Game 46 - Red Sox
Yankees 4, Red Sox 2
Record: 28-18
There's a great deal of luck in baseball, where inches literally mean the difference between victory and defeat. Over the course of 162 games, the breaks generally even out, and the good teams win about as many as they should. The Sox would have won this game with a little bit of luck, and a little bit of clutch hitting, but they got neither and lost. I'm disappointed, but not wildly so, because they'll get breaks later in the season and the Yankees will run into some hard times as Fortuna's wheel runs over their toes (apologies to Ignatius J. Riley).
The Sox got 9 hits in 6 innings against Roger Clemens - including 3 extra-base jobs - but managed only 2 runs. Bad situational hitting by any measure. The most irritating thing about this, aside from the fact that it was the bastard Clemens that benefited from the Sox largesse, was the verbal fellatio performed on the Yankee pitcher by broadcaster Joe Morgan. After Clemens was pulled before the 7th inning (meaning that he didn't even complete a "quality start" based on the definitions of that stat), Morgan waxed asinine about how "dominant" Clemens had been. Yes, he struck out 7, but he allowed 10 baserunners (on the 9 hits and 1 walk) in the 6 innings. Clemens was decent, perhaps even effective, but dominant - no freaking way.
I'm predisposed to see Yankee apologists around every corner, but Morgan pisses me off more than most. He has admitted that he holds a grudge against Boston because of the Sox previously abysmal racial record, yet is allowed to broadcast Sox games to a national audience. His predilection for blatantly stating the obvious is bad enough, and I don't care for him in any telecast, but he drives me batshit during Sox games. Stick to baseball, Joe, and leave the implied social commentary to others.
Clemens posting his 299th career win was the real lowlight of this game. Suffice it to say that I despise Roger Clemens with the white-hot heat of 10,000 suns, which is saying something, because he used to be my favorite player. That was before he (a) mailed in his final 4 seasons with the Red Sox (40-39, 3.81 ERA), (b) rededicated himself to his craft after Boston declined to re-sign him, (c) won two consecutive Cy Young awards with the Blue Jays, (d) forced the Jays to trade him to New York in a blatantly illegal ploy, (e) rode the Yankees' coattails to a World Series title, and (f) won yet another (this time undeserved) Cy Young with the Yankees. And that's the mild, profanity- and emotion-free version. He will get his, and it will be magical.
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