I'm not sure if my heart can take this any longer... hack, hack, gasp... beep..... beep... __________________...
Ok - I'm fine now.
Red Sox 7 NYy 6
All of the hype this week leading up to the first Red Sox / yankees series of the year has been Red Sox pitching versus yankee hitting. True to form (and as I predicted earlier today), the Bronx boys came out bashing with Axle-Hot-Rod hitting not one, but TWO homers (and he also tacked on a double and 3 runs scored) to give the visiting team a commanding 6-2 lead heading into the bottom of the 8th inning. Schilling was shaky, Pettite was excellent, the Red Sox struggled against lefty pitching AGAIN, and unless Joe Torre had NOT gotten knock-kneed and NOT brought in Mariano Rivera in the 8th inning (he did both) - we'd be looking at the 8th yankees victory in a row at Fenway and a dismal start to their 18 games together this year. So what HAPPENED?!?!
Remember those three things I mentioned in my earlier post? The sputtering hot/cold Red Sox lineup, the odd and shaky yankee pitching staff, and those hard-to-come-by tickets at Fenway? They all played pivotal roles tonight. And right now I'll bet there aren't many of those present who will remember any specific detail about how the Red Sox scored all of those runs (quick, quick - who scored the tying runs ahead of Crisp's triple? ha! told ya...) except for the fact that Rivera blew ANOTHER save at Fenway, and the bottom of the lineup for the Bostonians finally came through when we ALL least expected them to. And then to punctuate the matter, Axle-Hot-Rod couldn't come through in the 9th (heck, he did everything ELSE for them!) representing the potential winning run - and facing "the other Hideki" Okajima. Sweetness, oh the sweetness. Oh yeah - nice to see you again Dougie Mientkiewicz, sorry about that down-the-line thing you hated so much as a Red Sox 1B.
Can someone PLEASE look back through the annals of sports history and tell me how many times the yanks had scored the tying and go-ahead runs against us in the bottom of the 8th inning at the house that Ruth built only to leave us with one last gasp against Rivera in the top of the 9th. Gee whiz - I know it happened enough times to stick in my steel trap Red Sox memory... and then I wrote something in a blog somewhere about it. Oh yeah - like two seconds ago! I guess the euphoria hasn't worn off yet...
April baseball... 146 games left... I'm out of oxygen and my voice is almost gone... good thing these fingers and my spell checkur are in fine ordur...
Sheesh - this stuff is for psychos... LIKE ME!!! Go RED SOX!!!!!
P.S. Props to the Sox for their uniform "VT" tribute to the folks at Virginia Tech - Go Hokies and God Bless.
