First of all it's Mothers Day and the boys are wearing pink wristbands and batting with pink bats. Manly men in pink for Breast Cancer Awareness is the sweetest thing ever...
Lowell is out of the starting lineup and the Sox lineup looks a little like they are handing over the game before it begins. But then again, they have Beckett on the mound. Maybe they assume that with the run support that Josh has been getting, it doesn't matter who is playing defense. With Lowell out Youk is on 3rd and Hinske on 1st. Cora's at 2nd and the rest as usual.
Beckett gives up a couple runs in the first but is awesome thereafter. He racks up strike out after strike out. But then after the 4th disappears into the clubhouse and Snyder starts warming up in the bullpen. ???? Word comes back that Beckett has a avulsion on his finger. Got it? Not a blister.. an avulsion. (Had to look up the spelling on that one). It means that skin tore away. Not a blister because that would be bad. Beckett has a bad history of blisters. Skin tore away. That's supposed to be better.
Well, although statistically the Sox bullpen rocks, I think it's only because the starters rock and the bullpen doesn't have that much to do. And Oki and Paps are able to handle the task easily. In other words, the Sox seldom actually rely on Snyder, Lopez, Romero et al. With Beckett out after 4, the Sox turn to the pen and they give up runs here and there, allowing 3 more runs. In the meanwhile, the Orioles pitcher, Guthrie, is quietly awesome. He pitches a shut-out right up into the 9th. Not big overpowering pitching, not lots of Ks, but the Sox can't manage to even get a runner to 3rd through 8 and 1/3. Then this happens...
Not that big of a deal when you have a 5 run lead and you are throwing a shut out. And it's not like Guthrie walked Crisp to first, the catcher made an error to no fault of the outstanding Guthrie. Yet the Os manager made the unfortunate (for him) decision to pull Guthrie for no reason. I mean, up until that point, the game was dull -- REALLY DULL -- maybe he fell asleep and saw Coco on first and freaked? Nonetheless, he pulled Guthrie and the Os pen came on to save the day and made me realize why our sad bullpen (did i mention we went through 4 pitchers in the innings after Beckett?) has such outstanding stats. The Sox loaded the bases and scored and scored and scored and scored again. With 2 outs, the tying run on 3rd and the go-ahead on 2nd, and Lugio at bat, this happened...
and i am proud to be a Boston Red Sox fan yet again.....
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