 Josh Beckett pitching, coincidentally, on April 12, 2008. Taken by Kelly O’Connor/sittingstill.net. Used with permission. |
Well, I hope your Easter was better than mine. Ended up spending the day in bed sick with some throat/ear thing (what am I, 6?) and missed out on all the holiday goodness. I did get to do nothing but watch baseball and sleep, which, when forced upon you, really isn’t as great as it sounds.
Especially when your team leaves 25 men on base.
I still feel like death warmed over (how long has it been since I had a sore throat? I think I forgot how it feels. Knives. I’m swallowing knives. WTH?) so this will be brief. Still in the deciding mode on whether I bring this to work or stay home and try to get rid of it without infecting the world. So if I stay home I might be “back” with more later today.
Josh Beckett started the day cranky, throwing over the head of Bobby Abreu when time out was called and he ended the day cranky in his post-game interview:
“I have yet to hit someone in the head and it’s not on my list of (expletive) to do.”
It was just an ugly game all around. The Angels losing their (expletive) should have helped the Sox, especially since four Angels and NO Red Sox were ejected from the game, but in the end it didn’t. Lobsters killed them. Absolutely killed them.
It was interesting how Joe West handled the ejections and reprimands:
“The Angels were the aggressors, that’s why they were ejected,” said crew chief Joe West, who also noted that Hunter threatened to fight Beckett. “They were the aggressors and Beckett was warned. We even charged the Red Sox with a trip to the mound, because the manager and the pitching coach were standing there when we separated everybody. They weren’t happy about that either, so we had everybody mad at us.”
I find it worth noting that Beckett was warned but not ejected. Seemingly West didn’t take offense to the trajectory of Beckett’s pitch in the way the Angels did.
There is one Minor League note: The PawSox lost their first game of the season on Sunday behind a really shaky Clay Buchholz. (As I suspected, Kyle Snyder did get into the game. Unfortunately, even though the Bisons won, he left with a blown save. Still, his outing wasn’t as bad as that outcome might indicate.)
Oh well. New day, new city, new series. Finally seeing Nomar play against the Sox tonight will be odd, to say the least. Jon Lester v Dallas Braden at 10:05pm EST for the A’s Opening Day. Be there, Aloha.