Posts Tagged ‘Zack Greinke’
Casey Kelly is now on Twitter @cpk3. Following him and Luis Exposito @Expo2323 is highly entertaining! Photo courtesy of Kelly O'Connor/sittingstill.net and used with permission.
Wrote this to a friend yesterday morning:
I’m not of the “well, it’s the Royals so the Sox will roll over them” mind, never have been, but these games could be a lot of fun!
Last night was not a lot of fun.
Okay it was a little fun. Seeing Bill Hall go yard is always fun. Having Kevin Millar on the pre and post game shows and reminiscing about 2004 was fun. Watching Daisuke Matsuzaka pitch like the game in Philadelphia didn’t happen? Not so much fun.
But there is no time to dwell. There are still three games against the Royals to be played and won. The Sox just need to get back up on it. Tim Wakefield, Clay Buchholz and Jon Lester will be pitching those games. We have every reason to be hopeful! Special attention should be paid to Saturday night’s game…Zack Greinke v Buchholz. I know that Greinke has been snakebitten by the rest of his team and that he’s this fabulous pitcher who MLB is already getting the HoF plaque ready for, but I kind of like our guy too.
First, though, there’s Wake tonight. The next streak has to start with a win and I think Wake’s just the guy to lead them.
Daisuke at Pawtucket yesterday (Photo courtesy of Kelly O'Connor/sittingstill.net and used with permission). Matsuzaka threw five shutout innings and led the team to a win - splitting their double header.
Apparently wanting something to celebrate so he could spend his birthday with a hangover, Jason Varitek took advantage of his appearance in last night’s game by hitting two home runs. Maybe this resting every for four days between each start works for him?
On a night when reigning Cy Young winner Zack Greinke pitched 6.2 innings, every Red Sox starter except Victor Martinez had at least one hit in the game. (Greinke gave up eight hits, four earned runs – including two home runs – while striking out five.) It was a fun game to watch and it had the feel of the team really starting to get it together. Let’s hope it keeps up today when Clay Buchholz faces Gil Meche.
In the middle of being tortured by the idea of a CC Sabathia no-hitter happening on national television (beers for Kelly Shoppach!), we got the news that Mike Lowell might very well be calling it quits after this season. It doesn’t come as a huge surprise really – I think all his talk about not being 100% lately was probably leading up to this – but finding out that he specifically didn’t take the Phillies’ four-year contract because he knew he wouldn’t be playing that fourth year is interesting. I always hate to bear witness to the end of a player’s career. Last night, though, it was fun to watch him start. He looked good on third and even got himself a hit off of Greinke. I’m sure he’s antsy sitting on that bench for the first time in his career but at least he’s still able to be productive when the team needs him. If if fact this is his last season, I’d really like to see him finish it in Boston. Ah, drama. What would Boston be without it?
A little shameless self-promotion: Tonight at 6:30pm ET, I’ll be a guest on the new podcast “Throwing Like a Girl“. Caryn Rose from “Metsgrrl” and Julie DiCaro from “A League of Her Own” have invited me on to chat about the Red Sox. Follow the link and you’ll be able to enjoy the ‘cast. Both Julie and Caryn have a really great conversational style, IMO, that makes the podcast listenable and interesting. Even without my being a guest, I think it’s something you’ll enjoy! If you miss the live podcast you can find it on iTunes as well. Join us if you can – it promises to be a lot of fun!
Today’s game is at 2:10pm ET and then the next two games are afternoon games (Monday is the Twins’ home opener at 4:10pm ET and then Wednesday at 1:10pm ET). Folks have been asking about live blog/chats this season and since the Twins are messing up the timing a little, I’m going to start them up again a week from Tuesday when Texas comes to town (the day after Patriots’ Day). So for now the plan is to try and have “Tuesday Night Live Chats” this season. We’ll see how that works.
Tek with two home runs, Jeremy Hermida with one and Lowell with a hit. The bench came up big last night. Bodes well (I hope)!
Happy birthday to Jason Varitek today and Trot Nixon as well! How about a win for the Captain’s birthday, fellas?
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.
Happy birthday to the Large Father! (Photo taken by Kelly O'Connor/sittingstill.net and used with permission)
Okay so I suck at this and I’m so sorry! I really thought the quiz was only moderately hard – and I thought by putting a 5 minute time limit on it I was making it fair for folks. Instead I got a lot of “Are you shitting me?” emails and a few offers to create quizzes for other blogs. 
At times like this I realize what a geek I am and forget that the world isn’t necessarily made up of geeks like me. (And it seems five minutes isn’t long enough for 10 questions…live and learn. Next time I’ll make it longer, I promise!)
I was going to make up a new quiz but then I thought that was unfair to the gang of you who attempted this one. So after thinking about the different ways I could choose a winner, I’ve decided to keep the quiz as is and let it run through Thursday (tomorrow) at 5pm. At that time, I’m going to take the top two scores and they will be the winners of the books. In an effort to make it truly fair, if you’ve taken the test already and then go back to take it again, your first score will be the score I go by to determine the winner.
In true baseball-related news: Zack Greinke won the AL Cy Young Award this week. When you look at the voting it seems so silly that so many of us (myself included) were concerned that the writers were going to piss us all off and give it to Sabathia. Word is that Greinke is getting married to his high school sweetheart this weekend – so it’s a good week for him. (Which leads me to congratulate Clay Buchholz and Lindsay Clubine on their marriage this past weekend. Good luck, kids!)
Sadly, this week we say goodbye to George Kottaras who was released by the Red Sox on Monday. I’ll miss George. He was fun to watch in both Pawtucket and Boston and he wasn’t too hard on the eyes either. Here’s hoping he finally lands a full-time gig in the majors in 2010.
And, finally, on this day in 1975: David Americo Ortiz Arias was born. I’d like to thank Enrique and Angela Rosa for bringing Big Papi into the world. Today should be a National Holiday in Red Sox Nation. 
Happy birthday, Papi!
