Jacoby Ellsbury – 6 for 14 in his return to the line up. (Photo by Keith Allison, c/o Flickr.com)
For the better part of this weekend, I was in enemy territory… the Empire State. Our trip started at 8:30am on Saturday and ended at 3:30pm on Sunday. In total, we spent about 15 hours in the car and about three hours at my sister-in-law’s 40th birthday party! We had fun… even if I did have the misfortune of overhearing some party goers discussing another baseball team… it was all “blah, blah, Yankees…blah, blah 20-something games over .500″ — enough to make me want to vomit into my wine glass. *sigh* Yes, I’m a disgruntled Red Sox fan. I’m not afraid to admit it.
I was pretty excited when we made it home in time to catch the end of the Red Sox game on the MLB Network… Yay! Ooooh, looks like they’re losing. Booo-hiss! From the looks of things, I didn’t miss much of a game. Here are the highlights, or I guess I should call them lowlights since we did take the L.
The good news — Jacoby Ellsbury had two more hits. And Clay Buchholz, just off the DL for a life threatening internal bleed, struck out eight! The bad news — Buchholz also gave up four earned runs which turns out was just enough for the Rays. The Sox bats had a difficult time figuring out David Price and could manage just three runs Saturday night. Rays won 5-3.
Today was a much better day. If you stopped watching after the first inning, you might not agree with me. The Sox put up a run in the first when James Shields walked Daniel Nava and David Ortiz and Adrian Gonzalez smacked a single to drive in Nava.
Josh Beckett was on the mound today trying very hard to get his groove back but he had an even more difficult first. He allowed four singles and hit a batter giving up three runs. Well, that lead didn’t last very long! But that was it. After the first, Beckett settled nicely and ended up only allowing the three runs while striking out seven in his first win since May 20th.
The Red Sox line up was on fire. Both Ellsbury and Will Middlebrooks had three-hit days. Oritz, Gonazalez and Mike Aviles had two hits a piece. And Aviles and Nava both had home runs to power the Sox to a 7-3 win over the Rays.
That’s not to say things didn’t get dicey along the way. Alfredo Aceves came in for the ninth in a non-save situation and managed to nearly give me a stroke. He walked the bases loaded and with two outs, brought the tying run to the plate. Needless to say I was sweating like a hooker in church (or maybe that was because it was 987,865 degrees in my house after having it closed up all weekend.) Hideki Matsui put a charge into 1-0 fastball from Aceves but didn’t get it all and flew out to Cody Ross in right to end the game. *deep breath*
Click here for the not-so-exciting box score from Saturday night… but for the real thrilling box score from today’s game, click here, courtesy of the Red Sox, of course. Next up: the Chicago White Sox and Kevin Youkilis’ first trip back to Fenway since being traded. This three-game series also marks another big event. We could…very possibly…see Carl Crawford take the field for the very first time in 2012. Wow! I’m just breathless with anticipation (in case you didn’t catch it, that last sentence is meant to be dripping with sarcasm.) Aaron Cook gets the start Monday night.
