1-1, or Anyone's Series

As I sat at my living room table early this afternoon eating a delicious brunch of pancakes, bacon (OJ & brown sugar-glazed), smoothie and coffee, reading the Sports section of the Boston Globe, I had some time to digest the enormous shit sandwich that Red Sox Nation was served up in the wee hours of the morning during Saturday night's ALCS Game Two.

And, despite having forgotten the taste of a Red Sox-made diarrhea hoagie, I immediately remembered why I do not seek out such fare.

Last night's game was the first in what could become a series of epic ALCS games, at five plus hours in length. The much-vaunted pitchers' duel didn't materialize (as much as it didn't in the lopsided Game One). Schilling was ineffectual, giving up 9 hits and 5 runs in 4.2 innings. Carmona looked much better, but he came out after four innings after surrendering four runs. The Sox lineup's approach was amazing to watch. As nasty as Carmona's inside sinker was, for the most part the Sox were able to lay off it and get him to throw strikes. He was up to 100 pitches by the end of the fourth after having to hurl pitch after pitch to the patient, disciplined Sox batters.

The game was an exciting one for ten innings. Cleveland pulled out to an early single-run lead, but the Sox came back to tie it when Manny was walked with the bases loaded (for the 2nd time in as many nights) and Lowell hit a 2-RBI double (for the 2nd time in as many nights). The Indians came back swinging next inning, scoring 3 and making it 4-3. Another run made it 5-3, but in the bottom of the 5th Manny took a Rafael Perez fastball on the outside corner and launched it into the Sox bullpen to tie it up. Lowell followed with a sweet shot off the Under Armor sign on the Monster to make it 6-5. MDC insisted on making it a tie ballgame in the next inning, surrendering a run.

The game became a battle of the bullpens, and both were good, with the Indians blowing the game open in the 11th starting with an RBI from ex-BoSox player Trot Nixon off the entirely useless Eric Gagné. The remainder of the inning was a gigantic poopfest, with Lopez and Lester serving up meatballs to the tune of six more Tribe runs. Borowski came into the bottom of the 11th with a seven-run padding with which to close out the disaster of a game.

Always bad to lose, but I wouldn't have minded as much if this ended up being a 7-6 squeaker by the Tribe in the 9th. When Gagné came out in a tie ballgame, I just knew the Indians were going to score. Zero confidence in him. That's not good. And I don't think one can argue with Tito's decision to use Papelbon when he did - two innings in the 9th and 10th - relying on Pap to keep the Indians' bats silent (which he did) and relying on the Sox' big sticks for the walkoff run (which Youk came oh-so-close to doing). I think most of the time Tito's strategy would have worked. The rest of the 'pen is too unreliable to play hoping to go ahead and keep Pap in reserve to close it out. He couldn't have closed out a 7-run deficit, for instance.

Betancourt is n-a-s-t-y.

Props to Trot:



Game 3 at the Jake: Matsuzaka vs. Westbrook. Series is tied up and it's back to square one. I'm confident, but we aren't in prime position to roll. Time to buckle down, hope Dice-K is on point and that Manny Ortez keeps putting up absurd offensive numbers.