Cursed To First - Sox and Pats forever.

Photos - Red Sox vs. White Sox

Full Photoset

Fenway Zen

Bottom of the third inning. David Ortiz stood in the on-deck circle, preparing to face Jose Contreras with the bases loaded.

My immediate instinct was to cringe. Everyone knows what his numbers say this year, I thought. Everyone knows about the PED report and all the doubts and clouds that linger over Papi. This isn't like it would have been in 2005.

Except, I would learn, for one thing.

The wave of energy that rushed through the crowd as the PA announcer began to call Ortiz's name was physically palpable. People leapt to their feet, and a roar burst out as if released from a can.

By rights, Ortiz should've been out on the little squibber that rolled toward first base, ending the inning. It really should have been more cause for navel-gazing about the erstwhile slugger.

Instead, Contreras booted the ball and Ortiz was safe.

Given the circumstances, the opportunities for nay-saying were so ripe they were falling off the vine. Yet the crowd cheered as if he'd just smacked a liner through the shift and cleared the bases. 

I'd been away from the ballpark too long.

Later on in the game, when the White Sox narrowed the lead to two runs, the possibility that the 6-run third had all been for naught became a real one.

But the ballpark was balmy, the pace of the game slow and even. Sam and I were snapping pictures, trading (perhaps tasteless) jokes about stolen laptops when Clay Buchholz began to give up runs.

By then, I'd decided, it didn't even matter if they won. I'd gotten what I came for.

***

First came the wait through April for Papi to hit a home run. Just one home run.

After that came the wait for the second.

In the ensuing months, he had his moments, then slumped again. The park still seems to have a spell over it when he comes to the plate, but it seems more out of respect, most times, than anything.

In the months since those first and second homers, there's been another wait; the wait for Papi to hit one walkoff homer at Fenway. Just one.

Tonight, when it finally happened, it was a ringing, no-doubt blast out to the right-field grandstand, a homer that had Don Orsillo shouting out the call as Papi trotted the bases. It was a beautiful and satisfying thing.

I can only imagine what it must've sounded like at the park, having been among crowds that stood rooting and clapping and chanting for Ortiz in other big moments this season, as that homer finally carried out of there, the way it already had in so many of our minds.

Shadows on the Wall

As it turns out, yesterday was only a brief respite from a relentless pounding the Red Sox are taking in the second half vs. the Yankees.

It began with hope after a decent performance the previous time around. A maddening, unreasonable hope; not two days ago I was finally writing the Sox off. For good. Again. Then, the next day they made me look like a fool for doubting.

"That's what baseball fandom's all about," replied Sam when I told her this over text message Saturday night. Maybe, but this season has been particularly frustrating; if you can affect a stoic pessimism or the flaws in your team are minor, it's one thing, but there's nothing that will make you more irritable than hopes dashed repeatedly. Somehow they keep pulling me back in, and that's what I hate most about moments like the first pitch of tonight's game, which went rocketing into the home bullpen as if to say: Ha ha, suckers.

Even as far as 5-3, with the Commander still out there eating up innings and the game within reach, I forbade myself to jump back off the bandwagon (though truth be told I feel more like I've been dragging along behind it for a while).

Not a moment after that decision, Alex Rodriguez smoked one off Beckett, just over the fateful red line on the edge of the Monster. 7-3, Yankees, and a hush settled over Fenway Park.

Some bile has been spewed about the fact that Ortiz sat vs. Sabathia when he's a career .304 with two homers against the big guy, but as Tito explained, those numbers may be, ahem, a little stale. The 2009 Papi has a pretty even lefty / righty split: .229 against lefties and .230 against righties. In other words, he's sucked against both.

There's also the Varitek / Martinez succession controversy, but with Martinez in at first base that debate is moot, as is the Varitek / Martinez / Beckett catching triangle at issue after the series in Toronto, since tonight the Pitcher Whisperer (per Chad Finn) was behind the plate.

Before the game was over, a thread sprang up in the public forums on SoSH entitled, "What the holy hell is wrong with Beckett?" Theories were scattered, and many comments amounted to shrugs. Beckett has said in the past that people forget he is capable of just sucking eggs sometimes. Right now, that seems the most plausible explanation for his recent performances.

Unfortunately, mortality from Beckett is something this year's Sox can ill afford, which is why these smaller arguments, in the end, feel like rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic. A team built for the long haul can accomodate the fact that its top-of-the-rotation starters are not machines.

Already, scrutiny has increased on the way this team is constructed, and the recent off-season decisions made by the front office. It reminds me of the 2007 Patriots, who went out and got Randy Moss after an attempt Tom Brady to make do with spit and bailing wire at wide receiver went over rather badly in the AFC Championship game.

That debate is for the Hot Stove, though, and right now it remains the dog days of August. This month, the Sox have held their own against weaker teams like the Jays and roughly equivalent teams like the Rangers, but the Yankees have played as if possessed by spirits. The way these teams have matched up before and after the All-Star Break has been ridiculously uneven; before, the Red Sox racked up 8 wins, and after, they've managed only one -- yesterday.

The Sox have Wake and Daisuke returning from injury, which will hopefully mean Brad Penny gets the Matt Clement treatment, and yes, there is a chance they could return as their ideal selves, the offense could heat up to its potential, and then the entire complexion of this thing could change.

And yet even as I write that, feeling just a glimmer of that pain-in-the-ass hope creeping back in, the memory of tonight's fifth inning jumps to mind. Tonight, it's hard to imagine much beyond this malaise until a "hard reboot", as they say in the trades, can happen once the season is over.

Uhm...?

I hate the sound of breaking glass, originally uploaded by Netream
(modified)

Dear Boston Red Sox,

Make up your minds. One way or the other. Either or.

Put me out of my misery already, or figure out what the major malfunction is, and fix it.

Sincerely,

--Beth

The Friday Night...what?

I hate the sound of breaking glass, originally uploaded by Netream

Picture, if you will, a frail and fragile Hope, embodied as a tiny, somewhat amorphous, furry thing, one with gigantic, brown baby-seal eyes that blink at you beseechingly.

That was the Hope I had after the Sox swept a team! on the road!! (even if it was the Blue Jays) and, while they lost the series, still authored that amazing comeback on that Friday night in Texas.

I wasn't thinking this Hope had legs. But there it was, just the same. I wrote a glass half-empty / half-full post. Things had reached...equilibrium.

Picture, if you will, an 18-wheel, tandem, Mack truck, one with a huge NY symbol on the front in Christmas lights. Picture it bearing down on a squealing Hope, then striking, flattening, and obliterating Hope into fragrant road pizza by the side of Rte 128.

That would be my best description of how it felt to watch the first three innings of last night's ball game.

And yes, I only really watched the first three innings. Oh, we were set up at my friend Ryan's house with pizza and bubblies, watching eagerly on his big screen TV as the game began. Our speculation on what would happen in the game, in retrospect, was almost...cute. Ditto the blog previews I read leading up to 7:12 pm, many of whom were caught up in the Tek / Martinez controversy or wondering whether Brad Penny had another start in him like the one he showed against Detroit.

By the third inning that half full / half empty glass, if I may mix my metaphors a bit, had us all a little better acquainted with what it's like to be David Wells.

Back on our couch, we flipped to the Little League playoff game between Peabody, Mass. and San Antonio, TX, which began in a taut pitchers' duel. Sure enough, by the fourth inning of that game the Boston affiliates were getting crushed.

Even our Little League team was losing. And when we found ourselves excoriating 13-year-olds for failing to make catches in the outfield, we decided a switch to Comedy Central stand-up would be best for all involved.

So that's what we did. We watched most of Jim Gaffigan's King Baby on the big screen TV with our pizza. Every so often my cell phone would buzz with text updates. After a while, I kept hoping the next one would be the one that said "You have exceeded your ten messages per day limit."

Eventually it came, but not until after we switched back again just in time to catch a 10-1 score, to which Ryan reacted by dry-heaving. We went back to Gaffigan.

"This is the kind of game that gets a nickname," Ryan finally said. "The Friday Night...something."

"Massacre's already been used. Twice," I replied. "Maybe...the Friday Night Failure?"

"The Friday Night Face-Smashing," he responded miserably.

An hour or so later, we switched with one eye open back to NESN. We were still unprepared for what we'd find. When we saw that impossible "20", Ryan let out an involuntary little shriek, a shriek very much like the one I'd pictured my little Hope making, with his very last breath.

Binary Thinking

Half Empty or Half Full?, originally uploaded by Bonnie Matthews.
That old feeling's back...

Two things I never liked from the begining: the Julio Lugo Experiment and the John Smoltz Experiment, respectively.

Two things I did like that have bitten us in the arse: Brad Penny and Rocco Baldelli.

Two things I'd prefer not to see again: Victor Martinez catching Josh Beckett (though I agree with Chad Finn that Beckett's outing last night was not at all his fault); Jason Varitek trying to throw out a runner. Or hit. Okay, that was three things total. Hrm.

Two more things I'd prefer not to see again: Josh Beckett getting lit up by a fourth-place team in the echoing purgatory of the Rogers Centre; a screaming liner nearly decapitating Clay Buchholz.

Two things I'd pay to see: An easy inning for Jonathan Papelbon. Also, the inevitable showdown between Dustin Pedroia and Don Orsillo, who called Dustin's shirtless dancing at Mike Lowell's charity event last year "gross" last night.

Two things I didn't think we'd see this week: Josh Beckett a non-factor. Clay Buchholz getting the better of Roy Halladay.

Two things that have fed my inner 'hope addict' about David Ortiz lately: 1) The way he leapt nimbly to his feet after a close slide at home plate yesterday, gesturing to the umpire that he was safe. He seems in good health, and with a defiant attitude to boot. 2) His hitting on this road trip-- two bombs in Texas, a bomb last night, and a healthy solo shot to left in the top of the second inning tonight.

Two thoughts on Theo Epstein: He deserves the intelligent criticisms being levied at him at the moment; at the same time, as Red also put it, "the guy's put together two more World Series-winning teams than I ever will," and I really don't want to see an old-school pitchfork mob at the GM's doorstep, no matter what happens this season.

Two competing images I have of the 2009 Red Sox: The team that got swept in the Bronx. The team that came back in Texas and held on in Toronto.

Two things I forgot to add: Welcome to the world, Dylan Pedroia. And the Rem-Dawg can't come back soon enough.

If you're gonna play in Texas, you gotta have better pitching* in the band

Jon Lester, you're all set. The rest of you...

I'm not sure what to say. Am I off the bandwagon? Well, I'm here, aren't I?

But let's be realistic. The Sox have gone on two road trips in the last several weeks, and during one of them they relinquished most realistic hopes of overtaking the AL East. During this most recent one, they have ceded first place in the AL Wild Card.

This isn't to say they're staring up at a 5.5 - 6.5 game deficit, as they are in the division. But they're now in a position where Tampa Bay is breathing down their neck, and after this weekend, Texas is at least looking like a worthy rival, if not the better team.

The despair would be worse, of course, had Friday night not happened. That night, as with Youkilis's freak-out last week, was easy to envision as the beginning of a 2004-style late-season resurgence. And it could still happen.

It could still happen. Right?
___________________

*And timely hitting. And the ability to prevent eight stolen bases in one game. But that didn't all fit very well.

Patriots Preseason Game 1 -- Standout Players

Making note of the standouts among the familiar faces, new acquisitions and draftees we finally got to see in action tonight--

Tom Brady -- All eyes were on Brady, of course, as he made his return to the field following last year's knee injury. The same guy who didn't take a snap in last year's preseason (and I swear, the way that actually prepared Cassel and let him get to know the rest of the team better, it's like they knew.) played two full quarters of football today, and was, as Over the Monster's Randy Booth put it in a Facebook status post, "in full on FU mode."

Even in his very first three-and-out series, he stood up in the pocket with confidence, and his throws were strong and mostly accurate. (It helped that that pocket remained lined with a full complement of starters throughout Brady's playing time.) He would throw two touchdown passes and one INT--on one of a number of long bombs to Randy Moss, most of which were completed. By the end of the first half, with the Patriots leading 21 to 6, Brady looked like he was actually...showing off.

I really hadn't taken for granted that Brady, despite all the encouraging reports, would necessarily be his old self right away. But...damned if it wasn't like he'd just always been there. He lofted floating passes into a running Moss's hands, sent a bullet whistling into the back of the end zone on his second touchdown completion. In front of him his linemen played as if their lives depended on it.

It was, to say the least, very, very encouraging. 

Julian Edelman -- The wide receiver drafted this year from Kent State played QB in college. Tonight, I was immediately reminded of Wes Welker watching him play, and he was certainly in the Wes Welker role -- catching quick outs in the flat and leaving defenders grasping at air. He also scored the Patriots' second touchdown in the second quarter with a 75-yard punt return.

Chris Baker -- This tight end signed in the off-season--a former Jet--caught both of Tom Brady's TD passes today. The Globe's Mike Reiss notes, "Baker played every snap [of the first half], an indication of where he stands on the tight end depth chart."

Randy Moss -- His chemistry with Brady just jumped off the screen after watching Matt Cassel fail to 'click' with the star wideout last year. Also, he rarely left Brady's side on the sideline, and several times was shown with a grin so wide, you would've thought it was Christmas and his birthday all at the same time. Aww.

Myron Pryor -- The former BC Kentucky nose tackle lined up next to Vince Wilfork to form the core of a 4-3 line, lending further credence to the theory hatched after the draft that the Patriots may switch to a 4-3 defense this year. I spotted Pryor early on when he stood up a double-team of starting Eagles offensive linemen with ease; he also sacked Donovan McNabb and flushed him out of the pocket in later plays.

Patrick Chung -- The heir apparent to Rodney Harrison blocked a field goal, and made some impressive open-field tackles early in the second half.

Jerod Mayo - Tied Patrick Chung for team lead with 5 tackles today, including a brutal shot to open his season on the Eagles' LeSean McCoy. There's just something electrifying about his energy, and, as my father likes to say, "he'll pop you one."

James Sanders -- Four tackles today for a defensive back I'd really like to see come up big in Rodney's absence. Chung is doing pretty well so far, but it's nice to have a strong veteran presence back there with a rookie.

Jonathan Wilhite -- The 2008 draftee was also among the team leaders today with four tackles and some great coverage on the long pass from McNabb in the first half. 

Terrence Wheatley -- Three tackles and seeming to pick up where he left off after he broke his wrist just when he was showing promise last year in a game against the Colts. 

Darius Butler -- The 2009 draftee out of UConn got some snaps in the first half and had 2 solo tackles. Was the player who finally picked off an attempted two-point conversion pass after Belichick put his second and third stringers through three consecutive goal line situations in the second half -- two of which they lost.

Note the number of defensive backs on this list. It is safe to say the Patriots have, ahem, acquired some depth at these positions.

Patriots season begins with questions

Some years, as a dual baseball / football fanatic, it takes me a while to get into each sport when their season first begins. Often this has to do with how bad my hangover is from the other sport - in 2003, I couldn't muster much enthusiasm for the Patriots until about halfway through the season after the excruciating Red Sox defeat in the pennant series with the Yankees. Post Super Bowl XLII, it took until well after Opening Day for me to have any "juice" to give to the Red Sox.

Not so this year. This morning my first thought was of the game tonight. I proudly wore my new Brady jersey around the office, and annoyed almost everyone I came across with an enthusiastic "Are you ready for some football?!" For a few special people, I also turned around and pointed to Brady's name on the back of my jersey.

While the years 2001 through 2005 were a peroid of insane, nuclear, all-consuming sports miracles in New England, the last few years have slowed down a bit for the Patriots. Heading into their first preseason action against the Eagles tonight in Philadelphia, the team opens a season that may just make or break how they go down in history for this decade.

As a franchise and a fan base, this is a new kind of pressure. Prior to the first Super Bowl win, the Patriots were historically a sad-sack franchise that had only rarely gotten a chance at a championship. They opened each season with pressure to reach the Promised Land. Fast foward a decade, and the same team, now routinely compared to the New York Yankees, is faced with pressure to follow up and cement its legacy as the dominant team of the 21st century's first decade.

In the grand scheme of things, I believe the Patriots will always represent this decade as a cultural touchstone and a lightning rod. They will still have the iconic quarterback of the decade, a crossover star, and the iconic coach. They will remain undoubtedly the most hated franchise among the national audience, and the most likely to generate a flame war on the Internet.

However, on a purely statistical basis, the Pittsburgh Steelers could rival the Patriots' record in the postseason if they win the Super Bowl this year. If the Patriots win the Super Bowl this year, on the other hand, they could end the between-the-lines debate once and for all. That's a big swing.

The Patriots have now failed in the postseason as many times as they've won. Brady dismantled the record books in 2008, only to lose last year's entire season to injury. As for the rest of the personnel, the Patriots begin this season with as many question marks on the roster--as well as among their coaching ranks--as any during the Belichick era.

This is a year that will make or break the Patriots dynasty. Tonight is the night we get our first taste of what is to come. I don't know about you, but I can't wait.

Guess who's back?

Tom Brady, originally uploaded by Mpls Ju.

I'll be reviewing the action over at MVN. Here's my game preview post.