For a game that started out like happy hour at Thunder Mountain, it slowly devolved into a torturous, horribly-umpired affair, ultimately crashing with Hindenburgesque splendor around 1:30am, when Mike Timlin–the human white flag–came on and walked three (one intentionally) before giving up the sac fly that sent us all to bed.
An absolute crapslap of a game that it’ll take a while to digest, but the Cliffs Notes version goes like this: Commander Kick Ass was reduced to Gomer Pyle, knocked around like the chubby kid at summer camp, and dragged out for one inning too many by Sir Teets. Also, the bats simply couldn’t deliver when we needed them most. Take the first inning as microcosm: With two outs, Jason Bay cracked a two run double, then Lowrie walked, and Kazmir was on the verge of imploding. But then Tek, who never met a rally he couldn’t sit on and kill, struck out swinging… and from there, leaving guys on base was the story of the night for the Sox. Ellsbury went 0-for-6. Kotsay went 0-for-6 (prompting the musical question, what did Sean Casey do to piss off Tito?). The Large Father, who really needs to start f@#king hitting if we’re gonna roll back into the World Series this year, went 0-for-3 with a couple walks. What has happened to the King of Walk Off Madness? Is he reeling from a Manny-free existence? Oh, and Lowrie and Tek, a combined 0-for-6, were essentially useless with bats in their hands.
But, on the bright side, we got the split, which is really what I was hoping for last week. Two would’ve been sweet, but come on. The way these teams slam against each other, the ALCS is going 6 or 7 games. Accept it.
First team to win 3 moves on. And we’ve got Lester at Fenway on Monday.
I like the sound of that, people.
