 Tim Wakefield: Ready for action. Photo taken by Kelly O’Connor/sittingstill.net and used with permission. |
Today marks the beginning of a week of much baseball and fun for me. I have tickets to four games (one being a Pawtucket/Buffalo game – Javier Lopez and Kyle Snyder together again – sort of!) this week and Friday starts a weekend of “paloozaing” with no less than 35 of my closest friends. We have people coming in from Tennessee, California, Florida, North Carolina, Texas, Georgia, all over New England and even New Zealand for what promises to be a wild weekend!
So I’m having a little trouble sustaining my disappointment over the way the Boston road trip ended yesterday.
I could write about Nick Green’s errors or how many men were left on base. I could complain that two guys who have been coming up big for us (Bay and Lowell) left the bases loaded in an inning that would have won the game. I could talk about Rocco Baldelli taking his DH role so seriously that he mirrored the way Papi has been hitting lately. But what’s the point? I was encouraged by the pitching. Masterson, in probably his last start for a while, gave up nine hits and two earned runs in six innings. Maybe not poetry but he also struck out six so I’ll take it. He pitched well enough to win which is good enough for me these days. Delcarmen and Okajima were perfect in their appearances and Ramon Ramirez, who has been perfect all season, was just a victim of circumstances. So I have two ways to go, focus on the bad (the Blue Jays and Yankees both won again and the Sox are now three games behind Toronto and only a game and a half ahead of New York) or focus on the positives. I’m going with the latter.
Sox get a much needed (for all of us, I think!) day off today and start up again at Fenway tomorrow night against the Blue Jays. I’ve been telling people that I’ll start being impressed with the Jays when they start playing the AL East and winning. They didn’t face one AL East team in April and in May have played the last place Orioles (sweeping them in a three-game series) and the Yankees (losing that series two games to one with their only win against New York coming behind a Roy Halladay complete game). I don’t mean to insult the current division leader but I have high hopes for the Red Sox this week. The Sox miss having to hit against Halladay by one game. I have confidence that they’ll be able to take advantage of this.
Tim Wakefield on the mound tomorrow night. Since I’ll be up and out of the house much earlier Tuesday than on days when I’m working (road trip to Pawtucket!) and then heading to Fenway I really am hoping for one of his patented short games (culminating in a win for the Sox!). Tomorrow promises to be a long (but fun) day!