Monday, April 14, 2008

Series 1 - @ Boston - Red Sox 2 - Yankees 1

After Dr. Reisman threw out the first pitch; and I'm still not sure how I feel about that. I'll let it slide on this occasion on account of him being a native of Parsippany, NJ, neighbor of my hometown: Denville, NJ. And after the Ortiz jersey was unearthed from deep in the new Yankee Stadium's concrete foundation, the Red Sox took two out of three from the Yanks, winning the rubber match 8-5 in which Philip Hughes looked spectacular, especially over the first two frames. At least Dice didn't look like a world beater. That was encouraging. As was seeing that Posada's arm has healed by leaps and bounds. That was evident late in the game Sunday Night. But overall, I can't complain about the outcome too much after a weekend at Fenway playing as poorly as the Yankees have been. You figure it's hard enough to beat the Super Sox on a good day let alone with an anemic offense and, our staple, poor pitching.


On a side note, I think they should have left the Papi jersey in the infrastructure of the new Stadium. As long as it's been buried there, D.O. has struggled to say the least. Boasting the lowest BA of any player in the ML, that qualifies, Papi has gone 3-for-43 overall and just 1-for-his-last-29 for a .070 average for the season to date. Secondly, all of that nonsense and drama shit the Red Sox rounded up in October of 2004 to pull off the miracle of miracles about believing, and idiots, and red sox nation, and reversing the curse. It appears now, four years and 2 Red Sox WS championships later, that the most enduring of their charming little mantras was reversing the curse. I'm not a superstitious kinda guy and I didn't buy it at first as I thought it was just your standard Boston propaganda because they like the soap opera part of things more than the game itself. But, it has held true. The Yankees surrendered their streak of first place finishes, they have been dismissed in the first round of the last three MLB playoffs, but worse, Boston has meanwhile prospered. After witnessing all of the events that transpired to allow the Red Sox to win that ALCS after they had infinitesimal chances of doing so. The indefensible steals of Dave Roberts. The 2-out rallies of the Red Sox, pick which one was your favorite. Mariano Rivera. Mariano Rivera. Mariano Rivera. Tony Clark's ground-rule double over the, coincidentally, shortest fence in the Major Leagues that missed winning the series by a matter of inches. Getting eerie, isn't it? Never mind all of that. The Red Sox Nation believed that the idiots could reverse the curse! And I didn't even get into the topic of AA level ballplayers resurrecting their previously tepid careers one after the other soon after arriving in Boston (i.e. Millar, Mueller, Bellhorn, Ortiz, Damon). Or the incomprehensible ability of slumping players or generally poor players breaking out solely against the New York Yankees (i.e. Varitek, Nixon). The point is that the Trost should have left the jersey embedded in the stadium to allow the Yankees teams for years to come to experience the good fortune the Red Sox have enjoyed over the last 4 years. We gotta get it back.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

The eeriest thing of all, at least for me... was this. If you remember, Rivera had 2 outs in the 9th, was facing Papi (the most dangerous man not in a Twins uni), and had 2 strikes on him. In my mind and heart, I wanted nothing more than to blow Papi away by attacking his Achilles heel... the up and in heater. And Rivera, succumbing to my wishes did just that, and piped a 96 MPH fastball up and in. And what did Papi do... something he had failed to do 453 times that season... smack the up and in fastball for a run-scoring single. It was incredible and makes you believe in higher powers than players just using their abilities to win. The Red Sox were supposed to win that series... it just so happens that the higher powers wanted to toy with the hearts of Yankees fans worldwide.