Sports Writing

LOWRIE!!!! That suicide squeeze at the top of the 9th was over-managing, I think: Aybar is a lightweight with the bat, but still, 1 out, man on 3rd, there were a lot of other options. But what a game. What a game.

What a game. Awesome stuff - back and forth all the way. J.D. Drew is really making a post-season reputation in his Boston stint. What I don’t get though is why, for the penultimate out, the fans allowed Youks to make that (awesome) grab. Come on, surely a good fan would’ve interfered appropriately. Angels fans living up to L.A. laissez-faire stereotypes there…

Ah, that Jason Bay homer was so good. Incidentally - Jacoby, Jed Lowrie, Jason Bay, Jason Varitek, J.D. Drew, not to mention Jon Lester to Justin Masterson to Jonathan Papelbon. Is that a record for most number of players in a playoff game whose names start with a J? (And once again, why does “J.D.” stand for “David Jonathan”?)

Seems anticlimactic, the way the AL East was decided, the Rays and the Sox falling ass over teakettle to stumble to the finish. But congrats to the Rays, who’re as great a story as any this season - along with Cliff Lee individually. Now for the playoffs. Sox-Dodgers as the World Series would be classic. The 2008 Sox vs the 2003/2004 Sox (Manny, Nomar, Derek Lowe…). It’s almost like one of the sim games where you pit historical teams against current ones.

Still tight, but it looks like the Rays and Sox will be in the playoffs either way. I’m hoping for a Rays-Sox ALCS. Love the Sox, but I do appreciate what a good baseball story Tampa has been this year. Incidentally, I love Pedroia, but I don’t think he’s the MVP.

Mariotti’s always been a blowhard on Around the Horn (which I still find compulsive watching, if only to meet my American sports news jones), but I just thought it was funny how even Roger Ebert slammed him after he quit the newspaper business.

Damn, I typed in September for this post’s title, and now the old Earth Wind and Fire song is in my head, replete with falsetto chorus. “Ba de ya… dancing in September”.

19-17. From 10-0 up to actually being down 15-14, then 16-14. Baseball is a crazy, crazy game. Oh, and I’m glad to have Paul Byrd. Buchholz needs some time to find his mechanics.

And so the carousel went, and Manny got off. Or perhaps ’twas more a 3-ring circus. I think all 3 teams ended up winning somewhat with this trade: the Dodgers haven’t had a hitter like Manny for a while, and were criminally undervaluing Andy LaRoche anyway. Jason Bay’s a decent hitter, as long as tehre’s no expectation that he’ll replace Manny’s production purely through offense. And I hope LaRoche and Hansen, both full of promise but needing a change of scene, blossom at the Pirates. There’s no way of course that was truly fair value for the production of one of the greatest right-handed hitters of all time (even if he’s not the >1.000 OPS guy he used to be). But I suppose hands were tied.

Will they trade him or won’t they? I don’t believe, what with all the rumours of front office disenchantment, that the Sox will get good value for Manny. And so I hope not. It won’t derail the team - think Nomar being traded in 2004 - but still, must all these relationships end this way? Must Boston eat all its baseball superstars?

Buzz Bissinger bemoans the escalation of players’ salaries in a New York Times op-ed piece, and asks why they should get such salaries in a time when people are struggling to make ends meet. But that seems like the entirely wrong target. Why not go after the billionaires who actually own the teams, if the fact that too much money is sloshing around baseball and other sports gets on one’s nerves? Just because the player is the most visible target doesn’t mean he’s the right person to go after.

Joe Posnanski writes about Curt Schilling’s chances for the Hall of Fame, or rather rants about comparisons between Schilling and Jack Morris. I did like the results of the poll that asked “in his prime, who do you have to start Game 7?” - 37% said Pedro, 23% said Koufax, and 21% said Bob Gibson. Which I think reflects accurately who were the best pitchers in their prime - rather than any hoo-ha about “big game” pitchers.

No surprise that the Rays are legit - from the moment I saw Evan Longoria swing the bat I figured they would be that good. But man, the Sox splitting the series with the Yankees - when they had the Yankees by the throat - is really galling.

Ack, I don’t know what happened to my previous Celtics posts. But what an amazing run. And Game 6 was a clinic in defense. I can’t find the games on iTunes (unlike last year’s World Series), so it looks like I’ll have to find some way to get the DVD sent over to these shores.

What a game, and what a story. To think it all started with what in retrospect was a lucky car crash. The no-hitter was one of those ’true’ no-hitters - KC looked overmatched, and Lester looked like he could throw any one of his pitches anywhere he wanted, in any count.

Meanwhile, I thought this quote from Cynthia Rodriguez, on A-Rod passing out when his first child was born, was funny: “As tough and big as he seems, he is real wimpy around doctors or any type of medical situation,” Cynthia Rodriguez said. “I don’t know why I thought the birth of our child would be different.”

That was the best Wakefield start I’ve seen for a while. Nice for the team to get the shutout on a day that Paps and Okajima weren’t available in all likelihood.

The Wall Street Journal (of all papers) explores creative usage in baseball this season - I had noted the game in which Girardi elected not to start Ian Kennedy in case of rain, but missed Chris Resop playing both pitcher and LF in the same game, which sounded like a great move, even if it didn’t pan out in this instance.

Finally, crooked numbers for the Sox; finally, runs. That Moss homer to straightaway centre was beautiful (I love those homers to dead center). One of my favourite moments in the game, though, was Buchholz’s 3 straight Ks to get himself out of that 2-on, no-out jam. That curveball was making some of the Rays hitters look silly.

I’m loving the starting pitching, but not loving the offense. 5 great starts: Masterson, Beckett, Lester, Dice-K, and Wakefield, and yet the only wins in that span belong to a certain J. Papelbon. Um, the older J. Papelbon, that is. I’m wondering what the Fenway park factor looks like this season - surely it’ll look depressed by a woeful offense and masterful starting pitching?