Results tagged ‘ AL East ’
Merits of Hangovers
There has been speculation about the form of the Red Sox players today, after a wild celebration last night upon winning the AL East title. And given hints of forgiving a loss should the whole team be hung over and tired since they already clinched the title. So, it looked that way for a while tonight. Until, JD Drew, the one player accused of not caring, not working hard, not pulling his weight, not being worth his contract, not being a team player especially for not returning to the ballpark last night, cracks a three-run homer that takes Boston to a slow-coming lead and eventually a game win.
I am reminded of a friend’s fond account of the best race her intramural team in college won. To quote her, “we were all hungover and we had the best race I ever had.” And they won. She used to tell that story to every single novice class I coached until I threatened to boot her for being a bad influence.
Maybe there is merit to playing while hung over. I try to ignore declarations of hang overs. Perhaps I’m a bit more hardcore and judgmental, but I just don’t want to know when my teammates are not in fine form, especially as athletes. But now I wonder if there’s something behind it. I know when some people are hung over, they are loosened and relaxed. Lemme correct that: they are too out of it to really focus and therefore seem relaxed. And the team did win tonight, after all. TV watchers: did the players and coaches look attentive at all? In other words, were they visibly hung over?
Blah. Did my friend really think I’d buy her reasoning? JD Drew wasn’t at the celebration. And this could have been a lucky win otherwise. Forget that hung over reasoning. Don’t drink too much, folks. Celebrate at the championships and party hard then.
In conclusion
I swear: I shall not mock my friends and colleagues who are O’s fans, for a very very very long time. Until next year’s season, when the fun starts all over again 
Extra Innings: I am nervous about the competition against the Yankees in the play offs, if it reaches that point. Yankees have proven themselves a formidable opponent. They caught up on such a huge lead the past two months and they trounced the Sox in the last match-up series. A-rod has been hot at the batter’s box, as much as I hate to admit it. The fact that the Yankees have been falling to extra innings games and blowing run leads makes me wonder. Is it a sign of games to come? What’s going on over there?
Only in Fenway: I didn’t think to stay up to follow the Yankees-Os game. It seemed like they had such a dominant lead over the Os. Yet, I should not have been surprised and merely amused to hear that the fans watching the Twins-Sox game at Fenway stayed to await the end of the Yankees game. Those fans were there longer than the team captain!!
Definition: From my dictionary.
clinch verb 1 confirm or settle conclusively….
I can’t call this a “clinch”. The win of the title has been settled, no doubt, but it took a rush all the way to the end of the season to conclude and decide.
I repeat my assertion from an earlier post.. at least in the AL side the house, it’s going to be a lot of tough competition to make it through the pennant race. Red Sox and Red Sox fans alike, we’re in for a bumpy ride. I’m confident the Red Sox has what it takes; they didn’t win the division title by fluke. They just need to perform their best and nothing but the best.
In summary: Thank you, Red Sox for getting the division title. It’s been a while and I really really wanted you to win this badly. People keep saying the most important thing is that you make it to the play offs and play well. I’ll admit: I wanted you to make division title, and break a 10+ year drought. Winning the play offs would be icing on cake for me.
Eh, wha-??
Holy crapoollaa!! What? How? Boston wins AL EAST!!!!!
Thanks, unnamed friend, for giving me a call to rouse me out of bed so I can check the news.
OK, I’m half asleep and have a race this weekend so I still need my zz’s. A more thoughtful post tomorrow. It’s kind of fitting that the Red Sox don’t know that they’ve won the AL East until well after their own game ended, and possibly after some players split up and went their respective directions. It’s not to say they don’t deserve a loud celebration. Just, with all losses this month, the injuries of major players, and the losing the huge lead, it seemed like a more subdued win was more representative.
Final thoughts before bedtime
I’m ecstatic over the Red Sox win. Heck, I’m crazy about every single Red Sox win. I’m programmed to think and react that way since I was a kid.
But it’s been a bumpy ride. Who can deny it? Every reporter has pointed out at some point or another within this month that the Red Sox had as much as a 14.5 game lead over trailing Yankees at its best moment. And we’re now awaiting the very last two games of the regular season to resolve the division title.
The unpredictability of this sport is part of the fun. And part of the nerve-wrecking roller coaster ride. April to September now feels like an awfully long period of time, when there are almost a game daily. Back in spring, we were all optimistic but had been a little more grounded, telling ourselves “it’s still early.”
In summer, I braced myself for the annual Red Sox August slump. That didn’t come, for a long time, at least. Hearing that the Sox was winning and winning on high notes felt so novel, and so sure as a fact that they were the best team in both leagues.
Now, we are still waiting to see if the Red Sox can claim the division title, with only two games left. If you asked me in July how I thought the Red Sox would do in the play offs, I would say hands down, they’re going all the way. Tonight, I’m not so sure. I find that the team has phenomenal players and that the team works well together. The front office has demonstrated incredible skill in picking out new talent that not only show promise but also deliver now.
It’s not a question of whether the Red Sox is qualified or is the stronger team. The fact is that there are many strong teams and they’ve demonstrated their ability to win just as much as the Red Sox has. Red Sox is in for a tough battle. All the opponents are going to be playing hard ball, and the Sox need to deliver nothing but the best to make it through the play offs.
Hanging on to the lead by a thread
Good thing I was too busy to follow the game today. Between the race and preparing to host a wine&cheese party, I just didn’t have time.
Having the Sox clinch a seat in the play offs helped put it in perspective for me. Don’t get me wrong- I still want to Sox to win the title and break the trend of coming in under the wildcard. I feel after the phenomenal year they had this season, they ought to be given the title.
1.5 games ahead. Barely hanging onto the lead, though. Five games to go for the regular season, all at home. At least the Sox will have homefield advantage.
Tomorrow: rest! For all of us.
ARGH (*&$#(&$@#(
Dear Local Electric Company,
Um, yea, thanks a lot!! Thank you so much for being the “dependable energy provider.” You just had to put my area through a “widespread power outage” just as the Red Sox was celebrating its entry to the play offs. And it was so widespread that my neighbours down the street had their power. Just me. Just my block. For EIGHT HOURS. What was your excuse? We didn’t have any storms or rain. We didn’t have wind. It wasn’t even a hot day!
Just when I was listening to the radio to hear what would have been the announcement for the fourth time the Red Sox made it to the play offs in the last five years. Thank goodness you at least had the courtesy wait until I heard the last pitch. Do you know how irritating it is to cut off an announcement in mid-sentence, even if it’s the Devil Rays’ home station?? “And the Red Sox cele-”<cut, flicker lights and darkness>
I was already half-way through typing my celebratory blog entry. You couldn’t even give me an extra five minutes for me to have the satisfaction of blogging about the clutch win.
What did I do to offend you? I pay my bills on time. I don’t grouse about the cost of electricity. I didn’t sign that petition against your building the towers through the state. Why couldn’t you have done it last Sunday instead so I could have missed the loss and had a perfectly valid excuse for being late for work??
ARGH$%(&%(#%$)!
With not so much regard,
Your reluctant and unappreciative customer
August came a month late
24 hours later.. I have a massive headache but it’s not baseball related. If anything, I think I may even be calmer, once reading what Schilling had to say, and since there is no game taking place tonight. As I’m waiting for my work computer to finish backing up its files so I can go to bed, I’ll update this a litte more.
I ought to know being a Red Sox fan doesn’t come without excitement and that excitement swings both ways. That ginormous magnet I mentioned a couple weeks ago still sits in in my bedroom, awaiting a home assignment. And I still intend to stick it up, win or not.
It’s tough watching a team slide downhill and lose a 14 game lead over the course of two months. In the middle of the summer, they- and we- were flying high and the Yankees unbelieveably bad. It even reached a point where an otherwise uninvolved city paper printed an editorial about Yankee fans! But rivalry aside, Boston was the best and everyone said it. That was a new experience to see the Sox automatically seen as the strongest team.
I braced myself for the downhill slide when the All-Stars came and left and the month of August rolled around. Every year in recent history, August has been a horrible month for the Sox. Injuries happen, leads turn to trails, losses come quicker than the wins. Think about it… the last time the Red Sox got the division title was 1995, meaning we’ve relied on the wildcard to get into the playoffs. That downhill didn’t happen, at least not to the degree I’m used to seeing. Injuries still happened and batting averages dipped. Yet, we finished quite strong in the end of August, with a phenomenal group of rookies running the show.
We started the month with a decent 5+ game lead. We started talking about winning the division title in addition to getting into the play offs. Then we got more injuries, more losses, more missed batting opportunities, and more runs given up. And it just dawned on me. We’re still having our annual bad August. It just happened late. Actually it did start in August, subtly, and came in full force lately. So we had a longer and later August slide. Blame it on global warming or something.
The Red Sox has snapped out of it before… they can do it again. Reading the blogs and web for opinions and thoughts have cheered me considerably. They don’t say Fenway Faithful without a reason.
The things I take for granted
Waking up this morning hurt… I hadn’t slept well. It had rained last night so the air had a quiet muffled quality that follows. It made me think of getting up in a major city in the wee hours of the morning of a weekend, when all is quiet and recovering and the sunrays are just creeping in between the buildings. Yes, recovering. That would be a good word for this. Most of it was internal; I’m not even within Red Sox Nation borders.
I wish I had assumed my fair-weather fanship and gone to bed early. Even my coach noticed my lackluster performance at practice this morning. At least I would have slept well thinking we won. But it would have been so uncharacteristic of a Red Sox fan in a Sox-Yankees match-up. And it was Friday night. What excuse would I have?
I was so worried about Dice-K’s performance I didn’t give much thought to the relievers. Heck, I just assumed they would do fine. I should have known clutch performances go both ways. If we can do it, the Yankees certainly can, too. Having a formidable opponent makes the rivalry more heated but, man, this heartbreak is worse than my last relationship break-up!
Trying to move on
Beckett versus Wang. I have a healthy respect for Wang and even told myself I could watch this game with a more objective point-of-view in comparing the two pitchers. Not anymore. Now, I want the Red Sox to win. As simple as that.
The way I see it, there are several ways this can turn out in terms of which pitcher gets the win. Even the possibility of the game being determined by the relief pitchers. In all cases, a lot depends on the support the teams give their pitcher.
And I think both teams show a lot of focus today. Naturally, they would want to give their teammate that 19th win and an edge for the Cy Young award. I don’t think the teams will be as forgiving about allowing errors as they did yesterday. Now that the initial jitters are out of the way, the focus is in. Yankees have last night’s victory to play off and the Sox have the loss of force them in clean up their acts. The 4.5 game cushion doesn’t look so cushy anymore.
So, go, Red Sox and play a good one for the fans. We need something to mollify the horror of last night’s loss.
Listening to the drum beat
After a good night’s rest and with a huge cup of Dunkin’ in my hand, I now find myself very very excited about the coming series against the Yankees. Especially the pitcher match-ups. Tomorrow: Beckett vs. Wang. Wow. Talk about resolving who’s going to be the AL leader in wins. Both tied on the top with 18 and both gunning for their 19th win. That will be a good game to watch… I’m going to have to find some folks and a good sports bar to camp in to watch.
Times like this, I really wish I had a television.
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