The Boston
Red Sox don’t make it easy for themselves in the playoffs. The Red Sox have
survived numerous near death moments in the October: Being down three games to
none against the Yankees in 2004… losing two straight on the road in the ALCS
in Cleveland in 2007… and now in 2013, starting the ALCS against Detroit by going
15 straight innings without a hit.
But with one swing of the bat, the
whole season turned around. As they say in Boston, “It ain’t over ‘til the Big
Papi swings.”
That was
the case on Sunday night. It was the eighth inning of Game 2 in ALCS against
Detroit. The Red Sox were losing 5-1. The best offense in the MLB had gone ice
cold. But when you’re down by four and the bases are loaded, there is no guy
who you’d rather have up than David Ortiz.
“I was just
trying to put a good swing on the ball,” Ortiz said after the game. “My idea
wasn’t just to go up there and hit a grand slam.” But when Ortiz got the first
pitch changeup that he was looking for, he put a great swing on the ball and
gave it a ride into the Red Sox bullpen.
We now go
to Detroit for three games to face one of the best postseason pitchers of this
generation, Justin Verlander, and then Doug Fister. John Lackey will take the rubber in game
three for Boston and Jake Peavy in game four.
I think
that the Tigers may have an edge from here on out because we now have to play
three straight games at Comerica Park in Detroit. Ordinarily I’m not big on
home field advantages but here it matters for a few reasons: 1. John Lackey has
remarkably better numbers at home. 2. Comerica Park is huge and it will pose a
challenge for outfielders. 3. The Red Sox as a team in the regular season were
53-28 at home and 44-37 on the road.
One the
other hand, the Red Sox scored more runs than any other team in baseball so if
those bats light up, watch out. There are ups and downs for the rest of the
series for both teams.
Game three
of the American League Championship Series between the Red Sox and the Tigers
is tonight at 4:00 pm on FOX.
***
On another
note, the Vermont Mountaineers are gearing up for their 2014 season and there
is some very encouraging news for Mountaineers fans about the upcoming season.
The
Mountaineers announced to the public in their newsletter that manager Joe Brown
will be back for the 2014 season.
“I felt
very confortable that he did a good job with the team and he brought in a good
roster of players,” said long time Mountaineers GM Brian Gallagher. “He had good leadership under a tough
situation when we had all of those injuries.”
Brown lead
the Mountaineers to a 24-20 regular season record, good for second place the
NECBL Western Division.
For Brown,
it wan “an interesting decision” to come back to Vermont. “I enjoyed it up
there,” he said. “It’d be nice to see how we could do with a group of guys from
the start of the summer to the end of the summer.”
For most
Mountaineers fans the offseason is just the offseason and they wait until June
5th to start thinking about the team too much but for Gallagher,
Brown, and the rest of the Mountaineers organization, the recruiting for next
year is well under way.
The
recruiting “is probably about 75% done,” Brown told me. “We’ve been very
fortunate to get some of the kids we wanted.”
“So far
I’ve sent out 20 contracts,” Gallagher said. “We still are very short on
pitching right now but the guys we have coming in are very good. We just
haven’t gone after a lot of pitching yet.”
The entire
Mountaineers community has also been very closely following the story of
Mountaineers OF from last year, Pat Wiese. Pat was diagnosed with bone cancer
in September.
Pat hit
.306 in 21 games with the Mountaineers before leaving with an injury in his
knee that was later found to be a tumor.
“We’re all
pulling for him and he’s had a heck of a battle. His baseball career is pretty
much done with, but at this point we just want him to beat cancer and come back
and have a healthy and productive life,” Gallagher told me. “It’s been pretty inspiring to see how much
support he’s gotten from Vermont. He had surgery in early October, and he’s now
going though treatments to try to get this thing taken care of.”
While Brian
and everyone else with the Mountaineers got to know him over the summer, the
connection was made long before then for coach Brown and Pat. “Being a central
New York coach, I’m only 25 minutes from his campus,” said Brown. “And having
known Pat in high school so I certainly feel for the whole family and I give
him a tremendous amount of credit for how he’s handling it.”
I
personally would like to send my thoughts and prayers to Pat and his family.
Follow Jasper
Goodman on Twitter:
@Jasper_Godman
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