I’m not much up on my classic Star Trek, but I believe that there’s an old Vulcan proverb stating, “Wanting is better than having. It is illogical, but often true.”
This can typically be said for marquee pitching match-ups. You wait and you wait and you wait for Martinez vs. Clemens in the 1999 ALCS. You watch the news reports comparing the two hurlers. You chew up the endless Globe and Herald articles. You refer to your dogeared copy of The Quotable Gammons. You buy the T-shirt, order the commemorative pizza, rub the Special Edition Pedro vs. Rocket Hair Gel into your scalp. You slide on the foam hand, shift uncomfortably in your Official MLB ALCS cargo pants, soak in the four hour pre-game ESPN special, grill up the Pedro vs. Rocket Franks and gently caress your WEEI Krazy K card. Then, twenty minutes later, in a near-apocalyptic display of anticlimax, the Sox are up by 7 and Roger’s hosing down his man-cans in the visitor’s shower.
So I was a bit reluctant to throw myself headlong into Beckett vs. Pedro. If we can keep the streak alive, great. If it ends, we’re losing it to Pedro, I reasoned. Still one of the game’s best. I could deal with that.
A big chunk of last night’s potential drama was sucked out on Tuesday night. Pedro gets a rousing ovation, answering the seemingly million dollar question, “How will the fans react?” Last night, he gets another. It is thunderous. It is majestic. It is well deserved.
Then we put on our “kickin’ pants” and go to work on him, tagging him for 8 runs and chasing him out after 3. The game more or less decided before I’d even hit my second beer.
But the win streak stands at 11. And, as my man Joe B. noted in an e-mail, we got to give Petey the standing O, then got to kick his arse. And that’s the best of both worlds, isn’t it?
