Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas

Games 9 & 10 - Red Sox

Tigers 7, Red Sox 2
Red Sox 12, Tigers 6
Record: 5-5

(Note: Coming to you live this morning courtesy of a healthy (but controlled) dose of Percoset, so if any of the following skews bizarre, well, that's my excuse. It'll nearly certainly be a disorderly mess.)

To wit, my computer screen tells me that David Ortiz is batting .083 with a .433 OPS through 10 games. Which is so preposterous it must be the product of my blissfully addled state of mind. Especially since the same source tells me that J.D. Drew's carrying a .440/.483/.720 line through the season's opening fortnight, and is tied with Jason Varitek with the team lead in homers with 2.

The Sox as a team have muddled through the season's opening stages, a development that was eminently predictable based upon the unusual travel schedule and the abbreviated exhibition season. Tellingly, not a single Sox starter has lasted more than 6 2/3 innings and the rotation is averaging less than 5 1/2 innings per outing. The corresponding burden placed on the bullpen has already led to some less than auspicious efforts, with Mike Timlin's injury requiring more innings from David Aardsma, Brian Corey, and the late, not-so-lamented Kyle Snyder. And I'm no rocket surgeon, but that would seem to me to be a recipe for less-than-optimal results.

Tonight brings the Yankees to Boston for the first of the season's 19 games between the (insert hyperbolic blather here) rivals. And I can't tell you how all-fired...indifferent I am. I noticed this phenomenon a week or so ago when I turned to YES to catch a few innings of Rays/Yanks action. My whole life, even a glimpse of the pinstripes had a visceral impact - a combination of disdain, fear, and animosity instinctively rising up in my gut. Now, eh, I still despise them, but it's a healthy, bile-free hatred (and good thing, because I'm now gallbladder-free, so bile isn't so good for me.) And so 2004 and 2007 pay yet another dividend. As Pigman exclaims at the end of the wildly underrated PCU, "A Bridge Too Far. Caine and Hackman in the same movie. This is my thesis man! This is my closing argument! I CAN STOP WATCHING TV!" Or at least, I can stop watching Sox/Yankees games with my hands over my eyes.