Tuesday, August 26

Sox take game one in New York

This was the game most sports analyst had the Yankees winning in the series. Wakefield coming off the DL, Pettitte pitching well, and a hot Yankees team was supposed to combine in a good start to the series for the Bronx Bombers. By the end of the night, A-rod was being booed and "let's go Red Sox" chants could be heard on the TV.

Timely hits allowed the Red Sox to initially trade runs with the Yankees and ultimately go ahead for good as they came away with a 7-3 win. While neither Tim Wakefield nor Manny Delcarmen were particularly good, they held the Yankees at bay and kept the Sox in a position to win the game. (In the end, that is all we can ask from Wakefield)

The Red Sox used a balanced hitting attack and smart base running to consistently push across runs through the middle innings. Jason Bay picked up where that guy from Washington Heights left off, going 2 for 4 and driving in 2 runs in his first expierence of the Red Sox/Yankee rivilary. Every hitter in the lineup had at least 1 hit (save for Dusty...weird).

On a separate note, I find the booing of A-rod to be quite obnoxious and annoying by Yankee fans. Believe me, I am certainly not a fan of their third basemen, but he has been in their lineup day in and day out, trying to bring his team back into a playoff race (perhaps trying too hard) and they boo him after failed attempts at the plate and successful plays in the field just the same. Quite simply, he is giving it his all but not performing up to his insanely high standards, and getting killed for it. If he was dogging it down the line, sitting out with a "fake injury", or bad mouthing the fans then go ahead and boo him, but booing a guy who is hitting well over .300 with 28 taters and 78 rbi isn't what true baseball fans are about.

Anyways, back to the game, combine tonight's victory against the Yankees with a Tampa Bay loss, and the Sox are now 3.5 games behind in the division race, and 6 games ahead of the fading Yankees in the Wild Card.

ITM Note: In AL Central action, The Whitesox won 8-3 over Baltimore and the Twins are in a late night matchup against the Mariners.

It was a good start to an important and potentially symbolic series in the Bronx. Certainly New Yorkers don't want to remember the last time the Red Sox played in "The Stadium" as the time the Sox buried their playoff chances. Until tomorrow....

6 comments:

Joe Murph said...

Couldn't agree more as to A-Rod. I just don't understand booing a guy for trying and failing. It's the hustle plays that bother me. nt

Anonymous said...

Anyone else hearing Kotsay to Sox rumors? Apparently he got pulled from game today.

Anonymous said...

I was pretty surprised that Wakefield did as well he did. The Yankees hit him well even on good days, and it seemed like his knuckle really didn't have the same dance that it usually does. Can't help feeling like we got away with one.

Anonymous said...

As of last night ESPN was reporting that the Sox and Kotsay were close to a deal....as a result of JD Drew's trip to the DL.

I agree with the comment above that Wake pitched pretty well and it felt like we stole a game last night. Not that i'm complaining, win one out of the next two and you have to think the Yanks are in real trouble, win them both and they're done.

Tim Murphy said...

Arod is the least clutch player I can remember watching. Did anyone see his numbers with runners in scoring postion, batting.250 this year. I'm sorry for the amount of money he's making and his level of talent I'd be less then happy with him if I was a yankee fan. It might not be a fair shake for arod, but no one remembers a home run off the royales in the top of the 5th inning, its the bases loaded situations against the sox that make the highlight reel.

Also, the yanks are underachieving as a team, as a fan of baseball, I can sympathize with frustrated yankee fans. However I do take great delight in their failures this year.

sox sweep, you read it here first.

Anonymous said...

Just a thought as to A-Rod. He really does seem to take the booing and the failures hard. He really wants to go better. And if I'm to believe Al Leiter, this is the worst thing for him right now. On the YES broadcast, Al Leiter swore, and would not give in on this point, that in game 7 of the World Series, he approached his game absolutely no differently than a game in April or May. He said he never once stepped on the field thinking that his teammates really needed him to pick them up. He just made a gameplan with the catcher and that was it. He thinks that one of A-Rod's big failures is he's never learnt this trick of the pro athlete for some reason. Al could be lying, and maybe what he's saying is just a variation on one pitch at a time crap, but still, his sincerity as to it caught me.

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