how about the guy batting cleanup? Although we all want Youk back ASAP, I don’t think anyone’s complaining about the job that Jason Bay has done for the Sox this season. His double in the 8th drove in the homerless Papi and gave us the win. Call me crazy, but I like this guy. And I like him a lot more considering what he’s done this season (9 HR, 34 RBI) and what I’m pretty sure he hasn’t done in this season or his career (steroids).
But how can we talk about last night’s game without talking about our pitching? Josh Beckett had a great start (6.0 IP, 6 H, 3 R, 3 BB, 5 K) and really making it a pitcher’s duel against Matt Garza (7.0 IP, 7 H, 3 R, 2 BB, 6 K). I absolutely love games like this where it’s close up until the very end. Of course you can’t have a close game without having good relief pitching in addition to great starting pitching. We got some of that last night from Hideki Okajima who was lights out – 1.2 IP and no one got on base. That was nice flashback of the Okajima we know and loved from 2007. Ramon Ramirez (I love this guy) recorded the final out of the 8th, leaving the door open for Papelbon to come in for the 9th.
One might point out the Papelbon has been a little shaky this season and last night was no exception. Although he had both the tying run and the go ahead run in scoring position, you can’t ignore the fact that he struck out the side and only surrendered a hit and a walk. Yeah, the point for a closer is to not let anyone on base, but considering Papelbon has the second most saves in the league (and in baseball), I’m gonna cut him some slack. If the team wasn’t traveling right now, I would gladly go out for a drink with both him and Big Papi.
Since that’s not going to happen, I’m going to check and see how my fantasy team did last night.
Keep the Faith.
