Ever since the Sox clinched a playoff spot and had no chance at catching the AL East Champion Devil Rays (pardon me as I puke), the Sox games have been like a week-long last day of school. Did the Sox draw straws to see who got to close? Come on, Manny Delcarmen in a 1-run game? David AAArdsma with a 2-run lead in the 9th? What’s next, Dustin Pedroia batting cleanup?

But since the Sox games were so lacking in intensity I thought I saw Coco taking a nice summer-nap on a lawn chair in center the other day, it seemed like a good idea to check up on a few former Sox.

One guy you may remember, who now wears Dodger Blue, took over for Joe Torre for a day and managed the Dodgers to a 3-1 loss to the SF Giants. No, his name isn’t Manny, it’s Nomar. He took the pre-game press conference as the manager, made the lineup as the manager, made another lineup when Manny asked out as the manager, and sat behind the manager’s desk to answer questions at the end of the game. I’m kidding about the Manny thing, but I wonder how long it will take for CHB to put it in a column as fact. Since the Dodgers’ game meant about as much to them as the Sox games’ did to the Sox, I had the opportunity to pick Nomar’s mind about Johnny Pesky. If you’re curious, here’s what he had to say:

In the other clubhouse, was a man who should be thanked daily for his work in 2004. And so I did. If you ever get the chance, don’t ask Dave Roberts for an autograph, or a picture. It’s much more rewarding, for both you and him, to just thank him for The Steal. Seeing his smile as I thanked him made me realize how much he loved his 3 months in a Sox jersey, and that he was just happy to help. Way better than a pen mark on a baseball, trust me.

So as we enter the playoffs with the 2007 World Series MVP in question, the 2008 All-Star Game MVP in question, and a man with a lifetime 1.26 ERA in the playoffs in question, let’s try to remember that it’s been a pretty good season regardless. And if all else fails, we’ve still got Johnny Pesky and The Steal. (Author’s note: I still reserve the right to bitch mercilessly if the Sox make fools of themselves in the ALDS. I just can’t help it.)

Apparently Chanukah/Christmas/Kwanza came early to Fenway this season. I didn’t have high hopes when the runaway AL Cy Young award winner with a 22-2 record comes into Fenway to face what lately has been amounting to Mr. Hyde Wakefield. And yet, somehow, while the bats couldn’t do much against some rookie with an ERA north of 6, they could do just enough damage against Cliff Lee to hand him his 3rd loss of the season…in September.

But the fun doesn’t stop there. With the Sox magic number sitting at a lowly one entering the game, the win made it official that the Sox would have an opportunity to defend their World Series trophy in October. It was a raucous celebration, and for all the analysts complaining that they shouldn’t be celebrating this hard when the division is still at stake I have two things to say. First, the Devil Rays have won the division, I’ll concede it now. Three games back with five to play plus the tiebraker? I’m not expecting any miracles. Second, here’s a list of Sox players who did not miss time to injury this season: Lester, Delcarmen, Masterson, Paps, Cash, Cora, and Pedroia. That’s right, SEVEN out of a 25 man roster were available to play every game. Celebrate boys, you certainly deserve it. I hope you all have trouble with the sun tomorrow morning. Although I’m a little disappointed that we didn’t have any pant-less dances this year. Giving away the bases was a nice touch by Paps, but only three people get to enjoy that…everybody enjoys a Irish jigg in your undies.

Clinching the playoff berth was only one of the many things to celebrate. With the Sox win, today also became Yankee Elimination Day, which really should be a national holiday. The best part about YED is that it seems to be coming earlier and earlier every year. Starting in 2003, the MFY have been eliminated on October 25th, 20th, 10th, 7th and 8th. Maybe next year we can get it to coincide with Labor Day?

And finally, since good things seem to come in threes, we learned that Johnny Pesky, Mr. Red Sox himself, will finally have his number retired on Friday. Johnny, I say this on behalf of, well, just myself, this is so long overdue it’s not even funny. I’m guessing you’ll enjoy the big round number next to some of your old buddies a bit more than the cake the Sox gave you two years ago for your birthday. Maybe Papelbon will perform a dance for you for the occasion. We can only hope.

There are times when I really prefer the college game. Not the ping of a metal bat, I could happily go the rest of my life without hearing that sound again. But the game itself is real baseball, not to be confused with what you sometimes see on NESN which is Selig-ball.

Take last night for example, somehow Beckett manages to hit not one, not two, but three batters in one game. You may think that was because he didn’t have much command, but with his 6 K’s and only one walk, that’s kind of hard to believe. No, the reason is because the home plate umpire, like most major league umpires not named Harry Wendelstedt, completely ignore rule 6.08(b) which states that

(b) He is touched by a pitched ball which he is not attempting to hit unless (1) The ball is in the strike zone when it touches the batter, or (2) The batter makes no attempt to avoid being touched by the ball;
If the ball is in the strike zone when it touches the batter, it shall be called a strike, whether or not the batter tries to avoid the ball. If the ball is outside the strike zone when it touches the batter, it shall be called a ball if he makes no attempt to avoid being touched.

Hell, Shoppach (pictured above), even leaned into the pitch. But don’t worry about it Blue, it may have only cost the Sox the division.

As for tonight, I’m afraid to see what the Indians try to do against Wakefield.

Anybody else sick of the Lester vs. Hallady starts? The first one was great, the second one was exciting, but by the third I’m not really sure if I want to spend $10.50 or just get it off Netflix. The last installment of the series reminds me a bit of Rocky III. Mr. T (Halladay) kicked the crap out of Rocky (Lester) early, Apollo Creed (Farrell) talked some sense into Lester and helped him settle down to get through 7 innings. Plus, I have a feeling like Rocky III, this will not be the last time we see these two face off. Of course, in Rocky III, Rocky beats Mr. T at the end of the movie, while Lester’s offense couldn’t bail him out.

The Sox did end up taking two of three against the Jays of Canadia, which is really all you could hope for. With the two wins, the Sox magic number is now down to Bobby Doerr’s uniform and they guarantee themselves at least a tie of the wild-card after 162 games. So you’ve got three potential outcomes tonight with the Last Game at MFY Stadium:

1. The MFY lose, eliminiating them from the playoffs at The Last Game At MFY Stadium
2. The Orioles lose, so they edge out the Sox for the most losses ever at The Toilet
3. We end up with Disco Demolition Night II. I don’t care what the Yankees say, when you allow 50,000 New Yorkers to wander around on the field before the game, anything not super-glued down will be missing before first pitch. It’ll be interesting for them to play without home plate.

Sorry for the late post, I’m still waiting for Jerry Meals to say that Dioner Navarro’s hit is waved off because somebody screamed too loud. All joking asisde, calling off the Pena strike is one of the worst calls I’ve ever heard of. A lot of calls are quick, and you can’t think too long. But in this situation he just didn’t pay attention. I wonder if he hung out with Ed Hochuli this week.

So here’s what we learned from the last two games at the Dump…err…Trop. Beckett is looking in fine playoff form, which is not good, but great news for the Sox. Without him, every team in the AL playoffs would want to play the Sox in the divisional series, because Lester (twice), Dice-K, Byrd and Wakefield would total maybe 2 wins. The offense on the other hand better step it up quickly. Scoring one run against Cy Sonnenstine and three (all from Big Papi) against Matt Garza? Those guys are chumps compared to what we’ll face in the postseason. I can’t believe I’m saying this but…we need JD Drew back.

Also, and I say this with all the love and respect in the world for him, Tim Wakefield cannot start a playoff game. He’s too inconsistent right now. Mediocre Tim seems to have left the building only to be replaced with Dr. Timmy Jekyll and Mr. Hyde Wakefield. And while I’d love to see Dr. Timmy Jekyll show up in the playoffs, it’s too big a gamble.

Unless by some complete Tampa collapse (remember, add a half-game lead to whatever the standings say because of their tiebreaker), the Sox will be the AL Wild Card team. I guess it’s better than saying goodbye to your stadium while fighting to stay out of fourth!

Dear Scott,

This whole worst-to-first Rays thing is really cute, but we’ve got some bad news for you. All these years that you’ve completely dominated our hitters? We let you. Before you say “what are you talking about? You couldn’t even hit .270 off me” just remember that we didn’t exactly fear the rest of your team those years. We had to make one of you look good. In fact, those fights we got into were kind of sweet. But with you guys still in first place in the AL East in September it’s no longer cute. So here’s what we’re going to do: we’re going to hit you…hard. Not just one member of the lineup, this time, everybody wants to get their punch in. So we drew straws and Papi, Lowell, Bay and Tek are all going to go deep off of you. And then, to prove that you don’t have the only good farm system in the AL East, Youks and Ellsbury are going to go deep off your pen. Even Manny asked to come back for this one.

But we’re not that mean, we’ll still give you a chance by throwing the luckiest 16-2 pitcher in baseball against you. Even with a 10-run lead Dice-K will still make all our fans sweat and scream at the TV. And then we’ll even bring in Mike Timlin so he can finally set the record for most relief appearances at 1,051. He’s been bitching about it all season, and we figure you’d like to thank him for the 14th inning last week.

You better have enjoyed your time at the top, cause you now have some company.

-Your 2008 Boston Red Sox

Back on April 29th, Lester showed Red Sox Nation the same potential that Jon Farrell had spoken of, out-dueling Roy Halladay in a 1-0 victory. Well, the season has come full-circle now and Lester has proved once again that his metamorphosis is no fluke with another victory over the Doc. (Maybe we should have realized this when he pitched a no-hitter?) Lester allowed a solo shot to the second batter he faced and then shut down the Jays for the next seven and two-third innings. Back in April, it was nice to see his potential, but anybody who though that he would be this consistent has got to be lying. Yes Mr. Farrell, I see you in the back screaming that you expected this. You want a cookie?

Paps on the other hand needs to lock himself in the video room for about 20 straight hours until he can figure out what’s going wrong. This giving up 2 runs thing every other game may help the sales of Tums in the New England area, but certainly doesn’t add to my enjoyment of the games at all.

I’ll take three out of four against the Jays anytime I can get it. The past few years they’ve become the Canadian version of kryptonite for the Sox, and having to face Burnett and Halladay in one series didn’t exactly add to the Sox chances. With the Sox victory and the MFY win, we now sit a game out of first. Let’s not f it up like last time, ok boys?

For another 14 innings this was looking to be a pretty ugly day. Byrd continued tipping his pitches and low and behold, he got rocked by the team that has become famous for stealing signs, 8-1.

The second game was ugly too, but I’ll take any victory against the Jays of Canadia. You wonder if there was some kind of bet in the clubhouse going to see if they could score their runs in the strangest manner possible. Here’s how the Sox scored their seven runs:

• In the first, both Ellsbury and Pedroia scored on a wild pitch after Zaun threw the ball away trying to throw out Ellsbury at the plate to give the Sox a 2-0 lead.
• In the sixth, a sac fly by Lowrie cut the Jays lead to 5-3.
• In the seventh, an RBI groundout by Youks scored Ellsbury, 5-4 Jays.
• In the eighth, after a leadoff double by Bay, Lowrie singled to Rios to tie up the game at 5.
• With two down in the eighth, Ellsbury took a full swing where the ball travelled 25 feet up the first base line and stopped. Lowrie scored from third and the Sox had a 6-5 lead.
• Two batters later Papi doubled off the Monster to add an insurance run, 7-5 Sox.

So the Sox got four of their seven runs without a hit, and one on a hit that Kim could have hit harder with her eyes closed. I guess ugly victories are somewhat common for this team…it’s not like they’re going to be on the cover of GQ anytime soon.

With the win and the split of the doubleheader (whew!), the Sox official playoff magic number countdown begins. It’s 10 and counting…

Rain, you’re welcome at Fenway anytime you help Wake pitch like that.

Wakfield pitched an outstanding game, one of his best ever in a Sox uniform going eight shutout innings giving up a mere three hits and ZERO walks. To say that it was out of the ordinary though, that would be lying. The start in itself wasn’t remarkalbe, but how he bounced back from his worst start as a member of the Sox to one of his best is just vintage Wakefield. Amazing that a guy can’t make it through the second in one game with four walks and 7 ER, and can totally dominate the next week. It’s the curse of the knuckleball I guess.

Jed Lowrie may have to buy the number 22 off Casey after his game tonight. Two hits, two doubles, two runs, and two RBIs. He missed the two-cycle by a walk.

Does everyone remember the runs expected stats I put up yesterday? Well, all those numbers go out the window when Timlin enters the game. Instead, here are the expected runs for different the different situations that Timlin faced last night:

• One out, nobody on base: 1.0
• Two outs, nobody on base: 1.0
• Two outs, runner on first: 2.0
• Two outs, runners on first and second: 3.0

Apparently Tito didn’t read my post from a few days ago when I said that it’d be better to bring in JD Drew to pitch over Timlin. Honestly, why go with Timlin? He’s officially got nothing left (unless he’s in the NL, when he could still close for a contending team. I hear the Mets need a closer…), and you’ve got Pauley, Chris Smith and Hansack still in the pen. I don’t care if they’re career minor leaguers, I’ll take unproven over proven but awful every day of the week. I guess we should just be happy that Tito waited until the 14th before bringing in Timlin instead of losing the game in the 10th. Although that doesn’t make up for being 2.5 games back in the division.