Sports Writing

Schadenfreude’s all I got left for this season, and a fifth year of seeing the Yankees lose to a wild card team fulfilled it in spades. Welcome to Atlanta Braves territory, Joe Torre.

So the Purge begins. Wallace gets fired, no surprise, and so does Papa Jack. My general sense is that Wallace was never a good coach for young’uns, and with Papelbon, Lester (when he comes back), Delcarmen etc. coming up that did not bode well for his position. Perhaps it’s telling that in the end Wallace “received expressions of support from Schilling, Mike Timlin, Tim Wakefield, and Jason Varitek” - all veterans long in the tooth.

Sox 7 Jays 1 in a Julian Tavarez complete game. Who would’ve thunk it? The starter we were looking for earlier in the season, right under our very eyes.

Congrats to Big Papi for breaking Foxx’s old Boston HR record. Imagine what could’ve been without that heart scare…

This is the season of angst. The whole “why can’t we get guys like that” effect is in full play, what with Anibal Sanchez’s no-hitter… losing the 10-9 game to the Royals in the fashion the Sox did pretty much summed it up: pulling ahead with hope, before the bullpen brought it all back down. And then now… 6 runs in the top of the 12th? Eric Hinske hits for Manny Ramirez? They are trying to break out hearts, I think.

This Sox season feels like the Simpsons baseball episode where Mr Burns hires a team of ringers and everyone can’t play due to some random misfortune… (Ken Griffey Jr gets gigantism, Roger Clemens can’t stop clucking like a chicken…) Except, well, if comedy is tragedy plus time, in this case the comedy seems to have preceded the tragedy…

CART MASTER: Bring out your dead! CUSTOMER: Here’s one. CART MASTER: Ninepence. DEAD PERSON: I’m not dead! CART MASTER: What? CUSTOMER: Nothing. Here’s your ninepence. DEAD PERSON: I’m not dead! CART MASTER: ‘Ere. He says he’s not dead! CUSTOMER: Yes, he is. DEAD PERSON: I’m not! CART MASTER: He isn’t? CUSTOMER: Well, he will be soon. He’s very ill. DEAD PERSON: I’m getting better! CUSTOMER: No, you’re not. You’ll be stone dead in a moment. CART MASTER: Oh, I can’t take him like that. It’s against regulations. DEAD PERSON: I don’t want to go on the cart! CUSTOMER: Oh, don’t be such a baby. CART MASTER: I can’t take him. DEAD PERSON: I feel fine! CUSTOMER: Well, do us a favour. CART MASTER: I can’t. CUSTOMER: Well, can you hang around a couple of minutes? He won’t be long. CART MASTER: No, I’ve got to go to the Robinsons’. They’ve lost nine today. CUSTOMER: Well, when’s your next round? CART MASTER: Thursday. DEAD PERSON: I think I’ll go for a walk. CUSTOMER: You’re not fooling anyone, you know. Look. Isn’t there something you can do? DEAD PERSON: [singing] I feel happy. I feel happy. [whop] CUSTOMER: Ah, thanks very much. CART MASTER: Not at all. See you on Thursday.

So Papi has heart trouble. This season - this shining season which started with so much promise - gets worse and worse. It isn’t even 2002, that promising team that got GradyLittled out of the playoffs. It just seems to be a parade of bad news.

Damn it. Damn it all to hell. At least get one for pride. Meanwhile, I’ll be amusing myself with stories of jerkass Yankee fans.

Now that’s a way to extend a hitting streak. A sweet single. Boggs, Nomar, and Speaker up next on the Sox hitting streak record, and then where have you gone Dom DiMaggio?

I know, I’ve been extremely tardy about posting here. Went to Bangkok for work, and you know, one night in Bangkok makes a hard man humble… then something screwed up on my hosting (well, okay, I did: I hadn’t updated the expiry date of the credit card on store with the hosting company…). But Singapore Sox Fan is back.

Gah. Another late loss, and then a blowout. Willie Harris is a waste of roster space. On the “always look at the bright side of life"side, at least Tek seems to have been moved further down to other and Kapler seems to be hitting. But right now it looks like the good side of the “Way” Beckett trade was getting Mike Lowell…

“[It] was all right, but you have to grow up sometime.” - Johnny Damon, on his marijuana use (Link) Anyone surprised by this?

Those weren’t moon shots Ortiz and Howard launched: those were Mars shots.

The kids are all right. More than all right, they were pretty brilliant last night. Hansen, Papelbon - I’ve started espousing this theory that the way to judge Sox relievers is to look at the last letter of their names - those ending in “-n” (throw in Delcarmen and Timlin) give me less heart trouble that those ending in “-z” or “-e” this season. Hey, they always say evaluating relievers is a crapshoot - it’s about as good a method as any. But then Lopez was brilliant in getting Thome out.

I fell in love again all things go, all things go drove to Chicago all things know, all things know we sold our clothes to the state I don’t mind, I don’t mind I made a lot of mistakes in my mind, in my mind

Carl Crawford steals home. Good Lord. Am I glad I have a new Macbook that doesn’t play Windows Media - I’m almost afraid to fire up my old computer and watch it, even though were it any other team I would absolutely love to watch him - or anyone, really - stealing home.

That the Yankees lost 19-1 on Steinbrenner’s birthday to George’s hometown team does salve the wounds of the Schilling loss somewhat. But not totally. Anyway, watching A-Rod go 3-for-4 (when I woke up, only the Yankees game was on…) made me also think: maybe it’s not that he’s bad in the clutch. Maybe he’s the kind of player who’s especially good against bad pitching, even more so than normal players, and since in blowouts he ends up seeing the mopup guys a lot he feasts on them.

Because we have a shared interest in the Sox, I guess, Seth Mnookin e-mailed me to promote his Feeding the Monster book (very different from his previous investigation into the Jayson Blair scandal, I suppose - but here, I’ll do some free publicity and link to this interview with Curt Schilling).

Buster Olney complains about Manny not going to the All-Star Game: Francona, a good guy who is always willing to take a bullet for his players, is trying to give Manny as much cover as possible, saying that the slugger’s knee is hurting, that he – Francona – would prefer that Ramirez didn’t play, etc. But let’s face it: It’s a lot of bunk. If Ramirez can play in 77 of 81 games for the Red Sox, he probably can slog through a couple of innings and an at-bat in the All-Star Game.