I was working till 8 so I knew I'd get in the car and find out the score having missed the first hour of the game. All day I had this horrible feeling that it would be 6-0 Yanks at that point. I got in the car at 8:02, and Castiglione told me just that. 6-0. And this isn't that thing where you're pissed so you try to make it seem like YOU actually won because you got something right that went against you. I'm a pretty positive mofo so I don't know why I got the 6-0 vibe, but I did. And you could pretty much turn your radios off at that point.

Fuck Soriano. And fuck Mark Reynolds. And fuck their drug cheats. And the Rays won so it's 1 / 5.5 / 7.5 / 15. Worse than it's been in recent days, but almost exactly where we all were ten games ago, with the exception of the Yanks being about 2 games better now.

Here are tomorrow's probables brought to you by MLBN, with some horribly inaccurate stats for our game:


Lackey better be knocking some asses on their asses.

The Yanks losing in the afternoon was huge, as it guaranteed an 8.5 game lead going into the weekend series. Too bad we left a million guys on base and lost 2-1. Rays won, so the standings are:

Us
Rays a deuce
Orioles 5 and change
Yanks 8 point 5
All Others 15

The suspiciously fast recoverer vs. Doubront in game one, Friday night at Fenway.

Speaking of PEDs, how come people say the A-Rod thing is a witch hunt? Isn't a witch hunt justified when you're hunting an actual witch?

Know what's weird? All six first-place teams in MLB are within four games of each other.

And this replay thing: I of course love that they're gonna use it more, but I hate the "limited amount of challenges" crap. What if you challenge three times and are proven right each time, and then you have another bad call go against you? You just don't get to challenge it? Through no fault of your own? Anyway, I hope that now that everything can be reviewed, ballparks end that policy of not showing close plays on the jumbotrons. Now they should go all out and show them in super slo-mo and run them backwards and forwards over and over while the umps are making the decision.

Was good to see Napoli snap out of it with a two-out, two-run game-tying dong in the 9th. But Drew couldn't catch a liner that would have been an inning-ending double play and the Jays win in extras. The lead is down to 8.5 over the Yanks. And the Rays came back from down 4-1 to win in the bottom of the ninth so they're 3 back. The O's lost in walk-off fashion for the third straight time so they stay 6 out.

Here's that other Don call I was talking about:



Lester vs. Rogers at the Centre which bears his name, five minutes ago.

This is the play I was talking about last night. He says it's down and off the wall, then that it's gone, then that it's caught by Bonifacio, when it was actually Davis:



And while he admitted to all this shortly afterwards, the worst part of his calls isn't simply needing glasses and not being able to see what's going on, but the fact that he's saying "this one will get down" before the ball is even in the guy's glove. He guesses at things before they happen, and it totally screws him when they don't. Maybe this is a byproduct of not being able to see--he's forced to guess. Then again, he'll do his gun-jumping on very obvious routine plays, so maybe it's a perfect storm for bad play-by-play.

But it was almost the worst! As we sat tied in the bottom of the ninth in Toronto, I knew one measly run would mean a shitty loss in a game where we led in the 8th, while Tampa was down one, but at home against a weak-ish Mariners club. Plus the Yanks were up big. We could have been talking about the East lead down to 2, and the Yanks 8.5 out but with a 3-game win streak, and us having lost 4 of our last 5....

But then awesomeness occurred! The Rays were unable to come back. At that point I knew we'd have a 3-game lead minimum. But still, we don't want the Yanks to start believing in themselves AND be somewhat within striking distance going into our series with them this weekend at Fenway.

In the 11th, with two outs and two strikes, Victorino came through with a two-run single. The second run was possible since the Jays had let Ellsbury take second. 4-2 lead. Uehara puts 'em down 1-2-3, and we win. Four game lead!

I was in mega-curse mode earlier in our game. Between all the stuff I mentioned above and the fact that we've just hit mid-August, I feel like the season just now turned down the home stretch. Suddenly every pitch is vital. And as we left the bases loaded down 1-0, I was super pissed. A racecar in the red. Finally we tied it and took the lead, and reDempTion got them out in the 7th, and I got my mind set on cloud nine. Then Taz gave up a game-tying dong in the 8th leading to the tense ending. But we lived through it, and now we've got the biggest cushion we've had in a while.

Meanwhile, the poor Orioles get the shaft, as I'm so focused on the second-place team, and also the Yanks wherever they are. Balty is stuck in the middle, but who knows, they might overtake Tampa soon, then I'll start having to keep better track of them.

GREAT job by Napoli tonight. Let me clarify. The fielder Napoli, not the hitter Napoli. FN made two very nice catches in foul territory late in the game. One he was going backwards for, and the other he had to slide for. Middlebrooks also came through with some key plays, and key hits, including one in each of our two run-scoring rallies.

Don "Burgundy Sox" Orsillo was on fire tonight. On a fly out to left, he said it was not caught, off the wall, and over the wall, before finally realizing it was caught. He did end up joking about it, admitting he didn't get it right till the third try, and then had Remy be his Waldman, acting like it's so hard to see balls in front of the scoreboards. What he didn't admit is how he jumped the gun anyway. Not only is he apparently blind, but he makes the call before the play happens, and it screws him time and time again. Later he thought a little soft bloop to the pitcher was a grounder. In fairness, the bat broke, and he thought he was seeing the ball. But I can assure you no one in the viewing audience confused it with anything. There was also a fly ball in the left field corner that was caught "out of our view." But if Don goes from looking at the field to looking at the monitor after the ball is hit, as he claims, why wasn't he watching the monitor, especially in a case where you know the play will be hidden by a wall? Had he been watching the monitor, he would have seen what we all saw, the outfielder catching the ball.


Standings:

Us --
Rays FOUR!
Orioles 5 or 6
Yanks 9.5
Jays SEVENTEEN

I've been trying to get the Red Sox to show movies at Fenway on summer nights while the team is away for years. Search my blog for "Monster Movies" and see all the posts I've done about it, starting in April 2005. Of course, as that search term implies, my specific idea is to project the movies on the Green Monster. They're not doing that, but later this month, they WILL be showing a movie at Fenway, up on the big board. I've told them about my idea in team surveys over the last few years, so I guess it finally got through. Or they just thought of it on their own. Or they got the idea from me AND will soon be sending me a full-season ticket package free of charge and scores of game-used Gedman jerseys as a thank you. I'll keep watching my mailbox.

Anyway, the movie they're showing is The Sandlot, and fans will sit in the seats behind home and first. (Not on the outfield grass as my much, much better idea proposes.) What's up with this Sandlot movie? I noticed on one of NESN's text surveys that it was actually beating Major League and Bull Durham and Field of Dreams and The Natural as best baseball movie of all time. Does this show that the audience is very young? Or just that only the young are voting, and those dumbasses think some kids' movie is better than the classics. Or was it just rigged to get people buzzing about Sandlot before they show it? Or was that actually a vote to see which movie gets played at Fenway and I missed that part of it?

My e-pal, Boston Fan in Wichita, sent me this pic of him and his awesome dual-Salty shirts at the Kansas City series:


I love the left-right curvature action on the name! He said Salty told him he thought the shirts were cool, and notes, "to get him to look up at our shirts, among all the 'Salty's being shouted, I yelled 'Hey Jarrod!' and he looked right at us." Nice job.

We were 2.5 games up in the East going into our four-game series with Kansas City. Here at the end of it, we sit 3 ahead. That's really all that matters. Though you could think of it as missing a chance to go, say, 5 up had we won 3 of 4 instead of losing 3 of 4.

Stupid Tigers go into New York and can't win the series. But it was pretty sweet that Mo blew his third save in a row today. Yanks now an even 10 games out.

The Rays are closer to the O's (4.5 back) than they are to us. Which is great since it makes all the "it's gonna be neck and neck between the Rays and Sox the rest of the way" people sound like fools. Which is not a shot at the Rays or to say that we're running away with it or anything. I just think it's hilarious how the human creature will look at what's just happened and say with complete certainty that that is what's going to happen in the future. It's like when it's 5-4 after one inning, people will say, "gonna be one of those games," as if it's somehow already been decided that both teams will continue to score runs at the nine-per-inning rate. And to say it in the A.L. East with two months to play is even more ridiculous. The O's could easily join the crowd at the top. We could drop to third. The Yanks or Jays could get back into it. Well, maybe not the Yanks. It's kinda dumb to look at the standings at any time and assume they'll stay exactly like that for the rest of the year. Again, I think this is a human thing in general, not just a sports fan thing. And I'm down with making predictions, but you don't wanna fool yourself into thinking past performance guarantees future results.

Don Burgundy Update: My friend Kat told me to watch the bottom of the 6th. I hadn't been watching that part of the game so I just caught it now on Sox in 2. Count was 3-2. Umpire realizes scoreboard at stadium is wrong, calls to his first base ump while holding up 3-2 on his fingers. First base ump agrees, also holding up 3-2. (Reading his lips, it seemed like he was saying, "I have 3-2, board's wrong.") He confirms it with the other two umps, then goes to the dugout phone and makes a call, comes back out again holding up 3-2 as the board is fixed. But here was Don's take: "I think it's 2 and 2," he says, while telling the audience that the home plate ump thinks it's 2 and 2 (despite that he's holding up 3-2 for a long time), that the first base ump wasn't sure (despite that he too is holding up the correct 3-2 count), and that the other umps "didn't know." He then notes that the board went from 2-2 to 3-2, while the camera shows us that it's at 2-2. Finally Remy says that the truck told him it should indeed be 3-2. It had been a pretty clear at bat, with NESN's score box having it right all along. I don't know what was worse, that Don suddenly lost faith in his own ability to keep track of the count, or that he assumed the umps were all as clueless as he was.

I went to bed Friday night thinking that Tampa would have a chance to tie us on Saturday. Their blown game made it a 2-game lead instead of 1, and then today, they lose* and we win. THREE GAME LEAD! Most breathing room we've had since July 13th.

My main man Middlebrooks was back in the bigs, and he went 2 for 4. Ellsbury was 4 for 5. We went up 4-0 and Doobie was rolling (on a day when I got stuck in all kinds of traffic in Newport thanks to the reggae fest--peee-U, I think my contact lenses got high or something), but suddenly he went bunk, and Farrell ripped the ball out of his hands. It was 4-2 with two on when Sony Workman came in and got out, RBI single, out, out to end the jam. That's as close as the Royals would get. Middle beat out a two-out hit and Jacoby scored him on a double in the 6th to make it 5-3, and that was your final.

The condom contest is Sunday, then it's a day off and we go to Toronto for three.

The O's fell to 5.5 out, and the Yankees got routed by Detroit to fall 11 back.


*but they turned a pretty sweet hidden ball trick