Beckett gives up 5 in the first. We get them all back in the same inning. He leaves with a 7-6 lead. But our 'pen, which has been the best in baseball for a long time, ends up giving up 4 runs in the 7th. We lose 10-8. (AG grounding out with the tying runs on base in the 8th was extra-rough.)

It should be noted that in that 7th-inning rally, there was an ERROR by Aviles that could have been a double play but definitely should have been one out minimum. The horse-fucker Teixeira hit a triple after that--could have been a bases-empty hit, instead it's the game-winning RBI. (The scorer gave a hit on the Aviles ERROR, but as we know, everything's a hit these days. The scorers don't want to take hits away from the home hitters, and don't want to give errors to the home fielders. It has to be egregious to be called an error in 2012--but I see even those, and the H still goes up on the board. It really pisses me off.)

So that stinks. We turn a potential blow-out against us into a lead, and then put in in the bullpen's hands, but we lose. As for anti-media signs, I didn't see any, but like I said I didn't expect NESN would show any. (I know my mom had hers though!) The Fox and ESPN games are the key ones. And Universal Hub linked my post!

Some notes from the broadcast:

A few times I saw the lineup card behind Girardi on the dugout wall. Guess what? Old logo. The Red Sox print these out and give them to the visitors. And they don't know that their own team tweaked its logo in 2008.

Don is just losing it! Said Ross bobbled a ball in right that he absolutely fielded cleanly. Said this was the fourth game against the Yanks this year, it was the third. (He was doing this while mentioning the huge ERA our 'pen has against the Yanks compared to vs. others--uh, hello, that's because of the 9-0 blown game. Very small sample size, affected by one really bad game. Pretty meaningless.) When the Yanks got that 4th run in the 7th, Don went into his out call: "annnd, ON THE RUN...." That would end with "is Nava to make the catch," but at that point he noticed he wasn't going to catch it, and changed to "is Nava but can't get there." Similar deal on the ball into the Triangle--he broke into the HR call: "and it iiiis...." not gone, not gone at all. But the one that ticked me off the most was when he said "what a play" on a Jeter play that was nice, but not "what a play"-worthy. He gave him "what a play" because he's Jeter, simple as that.

We got a little gift, as NESN switched to the "classic" CF cam for a few pitches late in the game. Don't know why but I'll take it. (At one point they went back to the head-on robot cam, but it was zoomed way out. Maybe ol' HAL is starting to make his own decisions.)

Why does NESN continue to show FAKE, NON-LIVE scenes of Boston during the game, trying to pass them off as live shots?? I proved this without a doubt in an earlier game (shadows DO NOT lie), and since then, I've noticed they do it all the time. It's not like they have a "live" icon on the screen, but when they come back from break showing the city at night from the blimp (when there isn't even a blimp at the game--there's another dead giveaway), and Don says "beautiful night in Boston as we go to the 6th," that's an obvious deception of the audience. Tonight on one of the mid-game shots, you could see a bunch of people on the warning track. I thought, Oh, maybe this is from the Ortiz 400 presentation--but Kim pointed out that that took place in the light, and the shot we were seeing was in the dark. So the shot clearly was from a different night. Going to the bottom of the 7th, the overhead shot showed home fielders running out of the dugout to their positions--but the road team is in the field in that situation. This was while the current score was shown on the screen, with a live Don talking over it. A scene from a different night! Hell, the downtown Boston close-up night blimp shot is repeated all the time. They took one day/night's worth of blimp shots and are using them for the whole season! Terrible job. Oh, and one time they stuck with the fake live shot so long, it caused us to miss the first pitch of the inning. Double pet peeve!

And the whole thing with not cutting to the other camera on batted balls is getting worse. There was one play where our guy hits the ball, we hear the crowd react, the batter start to run, then we see the fielder throw him out. Only on the replay were we able to see that it was an incredible diving stop! Faster on the button, NESN.

Okay, better cut it short. Good night. Two games Saturday. Enjoy. Bring a sign.