Thursday, August 03, 2006
And thus Sir Mark Loretta (surely worthier of the title than the crass lump of flesh colloquially known as Sidney Ponson) got up upon his white horse, and, with the people around him chanting and cheering, proceeded to do nothing less than save the day.
Seriously. Loretta needs to have game-winning hits more often, if for no other reason beyond the fact that he gives great postgame interviews.
On the field, Tina Cervacio (-cio? -sio? I would look it up but no, lazy) asked him some question about how key was The Greek God of Walks doing it again, and so on? Loretta sort of half laughed and said, like he wasn't quite sure Tina knew this and didn't want to show her up on screen but found the whole thing amusing anyways, "He's not Greek, you know." Aww, Loretta. We all know.
And then in his official postgame presser after he'd showered and all, he brought it up AGAIN. He was talking about all the guys who had gotten on base before him in the inning and he said something along the lines of, "And the misnamed Greek God of Walks did it again...." It's like he's bitter about it or something. I don't know, he kept pointing it out and it was fairly adorable.
He also described Gonzo's play on Coco's impressive but somewhat wild catch-and-throw from center as "Michael-Jordan-esque". I assume he was referring to how Gonzo ranged so far to his right and both caught and subsequently threw the ball from a leaping position not unlike the Michael Jordan silhouette pose that shows up, in logo form, on all his gear.
When asked which was worse, getting mobbed by the entire team after his hit, or getting mobbed by just Ortiz, he chuckled and said that, "Papelbon got me pretty good... last time I hit a, uh, well, a walkoff homer, I kept my helmet on, so this time I was trying to get it off.... that's why I was kind of running away... but they got me pretty good." The best bit is that, on the replay, you can see it go down exactly like this. Loretta is leaping around in joy, then starts trying to pry his helmet off, while running in the general direction of the dugout. But the team is mobbing him and he's got Gonzo hanging off his back and Papelbon, who at this point looks like a crazy person, vaccuumed onto the front of his jersey, and everyone's pounding him on the head and not letting him get his helmet off. Eventually he does manage to kind of slip out from under it (the helmet, not the hugging), but not before they 'get him pretty good', and all are happy.
Also awesome? How The Eck kept calling Carmona's pitching pathetic. He wouldn't stop saying it. We all know how The Eck gets sometimes ('round here we call it Eck-tastic!) and this was him at his bitchy finest. He must have said the word 'pathetic' at least 10 times over the course of a minute. "As a Red Sox fan, you're happy, but in a baseball sense, that was PATHETIC." "Lester, when he's missing, he looks like, like he's missing on purpose [meaning his misses were close enough that, if you didn't know he was struggling and only saw a couple, you'd think he was purposefully pitching outside the strikezone to get guys to chase]. Not like THIS guy. This was PATHETIC."
It was as though Carmona's extremely wild pitching had somehow tainted the holy altar of closing duties and had, as such, personally offended him, The Eck, as a former closer, a fan of the game of baseball, and a human being. PATHETIC. I was nearly in tears.Labels: baseball, Mark Loretta, MLB, Red Sox, the Eck
5:06 AM
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