Bob Ryan Also Sucks –
Here’s one from Saturday following
Friday night’s Sox-Yanks barnburner. Burnbarner?
(Bob’s bla in bold, my bla
in plain.)
They Showed Some Clout
Who and what are you referring to?
EXPOUND!
When is a walkoff home run
against the Yankees only half the story?
When the other
half is Bob Ryan toppling out of the press box to his death.
When the only reason someone
has a chance to hit a walkoff is because someone else has hit a two-out, tying
home run against Mariano Rivera.
Oh, that reliever who used to be
intimidating five years ago? I remember him..
"That was
interesting," deadpanned Terry Francona,
who had just seen Kevin Youkilis win the game,
5-4, with an 11th-inning bomb over the left-field wall off Damaso Marte
Of the 15 ERA? That Damaso Marte?
two innings after
So, the first Red Sox-Yankees
confrontation of the 2009 season is in the books, and
it was anything but ordinary.
It was extraordinary!
It was, in fact, downright
spooky, with the teams combining for 29 men left on base (New York 15, Boston
14), and with each team bemoaning the failure to put the game away long before
the two Sox homers were able to send the fans home in a state of semi-delirium.
That’s the spookiest thing I’ve
ever heard. There must be ghouls in
It was a night of
juxtapositions,
Like a writer with talent that
hasn’t faded years before sitting next to Bob Ryan.
but none bigger than the one in
the ninth, when the Yankees, holding a 4-2 lead, were unable to score off Javier Lopez after loading the bases with no one out,
and the Red Sox, down to their last out, were
able to tie the game when Bay deposited that 1-0 pitch directly over the yellow
line in deep left-center.
ULTIMATE JUXTAPOSITION!
Youkilis, who is hitting a mere
.433, was involved in that business, too, having ripped a one-out single past
Rivera's ear to give the Sox a base runner and bring the proverbial tying run
to the plate.
He literally brought the
proverbial tying run to the plate.
Twice before in this little
history with Rivera has a Red Sox player reached
him for a huge two-out homer. Bill Mueller hit
that memorable grand slam off him in '04.
The A-Rod/Tek
Slapfight Game.
Manny did it one night in Yankee Stadium, but the Red Sox went on to lose that
game in the 10th.
Ya blew it, Red Sox.
And now Bay has done it, making
him the first Canadian to have the honor.
Darn Canadians, crossing the
border and taking baseball jobs from good Americans like Manny Ramirez.
Hey, this is baseball. There's
a category for everything.
Is there a category for paraplegic
handlebar-mustachioed long relievers? Hmm, is there??
When Bay stepped into the
batter's box against Rivera, it's not as if anyone in the Red Sox dugout was
brimming with confidence.
They were brimming with
lukewarmness.
For Rivera had converted his
last 15 save opportunities, dating to Aug. 12, and was on a 43-of-44 run since
the start of the 2008 season. He's already had four saves this season, and his
ERA was not hard to calculate: 0.00.
Yeah, but it was against the Sox.
The one team that’s solved him over the past five years; dating back to that
’04 Mueller homerun you just mentioned a second ago.
"And he was throwing the
ball so well tonight," Francona said. "You could see him spread the
plate out. But Jason made a beautiful swing, and that allowed us to keep
playing."
It was pointed out to the
skipper that the Red Sox have had some degree of success against Rivera - more,
at any rate, than most teams. "I don't know," he said. "That's
because we face him more than anyone else, I guess. But to be honest, when he
comes in, it's not exactly a confidence-booster. And if he is in, it means
things aren't going that well for us."
In other words: Hey Mo; we own
you, bitch.
We should have known it was
going to be a strange evening simply by the nature of the first
Hey now..
and Ellsbury being Ellsbury, he never stopped running,
sliding in ahead of Molina's throw for a run whose construction the crowd of
38,163 will surely never see again, even if they live long enough to see
Ellsbury's great-grandson perform in a Red Sox uniform.
‘Coby’s
great-grandson? He’ll probably be
some sort of future Robo-Injun. Able to gamble away entire
salaries in a single night.
So what kind of an evening was
it, exactly? Well, try the kind of evening in which it took until the 20th
half-inning for someone to go down
Kinda like Cubism. Strandism?
Hitting into inning-ending double plays in the first, second, fourth, and fifth
was part of
That doesn’t sound very charming.
The Yankee nadir came in the
top of the ninth.
Nadir. He’s the new rookie center fielder, right?
Lopez hit Mark Teixeira and walked both the DH-ing Jorge Posada and Nick Swisher
to load 'em up.
Javier Blowpez.
Francona had to bring the
infield in, and damned if Robinson Cano didn't
smash one directly at Dustin Pedroia, who turned
that seldom-seen
There was more adventure in the
Yankee half of the 10th. Molina began the inning with a sharp single off Jonathan Papelbon, the sixth of seven Boston pitchers,
and one Ramiro Peña sacrifice bunt later, the Yankee catcher was on second,
representing the go-ahead run.
Now that’s what I
call adventure!
Derek
Jeter then smashed a solid
single to center. Wait. What's this? Pedroia
is diving to his right, snaring the ball, popping up, and throwing out an
amazed Jeter?
Wait. What’s this? Bob Ryan is
writing in the present tense? What is this, a liveblog?
Oh, that's right. He won a Gold
Glove to go along with that MVP plaque. He's not a bad guy to have on your
team, actually.
Oh, that’s right. He won an NSSA
Sportswriter of the Year award to go along with that AP National Sportswriter
of the Year plaque. He’s not a bad guy to have on your newspaper staff,
actually. For me to poop on.
A somewhat shaky Papelbon
walked Johnny Damon, but he escaped the jam by
throwing a 96-mile-per-hour fastball by Teixeira.
Somewhat shake this, sucka!
Way back when, Chamberlain and Jon Lester were taking turns getting into, and then
getting out of, predicaments, the former leaving after 5 1/3 innings and the
latter huffing and puffing his way through 114 pitches in six innings.
Seems like the
former would be more the huffing & puffing type, rather than the latter.
Lester seemed as if he was
behind everybody
That’d be a dangerous place to
pitch from.
and was pitching from the
stretch every second he was out there, but he did strike out seven and allowed
only two runs, and it was, for better or worse, a quality start.
One of those aforementioned
juxtapositions came when Yankees lefthander Phil Coke
Perfect name for
a Yankee. ‘Cause he blows!
Hiyo!
replaced Joba The Heat with two on and one out in the
And that's the way it stood,
right till that 1-0 count to Bay in the ninth. I'm not going to say,
"Manny who?" But feel free.
Nah, I’m good.
When the Red Sox win a game
like this against the Yankees and Rivera, there's no such thing as an excess of
hyperbole.
Unless you’re
Bob Ryan. In which case, hyperbole
simply isn’t hyperbolic enough.
Bob Ryan is a Globe
columnist and host of the Globe’s 10.0 on Boston.com. He can be
reached at ryan@globe.com. 
~~~
Another Bob Ryan-fest in the books. Back in the Seventies/Eighties, Bob Ryan’s words
would’ve done this game justice. Now? Not so much.
Having
not seen the game, because ESPN decided to air a couple NBA playoff games
instead of the one game that would’ve garnered the highest ratings they
would’ve seen all week; I take away from this column that a lot of things
happened. Watching the highlights, you get to see the actual emotion and
excitement of the game. A good sportswriter who still
cares about his craft, and his team, would’ve been able to capture that
excitement.
Bob Ryan
captured slim to none. And none won.