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markk
Old Love
USA
803 Posts |
 Posted - 28/10/2013 : 23:34:57
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| I totally disagree on Ortiz, but its probably a moot point, as the momentum changes with every game, and we are now down to a 2 out of 3 series, but all and all this has been an entertaining matchup. |
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lemonade kid
Old Love
USA
9875 Posts |
Posted - 29/10/2013 : 13:33:17
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quote:
Originally posted by markk
I totally disagree on Ortiz, but its probably a moot point, as the momentum changes with every game, and we are now down to a 2 out of 3 series, but all and all this has been an entertaining matchup.
He may not be a gold glover, but it was obviously right to play Ortiz as a position man... would you have kept him out for three games? And play who? Big Papi-- .733 batting average and he is a big reason they won in St Louis....heart and soul.
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Old hippies never die, they just ramble on.
-lk |
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lemonade kid
Old Love
USA
9875 Posts |
Posted - 29/10/2013 : 15:07:07
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• Gm 1: BOS 8, STL 1
• Gm 2: STL 4, BOS 2
• Gm 3: STL 5, BOS 4
• Gm 4: BOS 4, STL 2
• Gm 5: BOS 3, STL 1
• Gm 6: Wed., 7:30 p.m. ET
• Gm 7*: Thu., 7:30 p.m. ET
*- If necessary
David Ortiz at first-no errors, solid play, .733 batting average.
When the Red Sox are in the World Series, baseball fans are assured of a few constants. One is that David Ortiz will do something memorable. The other is that Ortiz will play first base on the road.
Yes, it's that time of the early 21st century again, when the Fall Classic shifts to a National League stadium and the Red Sox must deal with the temporary loss of the designated hitter by moving Ortiz, who will turn 38 in November, to first, where he hasn't played the majority of his games in a big league season since 1998.
Ortiz did it for two games during Boston's sweep of St. Louis in the 2004 Fall Classic and for two more in his team's sweep of Colorado in '07. He didn't commit an error in either Series. Ortiz hit over .300 in both Series. He even turned a nifty double play in Game 3 of the '04 Series, nailing Cardinals pitcher Jeff Suppan at third.
So at this point, it doesn't seem like a big deal. The Red Sox will likely elect to keep Ortiz in the lineup, especially after his hot start in this Series (homers in each of Games 1 and 2, a would-be grand slam that was robbed by Carlos Beltran in Game 1), so they're willing to absorb the loss of Mike Napoli, who will have to sit to make room for Ortiz at first, and any fielding mistakes Ortiz might make.
-MLB.com
So yeah, Big Papi at first..no big deal. Working out... just... FINE.
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Old hippies never die, they just ramble on.
-lk |
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LeeRob
Fifth Love
397 Posts |
Posted - 28/11/2013 : 19:58:06
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I was working in Cambridge, Mass in the 70's and went to many, many Fenway games. 'Saw Yaz tip his hat at his last game. 'Saw Pudge bat em out of the park; Jim Rice do a pop-up that touched the moon before it came down.
Heckled Munson mercilessly; 'saw Howard Cosel stick out his head from the booth in reply to a bunch of Boston-accented kids yelling up, "Howard, Howard, Hey Howard," and the when his smiling profile appeared, heard, "ewwwww, look at that nose," they were having fun and he loved it.
'Saw Dewey Evens slide into home on his face and called out.
Bill Lee 37, Ha, what a stoner, he used to get coffee at the deli beneath my tenement apt. in Belmont.
Good times. I have many of those games on cassete tapes I recorded at the time: Dick Stockton calling the action.
During the '76 series, Steinbrenner showed up at the game surrounded by black coated NY cops escourting him to a mid level seat. All that security; I thought it was Ted Kennedy.
We called the Yankees, the "New York Nazis." :)
Rooster too.
It's all the same day. |
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markk
Old Love
USA
803 Posts |
Posted - 05/12/2013 : 01:30:43
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| What does it mean, the stunning Bombers signing of Ellsbury. They overpaid for a very talented leadoff centerfielder, often injured, who was an All Star only once. But he will now be wearing pinstripes. They don't call us Damn Yankees for nothing. It means the Evil Empire is back. |
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lemonade kid
Old Love
USA
9875 Posts |
Posted - 05/12/2013 : 16:26:18
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quote:
Originally posted by markk
What does it mean, the stunning Bombers signing of Ellsbury. They overpaid for a very talented leadoff centerfielder, often injured, who was an All Star only once. But he will now be wearing pinstripes. They don't call us Damn Yankees for nothing. It means the Evil Empire is back.
Talented but.....Sox have so many talented players (on the roster & in Triple A, etc) in that position, we all knew he was gone a year ago. Yanks have a long way to go and Ellsbury won't help a crippled team...they need much more. Good luck, Yanks. Yanks main joy of late is to take a Sox player that was leaving anyway after the The Sox have won a World Series. We 're ok with that in Bean-town.
Wonderful memories, LeeRob!
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Old hippies never die, they just ramble on.
-lk |
Edited by - lemonade kid on 05/12/2013 16:26:53 |
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markk
Old Love
USA
803 Posts |
Posted - 06/12/2013 : 01:36:53
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| LK your points are all valid, I'm just stirring the pot. There hasn't been too much to stir for the Yanks. But they will make it happen someway. |
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markk
Old Love
USA
803 Posts |
Posted - 22/04/2014 : 22:44:35
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| Here we go again. Sox/Yanks tonite at the Fens. How will Ellsbury, who just may be MVP if he stays healthy, be greeted. Now that IS a dumb question. Our boy Tanaka is pitching, and today has been coined Tanaka Tuesday in NY. |
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lemonade kid
Old Love
USA
9875 Posts |
Posted - 23/04/2014 : 21:19:31
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It is odd how the best team in baseball (Red Sox last year),can become what looks like the worst team in baseball (Red Sox in last place)! But last year's World Series win will last me for years...what a great time for Red Sox fans it WAS!
Good luck to the Yanks.
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"After silence, that which comes nearest to expressing the inexpressible is music".
-Aldous Huxley
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Edited by - lemonade kid on 23/04/2014 21:20:39 |
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markk
Old Love
USA
803 Posts |
Posted - 23/04/2014 : 22:27:51
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As of now, and for the rest of the year, the Sox are the champs, and will continue to be so until they lose, or maybe they'll win again.
They are the frontrunners and until beaten, are the top team in baseball. |
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lemonade kid
Old Love
USA
9875 Posts |
Posted - 24/04/2014 : 17:02:41
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Thanks for the heartening and true words. Champs until they're not!
Maybe the pine tar incident against the Yanks yesterday will be the kick in the pants the Sox needed...won it 5-1. Granted, everyone does it and it's a bad, arguably stupid rule as it gives no advantage except control so a batter doesn't get hit in the head. But it's a rule, and the yanks were even more stupid for allowing their pitcher to rub pine tar on his neck for EVERYONE to see!?
The Yankees' pine tar pinhead outdoes himself this time
CBS News-Jon Heyman, Baseball Insider
watch video...
http://www.cbssports.com/mlb/writer/jon-heyman/24537885/the-yankees-pine-tar-pinhead-outdoes-himself-this-time
We've learned a lot about Michael Pineda in the short time he has been an active Yankee.
Some phrases that come immediately to mind: Pleasant personality. Great breaking ball. Giant goofball.
Hard to say what's more obvious at this point, the pine tar he wears on his neck or the falsehoods that spill out of his mouth.
First time against the rival Red Sox, he had the pine tar on his pitching hand, switched it to his wrist, and then told us it was dirt.
Second time, the pine tar was glued to the right side of his neck (toward third base, and away from the Red Sox dugout; how clever!), and his claim was that the Yankees never talked to him about his use of the pine tar between the first time he was caught and the second.
That suggestion is obviously absurd, even if Yankees general manager Brian Cashman hadn't told us there had been "enough conversations" regarding what Pineda needed to do better. Of course we had to know he was talked to.
What else was there to talk to him about?
Yet, Pineda, straight-faced and otherwise seemingly contrite, told the writers about the presumed conversations following the first time he was spied with pine tar, "Nobody talked to me about that."
Give him this. He finally admitted it was pine tar after his defeat to the Red Sox, he didn't disagree when someone mentioned it was against the rules and didn't protest much when someone asked whether he thought he might be punished further.
So he was on a truth streak there for a while. Maybe he figured his percentage of truth-telling was high enough for the day, and he would give it a shot. How silly.
Oh, the Yankees told him to stick the pine tar you know where, there's no doubt about that. The league office did the pine-tar-using pitcher a favor last time, sending the message through the storied team to make sure to tell their misguided pitcher to be more discreet about his use of the sticky stuff.
WEDNESDAY'S RECAP
Lackey dominates, Pineda ejected, Red Sox win 5-1
You think the Yankees forgot to mention this to him? Uh, no shot.
League higher-ups aren't so foolish to think the use of pine tar among pitchers isn't prevalent, so they gave Pineda a mini break, one he tried to take advantage of. League higher-ups get that there's an unwritten code to keep the foreign stuff hidden. So the league rather plainly reminded the Yankees about that in phone calls to top Yankees brass that came immediately after Pineda's first indiscretion.
MLB was doing Pineda a favor of sorts, not because he's a special case but because he's one of a pack of pine-tar enthusiasts. Not only was he not punished for his first violation, but according to people familiar with the conversations he was told through club intermediaries not even quite that he can't do it again but only that if he does it again, don't let anybody see it. In other words, don't make it so obvious, big fella.
So what does Pineda do? He plants a baseball-sized glob of the stuff on the side of his neck, where everyone -- and every camera -- can catch it. He must think we live in a technology-free society.
MLB, whose rules czar is none other than Joe Torre, was being nothing if not realistic in its original leniency. They understand pine tar is needed by many, if not most, pitchers, mostly to grip balls on ultra-cold nights. So Torre and Co. told the Yankees to tell him to be discreet, to not make things so obvious.
Of course, a massive gob of reddish-brown goo on the side of one's neck could not have been more obvious if he wore a sign out there. It was so obvious that Red Sox manager John Farrell had no choice but to complain, as every pinstriped person conceded. Farrell didn't want to, but felt he had to.
Cashman found plenty of blame to go around on his own team but had nothing but acceptance for what Farrell did. "I would want our manager to do what John Farrell did," Cashman said, candidly.
Cashman was honest in all his answers, though he wisely, correctly and probably mercifully spread the blame around his own area. Cashman didn't finger anyone by name in his dugout, who had to see something unless they were asleep (they may well have been), but stood up and spread the responsibility for this mess, saying the whole organization was "embarrassed" about what transpired. Good for him.
Cashman's message was refreshing, especially as it came after impenetrable manager Joe Girardi's practiced and expert Sgt. Schultz impersonation. (I hear nothing. I see nothing. I know nothing.)
Girardi may well have known nothing. But the point is, he should have known something, and he should have admitted as much. Or someone in that dugout should have. A coach, a member of the medical staff, the team psychiatrist, someone. They need to have control of their roguish player, as Cashman basically admitted.
"I am surprised that we as an organization are in this position," Cashman said in his effort to start to spread the blame. "We're all witnesses. We're all a part. There's clearly a failure and a breakdown if he wound up walking out of the dugout with something like that."
So while Pineda was absurdly claiming the organization didn't tell him to stop, Cashman, while not going along with that ridiculous storyline to absolve Pineda, was both kind and wise to try to push some of the blame to others. Pineda indeed looked shellshocked during his interview, and Cashman correctly read that he needed to help Pineda feel he wasn't on some island of goo, all by himself.
Give the pine tar pinhead credit for this much: He didn't run away and hide and did face the tough notes of the New York media.
And maybe it's right that his Yankees bosses didn't warn him quite often enough. If they told him 10 times, maybe they needed to tell him a hundred times. Some guys, after all, catch on quicker than others.
Maybe the Yankees needed to write a reminder on his glove, or to hold his hand, or to scrawl it on the side of his neck, for that matter. Maybe they are guilty of not knowing how crazy he is about this stuff, of not knowing that on the maturity scale he's in a neck-and-neck (sorry) battle for the basement with even Jesus Montero, the young man with the sinking career he was traded for two years ago, the young man who admitted upon arriving in Seattle's camp this spring that the reason he looked like he weighed 270 pounds and resembled a blimp is that he couldn't stop himself from eating everything in sight.
Montero is buried in the minors for struggling Seattle, so in terms of baseball value the Yankees stand far ahead in the trade of child-like savants. They are quite a pair indeed, a couple addicts in their own way (Montero for food and Pineda pine tar). But in the race for maturity, by owning up to his sins even Montero may be a neck in front.
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"After silence, that which comes nearest to expressing the inexpressible is music".
-Aldous Huxley
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Edited by - lemonade kid on 24/04/2014 17:10:23 |
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markk
Old Love
USA
803 Posts |
Posted - 24/04/2014 : 23:54:37
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| Much todo about nothing, Pineda will be fine, he just may not be the brightest, but I can think of many other dull ballplayers, Roger Clemens comes to mind. |
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lemonade kid
Old Love
USA
9875 Posts |
Posted - 25/04/2014 : 14:50:48
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quote:
Originally posted by markk
Much todo about nothing, Pineda will be fine, he just may not be the brightest, but I can think of many other dull ballplayers, Roger Clemens comes to mind.
Right! The next one caught will be a Red Sox pitcher. Pineda was very gracious about the whole thing including when questioned by the press. I can think of other players who have been less gracious...Big Papi, and maybe a Yank recently caught & suspended for other wrongdoings (suspended for like what 2 years?!). Are the Yankee fans unhappy to see that big dummy gone from the clubhouse?
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"After silence, that which comes nearest to expressing the inexpressible is music".
-Aldous Huxley
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markk
Old Love
USA
803 Posts |
Posted - 27/04/2014 : 19:36:26
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| There is not a peep, not a whisper from him, nor is anyone saying if only we had A Rod back. |
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underture
Fifth Love
482 Posts |
Posted - 11/06/2014 : 13:50:35
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My kingdom for a run. The Rays are officially done for any post season honors this season. It's kind of like all the negative mojo that teams inevitably go through have dogpiled Tampa this season.
You giving up on the Sox for this season yet, LK? It's a battle royal for last place between Tampa and Boston.
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Sox/Yanks
