Cursed To First - Sox and Pats forever.

Jon-Jon's no-no

As Jon Lester put the finishing touches on his no-hitter Monday night, I was sitting on a coach bus in Las Vegas with about 80 other people, on our way to a group dinner as part of the conference I was attending. As we stepped off the bus into the blistering desert heat, a colleague of mine held out his Blackberry with the mlb.com story on the screen. "A no-no!"

"Who?!"

"Lester!"

"No!!"

"Yes!!"

And then it was time for cocktail hour, to be followed by appetizers, to be followed by dinner, to be followed by dessert, to be follwed by a few highlights of the game through half-lidded eyes later on in my hotel room, still before midnight local time but with my body screaming to me about it being 2 am. Tuesday: lather, rinse, repeat, plus redeye flight back to Boston. The blogging has had to wait.

Since getting home today, I've seen most of the game on TiVo. It's been a mystery to me why Jon Lester gets bopped all around the ballpark one start, and tosses gems like the one on April 29 and Monday's no-hitter the next. I mean, I understand that he's a young pitcher who's still learning, but I haven't been able to tell specifically what it is that hasn't been working for him.

In Monday's game, it became clearer, because of what what WAS working - a quick pace, a good mix of pitches and a fidelity to the strike zone, good velocity, and most of all a vicious, filthy, virtually unhittable cut fastball. He also seemed to get stronger as the game went on, fanning three in the sixth.

When the last out finally happened, Lester's reaction was much different from that of the last Sox youngster wer got to see pitch a no-no, Clay Buchholz, who looked stunned and uncertain what to do in the wake of his own momentous last out, even as Jason Varitek heaved him up into his arms and the rest of their teammates charged toward the mound. Lester had both fists in the air a split second after the final strike call, and as Varitek grabbed him, Lester grinned and hugged his head. Buchholz had seemed bewildered; Jon Lester, despite his similarly young age, looked like a man who knew exactly why and how he should seize the moment.

Though the reasons for the depth of emotion here were obvious, Texas Gal made a point I very much agree with, in her brilliant and much more timely post about the game, about the cancer storyline having been slightly overdone in some circles. It's not to minimize what happened to him or the fortitude he showed in coming back from it so quickly--it's just that to Red Sox fans who have watched him grow up, Jon Lester isn't just "the kid who had cancer". He's been one of the top products of the Red Sox farm system for years, and people were talking in epic terms about his upside long before lymphoma. After a while, there's a fine line between acknowledging what he's been through and reducing him to it.

That said, you can't discount the effect of what Lester has overcome on our reaction to this moment. In the second or two betwen hearing a no-hitter had been thrown and finding out who'd thrown it, I was hoping it had been Jon Lester. Among Red Sox fans, his already storied personal history has bonded us to him unlike any other player to wear the uniform. As I wrote last July:

I've seen people battle with cancer, and I've even seen a few lose the battle. But somehow, though each case is different, watching those who survive can still shine a ray of hope onto a subject that can seem dark and impossible. Thus Jon Lester has become more than a pitcher, and more even than an individual cancer survivor. He is proof. He is hope. He is a symbol of survival.

He may not want that role, and he never asked for it. Being a pitcher in Boston is aggravating enough without the onus of greater societal pressures. And yet through it all he's handled it with grace and aplomb beyond his years. He's made an incredible comeback, and despite the trade rumors that mention his name, I want him to stay in Boston, where we can see him grow after seeing him stricken. He is our prospect, our pitcher, and our survivor now--what he's been through in the past year has bonded me to him as a fan in a way I haven't been with any of his teammates. I think he should belong to us.

And he does. During the trade talks about Santana last year, I heard some people say they could part with Lester, but not Jacoby. I even had the thought myself, once or twice. But in the end, it feels like it would've been impossible to let him go--by now, it feels like he has become a permanent part of this place.

As Tito put it, "He's a wonderful kid, not because he threw a no-hitter. He's a good kid because he's a good kid," and the same goes for his victory over cancer. But there's an undeniably different tone to Boston's collective happiness about this no-hitter from the last one.

More on the baseball that's happened in my absence after the jump.

Manny Magic

Dugout Love 1, originally uploaded by ConfessionalPoet.

Bask with me in the loving insanity that is Dustin Pedroia and Manny Ramirez together in front of a camera in the dugout.

The first time I saw this, I literally shrieked out loud. I could not believe the way they suddenly seemed to break through the TV barrier and wave hi to us at home, and then to see the cuddling...? It was too much all at once. Seriously.

'Too much' is a great description for Manny right now, and I'm sure Mike Mussina would agree. Manny's first homer last night was a decent shot, especially to straightaway center in that ballpark. But the second, two-run jimmy-jack? I immediately received the following voicemail from my father, who, let's remember, does not like Manny all that much: "That was a serious, SERIOUS home run, that second one that Manny hit. Are you kidding me? He CRUSHED that ball right off the bat. Hope you saw it. See ya."

Crushed is one way to describe it. Here are a few more:

• Mammoth blast
• Titanic moon shot
• Absolute bomb
• Monstrous homer

Manny can also be said to have:

• Nailed it
• Tattooed it
• Hit the cover off the ball
• Lost one
• Teed off

I'm sure you can add plenty more of your own...and yet I feel like with a home run like that, words don't really do it justice. It's hard to find the right string of sufficiently expressive adjectives--you just have to see this homer, if you haven't already, and watch the impressive angle at which it comes off the bat, register the approximate half-second it takes to carom off the facade of the far left-field bleachers, and gauge its several-hundred-foot cruising altitude.

Meanwhile, the pitching equivalent to Manny's badassery was delivered for the Sox by Josh Beckett, who gave the Sox eight solid innings of pitching to contact, economical pitch selection, and consistent readings of 96 on the radar gun. My favorite specific moment from Josh was when he struck the hell out of Giambi in the fourth inning on three pitches; his last sidewinding heater, which earned a swing and a miss, was like something out of the 2007 ALCS Game 5 highlight reel. And eight innings out of a starter were precisely what the doctor ordered--Josh seemed to drop his mighty need to blow 99 mph past hitters, as he had in Toronto, and earned a number of ground balls and flyouts this time around, the better to go the distance.

While it was, of course, much more pleasant for Sox fans this time around, it still seemed like another one of those blowouts. Until suddenly by the late innings it reversed course into more of a barn-burner. The Yankees came back to within two runs after touching up Beckett for three and Jonathan Papelbon (not a misprint) for two, meaning he came in with a non-save situation and apparently created one for himself just so he'd feel more comfortable. Or, at least, that's what I'm going to pretend to myself right about now.

P.S. Alex over at Bronx Banter has been posting some nice Red Sox reading, on a Yankees blog no less.

One of THOSE games...

(Jim McIsaac / Getty Images / Boston.com)

The Red Sox and Yankees get a lot of attention for a certain kind of game that they play--the long, painstaking, exquisitely intense variety. The kind where every last pitch is an exercise in tension and every contact between bat and ball or ball and glove an intricate demonstration of both quantum physics and chaos theory. This, when layered with the heady mixture of folklore, local pride and divisional aspirations in the stands, makes Yankees-Red Sox games, at any time of year, totally epic more often than not.

But then there's another kind of game the Yankees and Sox play. The kind we saw last night--the kind where you end with a score of something like Pi to Q and both teams scrape the bottom of their bullpens and most people, on both sides, have switched off the TV coverage of scrubs performing mop-up duty in front of an echoingly empty Yankee Stadium by the ninth inning.

Sometimes, it seems the two evenly matched clubs meet one another like the irresistible force encountering the immovable object. Other times...one or two false moves, and the balance slips out of control; the game goes pear-shaped like ruined pottery on a wheel. 

Obviously, baseball teams everywhere play both of these types of games. But there are also games in between. Sometimes with the Sox and Yankees, it feels like there aren't.

A couple more points--

• I'm reserving further pronouncements on Mike Timlin after I tried to evaluate him based on two appearances coming off an injury, and was chagrined to see him follow with a crisp 8th in Cleveland. It's also clear that when it comes to baseball analysis skills, I will never be Peter Gammons. But chalk up last night's appearance as another vote in the "Mike Timlin, Please Retire" column.
• We have all seen Manny Ramirez do many things. Auction a grill on eBay. Step into and out of the Monster between innings. Re-create the pose of a charging moose with teammates in the dugout. Grow dreadlocks. Call himself a 'bad man' at a press conference. And we've seen him quibble with umpires before about balls and strikes.
  
  But I don't think we've ever seen Manny absolutely lose his everloving shit at an umpire like he did with Tim McClelland last night, when Manny thought that what turned out to be strike three was ball four. Maybe Manny could, uh, look at the umpire for the call before deciding whether to run down to first base or not, granted, but that kind of reaction from him is so rare that I give him a little more of the benefit of the doubt.

All's well that ends well

There really is nothing like taking the rubber game of a series. It's such a feeling of relief--and when it happens, as last night's rubber victory did, late on a Sunday night, it can brighten my mood for the whole first half of the week. Or, at least, it can avoid darkening it by adding losing to late-night sleep-deprivation injury.

Seriously, why do they put the ESPN games on at like midnight on Sunday night?

In any event, we got to see another solid outing from Daisuke last night, although like most of our starting pitchers, he's still using up pitches at an alarming rate, and just barely lasted through the fifth inning. This was, in general, another one of those classic painstaking Sox-Yankees matchup, in which every hitter is seeing so many pitches that the game drags...and drags...and drags...I thought it might be Monday morning before that fifth inning finally ended and Daisuke could leave with a decent start--but with four long, long, LONG innings for the beleagured Sox bullpen to cover.

I'm not sure if this 120-pitches-by-the-fifth thing is just a typical early-season habit for starters; a sign we should be worried; or just a sign we were playing the Yankees, who seem to adopt almost the exact same strategy of patience at the plate and a pitch-by-pitch approach to creating runs in tense games as the Sox, which makes them last approximately an ice age.

And then we got into the first full-on Yankees game stress for me this season. I don't know about you, but for our bullpen--without Hideki Okajima or Jonathan Papelbon available--to have to soak up that many outs against even a relatively depleted Yankees lineup (Captain Intangibles was sidelined and Posada seemed to be in a somewhat limited role this series) had me reaching for the extra-strength antacids.

The one contributing the most of any Red Sox to my gastritis was Mike Timlin. My father started calling him "Whiplash" (for how frequently he had to turn around to watch hits sail over his head) as early as 2005 and was heard to doubt Iron Mike as far back as 2004. I've always defended Mike--even to the point of exasperated gesticulating--but this year, I can't.

The reasons for this are not hard to grasp--the man has an 81.00 ERA. Small sample size, etc. But Timlin's matchup (or lack thereof) against Jason Giambi this series is what really bothered me. According to MLB.com, Timlin's record against Giambi in the past was limited, but good. In five total matchups between the two since 2005, Timlin has given up exactly one run to Giambi and no home runs (MLB.com unfortunately didn't return 2007 stats; it could be the two didn't face each other, I suppose). Even according to Baseball Prospectus's sp00ky PECOTA page, which repeatedly acknowledges his advanced age, Timlin is only projected to give up 4 home runs in 41.7 innings pitched this entire season. But in this series, he gave up a homer to the Juice Guy each time he saw him.

I know Timlin's still probably getting his act together after having to get his finger stitched up, and I know he hasn't had a chance to even things out over the long run, but I also think age has quite a lot to do with what we're seeing from him at this point--especially given his lack of success against a hitter like Giambi, with whom he's previously matched up well (I know a lot of people don't give Tito this much credit, but I like to think that's why Mike was even out there facing Giambi in the first place these past couple of nights).

Timlin's been an iron man for a very long time, and I love his crazed personality as much as the next person (BP calls him 'straight out of central casting') but it's starting to look (even more than it already has) like the Red Sox should've let Mad Mike ride off into the sunset this past off-season, and just let us enjoy his memory.

UPDATE: Mike Timlin just recorded three crisp outs in Cleveland, making me look like a complete ass for posting this. Oh, well. This is clearly why I am not the one sitting in the dugout every night, rocking and chewing tobacco with bubble gum.

P.S. David Ortiz shows bunt. We are living in the end times.

Red Sox-Yankees Photos

Rainy Night, originally uploaded by ConfessionalPoet.

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P.S. BTW, just in case I'm not the last person in the Western hemisphere to realize this, iTunes now has every game of last year's postseason, as well as a set of full classic games under the collection name 'Baseball's Best', which includes Game 6 of the 1975 World Series and Games 4 and 5 of the 2004 ALCS. So now you can have all essential Sox games in portable form. Ain't technology grand?

The Yankees and the Rain

(AP Photo/Charles Krupa/ESPN.com)

The above is my new favorite moment of the season so far. It's early yet, and so that favorite might change as soon as today, but as Papel-blog's Kelly once commented on this blog, "Every time Jason Varitek pats Papelbon on the head and/or upper back area, I'm pretty sure that God cures the broken leg of a small kitten."

The talk of the fans I know today is Jonathan Papelbon's appearance last night, closing out the second of two games against the Yankees, both of which were complicated by an incorrigible, on-again, off-again rain.

I was watching once again in Brookline, and we all roundly and vociferously cursed FOX for switching to NASCAR with two outs in the top of the ninth and a full count. I know there's such a thing as contractual obligation, but that was absolutely ridiculous. If they were going to switch, they should've switched during the delay, to give people time to, say, figure out where FX is on their cable. By the time we found the game again, Dustin Pedroia was just tossing the ball to Sean Casey for the final out, and having missed even a single heater from Papelbon is something about which I remain bitter today.

Add this to the long list of reasons FOX sucks: we already knew that they weren't competent sports broadcasters (see also, Zelasko, Jeannie and McCarver, Tim), but yesterday they weren't even competent broadcasters, period. It isn't like they didn't have time to plan ahead--the rain was well forecast before and during the game, there was more than one return of the tarp to the field, giving them time to switch, and at any rate, Sox-Yankees games usually run long. Was there any reason to force people to fumble with their remotes with a full count and two outs in the ninth inning of a one-run Red Sox-Yankees game? Is NASCAR really a more valuable TV property for FOX than that?

Okay, I'm over it. Well, I'm really not, but let's get back to Jonathan Papelbon and how much of a complete and total stud he is for blowing 96 miles per hour past Yankees from a wet mound after having to warm up and sit back down twice. With the shape the rest of our bullpen has been in so far this season, I shudder to think what ugliness might have kept those watching FX from returning to their regularly scheduled Terminator 3 yesterday afternoon, had Papelbon not been able to perform.

Similarly, if it weren't for Manny Ramirez swinging the big lumber (and a followup RBI from my emerging binky, Kevin Youkilis), we'd also probably have been looking at a different outcome. While I know the idea of a team is for everyone to take turns contributing, I have to say the continued, shall we say, concentration of contributions coming from some people and not others is killing my April baseball buzz already. Like the Bud commercial says, Leon can't do everything. I'm looking at you, Manny Delcarmen.

Still, thank God for the team's leaders yesterday, including Josh, who pitched a now-forgotten masterful 5 innings before being left in about two batters too long in the sixth, going somewhat pear-shaped, and becoming a footnote to Papelbon. Various talking heads kept saying how his pitching line really didn't match the dominance of his effort in the early innings, but to me "dominant" does not equal 3 runs and just over 6 innings, no matter which way you slice it.

I'd rather say Beckett has looked encouraging in both of his starts so far, both times busting out guns blazing in the early innings, but running out of gas earlier than usual. I think journalists and broadcasters like to use words like "dominant" because it draws eyeballs and ears, but to me, "dominant" isn't accurate, especially if you're talking about the Texas-style all-day-long-country-ass-whupping domination Beckett is capable of laying down, when said about a less-than-seven-inning effort. So chalk this up as the first known instance of me being less sanguine about Josh Beckett than the broadcasters. At least, since 2006.

Meanwhile, between Beckett and Jonathan, it's clear my dad and I ended up at the wrong game this week--we were there in person for Friday night's game, a decent effort by Buchholz in his first-ever start against the Yankees, that wound up being spoiled by Mike Timlin and Jason Giambi, not to mention a strange and frustrating game for the bats, as one by one Red Sox hitters socked the ball deep into the damp night, only to have it directed as if by otherworldly forces into the gloves of Yankees outfielders. About the only one to break on through to the other side was J.D. Drew, who clearly at this point is just trying to taunt me.

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The Tokyo Split

I'm late. Whatever. Usual excuses. And I'm doing another quick notes post, too. Oh well. It's Friday.

-- I agree with Kristen that it's too early to be hypercritical, but I will say I'm a bit concerned about the state of our pitching rotation at the moment. I don't say that solely because of the two games played in Japan, either--it seems both Jon Lester and Clay Buccholz have been getting roughed up some this spring, and Jon Lester didn't acquit himself much better in his first start.

That second game was dominated by Oakland pitching, which racked up 13 strikeouts. Rich Harden was absolutely dominant. And it was only the second game of the season for them, too.

-- So much for being the 'Washington Generals', eh? I understand that there is payroll disparity between the Red Sox and Oakland. I understand we are lumped in with the Yankees now. But please. What kind of loser attitude is that for the team's own traveling secretary to take? It's one thing to point out competitive disadvantages for small-market teams in general and quite another to just whine about an outcome that's not even certain yet, because the Red Sox taking the trip is getting more publicity. That's got nothing to do with the team's chances, as we saw in how the actual games played out, and I think it's about time for the Big Unfair Red Sox Steamroller handwringing to tone itself down out there in Greater Baseball-land. Just a little bit.

-- Again with the preamble about it being early, etc., but hot damn, Manny Ramirez, huh? He was the only one to get a bat on Harden Wednesday, and lost it in the seats. So far his stroke looks to be in monstrous mid-season form already. I just hope he doesn't bash himself into an earlier hamstring issue than usual.

-- Foulkie pitched another perfect inning for Oakland. He struck out Manny for a second time. Just sayin'.

-- Now it's back to Spring Training, I guess. How wack would it be if we don't get to use the DH in a freakin' exhibition series three days before the games start to count again? Especially with the way Papi's been swinging the bat (or not) so far?

-- I hate to give Dan Shaughnessy any traffic, but he did pick up on a pretty funny incident that occurred during the Japan trip in one of his columns this week:

Highlight of the trip, hands down, was EMC CEO Joe Tucci having a catch with Hideki Okajima at a fancy reception at the Sox' New Otani Hotel headquarters Monday. While 2007 World Series clips were shown on a Green Monster-sized LED screen, assorted clients and dignitaries - most of them Japanese - feasted on sushi and fine wines. After a few speeches and interviews with Mike Lowell, Dustin Pedroia, Kevin Youkilis, and Terry Francona, a couple of fielding mitts were produced and Tucci lined up to play catch with the Sox' second-most-famous Japanese hurler. Standing in front of the giant screen, Okajima softly tossed to Tucci, who was about 20 feet away. Tucci made the catch, and before you could say, "Nuke LaLoosh," gunned a wild heater that sailed far high and wide of a sprawling Okajima and punctured the precious LED screen. I will never look at the EMC logo (which was on the Sox uniforms for the Japan games) without thinking of this.

Surely some kind of moral vindication, at least, for Sox purists who hated to see the uniform ads.

-- More from around the horn: The collection of baseball babies gracing the cover of this week's SI contains two Red Sox prospects, Clay Buccholz and Jacoby Ellsbury. There's also a fascinating-as-always piece from Tom Verducci about the way the Red Sox and Yankees have gone about building up their farm systems since 2004, and the new dimension it could add to the rivalry (According to some, we're supposed to be over the rivalry by now, but apparently Verducci hasn't gotten that memo either).

I've noticed this too, in passing--sometimes it feels like for every homegrown Red Sox wunderkind there's been a Yankees evil twin that surfaces. Like Joba Chamberlain for Jonathan Papelbon. And maybe even Shelley Duncan for Dustin Pedroia.

However, heartwarmingly for Red Sox fans, Verducci's article also highlights some of the places the teams' farm systems have not matched up--with the Yankees at a disadvantage. To wit:

The Yankees had only one first-round pick in the 2005 draft--the 17th overall--and when it rolled around, several future big leaguers were still available: outfielders Jacoby Ellsbury and Travis Buck, relievers Craig Hansen and Joey Devine, and starting pitchers Matt Garza and Clay Buccholz. But [Yankees scouting director Damon] Oppenheimer's ideal was a player who could hit in the middle of the lineup and play in the middle of the field or be a front-of-the-rotation starter. So he took C.J. Henry, a 6' 3", 205-pound high school shortstop from Oklahoma City. 'He fit exactly what we were looking for,' Oppenheimer says. 'Obviously, it hasn't worked out the way we wanted'.

Henry has yet to make it out of A ball, hitting .222 with 15 home runs over three seasons.

Nice scouting, guys.

Yankees sign Billy Crystal

No word yet on whether or not he'll be tapped to replace Roger in the rotation.

According to the Yankees official site:

Crystal will sign the contract and work out with the Yankees at Legends Field on Wednesday, before playing in the club's game on against the Pirates on Thursday. Commissioner Bud Selig approved the Yankees' extension of a contract to Crystal.

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Crystal, who turns 60 on Friday, will wear uniform No. 60 in the game.

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He will not be the first celebrity to don a Major League uniform during Spring Training play. Country music artist Garth Brooks worked out with three big league clubs -- the Padres, Mets and Royals -- beginning in 1998 to raise funds for his Teammates For Kids foundation.

I can only imagine that Ben Affleck is burning up the phone lines to the Red Sox front office in the wake of this news.

True Colors

It's such a big game today, even our US Senators don't have anything better to worry about. So it should follow that the Statue of Liberty has weighed in too.

Screw all the haters. GO PATS.

Das Boot

Buckle up, folks, Boston and New York are facing each other for the championship.

And New York has tossed out the first volley:

This story was first broken by the New York Post: Tom Brady was spotted in New York outside Gisele's apartment wearing a cast on his right foot.

Now, before you freak, like I did, consider the following:

1) He's walking

2) He's walking while carrying stuff

3) It's a soft, removable cast

4) He plays with his feet and ankles taped all to hell

5) He's walking.

He says he'd "have to be on a stretcher" to miss the Super Bowl. I believe that. But still, any hint or semblance that Tom Brady is remotely injured is enough to have any Bostonian reaching for the Valium.

And in New York, they know that, the bastards.