When the Red Sox are at home, they can beat anybody consistently including the team that has won a division title for the past 13 years. I don't know what it is about Fenway and Boston, but it justs gives the team an edge.
Fortunately, and unfortunately, I missed most of the Saturday and Sunday games. I saw highlights on ESPN and was able to see snips of the game on TBS while playing poker at the Turning Stone Casino just outside Syracuse (made $321 by the way). More on upstate New York later.
In the last post, I mentioned that the Red Sox were facing a pitcher making his MLB debut. This meant the World Champion Red Sox would be facing an inexperienced kid in a loud, hitter -friendly ballpark on TV viewed by millions on NESN and TBS. So the Sox, with a great offense, should have killed this guy. But the Sox have a weird tendency to make random pitchers look like Aces. This happened on Saturday as Davies went 5 scoreless innings.
The Man of the Game is Marcus Giles who went 3 for 5 with a pair of doubles. He scored twice.
The Bitch-Goat shall be divided thusly:
Bellhorn: 0.2 - 0 for 4, Error
Wakefield: 0.8 - 5 IP, 6 ER
The Sox rebounded nicely on Sunday and got nice performances out of Ortiz, Manny, Varitek, Mueller, and most of all Clement. Matt the Missile has been on an absolute tear lately. His numbers from Sunday are pretty impressive. Only 5 Braves reached base on him. He kept his pitch count down and finished with 110. He didn't walk anybody.
The Man of the Game is obviously Matt Clement with his complete game win.
RED SOX NATION TAKES OVER UPSTATE NEW YORK VILLAGE
Cooperstown, New York is a small village in the middle of nowhere. It is 30 miles from any major highway, and 67 miles from any real city. Only 2,032 people are residents of the town. On Monday, that population ballooned to around 10,000. It was obvious that there were more Red Sox fans from New England inhabiting the town than local Cooperstowners.
I stayed at a friends house just outside of the town and watched the parade, which was reminiscent of my hometown's 4th of July parade. You know, politicians in classic cars, some marching bands, people giving out candy and toys to kids. Throw in the Oscar Mayer Wiener Mobile, a brand new Ford GT, and the World Champion Red Sox on a trolley and that is what the parade was. We couldn't get tickets for the game due to the high demand for tickets and large number of tickets bought up by scalpers. We found a few good places to watch the game for free though. It was kind of like watching a game in 1900. Plus, it was a good feeling that in order to watch this game, you had to be there. There was no television broadcast even in Cooperstown. Anyway, the game was somewhat dull after the Red Sox starters were out and I was getting sick of hanging onto a fence behind the center field bleachers. Johnny Damon was a treat though playing catch with fans and conversing with us about beer and stuff like that.
I took a good number of pictures in Cooperstown of the parade and the game and once I figure out a way to get them from my camera to this computer (which is not mine) and onto the internet, I'll post a link.
Not shockingly, the Red Sox are back on the road once again. A 3 game set with Toronto, and the same with the Yankees before coming back to Friendly Fenway.
ARSENAL BEAT MAN. UNITED FOR FA CUP
If you didn't know, Manchester United, the most famous sports team in the world and the most valuable sports franchise in the world was recently bought (well an overwhelming majority of it was bought) by non-soccer fan and Tampa Bay Buccaneers owner Malcolm Glazer for 790,000,000 pounds or just under $1.5 billion. Of course, Glazer isn't paying cash nor can he use the valuable Buccaneers as leverage on any deal due to NFL rules so he is going to transfer his personal debt from buying the team (650 million pounds/$1.2 billion) to the team itself. That's just ridiculous. Why the hell would you buy something only to transfer the debt to what you just bought? That could only hurt the asset you just acquired. Which it will. Ticket prices will go up for Man United and they will attmept to make more off merchandising which is nearly impossible. Man U is perhaps the best run sports organization in the world and their revenues are basically maximized as it is. I'm not complaining because I hate Manchester United, but could you imagine if some Englishman who didn't even like baseball wanted to buy the Red Sox? Then, in order to pay for the purchase, he would put the team in say $600 million in debt? I don't know about anyone else, but I'd be pissed beyond pissed.
Anyway, before going to the Casino, I bought the FA Cup on Pay-Per-View and it was well worth the $25. Arsenal and Manchester United have played each other many times over the decades and are about dead even head-to-head over the course of history. They played 4 times this season in 3 different competitions. Each team won twice. Arsenal, my favorite team, beat them in the FA Cup on penalty kicks 5-4. It was great seeing Manchester United, the New York Yankees of English soccer, get defeated by the equivalent of the Boston Red Sox.
