Daniel Nava, currently batting .370 with 7 rbi in 8 games. Photo courtesy of Kelly O'Connor/sittingstill.net and used with permission.
Sweeps make me happy, especially when the majority of them happen on national television. As much as Fox and ESPN tried to make it about Manny Ramirez (and Lord knows ESPN, with a little help from Curt Schilling, went annoyingly out of their way to make it about Manny) it was all about the Red Sox this weekend.
Manny’s reappearance at Fenway threatened to take the attention away from the recent great play of the Red Sox. This is why ESPN and Fox stole the games away from NESN this weekend and while they most likely brought in the desired ratings, there had to be disappointment that there wasn’t more booing, there were no “Manny being Manny” antics and, especially, that Manny didn’t bring the Red Sox down.  Red Sox fans who showed up at Fenway planning to cheer for Manny and hoping to see him do well got a few hits, a home run and even a stolen base. Those who wanted him to go down saw him strike out against Scott Atchison. The weekend was a win-win for all Red Sox fans!
Clay Buchholz now has 10 wins under his belt and the Red Sox head to Colorado riding a six-game winning streak (and two series sweeps). The Sox are tied for 2nd place with the Rays, only a game out of first place. Tomorrow night the Sox begin their west coast trip to finish off interleague play for the season with Jon Lester on the mound. The baseball gods are being a little bit generous this week, as all of the Rockies games begin at 8:40pm ET – which means it won’t be as painful to do the Tuesday night live chat as I had anticipated. Which means we’ll be here tomorrow night live chatting it up!
I don’t regret my decision to not be at Fenway this weekend. Manny came and went and the Sox are sitting pretty with another 3 games in the wins column. I received an email from someone identifying as a Dodgers fan last night that read: “Sox still missing Manny! Enjoy failure without him!”.
I’m not sure how this weekend equals failure for the Sox or their fans…but if this is failure, I’ll take some more please.