Toeing the Rubber

Pedro Ciriaco has made many games a lot of fun this year (Photo by Kelly O'Connor and used with permission.)

So after Friday night’s loss to the Yankees a friend emailed me to let me know she decided not to watch the next two games. MLB made it easy for her, putting them on national television and making us have to suffer through the Fox and ESPN broadcasts, but Tim McCarver and Orel Hershiser weren’t her problem. She didn’t want to subject herself to watching the Yankees sweep the Red Sox ESPECIALLY on national television. She’d pick back up today when the Sox were home and back on NESN but they were going to have to win or lose (and she was sure they were going to lose) without her for the weekend.  This morning I received an email from that same friend telling me she kept her word and regretting nothing.  Well, nothing except she would liked to have seen Alfredo Aceves giving Bob McClure the business in the tenth inning.

Me, I stuck it out. I spent the better part of this weekend watching the Olympics and while I was in front of the television watching sports I devoted a couple of hours each night to the Red Sox. (Even when I tell myself I’ll miss a game or two for something like the Olympics it never works out that way. They pull me in every time.)  I’m not sorry I did, either. Don Orsillo and Jerry Remy might have had to call the losing game on Friday but the entire country got to see the Red Sox beat the Yankees twice over the weekend.

I can’t give up on this team. I know they’re still in last place and only at .500 on July 30th but I can’t give up. This weekend the team people said didn’t have heart, was unlikable and didn’t care about winning won two games almost no one thought they were going to win. This inspires me to keep watching and gives me hope that they haven’t given up.

A lot of people pointed to the Cody Ross walk-off as a turning point for the Red Sox. But then the Red Sox followed that up by getting swept by Toronto and losing two out of three to Texas before making their way to the Bronx.  They entered the weekend 1-5 after the walk-off. Maybe they just needed the extra pressure of national television and the New York Yankees to kick things into gear? Anything is possible.