Sunday, October 05, 2003

Holding On

Totally exhausted this morning. Could have slept until game time but that wouldn't have given me any time to bask in the warm glow of replaying Nixon's walk off homer in my mind.

The ball landed in the seats like a final, solitary raindrop, and grown men streamed onto the Fenway Park grass as if it were a jailbreak. This is how the 2003 Red Sox [stats ,schedule ] celebrated last night. This is how they lived to see another day.

 On the edge. As always (Massarotti, Herald).

On the edge is right and that goes for the fans. My throat is hoarse from all the yelling I did. As I wrote Friday, I was confident the Red Sox would take the third game of the series, but, honestly, I really thought it'd be a blowout, a slugfest, instead of a game that

will be remembered for Nixon's shot-heard-round-the-Nation. In Oakland, this will be the equal of the "Tuck Rule" game at Foxboro Stadium, when the Patriots beat the Oakland Raiders on their path to the Super Bowl. The Raiders came out on the wrong end of a controversial ruling by referee Walt Coleman. The A's, who share a home field with the Raiders, were victims of third base umpire, Bill Welke, and some of their own boneheaded base running (Shaughnessy, Globe).

But I'll take the win. Oh, boy, will I ever.

I completely missed B.K. Kim's "one fingered salute" to us all.

Relief pitcher Byung-Hyun Kim [stats ,news ], who was unable to nail down a win for the Sox in the ninth inning of Game 1 of the American League Division Series in Oakland, held his middle finger up to fans after being booed in pregame introductions last night (Horrigan, Herald).

Was that shown on the broadcast (I tuned in just as the first got underway) or did you have to be at Fenway to see it?

As a fan, I could care less about an apology, but it really does worry me that a relief pitcher could allow himself to be so completely rattled by boos. We already felt Kim "has the nervous demeanor of an 18-year-old college student trying to buy beer with a fake ID," now with the flip off it seems the poor guy really is an emotional wreck. If you let the fans get to you, how you going to handle a game on the line in the ninth?

Most likely, we'll know soon enough.

Unless the big bats wake up and start putting these games out of reach. How long can this continue: "Manny Ramirez is 1-for-12 with 11 runners left on, and David Ortiz is 0-for-13" (ESPN)?