Appeal to Baseball Gods

There are two reasons I want the Yankees to lose.

1) is, obviously, because I am a Yankee-hater. Which means, even if they have gone 9 years without a championship, that does not seem anyway near long enough. I'm a Sox fan. I want to see them suffering from a 100-year drought. Longer. I want them to have the longest Title-less streak of any Major League Baseball team.

In short: I hate the Yankees and want them to lose.

2) I'm not ready for baseball season to end!

I love winter and snow and bright cold days. But man, I hate early November, right when baseball end, and you have an empty spot in your schedule because you aren't checking how your team did last night. At least there are the Awards, but when none of your favorite players are really in contention, there's this sad silence from the baseball world. And I don't like basketball, nor do I follow football, so I am left clutching to baseball and waiting till next year.

So. Don't die yet, baseball! Hang on, Phillies! I want the full 7 games to be forced.

The New Red Sox

It used to be that you could count on the Red Sox to lose in the most spectacular way. As they said in Fever Pitch: "They don't just lose. They raise it to an art form."

All those infamous years that any real Sox fan has memorized. '46 and '75, '67 and '86... they made everyone think they were really going to win, and then they would lose in the worst and most unexpected way.

This year, we lost a different way. We lost in a way that we should have lost, when any other team would be expected to lose. The Red Sox, on the other hand, were pretty much expected to bounce back, but only because they were the Red Sox. So it came as a complete shock when they didn't.

Actually, now that I think about it... it's the same thing that happened last year. The Sox were down 3-1 in the ALCS, came all the way back to force a game 7, and then, just when everybody was sure they would pull it off (as they had, miraculously, in the 1999 & 2003 ALDS, and the 2004 & 2007 ALCS), they blew it.

I won't even try to place all of the blame on Papelbon. They played 3 games, not one, and they lost each and every one of them, with or without Papelbon.

Oh, Please, Gods of Baseball, please don't let it be an L.A. Subway Series. I don't think I could bear it, if the season came down to la-la land.

Red Sox baseball 2009 is over. Here come six months of baseball hibernation. I hate this part.

And when Joe Castiglione read those famous words of A. Bartlett Giamatti's at the end of the broadcast, that's when I fell apart.

"It breaks your heart. It is designed to break your heart. The game begins in the spring, when everything else begins again, and it blossoms in the summer, filling the afternoons and evenings, and then as soon as the chill rains come, it stops and leaves you to face the fall alone. You count on it, rely on it to buffer the passage of time, to keep the memory of sunshine and high skies alive, and then just when the days are all twilight, when you need it most, it stops..."

"What's not been a factor has been the Red Sox offense so far."

When they said that, in the bottom of the 8th, I was really hoping it would come back to bite them. But unfortunately, the comment remained terribly true.

But there was a bit more vintage Boston. You know, the tantalizing loss. Mike being the tying run at the plate and dashing all of our hopes just as they were starting to gain strength. It's coming back.

Now I want some 1999 vintage Boston, as in Boston losing Games 1 and 2 to Cleveland and then coming back to win 3 and advance. Or even 2003 Boston.

Plus, it's all in the patterns, and this one's worked out great:
2004: we beat the Angels in 3.
2007: we beat the Angels in 4.

So obviously it's gotta take all 5 games in 2009!

Postscript: Yet another complaint about Angels fans - today I saw one wearing what had to be an Angels golfing hat. With a diamond pattern.
And we complain about pink-hat fans? Evidently, it can be much worse.

A Whole Lotta Ugly

What an ugly game.

I think the best word to describe Game 1 of the Sox-Angels ALDS is FAIL.

Above all, this game was a prime example of the Umpire Fail. The umpiring was a joke, reminiscent of the 1999 ALCS. What baseball fan, who saw those plays, could actually believe that C.B. Bucknor missed the call?

Not the people who know that he's a horrible umpire. Major League players voted him the worst umpire in 2003. He was awarded the title again in 2006. Wikipedia isn't letting "new or unregistered users" work on his wikipedia page... because of vandalism.

After today's game, I can't blame anyone who would try it. (Whether editing wikipedia is a form of vandalism is another issue for a different blog...)

Then there's the Broadcasting Fail. Considering that this was TBS, it could have been much, much worse. But, after acknowledging that two LA baserunners were out by a long shot, though Bucknor called them safe, they had the nerve to say that "Red Sox defense has been good, but they have three errors."

Without any mention to questionable calls. Come on! Why point that out, if you know that two of those errors should go to Bucknor for Ugly Umpiring?

And, last but not least - rather, worst of all - the Red Sox Fail.

Because we can complain about the horrible calls all we want, but none of them prevented our scoring runs. That was all Boston.

Pitching was fine - Jon Lester allowed a few too many walks for comfort, and obviously Torii Hunter's home run was the key to the game, but he did very well. (Especially considering the two 4-out innings he had to play...) 3 runs should not be enough to beat the Red Sox.

But it was. With only four hits, and these scattered across the innings, the offense was practically nonexistent. No one even made it passed second!

Papi struck out three times! He, along with Jacoby and Youk, went 0 for 4!

This is not the Red Sox I know and love.

Luckily, Beckett is pitching tomorrow. Here's hoping he can get something going, and inspire some offense from his teammates.

The Angels deserve to lose if only for introducing that horrid eye- and earsore, the thunderstick. Call me a baseball snob if you want to, but those things are ugly. They deserve to be banished to the NBA. (I'm ashamed to read that they first broke onto the U.S. scene in my hometown of Portland, Oregon, but that was at a soccer game so I don't really care.) Dear Korea, next time you want to export some fan fun, please send us the singing!

Go Sox!

The Tiebreaker

And so it begins: the Phillies have just beat the Rockies and the 2009 playoffs are officially under way.

Yippee! October is here!

I woke up this morning and hurried to check the score of the Twins-Tigers tiebreaker (when I went to bed, it was 4-3 in the 8th inning). It looks like I missed an amazing game. I only hope it's an indication of the weeks to come!

It all seems a little unfair, though. Neither the Twins nor the Tigers were the clear winner after an entire season of 162 games, so how could it all be decided in one little game! (Okay, it could have been littler, seeing as it went into extras...)

And, one little close game. A difference of only one run to determine the division champion, and teeter-tottering scores through all 12 innings.

It doesn't seem like a fair way to choose a winner. I always think of as an even-handed game, with its best-out-of-five/seven-game-series. But, then, no one said it was fair - and as a Sox fan, I've seen plenty to prove it.

And, after all, whichever team won, the team from the Central Division would still be the worst of the four AL playoff contenders, and have a lower winning percentage than the Texas Rangers, who didn't qualify.

Anyway, I'm glad the Twins won. It may be hypocritical, as a Red Sox fan, but I like the whole culture around midwest baseball. The honest way they work, the middle-class type of team. The Red Sox are, unfortunately, like the Yankees - up in their own little penthouse, in one corner of the country, the two of them hitching free agent prices higher through their competitive offers. The Twins are the way baseball probably should be. Less flashy, but still amazing, exciting, and always managing to thrill you.

Okay, I guess the Tigers are that way, too. But the Twins have Orlando Cabrera, and ya gotta like Orlando Cabrera. Especially the way he picked up the pieces for us when the Red Sox management surprisingly and cruelly disposed of Nomar in 2004.

Also, I've been to the Twindome, and I loved the atmosphere. (Now there's an ironic sentence.) The people don't have to be diehards, and still it seemed like a place where everyone not only knew the game, but truly enjoyed it. Not like the games at Seattle, where families come for seven innings and a souvenir picture of the kids with their hot dogs, and where the attendance rises and falls with the winning percentage. Coming from a city that seems to take baseball for granted, it was nice to find a place where people valued it.

So, basically, I'm rooting for the Twins in the ALDS because I had a good experience at their ballpark.

And because I have two teams. You know the ones. The Red Sox, and whoever's playing the Yankees.