Tuesday, July 18, 2006
Ugh. Royals.
At the game on Saturday, I was keeping an eye on the out-of-town scoreboard to see how the Tigers were doing, of course. This happened to be the night where Verlander did his awesome Verlander thing and the Royals were shut out, but just the night before the Tigs had had to resort to a walkoff homerun in order to win, so I kept saying things like, "Yeah, Tigers still ahead! Woo! Look at that score! Woo!" over the course of our game.
SOME of the people I was with (not gonna name names or anything...) responded to these sentiments with mirth. "That's nice," they would say, "but it's the Royals." "Yeah, I saw that Guillen walkoff on Sportscenter... they were calling it [insert overexcited praising ESPN-used adjective here]. You can't have a [insert overexcited praising ESPN-used adjective here] hit against the Royals." Chuckle chuckle, giggle giggle, what good fun.
Of course the Royals went on to win the last game of the Tigers series and took a close one into the 8th inning against us today.
Point is, no one goes 0-for-162. Everyone's got to win sometimes, even the Royals and the Pirates of the world. So on the other side of the coin, someone's gotta get taken to task by the Royals on occasion. It's never fun and it's always a deeply shaming experience but, over such a long season, it happens.
The lineup we fielded yesterday had 5 guys hitting over .300 in it. The Royals had one. DeJesus. Dougie hitting a bomb is always cause for celebration and hilarity in Red Sox Nation, but when you get right down to it Dougie shouldn't ever have to hit a bomb to save the game for us. I'm sure he enjoys it, because then he gets to trot sedately around the bases instead of struggling to race his ponderous, square-shaped self onto the basepaths for a hit. But if it's his hitting that stands between us and a loss, we probably didn't play a very good game.
Wake's injury, or whatever the heck it is, is pretty troubling. He is up there in age, although no one thinks he's anywhere near retiring yet, not with the knuckleball. But if he's got a tweaked muscle in his back, well, he's not at an age where that sort of thing is going to heal quickly and elastically. I hope it turns out to be nothing much; he is after all signed to a contract with us for the rest of his natural life, and I'd like to get as much out of him as we can in that time.
Anyways. Photos.
Thursday's game against the A's was the one we lost in extra innings. Photos here, 'tho here are some highlights for the terminally lazy among you.
Zito looks back into the crowd.
Lester and Al Nipper looks like they're about to make out. They aren't, of course, but it looks that way.
Huston Street kisses his hand and looks up to the sky before taking the mound.
Go see the rest and enjoy.
Saturday's game, as luck would have it, was Schill's dominant outing and the only win of the series for us. Photos can be seen here.
Definitely a highlight. You can see Papi going in for his patented 'down low hug' on Craig Hansen near the middle there.Labels: baseball, in attendance, loss, MLB, Red Sox, Royals
4:19 AM
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