Sports Writing

The familiar DUN-DUN sound…. YANKEE STADIUM, 161st ST, THE BRONX, NY. 9/17/04, 10.13PM. Manny Ramirez (Manny Ramirez) is suspected of aggravated robbing of a homer. Det. Reynaldo Curtis (Benjamin Bratt) speaks to the shady-looking witness, Miguel Cairo (Miguel Cairo). Cairo gibbers unintelligbly about how he can’t believe he saw that. Curtis: “Something about Cairo’s manner bothers me”. Det. Lennie Briscoe: “You gotta speak slower, Cairo.” Lt. Anita (S. Epatha Merkerson): “The video footage seems pretty conclusive though. Bring him in. And better find that mysterious Sox fan who got out of the way while you’re at it.”

There are times when all’s right with the world, when everything comes together into a nexus of pure unbridled joy. On a day which started with inpropitious omens - the Manny homer reversed - we saw comedy in Cairo’s disbelief, a stirring recovery by the entire lineup, and finally the epic collapse of Rivera, brought down by the failure of his fellow trooper, Kenny Lofton, to “catch the ball”.

The familiar DUN-DUN sound… FENWAY PARK, BOSTON, MA. 9/16/2004 9.42PM. Curt Schilling and Terry Francona are hauled up on charges of misdemeanour overstaying in the 8th inning. “Let’s go, Curt,” says Det. Lennie Briscoe (Jerry Orbach). “You’ll have plenty of time to practice your Boston accent where you’re going”. Det. Ed Green (Jesse L. Martin) to Francona: “no Greek God is going to save you now”.

“They never let up. When you slip up, they take advantage right away and there’s nothing you can do about it.” - Rocco Baldelli Schilling wavered a bit in the 8th, but let’s just say, the man is as good as advertised. 20 wins. Let’s put it this way: the win is a somewhat dubious stat, but if you win 20, you can’t be all that bad, to say the least. The Cy may be Johan Santana’s to lose, but the ALDS/ALCS/WS MVPs are still up for grabs. Much cleaner game then yesterday’s, with the bats waking up nicely, and showing that killer instinct, grabbing the other team by the scruff of the neck, shaking it, and not letting go.

Rangers fans weigh in on the Francisco chair-throwing incident. Wow, the rumours about what the heckler said sound bad. Still doesn’t mean he should’ve thrown the chair, but what makes a whole bullpen, which is probably used to heckling, snap like that? Quote from a spectator:

Sox blogs, they’re everywhere! Like kudzu. Or Adam Hyzdu. Here’s Neophyte Girl, not purely a Sox blog, but has some content.

Hey, at some point Dick Wolf’s gotta run out of things to make Law & Order shows about. Next on LAW & ORDER: RED SOX The familiar DUN-DUN sound… FENWAY PARK, BOSTON, MA. 9/16/2004 8.58PM.

Poor Randy Johnson. Sets the record for strikeouts by a lefty on a day with the second-lowest ever attendance in the BOB, and in a season where the D-Backs have collapsed.

A stumbling performance today, but a win is a win is a win. Was Wakefield left in there for 5 innings to qualify for the win? He was clearly struggling in the 5th, but I guess that either shows Tito’s faith in him, faith in Brazelton’s deficiency, or just good ol’ unwritten rules: you don’t yank if your starter has a chance at the win. Good work by the bullpen today, with the exception of Leskanic. It was really interesting seeing Mendoza up there with a close lead, I think Tito’s finally coming round to the fact that somehow Ramiro’s refound his touch. It’s nice to see this on the box score:

File this under “I knew it was great, but I didn’t know it was this great”: in terms of baserunners per inning pitched, Pedro’s 2000 season outshines Bob Gibson’s 1.12 ERA season in 1968, or Koufax’s 1963-65 run of greatness.

I’ve always thought Jose Melendez’s “Keys to the Game” to be one of the most entertaining parts of the Sons of Sam Horn Game Threads, particularly when he riffs on interesting tangents. Here he weighs in on the meaning of Ichiro, specifically as an Asian athletic role model. I guess personally I’ve never seen Ichiro as a role model, but then coming from Singapore there’s quite a stark separation between the Asian ethnicities, and so the Japanese are really seen as coming from a different ethnic group. But I do like the increasing international flavour of MLB. I always get a big kick out of the fact that Bruce Chen is Panamanian. (1.73 ERA. Why can’t we get players like him? Oh wait. Heh.) Throws people’s assumptions about links between nationality and ethnicity into wack, which is fine for someone like me who has Jamaican cousins. Bruce Chen, Ramiro Mendoza, Mariano Rivera. That’s a pretty decent pitching staff to throw into the World Cup.

Well… Trot Nixon is back and hitting against righthanders. That good bit apart, why do I get this sinking feeling every time I look at the schedule and see a rookie starter? Kazmir came as good as advertised.

Former Sox farm-system boy Frank Francisco was arrested for throwing a chair in the stands at some heckling fans, and breaking the nose of an innocent bystander. Weird stuff. FF probably should be arrested - physical retaliation by a player is never the answer - but I really wonder what was said. Something about his Sept 11 birthday? From the ESPN report:

Random factoid: Pedro’s awesome 17-K one-hitter in the Bronx in 1999 is the record number of Ks of a Yankees team. That I knew. What I didn’t know was that Schilling is tied at #2 with a 16K performance, back from his Philly days.

“Woke up this morning, got yourself a gun” Alabama 3, “Woke Up This Morning” Bleah, bleah. Monday morning 8am is not the time you want to find out about a Sox shutout loss and a rollover by those damn Baltimore birds. What’s up with random pitchers like Lilly and Meche suddenly discovering their touch against the Sox? At this rate, I’m much happier to see Hudson, Mulder, and Zito on our schedule. Someone on SoSH noted that this was a really light-hitting lineup with Reese and McCarty, and without Ortiz. I tried to be the optimist then, thinking that infield defense helps Lowe more than anyone, but I guess there’s such a thing as taking pure defense too far. Just as well I have work to throw myself into.

Derek Lowe meets Gil Meche for the final game of the Seattle series. When I try to picture Gil Meche, I always picture Gil from the Simpsons. “Oh, lord, my hot plate. I only had two payments left!”

Bronson Arroyo, man of corn rows, how does your blond hair grow? As I learnt from watching NESN today, Bronson was responsible not just for his cornrows, but for Trot Nixon’s mohawk. Perhaps he needs some training at Blaine? But while he may be no Vidal “I was an Israeli commando” Sassoon, he can flat-out pitch. The only threat from Seattle against Arroyo today was in the 3rd inning, and that was thanks to a fairly measly infield single from Dobbs followed by a single from Wilson. 7IP, 4 hits, 0ER - Bronson keeps up his reputation as a killer on the road.

At the end of July 2001, I left my East 28th St apartment in New York to reenter the military in Singapore, flying out of JFK through Eero Saarinen’s glorious TWA Terminal. I spent my second-last night in New York in the shadow of the looming towers, roaming through TriBeCa, gazing up at their lights, gaping at their magnitude. I knew I would miss the city, its energy, the confluences of worlds compressed into its five boroughs.

Danger Will Robinson! After going 0-5 against rookie starters they have not seen before, the Sox will see another one Tuesday when [Pedro] faces Tampa Bay’s Scott Kazmir in the opener of a three-game series at Fenway Park.

Facile credo, plures esse Naturas invisibiles quam visibiles in rerum universitate. Sed horum omnium familiam quis nobis enarrabit? et gradus et cognationes et discrimina et singulorum munera? Prelude to Samuel Taylor Coleridge, The Rime of the Ancient Mariner