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Results tagged “mikelowell”
The Red Sox played two games on Saturday, both exta innings, and broke even. Considering J.D. Drew was the only startng player in the 7-6 nightcap win who was on the roster for Opening Day, a split might be a success. Saturday was really memorable because Mike Lowell was honored for five seasons in Boston. The Globe says that Carl Yastrzemski was the last Sox player honored like Lowell.
A confession: We didn't watch much of the Red Sox game tonight, none of it after it was 10-1 Red Sox. Amassing a nine-run lead against the Yankees in the house Jeter built while the Yankees still have something to sort of play for was surprising. We actually said "Are you kidding me?" .
The big news out of Boston on a non-game day involves Mike Lowell, who is retiring. The Red Sox will honor Lowell on Saturday, October 2 with "Thanks, Mike Night" at Fenway Park. The Red Sox face the Yankees, Lowell's first club, that night.
The Red Sox rediscovered some offensive punch with 17 runs and 25 hits in a pair of much-needed wins in Toronto. They've won three straight, including Monday's 2-1 Get-On-My-Back effort from Jon Lester (12-7) in New York.
"It really stinks...It was a freak accident. I don't know how it happened or the reason behind it. It just happened." That's Kevin Youkilis, who as it happened was talking about the freak thumb injury that he just can't play through anymore, and which will shelve him for the rest of the season. Though he could be talking about the mummy curse or Tiki idol or whatever bad mojo landed on this team to the point that we're wondering what the record for man-games lost in a season is and how we'd even figure that out. Statheads, where are you when we need you?
Looks like the Celtics are going all-in for next year. Shaquille O'Neal, the biggest (in every sense) free agent left on the market and the subject of some of the best sports stories in the history of the Onion, is taking his talents to Revere Beach. So says everyone, at least. The big guy told Jimmy Kimmel that he and the C's were close to making something happen. Even though we could have used him five years ago, he still averaged almost a 13/8 in the regular season with Cleveland last year, before he got his thumb broken by Glen Davis. Who will be his teammate now. Awkward.
What does a three-game sweep have in common with a day off and Detroit Tigers? Probably nothing, but we have been wrong before.
The Red Sox limped out of Oakland and found what they needed in Safeco Field in Seattle: two wins.
Let's talk about the Red Sox for a few minutes. We plan to have other things on our mind for the next couple of weeks, so the Sox - who have been kind of an afterthought this year already - might be forgotten in all the hubbub.
So...about that regular season.
Sticking it in the face of everyone who was skeptical about their ability to turn it on when it mattered (not that, you know, we ever doubted or anything), the Celtics won their fourth straight playoff game last night, sticking it to a Magic team that may have actually given them their best shot last night.
We've got wins to cover. We've got a playoff matchup set, and another one developing with some bad blood. We've got near-injuries and shocking displays of power. And we won't mention T---- W---- or golf once, except for just now. Let's get started.
The Celtics AND the Bruins? Both winning in solid fashion against inferior opponents on consecutive nights? Has the world turned upside-down?
It's not a cure-all, by any stretch. But last night, the Celtics played the kind of game exactly like we've been hoping for, as they raced out to an early lead against Detroit, and - wait for it - held on throughout, for a 119-93 whupping. We needed that.
It started with a welcome sight: the Celtics playing at home for the first time in months and months (it seemed). It had a great moment when Eddie House came back, if you can call it back, since he hadn't missed any home games, and got and gave back all appropriate love from the Garden crowd. And, most importantly, it ended with a win, as the Celtics survived another big-lead-giveaway and held on to beat the Knicks 110-106.
Eddie House knows how this goes.
You don't play on eight teams in ten years without understanding the business. You don't spend the early part of your career getting waived by chumps like the Bucks and Bobcats, only to find yourself a key rotation guy on a championship team, without realizing that basketball is a crazy world. And since he seems to internalized the fact that he'll be a Knick later today - "I have friends that I will have for the rest of my life on this team, but it’s life. It’s not the end of the world" - we're glad he's OK with it. Since we're still not sure if we are or not.
On the outside looking in. After losing two out of three in Texas, the Red Sox are out of the playoff picture for the moment. It's a troubling time. Out batting is ineffective, our pitching (beyond Beckett and Lester) is shaky, and by our unofficial count, the Sox are 2-75 on the road this season. Not counting Baltimore.
Wow, that dismal weekend in New York seems like a long time ago, doesn't it?
Back at home and spurred on by Kevin Youkilis' charge on Tuesday (OK, that wasn't a total success, but what's done is done), the Sox continued pounding the Tigers, 8-2. Most of those runs were admittedly superfluous, as Josh Beckett had another Josh Beckett game, allowing only three hits (well, two of them were solo HRs) over seven innings to pick up his league-high 14th win.
Well, Junichi Tazawa got his first major league win in his first major league start. All he had to do was touch off a series of events that landed somewhere between "difference of opinion" and "international incident", hang on for the minimum five innings, and wait for Mike Lowell to swoop in and save the day.
Are we in the pennant race yet? Because whatever it is the Red Sox are racing towards, it doesn't feel like a pennant. They're 3-8 in their last eleven games, they're failing against an Oakland/Baltimore portion of the schedule that seemed designed to give them some momentum coming out of the All-Star Break, and they're exposing serious flaws in almost every aspect of the game that isn't named Josh Beckett.
The newest Celtic hit town yesterday. With his three-man recruiting committee by his side (we wonder how much guts it would take to turn down a job when Paul, Ray and Kevin come to your interview), Rasheed Wallace met the press and said everything we like to hear when a new guy comes to town. WEEI has a transcript of most of those things. He says he felt Boston gave him the best chance to win, he's looking forward to playing with KG every night, he (for the moment, anyway) doesn't care whether he starts or how much he plays. Sheed will wear #30 for the Green, which has had a really rough stretch since M.L. Carr took it off in 1985. Mark Blount and Sebastian Telfair were the latest to wear it. We hope Wallace does better things, but frankly, we don't see how he couldn't.
Sure, if you win the Stanley Cup, you get your name engraved on it, you get to take it home for a day to do whatever you want with it, and kids from Yellowknife to Halifax go to bed dreaming of it. But still, when your year is over, you usually have to give it back. Usually to the Red Wings.
Friday was all about the player comeback and, in Boston's case, players' happy reunions with the teams that have missed them.
We're running out of ways to say this. The Bruins are beyond hobbling. Beyond struggling. They've lost 46 out of their last 45 games (to be fair, that's a rough estimate) and not one of their 35 shots made it past goalie Steve Mason as the B's fell 2-0 to the Blue Jackets in Columbus last night.
If Sox fans were looking for something to get out of bed for this morning, a pair of our other local teams were ready to provide plenty of reason to go on. Monday Night Football! Bruins home opener! Who needs a World Series?
Remember Manny Ramirez? Bill Simmons does, and he's spent the last two months on a roller coaster of emotion about what went wrong (coughScottBorascough), what could have been done to fix it, and what it all means. The result is a 750-page analysis that's well worth the hours it will take to read it.
We didn't really think there was going to be any Wally Pipp-ing of the injured Red Sox (well, maybe one of them). Even though the kids have been on fire, the Sox welcomed back Josh Beckett from arm trouble and Mike Lowell from a strained oblique with open (if sore) arms. And the two of them chipped in, in an 8-1 ripping of the Rangers that pulled the Sox within 2 1/2 of the AL East lead and probably caused a sleepless night or two in Ray Country.
We've got one pitcher down, and one pitcher out. Not a great day for the Red Sox in Chicago yesterday.