Soup of That Day #36: Very High Noon

Red telephone boxes behind Enzo Plazotta’s Young Dancer. The telephone box on the right is actually the Sydney Cricket Ground – Photo: Tagishsimon, 2004. Tagishsimon is not affiliated with Longworth72. Image cropped by Longworth72.

This post started as a live blog of the end of a Red Sox game. Like the game that prompted this post, it’s now a bit longer than intended and I’ve added in a little bit more, both about the game and assorted other results from the weekend. As such it’s now a Soup of That Day rather than a Soupy Bite. To make it a little easier to work out the live stuff I’ve put it in italics.

It’s a belated lunch for me here in Perth and I have the rare treat of a baseball game to follow whilst I sup. The Red Sox are pitching the 15th inning of a marathon game against the Rays. It’s nil all and 3 hits apiece. The Rays do have runners on 1st and 2nd with 1 out following consecutive hit batters from Aceves, the 5th Sox pitcher for the outing. As I write this the Rays have lost the opportunity and a pop out and then a force out have sent us into the 16th.

And the Rays have just called up Russell from the pen – The 9th and last available. Less of a pitcher’s duel and more of a pitcher’s all-in brawl.

For the love of all things holey can we just call it quits on this? Reddick? C’mon dude!

Reddick walks.

That’s nice Josh.

Tek up. And out. Sacrifice bunt to get Reddick to 2nd.

Scutaro. Singles. Reddick to 3rd.

Ellsbury. Flies out.

Pedroia. RBI. Oh my *saintly aunt, we have a run!

Gonzalez up with Scutaro on 2nd and Pedroia, mighty, mighty Pedroia, at 1st.

The count is 0 and 2. Gonzalez 1 from his last 16. Make that 17.

Going into the bottom of the 16th 1-0. Papelbon?

Yep, Papelbon in for Aceves. Probably had to wake him up. Thankfully Wake has got to Baltimore early.

Rodriguez strikes out swinging.

Shoppach grounds out, 1st pitch.

Brignac up with his .194 bat. 2 straight whiffs. Then 2 straight fouls. 1 ball and gone. It’s done. Red Sox win it 1-0 in the 16th.

Mercy.

*I don’t have a saintly aunt. They seem nice but I’m not sure they meet the strict Vatican requirements.

So, an extraordinary game for the Sox and a crucial win. A great start from Beckett, who went 8 for just the 1 hit. He threw 106 and retired the last 22 he faced. That’s now 2 hits across 17 innings in his last 2 starts against the Rays. One word: Awesome.

The previous game had a starter for the Sox who doesn’t often get the ‘awesome’ tag applied. Mostly he gets ‘erratic’ tagged before his name and there was a question as to which John Lackey was going to show against the Rays.

Early on it looked bad. The Sox gave up 3 in the 1st, a combination of poor pitching and poor defence, Scutaro the main culprit. The blushes were saved by a Reddick 2 run shot in the 2nd and continuing the numerical alliteration , Big Papi with a 2 run double and Drew with a 1 run double combined for 3 in the 3rd. Ellsbury pinged one into the bleachers in the 4th and Lackey looked to have settled in. He did give up a run in the 5th and was pulled 2 outs into the 6th with his control showing signs of wavering. His 107 pitches cost 10 hits and 4 runs (1 was unearned).

The bats brought it home for him, with Pedroia’s solo shot in the 7th and a 2 run 9th, courtesy of a forced walk plus a Big Papi grounder, was enough insurance for the win. The Rays pegged one back for a 9-5 result.

And now we move forward by going further back. Game 1 of the series was the 1st game after the All-Star break and was a test of the momentum that Boston had carried in to that farce festival. Andrew Miller with the start and he started shaky, giving up 1 in the 1st and then a grand slam in the 2nd. McDonald homered in the 1st and then Ellsbury in the 3rd to peg it back a bit but then Miller loaded the bases bottom of the 3rd, conceding a run in the process, and Tito had reached the limit of his patience. Miller was yanked after 2.2 innings, with 5 walks in amongst a forest of 85 pitches. Aceves caught the walking disease as he forced in a run thereafter but ultimately Miller was tagged for 7 runs. In the 6th Pedroia knocked 1 over the fence but that was soon negated by 2 runs off Dan Wheeler in the bottom of the 6th. Scutaro then knocked out 2 in the 8th and Youk added a RBI single in the 9th to make it look close but that was all she wrote. It finished 9-6 to the Rays and the Sox have got to be looking at what Miller gives them.

The Dockers were likewise coming back from a break on the weekend. They’d had a bye the previous week after building some momentum against the cannon fodder that was Brisbane and Gold Coast, both at Subi. Their return was against Sydney at the Sydney Cricket Ground (SCG). Always a tricky venue and opponent, it hasn’t been a happy hunting ground for Freo, probably because it is ridiculously small. In fact the 50m arc at the SCG is actually more like a 45m arc. Confusingly it’s still called the 50m arc, primarily because I’m guessing nobody wants to change the lexicon of the game based upon a tiny ground in Sydney. Where it was raining. A lot.

The Dockers used the phonebox of a ground to good effect early keeping scores level at the first change. They led by 7 at the half and then extended it as the rain pelted down in the 3rd, going into the final change a seemingly unassailable 38 points up. These Dockers though are all about making the unassailable sailable and after adding a point to make it 39 stopped playing. The Swans didn’t and kicked the next 5 to close to within 6 and a 1 kick game. With a little over a minute left on the clock the umpires picked out a Sydney throw in the goal square and Freo steadied. Interestingly the commentators were agog at a. The 50m penalty that led to the attacking play (They guessed it was more than 50m – Hard to tell at the SCG where everything looks big) and b. That the ump could see what replays showed was definitely a throw. So they were upset that the ump made a call because he should have been too far away. Never mind that it was the right call.

In the end an 11 point win for the Dockers and a much needed win at that. Marshall Kane would have been proud.