Monday, March 31, 2008

And Now: Three Games That Don’t Matter

Did you like that? Did you like that little taste of semi-legitimacy the fiasco in Japan gave us? For a brief moment we were in the regular season were every game was a life an death struggle for our beloved Sox (ok I exaggerate… but stay with me) and then it was cruelly snatched away and replaced with a sham of a croc of a sham series with the Dodgers in a damn football stadium that is older than Timlin, not to mention the fact that the team is freaking exhausted from being half way around the damn world for a week. AHHHHHHHHH!

Whew… sorry about that. The tease of REAL baseball got me worked up. Let me give you a short breakdown of the weekend festivities.

Game 1- Boston Red Sox 1, Los Angeles Dodgers 3:
Wow the Coliseum is both big (huge amount of room for the fans and 400+ in center field) and freaking tiny (like 250 ft down the left field line). Colon pitched a hell of a game and is giving a running (well maybe rolling) start into his spot as the 5th starter. Well after he finishes a stint in AAA. Offense forgot to show up to this game and the bats were shut down by a mix of Chad Billingsly and Scott Procter. Yeah not pretty. Sox lost this thing in the 8th when so guy I never heard of (Holdzkom?) gave up the go ahead double to Mark Sweeny. More spring, more losses. What else is new?

Game 2- Boston Red Sox 7, Los Angeles Dodgers 4
Looks like EVERYONE came to this game. 115K showed up to watch the Sox get some of the cheapest homers ever down that piddly little line in the Coliseum. Youk and Cash went deep (not THAT deep) to push the Red Sox to a hard earned victory. Wakefield had a great day in a park that could have killed him if he kept his knuckler up. A good season out of him would be fantastic. Oh, and Papelbon gave up some more runs. Try not to panic.

Game 3- Boston Red Sox 0, Los Angeles Dodgers 8
Say it with me: “It’s only Spring Training, it’s only Spring Training!” They got freaking ONE HIT! If Pedroia didn’t lead off the game with a walk, it would have been a perfect game through 8 innings. Lets not even think about the fact that Buchholz got massacred (again) and only lasted 3 innings. And the strikeouts?? The Red Sox had 12. I want to crawl under my bed and hide. The real deal is in Oakland on Tuesday and this is the quality of play we are going to see? Do you understand how tough the schedule is this first month? If the Sox go 5-15 in the first 20 games I won’t be shocked at all.

Is it too early in the season to start drinking?