Baseball Karma

Game Six of the World Series, and the visiting team is up by two runs. In the ninth inning. There are two outs, and two strikes. And the visitors are one pitch away from winning their first Series…. Does any of this have a familiar ring to anyone? The difference was that in 1986, no one was on base when Calvin Schiraldi began to melt down. This year, there were two men on base, but still, the Rangers were only a pitch away.

Then it happened again in the bottom of the tenth inning. But in the tenth, by the time there were two outs and two strikes, the Cards had already scored once, and were only one run down. But there it was again; another pitch that could have meant the Rangers' very first World Series championship.

So what I’m wondering about is whether Rangers fans are more miserable than Sox fans? Right now—probably yes. They had a great run in September, and for much of October, but what’s it going to be like from November through March? I guess I would have rather melted down in September than to have waited until Game Six. The Rangers' bullpen, which had been so dominant against the Tigers, had a collective ERA over seven during the Series. That sounds familiar. Right?

The Cardinals, however, were the reason that Sox fans kept hoping, until the season’s very last blown save, for things to turn around. St. Louis snuck into the post-season on the very last day of the season, and only managed that with some considerable help from the Atlanta Braves. Of course, they fought their way into the playoffs, and that’s a much better harbinger of a successful post-season, than what the Sox were trying to do – back into the playoffs with a losing September by winning a couple games here and there. I can’t imagine that, even if the Sox had secured the wild card, they would have been able to make a run like the Cardinals did.

The Rangers all seem to be pretty good guys – Ron Washington especially. At times, I felt bad for them as Game Seven slipped inexorably out of their reach. But the problem was that whole high-fiving routine with George Bush in the owners’ box. I think that’s bad luck for the Rangers, and Nolan Ryan would be well advised to have the Bushes hanging out in some luxury box somewhere, behind tinted glass, and far from the spotlight. See, when Bush and Ryan started celebrating, there were so many haters who couldn’t stand to see that, and then those haters collectively summoned up just a smidgen of bad karma. The next thing you know, Nelson Cruz didn’t go all out after Freese’s line drive. Two runs scored; the game was tied; and there just wasn’t enough residual karma for the Rangers’ bullpen to hold off the Cards.

Oh well, as we in RedSox Nation are so used to saying…. Wait till next year. I’m just guessing about this, but there’s probably a lot of that going around Texas right now.

Hurricane Irene

It was Saturday, August 27, and we were driving home, just ahead of Hurricane Irene. Even though we got caught in torrential rains on Route 128, the leading edge of Irene having reached New England that Saturday, the Sox still managed to play two complete games before the worst of the storm arrived. And they won both ends of that double-header, shutting out the Oakland As in the second game. Bedard, Aceves and the relievers held the As to only three hits. At the end of the day, Boston was thirty-one games over .500, and as any loyal reader knows, that’s the magic number. Thirty games over .500 leaves a team at 96-66 at the end of the season, and ninety-six wins gets a team to the post-season. Plus, from the time the Sox had ended their season-opening sleepwalk, they had compiled the very best record in all of baseball. As far as any of us could tell, 2011 looked more promising than any year since 2007.

But Hurricane Irene seemed to wreck all that. By the time the rains and wind had stopped, the Sox were as devastated as any area of New England, even if we could not see it quite yet. I’m not going to dissect the September swoon -- the errors, the bullpen meltdowns, the alarming September ERA of the starting rotation. What’s the point?

We went to the park on September 20 - a Tuesday - to see the Sox play the Orioles. When I got those tickets in August, it seemed a certainty that there would be a celebratory air in Fenway that night. Even if the Sox slipped to .500 ball, by September 20, they should have had the wild card wrapped up. And with all those games against Baltimore in September, while the Yankees and Rays had to play each other over and over, the schedule seemed to be smiling on Boston. As it turned out, by the time we got to Fenway, the lead had melted away, and there were consistent signs of an epic collapse. In fact,we saw pretty much the entire swoon in that one night:

In the third inning, Saltalamacchia dropped a third-strike foul tip, keeping Andino’s at bat alive; he then singled to start the inning. Later on, after one run had scored, Guerrero hit a line drive into right field that Reddick dropped. A run scored on that error, but two more scored later in the inning with two outs. That was five outs for the Orioles in that inning, and even the worst team in the AL manages to score runs when you give them five outs.

But even with that four-run third, the Orioles trailed late in the game. Until the eighth inning. That was when Bard and Pap loaded the bases, before Pap gave up a three-run double. I can’t figure Bard at all. At one point in the season, he went around 23 innings without giving up a run. But in September, his ERA was over 10, and he ended the season at 2-9. Pap too had a deceptive year. Even though he blew only three saves, he seemed to turn many easy save opportunities into heart-stopping, nail-biting dramas.

And as if all that weren’t enough, now we have the Boston Globe expose with tales about pitchers drinking beer and eating pizza in the clubhouse during games; Tito departing under peculiar circumstances; did management force him out? And now Theo is apparently leaving for the Cubs. Boston didn’t really have a bad year; all they had was one terrible month. So the response to that terrible month was to disassemble the team that had won two World Series championships after an eighty-six year drought? I mean, maybe Tito had a bad year, but it wasn’t Tito melting down on the mound in late innings. And it wasn’t Tito dropping line drives in the outfield. I’m mixed on Theo’s departure, because it’s still not clear he was anything other than lucky. The heart of this current RedSox team came up through the farm system -- Pedroia, Ellsbury, Lester. Papi was signed before Theo showed up. And for every good free agent signed -- Schilling and Foulke for example -- there were at least two high priced lemons -- J.D. Drew, Lackey (the worst starter in the AL this year) and Carl Crawford. So if Theo takes the Cubs to the world series, he’s a genius; and if they stay mediocre or worse, he was just in the right place at the right time.

Meanwhile, it sure looks like the Haters Ball gets hosted in Rochester for the foreseeable future. G-Man better keep his car tuned up, because he’s going to making that drive on a regular basis. And I didn’t even mention Cuse moving to the ACC. But that’s enough troubling news for one post. Is it any wonder I haven’t been able to write since August???