Sports Redux: Seattle Slew

Let's start with the good news. Manny Ramirez finally broke out of his home run slump, and cracked career shot #499, a three-run shot off Seattle's Miguel Batista. Um, that's about it.

The bad news is that Seattle won, 4-3, on a Jose Lopez single off Mike Timlin in the ninth. Julio Lugo got tossed for arguing a check swing, and Terry Francona was dismissed early when he came out to challenge it. "'Bout time," as Harry Doyle would say.

But the most troubling news is that Daisuke Matsuzaka left the game early, after a couple pre-fifth inning warmup tosses. (He apparently ran past Francona, who didn't even want him to go out there in the first place.) It's trouble with his shoulder, or back, or something around there, which he says has happened before. "Since this is something I have experienced in the past, I'm not overly concerned with the situation right now," said Dice after the game. Small comfort to Sox fans, who still are conditioned to freak out on cue, and wonder just how many more Mastersons and Bartolos are left to call up from the farm. At least Manny's homer kept Matsuzaka from getting his first loss.

Paul Pierce captained up and spoke some words of encouragement to his team after the nightmarish Game Four. And if you missed Bill Simmons last week trying to solve the Garnett riddle, Dan Shaughnessy basically rewrote it today. Out West, the Lakers took a 3-1 lead in the conference finals, winning in no small part because Derek Fisher clobbered Brent Barry as he took a potential game-winning 3, while the refs looked the other way. If it were anyone but San Antonio, we'd be outraged, but you live with crappy refereeing, you die with crappy refereeing. ESPN wants you to vote on officiating in the four major sports. It's not binding.

We caught this over the long weekend: a really interesting piece in Slate about athletes, journalists, and the changing relationships between them. Pat Jordan was a sportswriter in the days when athletes would have killed to be on the cover of Sports Illustrated, and has seen that change to a world where sports stars play to the camera only, and don't want some grubby writer filtering the image they want to present to the world. Not that we like to mention CHB twice in one Redux, but Shaughnessy chimed in on this as well. It's not bad, but Dan closes by bemoaning "an age when players are conditioned to distrust and dismiss media members", without an apparent hint of irony or self-consciousness. Gee, why would athletes distrust media members who think they're bigger than the game, carry out personal vendettas on Page One, and all-but-openly root for local teams to lose so their book stays on shelves? Hmmm.

Photo by John Froschauer/AP.