Misery Loves Company: Two Guys Watch Baseball

Game 49 - Red Sox

Indians 6, Red Sox 4
Record: 30-19

So, let me get this straight. The day before a huge three-game series with your biggest rival, with an opportunity to take a 2.5 game lead in the division and to sweep a series to finish the season's longest homestand in style, the manager decides to rest both Manny Ramirez and Bill Mueller, the team's best hitter and the team leader in batting average and OPS, respectively. And the result, predictably, is a desultory loss to a mediocre team. Grady, guys may need rest in the dog days of June and August, but Manny was coming off a 3-3 outing, and Mueller's batting .390 and leading the league in doubles. Inspired managing by our huckleberry head man.

I will make a prediction about today's game against Roger Clemens and the Yankees, and I will be right. Clemens, historically, comes up woefully lacking in big games. The Sox were 1-8 in postseason contests that he started, for example. However, today's game is a big game because it has personal statistical significance to the Texas Con Man (so named by the legendary Will McDonough). Clemens needs the win to record his 300th major league victory. Hear me now and believe me later - Clemens will absolutely dominate the Sox, and be inundated with platitudes from coast to coast after recording the victory. I will fume and rage in the safety of my living room, secure in the knowledge that the gutless bastard cares only about himself. If there is any justice in the world, he'll pull a groin on the wet turf, and postpone his quest for 300 for several months.