Misery Loves Company: Two Guys Watch Baseball

Game 2 - Red Sox

Red Sox 9, Devil Rays 8 (16 innings)

I'll never get those four hours of my life back. I came home from work and hunkered down for a normal Tuesday evening of channel surfing. To my wondrous surprise, the Sox/Rays game was live and in color, thanks to the generous folks at MLB and their Extra Innings preview package. The Sox were trailing, 2-0, when I tuned in, but they battled to an 8-5 lead, thanks to timely hitting by Nomar and really poor fielding by the Devil Rays. Just like yesterday, though, the bullpen blew a gasket, with the ultimate indignity coming when anemic-hitting Rey Ordonez hit a two-run shot off of Bobby Howry. To put this in perspective, Rey Ordonez had played in 917 games in his major league career prior to last night. In his 3,045 plate appearances in those contests, he'd hit a grand total of 8 homeruns. He averages a longball every 102 games. And he touched one off against the Sox, leading me to exclaim "Rey Fucking Ordonez!!??!!", waking my daughter and causing my wife to leave the room in disgust. Again.

I went to bed after the 13th inning, unsatisfied and vaguely drunk. Which, come to think of it, is a pretty good description of the average Red Sox fan. At least I was happy when I woke up this morning and found the box score. Kevin Millar's solo homer in the 16th won the game, and Ramiro Mendoza, Steve Woodard, and Brandon Lyon combined for 7 shutout innings, so there were some bright spots. Chief among the highlights, though, was my 17 month-old daughter learning to say, "Nomahhhh" when Garciaparra's two-run double knotted the game at 2. That triggered a series of "Listen to this" phone calls to friends and family.