Red Sox lose. Swept. We now go home to face the Twins, still with the best record in baseball (tied) and still with a 1.5 game lead in the east over the Orioles and also Yanks. More on the game later, But first, the mistakiest dong ever!

Just after I predicted that "Ortiz will hit a home run that will awe the crowd" (no proof available), Papi did just that. Unfortunately, NESN's camera people don't know how to track home run balls. We never saw where it landed as they showed us a spot nowhere near where the ball was. Then they cut to a close-up of the ball in flight (one which also didn't show the landing spot), and we see that the Rangers' scoreboard still uses the old (changed after 2008 season) version of that Red Sox logo:


Then we see a shot of a Sox fan in the stands, who's a big enough fan of Carl Yastrzemski to name a pet after him....


...but not big enough a fan to know how his name is spelled. All you have to do is ask! Or try the Web, it knows too! Granted, it's a difficult name. It seems logical it would start with "Y-A-Z". But in my opinion, the moment you decide to name a pet after the guy should be the moment you say, "I'm gonna go ahead and learn this name for good."

Later, NESN showed us a graphic about some Twins players....

Let's take a closer look!
Maybe we've got a big H.G. Wells fan in the NESN control room. Or maybe they do this shit just about every game. It's not like this is some obscure player, it's Justin Morneau!

Then you've got Don doing one of his classic "in the dark" calls. Maybe I should call him Don Squier. (After watching that again I started thinking maybe I'm the a-hole, that the guy really didn't know if the ball went out since he had looked down for the bag the first time, but...even in that case, you'd say he wasn't sure, as Don did, AND that he was going back to touch the base he missed. Man, if you haven't clicked on the vid yet, you don't know what the hell I'm e-babbling about right now....)

Another funny Don moment: Berkman hit a ball that "almost got out of here." Except it bounced on the warning track.

And on the Ross homer, again, NESN misses where it lands, even zooming in on the wrong spot as the ball is landing in the deck above.

Here's some great reporting from the ESPN Dallas blogger. Awesomeness in bold:

Beltre is 6-for-36 with runners in scoring position this season, but that's not why Farrell decided to walk him. He wanted the righty-righty matchup with Mortensen against Beltre, and he also wanted to set up the force play.

Mortensen got ahead of Beltre with a 1-2 count on all sliders. Beltre even swung through the third pitch in the sequence. He didn't miss the fourth slider, lining over the glove of Red Sox second baseman Dustin Pedroia's glove [...]

No, they didn't walk Beltre to pitch to Beltre, and no, Dustin Pedroia's glove does not wear a glove. Then he goes on to write the following sentence--maybe he only had one verb left and had to use it twice:

They were able to grind out three runs on Lester and grind out a walk-off win.

Where do they find these people?

Back to the lecture at hand: I was pissed at Drew's brother. In the 7th, with one out and the game tied, Darvish walks Ross on four pitches. Drew then takes the first two pitches for balls. Catcher goes out to talk to Yu. Now maybe we were thinking, "here comes a strike, swing away." But I'm just saying, six balls in a row, game tied late, #8 hitter up, pitcher started that inning with more than 100 pitches, he's just giving us baserunners...you gotta make the guy throw a strike. Instead Drew swings, and fouls off a pitch that's probably gonna land outside the zone. It should have been 3-0 there, leading to a probable walk. Even if Ciriaco then goes down, at least you've got a shot with Ellsbury and the go-ahead run on second. Instead, it's 2-1, and Drew goes on to strike out. As does Ciriaco to end the inning. We wouldn't score the rest of the game.

Papi's streak is now 25.

Terrible job by Elvis raising the fist while running home with the winning run, on a play that turned out to be pretty close. It's pompous and it could cost your team big time. You better know you're gonna score before you start pulling that Jeter-ish crap.

And as long as this post is full of my pet peeves, to add insult to Inge, the mlb.com headline about this game was "Rangers walk off to sweep Sox."