Baseball Musings
Baseball Musings
October 11, 2003
Yankees-Red Sox

I'm back. Did I miss anything? :-)

Actually, had a good time watching the game with a bunch of partisan Red Sox fans. It seemed to me at the end of the first that Pedro wasn't right. The Yankees were making contact; all four batters put wood on the ball. Pedro did not have a strikeout. That's unusual.

It was also obvious that Roger was just overpumped in the first. He wasn't pitching badly, he was just overthrowing. He got hit, but by the time Ortiz came up he was hitting the corners, and setting Manny in motion got Roger out of the inning. He now has five strikeouts and no walks.

Meanwhile, the Yankees kept hitting Pedro. Of all people, Karim Garcia drove in the first run with a single. Jeter's HR made the fans in the monster seats turn around and look to see where it landed. And then a walk and two hits leading off the fourth gave the Yankees the 3-2 lead.

And then Pedro hit Garcia.

I think the pitch got away from Pedro, simply because it's too stupid a move to intentionally go after Karim. But it's fired the Yankees up. And Pedro beating up a senior citizen is going to fire them up even more (even though it looked like Zim deserved it). The Yankees now have a reason to really want to defeat the Sox. As an opponent, I would not want to give the Yankees a reason to want to crush me.

And by the way, I really think Manny should have been thrown out of the game for his antics. Clemens pitch was only close to Manny's head in Manny's mind. And he pushed the umpire after the ump tried to stop Ramirez from heading to the mound. I thought that was an automatic ejection. Not for a superstar, I guess.

All the action seems to have helped Pedro. He's thrown a perfect fifth and sixth, striking out the side in the sixth. Barry Bonds once said that he wanted the opposition to hate him, so they'd be thinking about the hate instead of thinking about how to get Barry out. Right now, the Yankees hate may causing them not to approach Pedro correctly.

It's 4-2 Yankees in the bottom of the sixth, one out and two on. Back to the party!


Posted by David Pinto at 06:24 PM | League Championship Series | TrackBack (0)