Tuesday, July 18, 2006

Well whadya know? Three poorly played games send Red Sox Nation into full-on panic mode. And the beginning of a fourth doesn’t engender much confidence. (“All you can do now is laugh. Its just that bad,” wrote one SoSHer last night as the score ratcheted up to 4-0, bad guys.) Then, quite suddenly, the baseball gods deigned to smile upon us again.

Perseverance.

Timely hitting.

Good relief pitching.

Lucky breaks.

Base stealing!

So that’s how you win baseball games.

It didn’t look so good at first. Teams like the Kansas City Royals are not supposed to be shutting teams like the Boston Red Sox out after six innings, are not supposed to carry four-run leads into the seventh.

But Doug Mirabelli decided to remedy that situation. Let’s just thank our lucky stars that home plate ump Jim Joyce was about as blind as James Joyce.

Coco Crisp, who officially broke out of his slump with his third hit of the night in the bottom of the seventh, drove home a slow footed Manny Ramirez. (Manny scored as the other Doug inexplicably cut off the throw. Perhaps he was preoccupied with Larry Lucchino and this silly, silly ball saga.)

Then, with Joel Peralta replacing the finally-hittable Luke Hudson, our chicken-parm-loving backup catcher stepped to the plate. He took a strike looking, then three straight balls. Then.... it shoulda been ball four. It should have loaded the bases. But it was called a strike.

Dougie grimaced, and wrung his gloveless hands around his bat.

Then he sent the next pitch into the Monster seats in left-center.

What’s that Tim McCarver used to say? “A walk is as good as a home run?”

Uh, no thanks.

From that point on, it all worked just like it should: Timlin came on to pitch a perfect eighth. Mark Loretta singled to center to lead off the ninth. David Ortiz hit a hard chopper over the head of his old buddy to move Loretta to third. Willie Harris pinch ran. Manny sent him home with a towering sac fly.

Jonathan Papelbon sealed the deal with a perfect ninth.

Dirty. Water.

The bad news? Tim Wakefield is still hurting, and it’s looking worse than we feared.

Rotoworld lays it on the line: “If Wakefield goes on the DL, it would put both Kyle Snyder and Jason Johnson in the rotation until David Wells returns.” There are so many frightening parts of that sentence, I don’t even know where to begin.

Maybe we could ink Ferrell to an incentive-laden three-month deal?

At least we’re not paying $25,680,727 a year for a guy who makes three errors in a game.

7/18/2006 11:42:10 AM by Mike Miliard | Comments [0] |  
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