Boston took a quick 5-0 lead before Matt Clement was hit near the right ear by a Carl Crawford line drive in the third inning. Clement stayed motionless on the mound for at least five minutes -- the ball caromed into left field and the Trop was as quiet as a tomb -- before being put on a stretcher and taken off the field. He is reportedly in good shape, but will stay in the hospital overnight.
Tampa Bay tied the game in that inning on Aubrey Huff's grand slam, and later took leads of 6-5 and 8-6. Delcarmen (#57) threw a perfect eighth inning, mixing in a fastball that was clocked at 94-95 and a curve at 77. He threw 14 pitches, nine for strikes.
After Curt Schilling allowed the potential winning run to reach base with two outs in the bottom of the ninth, Johnny Damon saved the game with a leaping catch at the wall in deep left center.
Damon then led off the top of the tenth by smacking Danys Baez's first pitch to deep right for a home run. Boston added another run in the inning and held on as Schilling allowed one run in the bottom half of the 10th.
Why Baez was allowed to pitch the entire 9th and 10th innings is beyond me. He allowed seven hits and four runs before he got five outs.
Boston would have likely won the game in nine innings if Dale Sveum hadn't sent John Olerud from first base on Bill Mueller's double. That hit tied the game (Adam Stern scored ahead of Olerud) and if Sveum had done his job -- holding one of the slowest men in professional baseball at third -- Boston would have had:
Runners on 2nd and 3rd, with 1 out in a tie gameinstead of
Runner on 3rd, with 2 outs in a tie game.Thanks for fucking up yet again, Dale. And, thanks Red Sox front office, for keeping this incompetent numbskull around to screw up potential rallies. ... Trot Nixon also hurt himself on a swing in the third inning. He strained an oblique muscle and had to leave the game.
Boston's win kept them atop the East, as the Yankees (1 GB), Orioles (3.5 GB) and Blue Jays (4.5 GB) all won.
Wakefield / McClung at 4:00.
18 comments:
Poor Manny! So rational! So consistent! Such hustle! What a fielder! And so underpaid...well, enough for now...late for a David Duke rally....
This is one game I really wanted to have seen for the good and the bad. Do you know how to get BoSox games in San Francisco? My only option seems to be paying $$$ to ComCast (ComBastard?) for their premium baseball channels. I'll probably shell out when the end of the season comes around...
Churn that rumor! Churn that rumor! Cook and stir that pot 'till it boils over
Ahhcommahn! Who dreams up that shit? Who's on the front page news next week?
What is up with this guy Jack Marshall? Give it up already, dude. You've made your point more than a few times.
spud:
you could download a copy of the game at MLB.com for $3.99. ... quality is alright.
spud- sooner you get this stuff, the more you get for the money. mlb.tv is choppy sometimes, but it's half the cost of xtra innings and you can see any archive, any time. for example i've seen the fight between tigers/royals last week at least five times already.
I think this manny rumor's bizarre, especially with the pics of him & wife & kid out in the globe at the same time. I understand that it's hard to keep your life private as a pro athlete, but a trade would not help manny in this respect. Any team that could afford his contract would have this kind of problem. If there's truth to it at all, it's been twisted to be a much bigger deal than it is. Things said in jest or in the heat of emotion can be easily twisted to a reporter's need for sensationalism.
Jeez, jack marshall. "So consistent!"? It's not like he leads the league in RBIs or has a 1.2 some-odd OPS with runners in scoring position or anything. "What a fielder!" Yeah, he flubs the occasional fly ball, but he's made several catches in the corner at Fenway that were amazing, and he leads all outfielders in assists (by a relatively large amount). I don't know about you, but I love knowing that a runner at second and a hit to Manny Ramirez does not necessarily equal a run.
I like Manny Ramirez (obviously). Not just for his INSANE baseball skills, but for his winning smile, his seeming enjoyment of the game, and the way he seems to approach each at-bat almost exactly the same way.
What is up with all the Manny hate recently? Can anyone honestly say they're not getting their money's worth? He led the American League in homers last year (as you all well know)! And it seems to me he's been hussling out of the box a lot more often this year.
And why haven't they fired Sveum?!
One of those days where you feel like you went through a week of Red Sox baseball in 24 hours with all the stuff that went on...
And spud, I'm in Michigan half the year, MLB.TV is great for catching Sox games, especially if you're in a lecture hall with wireless internet and a laptop...
Francona on WEEI says he asked Manny to play today because "the team is in a bind" with Trot going on the shelf, and Manny refused.
Way to help the team.
interesting, zach. ... seems a bit out of place for tito to say something so bluntly, but maybe he was genuinely pissed.
i was suffering along with the fox annoucners for this afternoon's game, so of course they had info. and i mean no info on anything -- sox, rays, baseball, nothing.
i get my money's worth from manny. and then some. who the hell cares what he makes? we don't pay it.
I guess what's up is that I'm really amused that you guys chose to make the specious case that Manny Ramirez was just a misunderstood, normal superstar who suffers critiques of his fielding and accusations of being a "flake" because of media bias on the very same week in which he 1) has fielded especially atrociously 2) was revealed to continue to want out of Boston despite all his comments to the contrary (And this, by the way, is what I sarcastically referred to as "consistent") and 3) refused to help out his team in a personnel crisis when asked by his manager. ESPN's Harold Reynolds said this was inexcusable for a team leader (which Manny clearly is not), while Carl Ravich said that some have posited that Manny didn't understand the symbolism of his refusal. Selfish team mate or clueless flake? I'm fascinated to see how much of this some people can take in and still be in abject denial about Manny's very real and very damaging shortcomings when he doesn't have a bat in his hands. It's like a psychology experiment!
Funny you should write just now, jack. I was about to say that I take back some of my unqualified adulation. Not stepping onto the field on a day before a day off when they needed him was a prima donna move.
As to the accusation that it's only when there's a bat in his hands that one should value him...well, yeah. While his gaffes in the field might lead to a few runs a season for the other team (how many?--10? 15?), he's also going to cause a heck of a lot of runs, too. I'll take Manny on the field as a necessary co-action of taking him in the batter's box.
Is he hurting team morale by his actions earlier today? (Yesterday, really.) Possibly. Hard to measure in runs scored or allowed, though. They did win the game today. Does this psychological factor come in later? Eh...I'm of the opinion that if the players are professional at all, this factor is negligible. One game certainly is not worth getting in a tizzy over.
Jack Marshall has serious problems with reading comprehension.
I cannot speak for anyone else here, but this is what I've been saying:
Manny does indeed space out, take weird routes on fly balls, do stupid things on the base paths. He does all of these things. You would have to not follow baseball at all to not know this. BUT THAT IS NOT THE POINT.
The point is that other players (including some of Manny's teammates) do these things too -- and do them just as often as Manny does -- yet they do not receive even 1/10th of the attention or criticism that Ramirez draws.
The question is: If Manny and Teammate X do the exactly same stupid things -- and Manny is a way better hitter than Teammate X -- why does Manny get so much more shit for his actions than Teammate X does?
RedSock has problems with GAME comprehension. Show of hands: how many out there feel Manny does these thing NO MORE OFTEN than other players? I just find that an astounding statement.
Obviously, only a Hall-of-Fame level hitter would ever be tolerated doing these things as often as Manny does them, and Manny is the only Hall-guaranteed hitter the Sox have. A player's deficits are balanced against his credits: the amazing thing with Manny is that despite his enormous offensive output, it's still a close call. How could anyone watch this team day in and day out and not conclude that Manny loafs, pulls rocks, falls asleep in the field and generally does thing no pro ballplayer should do more than the rest of his team mates combined?
"More than the rest of his teammates combined"? Ridiculous. Hyperbole is all well and good, but that's a silly thing to say. I think Mirabelli, Nixon, and Ortiz (and Sveum) have all upset me more on the bases this year. Renteria has upset me more in the field (in a harder position, admittedly). Nixon has upset me badly on a couple of game-losing plays in the outfield.
I know this isn't the be-all, end-all statistic, but Manny has exactly as many errors as his standard counterparts in the rest of the outfield (Damon and Nixon). They each have one error.
"Close call"? Please. He has nearly an RBI per game he's played. By the way, he's on pace for about 150 games this year, which is hardly nothing. There's absolutely no way his defensive play or baserunning stupidity is enough to detract from that to the point of him being average or anything like it.
I haven't watched every game this year, but I've watched about two-thirds of them, so I feel pretty safe in my statements.
I do wish there were a stat for "bonehead baserunning" (this should be called an offensive error or something) or "badly-tracked flyballs", though.
Sorry, Devine, that's just flat out wrong. By your error analysis, Manny and Damon are equally adept fielders. Have you seen any of the gappers in left that
Manny just doesn't get to because he picks up the ball late or jogs towards it? And it's the air-head stuff where Manny laps the competition.
Ah, but didn't I say I realized that errors are not the statistic that you want to sit on as far as analysis goes? I have indeed seen Manny make some very bad efforts/plays on flyballs. More than I've seen him make good ones (though I've seen those too), certainly. I still think he's worth it as a bad-to-mediocre outfielder in any cost-benefit analysis that includes his hitting.
Manny is someone who, altogether, one would choose to have on the team. I have my doubts that any team in the league (other than one where defense is more solid in the entire outfield--like Minnesota), if offered the man-child for a pittance, would go, "NO! NOT Manny Ramirez! It'll be a disaster!" Any team, including the Red Sox, can use the league-leader in RBIs.
By your error analysis, Manny and Damon are equally adept fielders. Have you seen any of the gappers in left that
Manny just doesn't get to because he picks up the ball late or jogs towards it? And it's the air-head stuff where Manny laps the competition.
Have you seen the fly balls where Damon appears to stick his glove in the air and make a blind, flying leap, then stagger to the wall, limbs flailing, as the right fielder rescues the ball? We saw this just last night against the Twins.
I appreciate Johnny Damon for many things - he was always a favorite player of mine, from KC and Oakland days - but the man is not exactly Willy Mays out there. For that matter, he's not exactly Bernie Williams.
I'm wondering how long you can continue to avoid Redsock's question, and act as if everyone here is defending Manny no matter what he does, when that was never the point of the discussion.
A little psychology experiment.
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