Hardball Heaven

The Sox put one nail in the Yanks' coffin last night with a sweet 7-3 victory in New York. Highlights in this one were Alex Rodriguez' ineptness at the plate and in the field, and a huge double-play groundball induced by Justin Masterson (on A-Fraud) to squelch a Yanks' rally in the seventh (I just used 'induced' and 'squelch' in the same sentence by the way...)

The Yankee "fans" were all over A-Rod last night, booing every at-bat, and even booing the guy whenever he touched the ball in the field, which really says something about how they feel about their bazillionaire slugger. He's got numbers this year, but not your typical A-Rod numbers, and he has not been good in the clutch. Think he's batting around .245 with runners in scoring position and two outs.

Could it be the personal swirl that's doing A-Rod in this year? Is the Material Girl messing with his brain?

Game 2 is tonight at 7, with Paul Byrd going against the Clown Prince of Aruba, Sidney Ponson.

(One other quick note: several media outlets are reporting that the Sox have signed Mark Kotsay to join their outfield ranks. Makes sense, with J.D. Drew now on the DL and Brandon Moss now playing in Pittsburgh (that's the one that's gonna hurt me for a while - I liked Mossy). This is the spot they envisioned for Brian Giles, but he decided he'd rather stay in beautiful San Diego and play for a loser. To each his own, I s'pose.)