Derek Lowe hurled six and two-thirds of an inning last night, coughing up two earned runs (and two unearned) en route to a victory over the hated Yankees. Maybe hated is too nice of a word. Lowe lowered his ERA to 5.56, striking out five Yankees and walking three, allowing seven hits. Mike Timlin came on in relief and unfortunately gave up a grand salami to Hideki Matsui to make the game close again, but he got the last out of the seventh.
Terry Adams got one out in the eighth before scuffling, and Keith Foulke came in to save the day, something he had not done recently. The Red Sox bats put nine runs on the board (eight off Contreras in 5.1 innings) and failed to keep Yankee pitchers on the ropes as Bret Prinz stifled the Red Sox for2.1 innings, with Proctor picking up the last out the Red Sox would make. Ignoring the Red Sox’s lack of offense against Prinz, they had quite a good game, indeed.
Kevin Millar paced the offense with three hits and four RBI (a solo HR goes with that) and Damon blew the game open with a three-run shot down the line. To read more about the game, visit Jeff Kallman’s great recap here.
Ah, the brawl Saturday. Most of us haven’t forgotten it. If you have been afflicted with amnesia ala Jason Bourne of the ‘Bourne Identity’ and ‘Supremacy’ movies, I refresh your memory here.
Bob Watson said today that ‘they will hear from me.’ Ouch! This is not good, especially for the Red Sox, as Watson has ties to the New York Yankees. One can only hope one would not be biased in this case – but not only is he a fan of the Yankees, he worked for them. I am biased towards the Red Sox, just like Dan Benton and Brian MacMillan are biased towards the Yankees. Combine the two differing viewpoints, and you have a pretty good idea of how things REALLY transpired between the clubs. (But you still can’t fault Varitek for not taking his mask off. As Dave so astutely noted in a comment, Varitek NEVER takes his mask off. In retrospect, Dave is correct.)
“There will be some suspensions. You can best believe that.” “Please believe me. They will hear from me.” Please note these two statements are by Bob Watson. The following LUDICROUS statement is from Worcester’s Own Tanyon Sturtze (whom I am shamed to say inhabits the same city as I was born in and commute to every day).
“I was just trying to pull someone off the pile.”
WHAT?
You call grabbing someone from behind in a vicious headlock that Hulk Hogan would be proud of, ‘pulling’ someone off the pile!? Excuse me!? Pulling someone off the pile is either
a) grabbing an arm and yanking
b) grabbing a jersey and yanking. This criteria does not include
c) grabbing someone in a headlock and dragging them back, rendering said victim helpless and turning beet-red.
No, I don’t think so, Tanyon.
Without further ado, my predictions.
JASON VARITEK – suspended for five games.
ALEX RODRIGUEZ – suspended for five games.
TANYON STURTZE- suspended for five games.
They’ll probably throw either Ortiz or Kapler in there just to ‘balance’ it out, getting three games. (If they suspend Bronson Arroyo, there is something very wrong here.) It’ll probably be Kapler, because the umpires saw fit to eject him and not Ortiz from the game. And Watson will back the umpires up.
Please keep in mind that the home plate umpire, (Bruce Froemming, I believe) was right in the middle of Rodriguez and Varitek. The umpire report is going to be very crucial to this process.
So, it’s a waiting game. But please note that the Red Sox are not going to be crippled by our losses. We have awoken, and we are about to make the rest of the league regret they did not take advantage of us before the All-Star Game. We are something like 2-6 versus the Orioles, while the Orioles are the Yankee batboys, going 1-10 against them. Ridiculous split, and we need to fix it.
