The Red Sox came out strong yesterday in the Bronx, beating the Yankees 4-1 in a nationally-televised game.  Jon Lester put up seven strong innings, allowing five hits, one run (a Curtis Granderson solo shot) and striking out four while allowing only two walks.  Honestly, I didn’t think he’d pitch this well, especially since he let the leadoff guy get on base in each of the first two innings.  But, he turned it around, and the Sox lineup helped him out.  Adrian Gonzalez ripped a first-inning two-run bomb to set the tone, and Nick Punto scored Pedro Ciriaco on an RBI single in the fifth inning.  The Sox tacked on an insurance run when Scott Podednik scored on a wild pitch from Cody Eppley in the ninth inning.

Jon Lester (Keith Allison, c/o flickr.com)

Ciriaco went 4-for-4.  What is it with this kid?  And, Punto had a great day at third base – he flashed the leather a couple of times.

Also, a moment of excitement in my house: when Craig Breslow came on to pitch in the eighth inning, Breslow and batterymate Ryan Lavarnway formed the first all-Yale University alumni battery in the major leagues since 1883.  As the wife of an especially enthusiastic Yalie, this was a Very Big Deal, and we spent most of the time Breslow and Lavarnway used inducing Robinson Cano to hit into a double play facebooking about it.  For God, For Country, And For Yale, and all that.

Here’s a link to the respectable box score, courtesy of the Red Sox.  In tonight’s rubber game, Josh Beckett (or, as McCarver called him yesterday, John Beckett) and his 5-10 record and 5.19 ERA take on Hiroki Kuroda (11-8, 3.06 ERA).

Two other items of note from yesterday:

First, the Globe reports that within the next few days, Carl Crawford will ask the Red Sox for permission to get Tommy John surgery next week.  Crawford’s been playing better lately, but he’ll be the first to tell you that he’s in pain.  There’s a balance that it seems like Crawford’s trying to strike here, between playing through pain if the team’s in contention for a postseason spot (which they are, barely), and thinking of what’s best for his own health if they’re not (which I think is also ok – he does have his own career and well-being to think about, which I can’t say I blame him for).  He tore the ulnar collateral ligament in his elbow in April, and since then he’s received a platelet injection that lets him play through the pain – but that’s never been seen as a permanent fix.

Second, the New York Daily News puts an interesting spin on the ongoing Adrian Gonzalez text message drama: apparently, you see, it was recently-traded backup catcher Kelly Shoppach’s fault.  Kelly Shoppach, who had clashed with Bobby Valentine over his playing time earlier this year, apparently sent the text message to ownership from Adrian Gonzalez’s cell phone.  It sounds like a group of players – probably none of them the impact players that could actually get ownership’s attention – became unhappy with Valentine’s style and convinced Gonzalez to let them use his phone to send the text.  Gonzalez is the highest-paid player on the team, and they apparently thought that a text coming from him would actually have some heft behind it.

So, looks like both the instigator and the leak are Kelly Shoppach.  Or at least, that’s what the Sox would have you believe, since nobody, including Gonzalez or Shoppach, care to talk about the incident any more.  Isn’t that convenient – let’s all just blame the backup catcher after he’s been shipped out of town.

I still think the larger issue is that there’s an issue at all – it’s not who told on who, or who covers for who, or who has the bigger salary and more sway over the ownership.  Fact is, this clubhouse is still in disarray, and blaming Kelly Shoppach for all the team’s problems is shortsighted, inaccurate, and will only take the Sox as far as the next blowup.

The Boston Red Sox evened up their series at Wrigley Field last night, beating the Chicago Cubs 4-3 in interleague play.

Jon Lester (Keith Allison, c/o flickr.com)

Jon Lester pitched a gem, holding the Cubs to three runs, all of which scored on one mistake pitch that Luis Valbuena slammed into left field for a three-run homer in the bottom of the seventh inning.  Prior to that, Lester had allowed a double to Jeff Baker and a walk to the next hitter.  Valentine saw enough, and brought in Scott Atchison to end the seventh inning.  If we’re being honest, I fell asleep after that, so I didn’t watch Vicente Padilla and Alfredo Aceves clean up the last two frames for Boston – but apparently they did, since no more runs scored.  Exciting Saturday night, folks.

Lester was just what the Red Sox needed him to be – strong, effective, unemotional, and confident.  By the time Cubs starter Jeff Samardzija had thrown seventy-something pitches, Lester had thrown 29.  That’s insane.

Offensively, the Red Sox scored enough runs to win, but they made some baserunning mistakes along the way.  In the first inning, David Ortiz walked.  Jarrod Saltalamacchia (who hit cleanup and earned it, mashing a two-run home run that gave the Sox the lead in the fourth inning) hit a double to deep right field.  You could tell that Ortiz thought he’d only get to second base on the hit, or *maybe* to third – he was kind of loping around second base when you could just see this lightbulb go off in his head.  He “sped up” (I use the term loosely since Ortiz doesn’t really have any speed to speak of), galloped around third, and was promptly thrown out at the plate by a mile.  Then, in the sixth inning, Saltalamacchia got into a baserunning jam of his own, and got caught between second and third to end a would-be rally against a tiring Samardzija.

Saltalamacchia also had a great day behind the plate.  He threw out Starlin Castro at second base. I think Joe Buck and Tim McCarver said that Castro had only been thrown out on 7 out of 43 stealing attempts – so this was good.  Will Middlebrooks, meanwhile, didn’t have the best day in the field.  The reason Starlin Castro was on first base to try to steal second was due to a Middlebrooks throwing error.  And, the sixth inning won’t exactly have a place in Middlebrooks’s highlight reel: he made a late throw on Darwin Barney, and then missed what should have been a routine ground ball to let Castro onto first base again.

Luckily for the Red Sox, Alfonso Soriano hit a ground ball to third and then, instead of, you know, running down to first base, Soriano watched Middlebrooks bobble the ball twice before starting a half-hearted trot.  Middlebrooks threw Soriano out, but had Sori run, he would have had a shot at getting on.  The Cubs fans at Wrigley didn’t take this too well, and booed Soriano lustily.

Here’s the box score, courtesy of the Red Sox.  The Cubs and the Sox finish up their interleague matchup today.  Josh Beckett got sent to the 15-day disabled list to deal with his inflamed shoulder, so Franklin Morales will get the start for Boston.

Photo by me.

Up until yesterday, I had two very memorable trips to Fenway Park — my first trip in 1978 when I was eight years old. It was a four generation outing with my dad, my grandfather and great grandmother (who was a huge fan!), and the Derek Lowe no-hitter. This one definitely tops the list now.

Becca did such a fantastic job recapping yesterday’s events with some amazing photos (if you missed it, click here) which is great because basically all I did was cry and ended up taking some extremely blurry pictures. It’s hard to  cheer, sob and snap pics all at the same time. What an amazing day! Like the final out of the 2004 World Series, I know I’ll never be able to watch footage from yesterday’s festivities without bursting into tears. It was such an emotional day for all Sox fans. Even the season ticket holder next to me got misty when Nomar walked onto the field. He said to me, “he was worth the price of admission for every game I went to that he played in. Now I’m crying!”

When I arrived for the game yesterday, I had a good feeling about this series with the Yankees. I thought nothing could go wrong — it was a beautiful day, Fenway turned 100 years old and I wasn’t at work — the Sox had to win. But they didn’t. So they’d win the second game, right? Nope. I wish I could’ve had ended today’s game after the 6th inning so I’m breaking this recap into two sections.

PART 1: Innings 1 - 6

For the first six innings of this game, I laid on the couch thinking, “crap, this is how the game should’ve gone yesterday!” Felix Doubront pitched six strong innings, giving up just one run on five hits to a pretty potent Yankees offense. He looked good and his 93 mph fast ball looked effortless. His only mistake was leaving one out over the plate in the top of the 6th for Mark Teixeira to belt over the Green Monster. On the slo-mo replay, you could see Mark’s eyes get real big and I’m sure he was thinking Christmas came early. He struck out seven Yankees and walked just two. At this point, I thought nothing could go wrong.

Even the offense decided to show up today. Almost every batter in the Red Sox lineup had at least one hit — everyone except the 3rd base platoon of Kevin Youkilis, Nate Spears and pinch hitter, Nick Punto. David Ortiz went 4 for 4 with an RBI and raised his average to .436, and Jarrod Saltalamacchia broke out his early season slump going 4 for 5. Both Mike Aviles and Cody Ross had two RBI — Cody’s coming on a monster homerun to straight away center that hit the camera tower. The Red Sox scored two in the first, three in the second, two in the third and two in the fifth and looked to be on their way to breaking their current four-game losing streak leading 9-0 after five innings.

But we all know that any lead against the Yankees is not big enough. In the 6th, Doubront struck out Robinson Cano and Alex Rodriguez before giving up the four-bagger to Teixeira. Curtis Granderson popped out to short stop to end the inning. Doubront finished the 6th with 99 pitches. I totally expected to see him in the 7th. That was not the case…. hence the second part to this recap.

PART 2: Innings 7 - 9

Vicente Padilla relieved Doubront to start the 7th and struck out Andruw Jones to kick things off. Russell Martin singled to right field and then FOX switched over to the White Sox v. Seattle game for the final three outs of Philip Humber’s perfect game. Now I love to see a perfect game just as much as the next fan but in my opinion, they stuck with the celebration a bit too long for my taste. By the time FOX went back to the Red Sox game, the wheels were starting to fall off the bus. The score, which was 9-1 when they switched coverage, was now 9-5. WTF? Nick Swisher blasted a grand salami to pull the Yankees to within four. And my nails got considerably shorter.

Matt Albers came in to relieve Padilla who couldn’t get the job done, and promptly gave up a three-run shot to Teixeira to bring them within one. And I really started to sweat. This is one of those times being married to a Yankees fan really backfires on me. I may or may not have been nanner-nannering my husband about Freddie Garcia’s stellar 1.2 inning outing. Karma hates me.

Franklin Morales came in to relieve Albers who also stunk it up and got out of the rest of the inning unscathed. In the end, the Yankees scored *cough* seven runs *cough* in the inning so I guess there was some scathing, just not for Morales. I honestly can’t bring myself to give the gory details of the 8th inning without leaping out the second story window of my house so here it is in nutshell. Bobby Valentine brought in Alfredo Aceves for the six out save attempt after Morales gave up a lead off single to left. That didn’t happen, he got the loss. The Yankees scored seven more runs on a lot of hits and a couple of walks and now Red Sox nation is pissed off. The boos for Bobby V. were deafening.

The game lasted 3 hours and 52 minutes. It felt twice that long but I’m sure that had a lot to do with having to listen to Tim McCarver and his butchering of nearly every aspect of the broadcast. If you care to take a gander at the painful box score, here’s the link, courtesy of the Red Sox. The series wraps up Sunday night at 8:05pm with Daniel Bard facing off against CC Sabathia. Surprisingly, right now Bard has a better ERA then Sabathia (4.63 vs. 5.59). Let’s hope we can at least salvage one game of this series.

It’s a marathon, not a sprint.  Baseball is a marathon, not a sprint.  Repeat that to yourselves a couple of time before reading the rest of this post.  I’ll wait.

Josh Beckett (credit: Amanda Laws)

Ready?

Ok.  Said Bobby Valentine, to the Boston Globe:

“I don’t know what a start means. Is two games a start? Is a month a start. I think we can get off to a good start very easily.’’

That’s just semantics, Bobby.  There are 160 games to go, true, but let’s hope some of them go better than the first two have.  Red Sox starter Josh Beckett got absolutely shelled yesterday in Detroit, giving up seven runs – off of five (five!) home runs in 4.2 innings pitched.  Detroit offensive tag team Miguel Cabrera and Prince Fielder – whom the FOX announcers were comparing not-so-subtly to the Manny-Ortiz pairing from last decade in a juggernaut of irony – each put up two home runs, and Tigers catcher Alex Avila launched one of his own to put the cap on Beckett’s day.  Scott Atchison came in for relief of Beckett with two outs in the fourth inning, and gave up a run of his own over the next 1.1.  Matt Albers also gave up a run in the seventh inning before he was yanked for Justin Thomas.

So that’s pretty worrisome, the Beckett start.  This is the guy who is supposed to spit nails, to get pissed, to bring the hammer down and turn the corner for a team that’s struggling.  But on Saturday, he didn’t.  It’s just one start, sure, but shouldn’t this start – this first start after the disastrous September and the ethereal spring training – be the one where Beckett re-establishes himself, and to some extent, the entire Red Sox pitching staff, as a force again to be reckoned with?

What’s even more frustrating, is that the Red Sox had a great opportunity to win this game.  Doug Fister, the Tigers starter, left the game in the fourth inning with what the Washington Post is calling a “left side injury.”  We don’t like injuries to opposing pitchers, but let’s face it – when a team has to throw its bullpen at you for any reason in the fourth inning, you have a good chance to put on an offensive clinic.  Here, though, Duane Below, Octavio Dotel, Phil Coke, and Joaquin Benoit (zitless) held the Red Sox offense scoreless.  Adrian Gonzalez and Ryan Sweeney each notched two hits, but that’s just about it.

Also, as if this game wasn’t annoying enough, it was on FOX, so we had to listen to Buck and McCarver.  And here’s something that always bugs me: Tim McCarver mentioned that yesterday’s game wasn’t as important as a game in, say, August or September, because it was early in the season.  I understand that games in August or September are more dramatic, because teams are deep in the playoffs race and each game makes the playoff picture more clear.  But I’ve always thought that these early-season games in April or May set up those playoff races – had the Sox won yesterday, that’s one less game they’ll have to win in August.  It really bugs me when people say that April games count for less, because they just don’t.  They count for at least as much as the late-summer games, and maybe more – since teams usually use the trading deadline as a measure to evaluate where they are, who they need to pick up, and who they can afford to lose.

Anyway, stepping off the soapbox.  The Sox finish up in Detroit today, before heading to Toronto on Monday.  Clay Buchholz, will you be the one to stop the bleeding?