Hardball Heaven

I come before you to rant. It's currently 10:50 on the east coast, it's hot and muggy, and as I'm wont to do, I'm lounging on my new leather couch (free by the way, if the Red Sox win the World Series this year) taking in the series finale between the Sox and the Angels out in Anaheim. And I'm bleeping pissed.

Entering today's games, the Yankees had whittled the Sox lead from a high of 14.5 games down to a meager 5. Granted, it's still the biggest divisional lead in all of baseball, but leave it to us pessimistic Bostonians to make 5 feel like 0.5.

Anyway, here's my main bitch. All year long, all I've read about is the pitching, the pitching, the pitching. Well, in case anyone hasn't noticed we've basically got 2 goddamn pitchers right now that we can count on. Dice-K and Josh Beckett. Hopefully Schilling makes that three. The jury's out on him after his performance the other night, and he needs another game to show that he can be effective down the stretch. Tim Wakefield - God love him - and Jon Lester are not getting the job done. We all know about the Wake roller coaster. Like Manny, we take the good with the bad, and we watch helplessly as opposing base runners have their way on Wake and Doug Mirabelli. When/if the Sox are fortunate enough to get into the postseason, Wake becomes an instant liability. Lester, on the other hand, has come back admirably from his illness but the kid's just not doing the job. I personally have never seen the glimpses of his talent that everyone has raved about. Every time I've seen him pitch, he's been strangely average - with one or two good outings. If someone would have taken Lester and Wily Mo for a good bat, shame on Theo. Sorry if that sounds harsh, but I'm just going on what I've seen.

The other thing that's pissing me off is this team is playing flat, uninspired baseball. Compared to the hyper Angels, they look like zombies. The baserunning mistakes have been frequent and they've been costly. They had another one tonight in the friggin' first inning when Julio Lugo had a brain fart and got picked off first. There just doesn't seem to be any fire, there's been no clutch, come-from-behind wins, Papi and Manny are going through the motions, J.D. Drew shows no signs that he's a living, breathing human being. Contrast that with the Yankees, who, while they lost big to Toronto tonight, have come together as a team and gone 20-7 since the All-Star break. They got into a beanball war with the Blue Jays last night, and Big Fat Rog got ejected for hitting Alex Rios square in the back. Of course, A-Fraud as in the middle of it all. Maybe this vintage photo of Tek giving A-Fraud a mouthful of Rawlings will get this ship turned around.

As I type these words, the Angels just took a 3-0 lead on Lester and the Sox offense shows no signs of getting to Dustin Moseley, whoever he may be. Papi is sitting this one out, as is Coco Crisp. And as I will be very soon. I ain't staying up to watch this crap.

Hey, I always said it was the best day-to-day soap opera ever...