I’m torn. I can’t decide if that was more of a debacle or a clusterfuck. Shut down by a 21-year old making his MLB debut. Four errors. Runners left stranded. Wakefield bitch-slapped for five innings. Just bad baseball. Another loss, another rainy game, and now another rubber game to try to save the series.
Hard to believe, but there were some positives last night. Trot Nixon making his own private highlight reel in right. Millar going 2-for-4. Manny doubling to center instead of grounding weakly to third. Halama and Mantei pitching well. And a late-inning surge that fell just short. And props to Terry Francona for immediately coming out to argue for Renteria. The guy had a frustrating night at the plate and apparently used some colorful language to let Andy Fletcher know. He broke the record for fastest ejection by almost two full seconds. Tito rocketed out of the dugout to take up the cause while Papi dragged Edgar to safety. Tito tried, but Fletcher wouldn’t ring him up.
We can take some solace in the fact that the Yankees lost. The Unit got smacked down while Yankee hitters did nothing against Kris Benson. Today they get Pedro. But we need to take care of business at home. No scoreboard watching. No players running around the infield like a monkey trying to bang a football. We need good baseball. Even in Friday night’s win, I watched the ninth with something like the morbid fascination of driving by a highway wreck and wondering if there’s anybody dead in the mangled car. No pleasure watching that.
Pitching. Fielding. Hitting. Sounds easy enough…
