now playing: the red sox versus the blue jays on mlb.com
boy. this week is going to cause many an ulcer in the stomach lining of redsox nation.
there’s a glitch in the matrix or something. there’s – as stephen stills would say – “something happening here…what it is ain’t exactly clear…”
teams that suck ass are eating the collective lunches of the contenders.
i’m not saying this strictly from the perspective of a red sox fan…i’m sure my friends who are yankees boosters are shaking their heads as well. i mean, come on – kansas city is on a tear, fer petes’ sake! and somehow, the yankees managed to lose some embarrasing games over the past month to teams like baltimore (lost 17-9 on tuesday), as well as the perennial losers toronto and tampa bay earlier this month.
and boston…well, they’re doing what they do best this time of year…hittin’ the snooze button.
millar, mueller, and nixon are a combined 0-for-infinity this month…the game i’m watching now saw them manage to tie the game on a david ortiz home run in the eighth with no outs, then manny walked, followed by a varitek single that sent manny to third. john olerud came up to bat in millar’s place and i thought, “you know…they might actually pull this off….”
but when olerud went down, i knew the inning was over.
and just like clockwork ferris mueller and trot dick-son sat ’em down, with manny on third base waiting to bring the potential winning run home.
and pitching…boy, oh, boy. bronson arroyo is the steve gutenberg of baseball….he keeps showing up, and everytime he does, everyone wonders, “how the hell does that guy still have a job?”
the sox have a kid, jon papelbon, who came in in the eighth and sat down the entire side with seven pitches. he gave up one hit in the top of the ninth, and that was facing their strongest hitters. so why is this guy sitting on the bench most of the time while they send in idiots like mike myers and that loser, chad bradford?
maybe it’s the subconscious need to create the drama and tension that red sox nation would, frankly, miss noticeably if they were to post largely W’s during september and not blow must-win/should-win games to teams like toronto and tampa fucking bay.
now, as i type this, the words “in play, run-scoring play” have popped up on the gameday screen with david ortiz batting in the bottom of the 9th in a tie game – so that tells me, essentially, that the game is probably over….ok, here we go:
David Ortiz singles on a ground ball to left fielder Gabe Gross. Johnny Damon scores. Edgar Renteria to 2nd.
ok, so once again, it comes down to Big Papi to drag the rest of these losers up to his level.
it’s as if ortiz is allen iverson and the rest of these non-productive uniform models are the rest of the sixers.
well, that means, essentially, that they’ve managed to stay only one game behind the yankees in the division, and should still be in the running with cleveland, depending on what they do. however, the final three games begin tomorrow – at fenway – with the yankees. and the biggest factor in these games is that there’s no more “keeping pace”. when one team wins, the other team loses (obviously) and there’s no more waiting to see if the opposing team on the other side of the rivals will help you out by beating your nemesis so that it doesn’t matter that you sucked that day.
there’s no more time to suck.
so listen up…millar, mueller, nixon, and all the rest of you shiftless bastards who have been content to ride papi, manny, and varitek’s occasional brilliance to the point in time where you’ve now arrived…
shape the hell up. it’s time to produce.
cowboy up, assholes.
...from the rear view mirror 