Wednesday Night Baseball – Not Just About the Sox

The Red Sox played a great game of baseball Wednesday night, as those of us in the Boston area were able to watch on NESN.  However, there was another fun game of baseball on ESPN 2 for their usual Wednesday Night Baseball game against the Braves and Yankees who were playing at the same time.  I found myself flipping between channels during commercial breaks for the Sox and caught some cool moments.  Meanwhile, the College World Series’ final game was on ESPN between Texas and LSU.  There was an awful lot of baseball on last night. 

I’ve never paid much attention to the College World Series in the past, but I found myself flipping to it a couple of times during Sox commercials this past week.  It’s a lot of fun being a student myself, seeing other students compete for a championship.  That being said, it also makes me jealous that Salem State doesn’t have much of a sports program, not to mention the fact that I don’t play baseball anymore.  But it’s still a lot of fun to watch student athletes compete.   So after the Sox game ended, I switched to ESPN and saw the last two innings of the College World Series.  Congrats to LSU for winning their 6^th World Series title.  I’m sure the players and students are proud. 

On ESPN 2, the Yankees-Braves match up wasn’t exactly a World Series game, but it certainly wasn’t a bore.  I had completely forgotten how I used to watch these two teams compete in their own World Series back in the 90s.  It wouldn’t be the same because the Braves aren’t nearly the team they used to be, but it would have been cool to compare.  Regardless, I was watching the top of the 6^th inning during a Sox commercial break when I hear announcer Dave O-Brien (who also does his share of announcing for Sox games on the radio) say that the Yankees had yet to reach base.  What I hadn’t realized was that the Braves were already on their second pitcher after Kenshin Kawakami left the game after the third inning where he got hit in the neck by a line drive (I haven’t found much on mlb.com, but it seems as if Kawakami only suffered a bruise and that he’s going to be okay).  That would really have been something special if the Braves threw a perfect game, or even a no-no, with the use of more than one pitcher.  Unfortunately this was not the case.  Brett Gardner got a leadoff walk, but was then picked off on a terrible call by the first base umpire.   Although the Sox game had come back on by this point, I had to switch back and forth a little because Gardner was heated and Girardi was about to be ejected.  

And that’s not even the most exciting thing that would happen.  This morning as I checked out some of the highlights from their game, I saw a cool video of Mariano Rivera putting on batting gloves, getting some advice from his teammates, and stepping into the batters box.  Apparently he promised his team that he wouldn’t even swing the bat, according to Bryan Hoch for mlb.com.  Here’s his at bat – it’s fun to see the reaction of both Rivera and his teammates:

http://mlb.mlb.com/media/video.jsp?content_id=5227703&

But of course, the main focus of the night for us New Englanders was the Red Sox.  This game had some interesting stuff as well.  There was a scary moment when a shattered bat came right at Nick Green who thankfully is okay (they really need to ban maple bats – that was too close), Papi got another homer and recorded his 1,002 RBI, and Lester picked up his 6^th win (although looking a little shaky in the third).   I was texting my buddy Kyle last night about how Ortiz homers seem more exciting than all the others this year.  His response was better than I could have put it: “They’re all wicked exciting.  It’s cuz he went 2 months without any…now each one is like an event.”  Couldn’t agree more, Kyle. 

What a great night of baseball.  Now, who’s ready to see Smoltz pitch tonight?!

Keep the Faith!