« SPEECHLESS... JUST SPEECHLESS | Main | BEYOND WORDS.... I BELIEVE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! »
October 20, 2004
DARE TO DREAM... HTE RED SOX WILL WIN TONIGHT... I BELIEVE
No instant message conversations to share with you tonight. A walking-out-of-the-office phone call to Tim at 6:30 this evening resulted in the spontaneous, game-time decision that I should catch the game from the friendly confines of Blair's living room. (Thanks are due to the lovely and talented Mrs. Blair for once again feeding me and opening her home to my tubby self.)
The logic was simple: the Sox were at home last night, so I watched from home. Tonight, the Sox were on the road, so I should be on the road. (However, you can catch the IM conversation between Tim and our friend the Red Sox DieHard in North Carolina on Tim's site.) The mojo was set: Tim would be in the recliner and on the computer, and I would be Net-less on the couch.
As you can guess and have probably heard, the Sox tonight did what no other team in baseball history has ever done: come back from a 3-0 deficit to force a game 7. They won this game 4-2, setting up a cataclysmic, climactic, apocolyptic game Wednesday evening for all the marbles. Thoughts on tonight's game:
1. Curt Schilling just became my favorite player of all time - an honor that has belonged to Hall of Famer Carlton Fisk since I was seven years old. I may live to be 90, and I will never again see such a courageous display of sheer guts and fortitude and will to win. What Schilling did tonight goes beyond tough, beyond important to the team, and beyond description.
The man has a dislocated tendon in his ankle. He needs surgery to repair it, which he will have after the season. In order to keep it from flapping around over his bone when he planted his foot, team doctors literally sutured the tendon to his skin and stretched the skin so tight that the tendon couldn't move.
Most any of the rest of us, with an ankle in that condition, would be calling for the crutches and avoiding putting weight on it. Curt Schilling walked to the mound with blood leaking from the sutures and soaking his sock (see photo below), a scene straight from a real-life "The Natural." And then all he did was throw seven innings of 94 mile an hour fastballs, darting splitters, and nasty curves. He held the Yankees scoreless for six innings, and gave us 99 pitches and seven innings in the single gutsiest performance I, you, or anyone else will ever see. That was one for the ages.
All I will say is this: there are only two things I want for Christmas: one is a Curt Schilling Red Sox #38 jersey, and the other is a baseball signed by Curt Schilling. Win or lose Wednesday, what Schilling did tonight is already New England legend, and he's permanently etched himself onto my list of all-time sports heroes. Wow.
2. Alex Rodriguez showed you all exactly what he is made of tonight. When the game was on the line, this overpaid, petulent child could muster nothing more than a 57 foot squibber back toward the mound. And then, seeing that he was beaten, what did that candy-assed little gerbil do?
He cheated.
That's what Alex Rodridguez is all about, kids - a karate chop to the opposing player's arm, a hack worthy of the Cobra Kai dojo. (See photo below) I half expected to hear Gary Sheffield yelling, "SWEEP THE LEG!!"
If you can't beat 'em, cheat 'em - thus goes Alex Rodriguez's motto. And
once he was caught (hard not to get caught when you deliver a kung fu chop worthy of Bruce Lee, huh A-Fraud?), this bum actually whined to the umps about it. See the picture below; doesn't it look like he is about to start to cry?
Anything you wanted to know about Alex Rodriguez' character, you saw in the eighth inning of tonight's game. He cheats, he whines - and most of all, he can't come through when his team needs him.
3. What a game, and what a classic series. I've never loved a Sox team so much as this one - win or lose Wednesday night. They took the Yankees' best shot... and then like Rocky, they crawled up off the mat, walked right back over to them, and yelled, "Is that all you got? That's not so bad!" I mean it; win or lose game seven, this team has made me feel better about being a Sox fan over the last four days than I could ever have imagined.
And I have to give it to the Yankees, begrudgingly, for also rolling out a classic effort. Not many teams can lay a 19-8 whupping on the Red Sox. No matter what I think of their fans and how much I despise their players, you can only have a great series if both teams are involved.
Wednesday night is history in the making, an instant-classic end to an already-legendary series. I'm nervous about our starting pitching; but the Yankees have to be nervous about theirs as well. I don't know what mojo Tim and I will invoke for game seven... we really made the game six mojo up on the fly. I do know that, as I told Sarah in the comments last night, I will not blog on anything else until this series is over... keep the Baseball-Only Blog mojo going for one more night...
All I know is what my heart tells me: Hte Red Sox will win tonight. I believe.
Schilling's blood-soaked ankle ... Roy Hobbs, eat your heart out
Wax on, wax off - eh, A-Rod? Aw, whaddaya mean I can't cheat?
