Results tagged “jacobyellsbury”

With most of September left to go, it's too early to say anything definitively. But it sure seems this morning like the Red Sox dealt Tampa Bay a devastating blow in the AL Wild Card race last night.

It wasn't enough to get everybody free tacos, but Jacoby Ellsbury made history in the Red Sox' win over Chicago last night, stealing his 55th base of the season and breaking Tommy Harper's club record. Never known for being a fleet team, the Sox have gone entire seasons witout the entire roster stealing 55 bases. Just in case you remember only those dark days, the Globe has provided us with a stolen base primer. The low point in recent years, according to our research, was 1983 (shut up; it's recent to us), when a team full of sluggards and plodders managed to swipe only 30 bases the whole season (leader with 11: Jerry Remy). So as far as team records go, stolen bases was a nice, easy, attainable one. Which doesn't mean our hat's not off to Jacoby, or that we're not going to eat a taco in his honor later today.

Penny, Bowden overwhelmed by Yankees The Red Sox ability to beat the Yankees has evaporated, and after Friday's almost indescribable 20-11 loss, the Yankees look unstoppable. It pains Bostonist to type such heretical words. PatriotLedger.com called it "one of the worst pitching performances in franchise history." You wanna argue with that?

Pitchers' Duel: A dramatic event with little scoring and no margin for error. Jon Lester and Brian Bannister demonstrated what the term meant last night as each man carried a shutout into the eighth inning in a 1-0 Red Sox win over Kansas City.

Pitchers' Duel: A dramatic event with little scoring and no margin for error. Jon Lester and Brian Bannister demonstrated what the term meant last night as each man carried a shutout into the eighth inning in a 1-0 Red Sox win over Kansas City.

The last time the Red Sox played in Washington, D.C., Rogelio Moret got a complete game win on home runs by Joe Lahoud and Rico Petrocelli. A 32-year-old Carl Yastrzemski batted third and went 0-for-3. In other words, it was a long time ago. Back in the nation's capital, the Sox took a little time to assert themselves, but that's what they did, unloading on the hapless Nationals bullpen to run away with an 11-3 drubbing of the worst team in baseball.

By our unofficial calculations, 18.5 million people have gone to games at Fenway since the last time you could actually show up, cash in hand, and get a seat. That's more than the population of Chile or Greece. The Sox notched their 500th sellout in a row last night. And the fans, who came to celebrate that nice round number, got two for one, as Brad Penny got his 100th career win, beating Florida 6-1.

Hopefully, the Red Sox weren't planning on going out dancing after their first two games in Philadelphia. Extra innings on Friday, and an hour-and-a-half rain delay Saturday. At least Pat's is open 24/7 for a late night cheesesteak.

If you can't be good, be memorable. Isn't that how the old saying goes? Well, it's a saying the Red Sox took to heart last night, tying a modern-day baseball record with six wild pitches - four by Daisuke Matsuzaka in his first game back - en route to a crummy 4-2 loss to the Twins.

"I gave up five runs,,,what else is there to say about it?" Not the words of a confident pitcher. Sure, you can look at the glass as being half-full, and say that other than leaving a pitch hanging over the plate for Justin Morneau to smack a three-run homer, Jon Lester wasn't all that bad. But we don't deal in half-full here in Boston, so we're equally concerned about the two other guys Jon Lester put on base, and the two other runs he gave up in last night's 5-2 loss in Minnesota.

Whew. All the crisis counselors can go back now. All the newspapers ready to print articles like "How To Talk To Your Kids About David Ortiz" can run something else instead. Rosary bead sales will be down today. Big Papi's finally put one out.

Bostonist just finished rereading one of our favorite books, W.P.Kinsella's The Iowa Baseball Confederacy. A tale of time-travel, mysticism and sports, the book's centerpiece is an exhibition game between the 1908 Chicago Cubs and the amateur Iowa Baseball Confederacy All-Stars, which, through a series of events beyond anyone's control, turns into a month-long, time-space bending battle of over 2,000 innings.

We were going to lead off with the Celtics, but yesterday afternoon was possibly the most frustrating and aggravating game ever, and so hard to come up with an angle on, that we're just going to talk about it later and start off with 2009's Play of the Year (nominations are technically open 'til December, but come on).

We were worried? Remember, last season the Bruins were 0-37-1 against Montreal in the regular season, and still managed to force the Habs to seven games in the playoffs. 1-8 against the Angels in the regular season? Pfffft.

First place was in their grasp. So close. Josh Beckett was humming, the Rays were putting up a line of zeroes, and even though it was only 1-0, the Red Sox had to feel good about taking first back last night.

The Red Sox split their doubleheader with Toronto. The Rays split their doubleheader with New York. So nothing changes at the top of the division, but the clock continues to tick on the Jays and the Yankees, so that's what really matters right now.

We think we can officially admit that Tampa Bay isn't just going to go away. For weeks, while the Red Sox played very good ball, only to see the Rays blow through the rest of the AL, our mantra was always, "we've got six shots left at these guys". Now we're down to three, the Sox haven't won in Tampa Bay all year, and the half-game deficit has ballooned to two and a half. Uh oh.

Folks...the late season magic has arrived.

Is this going to be the game that we look back on and say, yes, this was the day the 2008 Red Sox got it together? It's not out of the question. The Sox have been - let's go with scuffling - for a couple of weeks. They've watched Toronto blow them out of Fenway and blow Jon Lester out of SkyDome or whatever it's called now. And they stepped up, taking the Jays to extra innings and winning a wild game that's got the knot in every Sox stomach loosened up a little bit.

Two Red Sox may have moved themselves off the "what's wrong with this guy?" list in Kansas City last night. Well, nothing's really been wrong with Tim Wakefield; although he went into last night 6-8, he's gotten miserable run support and has had to deal with the constant emotional roller coaster that is the lot of the knuckleballer. But he was awesome last night (6 innings, 4 hits, 1 ER, 6 Ks), even though Royals skipper Trey Hillman threw knuckleballs to his terrified charges all day to get them ready. Didn't help, as the Sox won 8-2 again.

Jon Lester doesn't want to be known anymore as the guy who survived cancer. Jon Lester doesn't even want to be known as the kid who no-hit the Royals. Jon Lester, thank you very much, would like to be known as a lights-out pitcher and a cornerstone of the Sox' staff.

Tim Wakefield deserves better. He got the loss and was technically outpiched by Tampa Bay's Matt Garza, but if you give up five hits and only one earned run, you deserve better. That's our opinion, anyway. Wake was the victim of a 3-1 loss to the scorching hot Rays, mostly due to a couple of ill-timed wild pitches.

It's lonely at the top, they say. But there are now 24 men in the 500-home run club, and it probably feels a lot less lonely now that Manny Ramirez has joined that prestigious bunch. Manny took former teammate Chad Bradford deep in the seventh, stood and watched, then took his victory lap and got one of those bounce huddles usually reserved for walkoffs.

Remember during rerun season a few years ago, one of the networks, instead of trying something different, since there are 300 million people in the country and we still can't come up with anything better than Two and A Half Men reruns during the summer, trotted out the ham-fisted, "if you haven't seen it, it's new to you!" promotion? Well, Bartolo Colon may not be a loveable kid with a brilliant backstory like Jon Lester, or a scrappy 14-year-old with a bright future like Justin Masterson, but he's new to us! And he made his Sox debut with a win, pitching five solid innings as the Sox beat KC again, 6-3.

Boston Magazine released its annual power issue, which is an annual must-have for any lifestyle magazine. This power list leads to the inevitable question, what does "power" mean, anyway?

Someday, when Johan Santana and Jacoby Ellsbury are on the same Hall of Fame ballot, we're going to think back to the time when one was almost traded for the other. And then we're going to remember nights like last night, and no matter how many wins, K's and Cy Youngs Santana racks up over his career, we're going to thank Theo Epstein for keeping Ellsbury in Boston.

Paul Pierce might not think about the games he's recently played, but Celtics fans had past performances in their minds on Wednesday night - particularly the manner in which he'd faltered last month during play against those pesky Suns of Phoenix. It was with a big cheer (and sigh of relief) that we responded to a 27-point effort from P Squared during last night's 117-97 Celtics win at the Call It What You Want Garden. Kevin Garnett's 30-point effort earned the MVP chants from the Celts crowd, but it was Pierce that earned the really big smiles of the night (matched only by the smile on his face captured by the Boston Herald).

...only makes you stronger. That has to be the attitude the Bruins take today, after having their winning streak stopped, killed, set on fire, stomped, buried, and the earth salted. The good news is, they will never play a worse game than they did last night. It was 6-0 Capitals in the first period. Alex Ovechkin had a hat trick before half the fans had found their seats. Tim Thomas got pulled, put back in to hang out to dry, then pulled again. 10-2 final; the B's have to be happy they play again today and don't have this lingering over them for too long.

http://www.boston.com/business/gallery/sports_endorsements/">photo gallery of famous endorsements by sports figures, and they front-loaded it with an image of a shiny, muscled Ellsbury pushing a ridiculously large tire and a photo of him at Taco Bell.

--Hug a social worker today. If you've ever wondered why the Department of Social Services couldn't stop an act of violence from happening, read this eye-opening article on just how hard it is to be a social worker. According to the piece, "between one-third and three-quarters of all social workers nationwide have been threatened, physically assaulted, or had their property damaged." [Boston Globe]