Posts Tagged ‘Dusty Brown’
I took this last year at McCoy Stadium. Dusty Brown eyeballing the ump an inning before the same umpire ejected him from the game. It's a bit of a cranky post today and I thought the photo fitting.
This next week will be the longest of the year, won’t it?
One week from this coming Sunday we get our Opening Day (night) and, yes, I will be there. While I’m thrilled for the opportunity and grateful to have received the invite, I still am a little grumpy about the timing of it all. I’m Catholic and Easter is a bit of a big deal so having it on the holiday sucks just a bit. Thankfully, I was born of a family who won’t be offended if I leave Easter dinner a little early to make it to the park. I’m okay with it. Just means I won’t get into Boston as early as I normally would that day.
We lost Greg Montalbano in 2009. Kelly O'Connor took this photo of him at the Lowell Spinner's Alumni Dinner in January 2009 (Used with permission)
Just a note of warning: This entry is long and although I want it to be all-encompassing, I’m sure I’ve missed few things. But this is pretty much how I remember 2009!
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2009 was a fairly eventful year for me personally in both the good and bad categories. Sadly more bad than good which is probably why I initially avoided writing any kind of recap for the blog. But while I was writing my recap of the Red Sox decade (and I’ll have that up as soon as I finish it!) I realized I should probably write something about the final year of the decade as well. So here goes.
January: I started blogging at WEEI.com. Looking back on my entries for this month, I’m genuinely surprised I found so much to write about (it didn’t stop new readers from complaining that I was writing “drivel” though. Should have been a sign!). Personal highlights in January: The ongoing Jason Varitek saga, the signing of Rocco Baldelli, Kyle Snyder getting picked up by the Mets, the beginning of the MLB Network and Jim Rice finally gets voted into the Hall of Fame!
February: Bombshell of bombshells for MLB. Selena Roberts exposes Alex Rodriguez as a steroid user. The MLB Network cuts its teeth on this one and, unlike Peter Gammons and ESPN, doesn’t disappoint with their coverage. Unafraid of losing access to the players (again, unlike Peter Gammons or ESPN), they go full throttle on this story and introduce us to their newest addition to the network: Bob Costas. I wrote a lot about MLBN in 2009 and a bit about Sl*ppy. I would have written much less about the two, most likely, had this story not broken. Personal highlights in February: The Caribbean World Series on MLBN (I was genuinely surprised at how much I enjoyed it!), Truck Day, pitchers and catchers reporting and Joe Torre’s book about the Yankees.
Chapter 10: The End of the Curse. When asked by Regis Philbin the other day what happened to the Yankees over the past 7 years, Joe responded “The Red Sox happened”. That will go down as possibly my favorite Red Sox/Yankee-related quote ever.
March: I spent a lot of March writing ‘rants’ and pointing folks toward baseball-related Twitter accounts. Must have been resting up for April! Personal highlight in March: The WBC. I spent a lot of time ranting about players getting hurt and how I didn’t care who won only to be totally sucked into it by the end.
April: The beginning of the season! Lots of liveblogging and picking up more WEEI readers (with mixed results!). Personal highlights in April: Going to both Sox/Mets exhibition games at CitiField, attending Opening Day at Fenway and high-fiving JD Drew and Hideki Okajima during their introductions, being at Fenway for the walk-off win against the Yankees, Jacoby Ellsbury stealing home on Andy Pettitte, Tim Wakefield taking a no-hitter into the 8th inning (thus setting the table for his All Star selection), watching Jonathan Van Every pitch while Javier Lopez floundered in right field then eventually getting DFA’d (watched on television, not in person), the Patriots Day game where Luke Scott got all pissy and some idiot fan threw a ball onto the field and “Toeing the Rubber” getting nominated for a New England Sports Blog Award in the category “Best Red Sox Blog”. Relatively speaking, a great month except for one thing that really hit the baseball world hard and made the month miserable: the death of Nick Adenhart.
But I don’t cry because of any personal connection I have to Nick. I don’t cry because a future baseball star is dead. I cry because parents lost a son today. Many people lost a friend. And the world lost someone who could have potentially been great. Not just at baseball but at life. No drunken ass has the right to take that away from us. This doesn’t “put things into perspective” for me. I hate when people say that. I’m forty years old for God’s sake, I’ve seen enough death and tragedy in my life to have proper perspective, thank you. I don’t watch baseball and think that what goes on down on that field is life or death and more important than anything else in my life. I’d argue that most sports fans, even if they act like they have no perspective, have exactly that. Baseball is an outlet to forget about the realities of life for a few hours.
May: Getting to see Daniel Bard’s first Major League appearance (after having seen him pitch in Pawtucket) was very special. Finding out that Jerry Remy was recovering from cancer was sad and a little frightening. Personal highlights in May: Seeing Kyle Snyder with the Bisons at Pawtucket, Javier Lopez signing Steve the Ferret’s “Lopez” jersey (also at Pawtucket), Aubrey Huff fistpumping to Joba Chamberlain, appearing on “The Baseball Show” on Comcast SportsNet, crying (literally crying) over Big Papi’s first home run of the season, getting to meet metsgrrl and “paloozaing” with a huge group of people I love during the Mets/Sox series at Fenway.
Yesterday was an amazing day spent with friends (most of whom I haven’t seen in quite a while or hadn’t met yet!). There are many amazing tales to tell (but not here!) – my favorite being when our friend Susan noted that we could start singing “O Canada” except no one knows the words past “O Canada!”. Standing up and singing loudly and proudly, a group of us proved her wrong. That our serenade didn’t get us thrown out still kind of surprises me.
June: This month brought us the end of interleague play, the end of Jonathan Van Every’s season (thanks to knee surgery), Tim Wakefield hitting ten victories with his torn labrum, John Smoltz making us all wonder why we were so excited to have him on the team while Dusty Brown makes his major league debut. Personal highlights for June: Derek Lowe returning to Fenway with the Braves, Nick Green’s walkoff against those same Braves, sitting in Fenway during a mind-numbing rain delayed game that turned into a loss for the Sox (okay, that one is a lowlight, really) and the Sox capping off 7 wins in a row against the Yankees with an eighth.
Youk congratulates Dusty as he comes home. Photo courtesy of Kelly O'Connor/sittingstill.net and used with permission.
So here we are…the final day of the regular season. As a fan of the Red Sox, I shouldn’t be bummed about this, right? My team is going to the post-season. Dodgers, Rockies, Phillies, Cardinals, Red Sox, Yankees, and Angels fans can rest easy today (not so much Twins or Tigers fans, eh?) while the rest of the MLB fans get to stew in their sadness knowing after the last out is made that they’re done until next February (or April – depending on when they start following the team). Even so, I’m a little sad. During the regular season, my television is on baseball – not just Red Sox baseball either – more than anything else. Many is the night I go to sleep to the sounds of Vin Scully calling a Dodgers game. (I’m not a Dodgers fan. I enjoy watching them lose. But the Dodgers games are usually on when I should be sleeping and Mr Scully’s calling of a game is like a lullaby.)
I’m not ashamed to admit, I always feel a little lost during the first few weeks without baseball. The post-season helps but eventually ends as well. After a week or two, I fall into another pattern and I’m good until baseball starts up again. But this season my life is a little different. With the end of baseball will come the end of my job. I’ve been with the same company for 11 years and the end of that era coming with the end of MLB is an awful lot of piling on for this chickie. So this is me apologizing in advance for however all of this affects the blog.
In case, like me, you sometimes need to put things in perspective, Jessica Camerato has a heart-breaking story about Alex Gonzalez’ son over at WEEI.com. Jessica is one of my favorite sports writers and she really does this story justice. I have a friend who, when hearing we got AGon back, remarked “Now I really hope they win the World Series”. Many of us thought he deserved it in 2006…and now he has another chance. I’d like to think he was sent back to Boston for a reason and though the World Series is definitely a blip in his life compared to his son, I want it for AGon too.
Another friend is in the middle of research for a project and could use some help. He’s looking for “…baseball players with who had interesting off-field events happen to them while they were in the minors. Events such as overcoming a death of a loved one, addiction, off season jobs, interesting route’s to the big leagues, jail, etc.” So if you have a story to share please Email Jeff and let him know.
I’ll be enjoying my time at Fenway today but I admit I’ll be compelled to continue checking the scores of both the Twins/Royals and Tigers/White Sox games. Don’t get me wrong…I’m happy that the Sox aren’t embroiled in this kind of drama this year but how exciting for fans of the AL Central!!
Nice to see the younger guys making their own little marks Saturday night. Dusty Brown with his first major league hit, which happens to be a home run. Pretty damn cool for Dusty. I’m hoping for another win today but I’ll settle for a good game. My feelings of sadness for the end of the season are mixed with my feelings of excitement for the post-season to begin next week. So today will definitely be an emotional day.
 Congratulations to Dusty Brown on making his Major League debut last night! Photo taken by Kelly O’Connor/sittingstill.net and used with permission. |
When the Nationals tied it up in the sixth inning I had the thought that it doesn’t matter what the record of the opposing team is, they’re going to come to play and every game won’t be a cakewalk. I still was confident that the Sox would win but I wasn’t convinced it would be easy.
What did I know?
Four singles, two walks and a triple in the 8th inning sure made it look easy. 11 runs on 17 hits with Pedroia, Youkilis, Bay and Ellsbury all having a multiple hit game (Ellsbury and Bay with 4 – Pedroia with 3) and JD Drew and Brad Penny being the only two starters who didn’t have hits made things look easy when the game was over. It was a fun game to watch (and re-watch!) and getting the win with Penny starting gives me hope for, at the very least, a series win with Lester going tonight. I’m hoping Crabcakes gets the win tonight, leaving the door open for Smoltz to not “have” to win on Thursday.
Mind you, I wouldn’t be disappointed with a sweep either! I’m enjoying the Sox being up five games in the East (thanks to the Yanks losing to the Braves last night) and I’m looking forward to the team upping that lead.
But one game at a time. Crabby goes against Craig Stammen tonight and I’ll be live blogging it. Come on by if you have the chance!
 Marcus McBeth, before the game, looking for someone to give a ball. This and some other photos of mine from yesterday are here at Flickr. |
If the only thing to keep Saturday from being absolute sports heaven in New England had to be the Celtics losing, I’m okay with that.
Spent a beautiful (yet grey) day at McCoy Stadium and got to see the PawSox win – which is always nice. Had the opportunity to watch (among others) Michael Bowden, Charlie Zink and Clay Buchholz long toss before the game. Clay looked so relaxed and happy. It’s easier to believe the stories about his hamstring injury being minor after seeing him moving around in person. Most interesting sight of the day had to be watching Bowden and Zink toss to each other. Zink, the knuckleballer, really was just lobbing the ball to Bowden, occasionally warning him that he was going to throw the knuckler. But Bowden seemed to be taking this business quite seriously. He didn’t just “toss” the ball to Zink. Every throw was an actual pitch. He set himself as if standing on the mound, and he let loose with some hard pitches. At one point, Charlie finally called “uncle” and told him he wasn’t going to catch his pitches anymore. (All in good fun. Everyone, even Bowden, seemed to be in quite the good mood Saturday at McCoy.)
As an added attraction to the day, it happened to be Paws’ 10th birthday. Every New England mascot who is anyone was there to celebrate – including Wally (Lefty and Righty were, noticeably, absent!). Although we also wondered where the Alligator family (from Lowell) was. They were missed. (And I need to know how Paws knows Spiderman. He seemed wildly out of place with all the mascots so I’m guessing he’s just a good pal of Paws’.)
The whole team looked really good. Although we only got to see two Dusty Brown at-bats before umpire David Uyl tossed him from the game (at both his at-bats, Dusty took issue with Uyl’s called strikes). Dusty didn’t go quietly. We joked that for the rest of the game he was stalking the parking lot looking for Uyl’s car. Getting to see Daniel Bard make his Pawtucket debut was pretty amazing. He hit 99 at least once (and I snapped a shot to prove it). He did give up a home run but he also struck out two in the ninth. Odd highlight of the day: Some dope in a Teixeira t-shirt sitting in front of us for the last couple of innings. That he purposely wore a Yankees shirt to a PawSox/IronPigs game is bad enough (New York had no horse in this race) but when he started wildly cheering because Bard gave up that home run…well that was when I wanted to push him over the side and on to the field.
Instead, I grabbed the iPhone to see how the Yanks were doing. I didn’t realize they were the Saturday Fox game so the game had just started. As I checked the score, Teixeira was up at bat. I was hoping for a strike out so I could tell the t-shirt dude that his player just struck out, but no such luck. Teixeira hit a two-run home run. I shut down the phone and kept my mouth shut.
I told Kelly about this as we were leaving to get a cab and decided to check the score again. By that time, Wang had already given up 6 runs. So Kelly and I indulged in some major schadenfreude all the way from Pawtucket until we got to Boston by “watching” the game via iPhone.
It doesn’t matter what place the Red Sox are in right now. It’s immaterial that Papi is still struggling (although last night was encouraging!). Watching the Yankees lose 22-4 in the new Yankee Stadium made me happy. Wildly, excruciatingly, happy. I know it’s immature and I don’t care. So there you have it.
PawSox win; Red Sox win; Bruins beat the Canadiens; Indians annihilate the Yankees (at their brand-spanking-new stadium and on national television!). This equals a fabulous day in New England, baby!
Michael Bowden Photo by Kelly O'Connor
A rare 1pm (ish) game on a Saturday makes me happy. I love baseball, but the 4pm or 7pm games can mess up a good Saturday. This is a nice way to begin the afternoon.
PawSox didn’t get to crack open the champagne that was waiting for them last night. They’ll try again tonight behind MIchael Bowden. Good news for us but not so much for Dusty Brown and George Kottaras, is that David Ross went 2-4 with a solo home run. The PawSox radio guys were quite blunt in their assessment that picking up Ross is essentially sticking a dagger in the hopes of Brown and Kottaras to make it up to Boston in September (although they disagree on one key issue. One thinks only Ross gets the call-up and the other thinks Ross and one of the other two will get called up after the PawSox season is over). It’ll be interesting to see how that works out. But, more importantly, they need to win tonight so they can get the “when are they going to clinch a playoff spot” monkey off their backs. No Kyle in the game last night – so it would be pretty sweet if he got in tonight AND they clinched. PawSox, unlike the Red Sox, start their game at 7:05 tonight.
Rob Bradford got his big Manny scoop last night. He got a “hi” out of him. That was it. Was it really worth going to Philly in the middle of the Red Sox’ pennant race? Bradford DID get Joe Torre to gab a bit. Whenever I read a quote about Manny from Torre, I imagine Frank McCourt standing behind him, holding a gun to his back.
Along similar lines, I feel like the entire Boston sports media is trying to get me to “like” Paul Byrd. So far, it isn’t happening. I was really pulling for him last night, and sure he got the win but I was, again, unimpressed.
On the other hand, the Boston offense finally remembered they shouldn’t be afraid of Toronto, which was fun to watch. Seeing Varitek finally coming out of his funk has been fabulous. Captain keeps this up and he’ll shut up an awful lot of people. Interesting to note that I’ve stopped getting the “You can’t possibly think Dustin Pedroia is better than Robinson Cano” emails that flooded my inbox for a while. And Coco looked like he was determined to not let JD Drew’s injury hurt the team offensively. I wonder how all the “they’ll never make the playoffs!” folks are feeling today?
Lester pitches against Jesse Litsch this afternoon. Here’s hoping Crabcakes can keep it together and our offense isn’t hung over today.
