Miles from Fenway: The Home Stretch

The All-Star game has come and gone. The trade deadline has passed. Save some unlikely waiver wire movement, the teams are now set for the push to October.

I sat and listened to WEEI online all day yesterday while at the office. As rumors were thrown around about Andruw Jones I started to feel uneasy. The rumored deal would have given us Jones, but sent Crisp, Hansen, and Lester.

I've always been of the opinion that cultivating a farm system is the way to go. And right now the Sox farm system has quite a few players who, while not ready for the bigs quite yet, have the potential to really make an impact with the Sox in 2007 and beyond. Was Theo seriously thinking of getting rid of them to fill holes with a few rent-a-players? Were we going to turn into the Yankees? Hasn't done them much good in the last six years.

Luckily Theo stood pat. And now we're hearing about all sorts of deals that fell through, the most notable being a deal that would have landed the Sox Roy Oswalt. Of course there are still concerns. The Yankees landing Abreu is troublesome. The Sox DL list getting longer and longer has also got me worried. But hey, Wily Mo went 3-4 last night, with a monster home run, just a double short of the cycle. Not a bad replacement for Trot until he's back. And is there even anything left to say about David Ortiz? I think the world has officially run out of adjectives to describe this man.

As the game was winding down last night, I was on the phone with The Twin. He was listening to the game, I was not. "The Sox have three outs to score two runs to tie it," he said. And then Alex Cora hit a single. And then Youks walked. Papi was at the plate representing the winning run with one out.

He couldn't do it again. Could he?

Oh, oh he did. And I'm out of ways to say how much I love that man. And Boston's love of Big Papi is to the point that if I offered myself up to him, I'm pretty sure The Twin would give me his blessings. To watch him swing the bat, you just know, you KNOW that someday, years from now, we're all going to be telling the generations that come after us that we saw David Ortiz play.

Coco Crisp was quoted in the Globe this morning as saying:

""You know how they say that it ain't over till the fat lady sings?" Crisp said. "Here, it ain't over till the big man swings.""

Too true, Coco, too true.

Labels: Boston, Red Sox, sports

posted by FINY @ Tuesday, August 01, 2006

6 Comments:

At 8/01/2006, WelshSoxFan said…

They were never sending lester to the Braves. The Braves said Lester, the Sox said see ya later. There was more serious talk of Crisp and Hansen for Jones. I don't know why WEEI were reporting that rumour since it was all over the net and the radio that the Sox dismissed it instantly.

And the Yanks getting Abreu really shouldn't be that troublesome. He makes them a little better (though not as much as everyone is suggesting) but then Lidle stinks so he should balance out that trade nicely. The best trade the yanks made yesterday was Chacon for Wilson, which no-one is talking about.
At 8/01/2006, FINY said…

Welshman, you'll notice I was speaking in the past tense about the Braves trade. Of course now we realized they walked away instantly, but at the time it was rumored, how were we to know that? And honestly, that's one of the things I HATE about the trade deadline. Because when it comes down to it, all the sports columnists, reporters, talk show hosts, bloggers, fans, etc all talk about these deals as if we know what's going on, when in reality, none of us have any freaking clue.
At 8/01/2006, FINY said…

Hahahaha, and you'll have my blessings as well. :)

(for those who don't connect the dots, MK is The Twin).
At 8/01/2006, kate.d. said…

i had watched the beginning of the game last night, but had eventually switched over to something else when it started to look a little hopeless. at some point, jason said, "is the red sox game over?" i was like "hmmm dunno. probably." clicked back over, and there was papi, two men on, bottom of the ninth.

i was like, oh shit, we're gonna win.

and we did! and even though my air conditioner was sucking and i was hot, sweaty, and tired, i still jumped around the living room like a lunatic!
At 8/01/2006, Anonymous said…

count ran to 2-0 on Papi and I was lying in bed and I said oh this is over, hes gonna eat up a 2-0 pitch and WHAMMO!!! Game over....
At 8/01/2006, WelshSoxFan said…

I think those kinds of rumours can be dismissed out of hand. I think the trade deadline's kind of fun. Allows for lots of discussions with your buddies about what they should, what you'd do if you were GM. When all is said and done that's really why we love sports, because of the opportunities it affords us to discuss, disect and argue. The game itself is 3 hours long - it's the post-game that makes it so much fun.