Game 1 - Boston 11, St Louis 9

Normally a game like last night's would've been a four-star hair puller, things would've been thrown and excessive drinking and smoking would've taken place. After the ALCS however, last night was a walk in the park. Exicting, a little too at times, but a pleasant evening.

Frankenpunk's "special friend" watched the first few innings with us and when he and I started whooping and cheerring after Ortiz' tater in the first, she shook her head in disbelief. "Did you guys really expect anything less? I've only been watching this stuff for two weeks and he does that all the time." She's right of course.

And how about the starting second baseman on the Three True Outcomes all-star team, Strolling/Whiffing/Hammerin' Mark Bellhorn? This guy's name should appear in the baseball encyclopedia next to the term "Take 'n Rake." Love that guy.

This was as ugly a game as I've seen in a while, 5 errors, 14 walks, strange decisions, bad beaserunning, it was as though neither wanted to win and was ready to do everything in their power not to do so. Having said that, the Cardinals can't like their chances right now, the Sox all but rolled over for them and they couldn't get it done.

Can we talk about Manny's errors? everybody's talking about how stupid Manny's error on Walker's fly ball was. Yeah, it was unfortunate and yeah, he probably could've gotten to it without the slide. But the fact is his cleat planted and that's what mucked him up. The error on the previous ball was way worse. Letting Renteria's lazy single dribble through his legs and Marquis raced home? God, that was just awful.

Did anybody read Gammons today? Has that guy lost his mind? From his four keys of the game...

It's going to be fun for the rest of the country to watch this Cardinals team play. They never give up, especially their 1-6 hitters, which had seven hits and five walks between them.

Now, I'm looking forward to watching this team play, but c'mon... this is a polite way of not saying "their 3 through 6 hitters went 1-for-15."


I've got a question for each manager;

Mr LaRussa, assuming I can accept the idea of playing Taguchi over Mabry (which I can't), can you at least explain to me how it is that in a game in which you never trailed by more than 2 after the fourth you couldn't find a single at-bat for Mabry?

Captain Hazelwood, you don't have an emergency third catcher to speak of. You do have one of the best back-up catchers in baseball, Mirabelli, who had an OPS of .893 this year. Why did you have Varitek pinch-hit for Mirabelli with two outs and nobody on base in the 7th?

And here's question for Fox: Where is Al Leiter?


Game 2, St Louis @ Boston
Matt Morris - Mr. LaRussa, a follow up, if I may; is a guy with a 4.72 ERA in the regular season and 5.29 in the playoffs, pitching on short rest for the first time since "(he) was 10," the best you can do? Morris' best start of the playoffs was 7.0 6 4 4 2 2 against a weak-hitting LA team in the Ravine. I love the idea of watching this guy pitch to the Sox in Fenway.

OK, Tony, one last one, despite what you told the press, don't you owe it to yourself to at least try to make Schilling run around on that ball of ground chuck he calls an "ankle" by dropping a bunt or two? Serriously, at the very least he's likely to slip on that shoe full of blood.

Curt Schilling - We all know what Schilling did in Game 6 and you probably have read about the absolutely ghoulsih procedure that he's undergoing foro the second tiem in a week so that he can pitch. It's disgusting. If they were making a movie instead of playing baseball and Schilling were a dog PETA and the SPCA would be rioting. Until Schilling shows me he doesn't have six innings in him, I won't bet against him.

After last week, there's no such thing as a must win game until Game 4, but this is pretty close for the Cards, 'cuz if the Sox were able steal last night's game and can stitch a win together out of the remnants of Schilling's ankle tonight, the Cards are chin-deep.


I'm not sure I deserved "asswipe."