Nothing ever comes easy at the Metrodome. Brad Penny, who got the 99th win of his career, certainly earned this one. Most pitchers get a drink of water or go over scouting reports in between innings. Not Penny, he thew up in a trash can. They called it a sinus infection, which either means he was hungover (going for 99 wins does not mean you should drink 99 beers the night before) or hanging out with H1N1E6.

It turns out Penny wasn’t the problem though. He pitched remarkably well, sinus infection or not. The Sox doubled up the Twinkies in the hit column, but still only won by a single run thanks to Paps’ longball-itis (it’s a different strain of the sinus infection) and Carlos Gomez’s two spectacular catches. Maybe Jacoby can learn something from Gomez: the wall is your friend, not your enemy. If anybody had a right to be afraid of the wall, it’s Gomez. He needed stitches prior to the game because he couldn’t make it through a revolving door.

Oh, and here’s a quick note to Major League Baseball: red hats are hideous. When they look terrible on the RED Sox, who are they supposed to look good on? The Marlins with their black and turquoise uniforms? The Dodgers whose motto is “Think Blue”? The MFY? Please don’t use our veterans as an excuse to sell ugly hats, that’s just an insult to them. For once I wish George Steinbrenner was still coherent. Do you think he ever would have allowed a Yankee team to wear red hats? That’s what I thought.

It’s not everyday that you see the umpires use video replay to determine if a ball was a home run or not, except at Fenway where it’s apparently turning into a daily occurrence.

Last night Omir Santos’ 9th inning 2-out, 2-run home run was originally ruled a double off the monster. But then Joe West and his crew went to the video and called it a home run. As a result, the Sox lost 3-2 instead of winning 2-1.

What does Cowboy Joe West do for an encore? With the Sox down by two, he calls Youks’ 5th inning shot above and inside the left field foul pole a foul ball. Luckily, as we learned the night before, there’s replay for this sort of thing. So West and company again go watch some video, come back on the field and correctly…what? You still think it’s a foul ball? Are you kidding me? How fucking blind are you?

Joe West has for years been known as a terrible umpire. Mostly because he’s probably the most arrogant SOB to wear the blue uniform (and that’s saying something). Sox fans have for years now given him a free pass because of the calls he overturned during game six of the 2004 ALCS. But after this weekend, I think he’s finally used up his free pass.

Youks got his revenge in the 7th when he destroyed a ball into the monster seats in the 7th inning to put the Sox ahead 12-5. I was a little surprised that West didn’t call this one foul because it was just to the left of the yellow home-run line in center field.

Even though NICK GREEEEEEN made about 3 boneheaded plays in the field, he and Kottaras combine to get the award for the “people not named David Ortiz least likely to be the offensive heros” with their combined 5-10 batting including three RBIs with two outs in the 5th that gave the Sox the lead for good. However, all was not perfect in Red Sox Nation today. Big Papi’s batting average is now officially below the Mendoza line.

I was really excited after last year. I thought the Jon Lester of 2006/2007 was gone. You know, the one who raised your blood pressure every inning as he would allow countless baserunners on only to strand 95% of them? But apparently he’s back. Which, in some ways is a good thing, because that’s at least better than the Jon Lester from the beginning of this season who would allow baserunners on and then allow most of them to score.

Jason Bay helped out Lester’s cause with another HR, this one to right field. Some may say that it should have been caught by Alex Rios, but remember, this is the same Alex Rios who bobbled a warning track fly ball by Alex Cora and turned it into a HR. The HR was Bay’s 11th consecutive with at least one runner on. So what that really means is that it’s an impressive streak for Youks!

Also, can we now put to rest this notion of the Blue Jays being contenders instead of pretenders? Even when the Jays suck, the Sox still can barely take two of three games from them at Fenway. It’s been almost 2 years since the Sox swept the Jays, and that year the Sox won the World Series. Who knows, maybe this is a sign of things to come.

Well, it’s about damn time. It took 359 innings, 45 games, and 150 at-bats, but Big Papi finally stopped masquerading as David Arias, homering to dead center in the 5th inning. Not that I was counting or anything.

As much as I wanted Papi to go deep while we were in attendance in Anaheim, it was great to see the Fenway crowd go apeshit for a 5th inning HR. If you were judging by the crowd reaction you might think that it was a walk-off. If you were judging by the dugout reaction, you’d think he grounded out to first with the silent treatment he received.

I do feel a little bad for Tek and Tacoby. Tek (who was the David Arias of last year’s lineup) went deep twice and was overshadowed by Papi’s HR to dead center. Tacoby ties a major league record with 12 putouts in center, and he’s practically ignored because of Papi’s bomb. Now let’s hope that this isn’t such a rare occurrence anymore, for both Papi and Tek.

Sorry, writing about 1-4 road trips aren’t usually much fun. Especially when the Sox look like they’re trying to find new and creative ways to lose. Have the go-ahead run on third in the top of the 12th with one out and the reigning MVP up? Lose four batters later. Have a 4-0 lead in three straight games? Lose two of them. Tied in the bottom of the 9th with two outs and your most reliable reliever up? Allow three straight men to reach and, you guessed it, lose.

You may have noticed that I only mentioned the record for the last five games of the Sox’s six game road trip. That’s because Kim and I took a road trip of our own during which the Sox put up a 1-4 record.

We drove down to the Big A on Wednesday night, which meant that thanks to XM we got to listen to the Three Stooges broadcasting team of Terry Smith, Steve Physioc and Rex Hudler. If you listen to them, don’t expect to ever know what’s going on in the game. At one point Rex didn’t feel like bothering to interrupt his fascinating story about running into Larry King and tell us that a batter went from a 1-0 count to getting walked. Oh, and by fascinating, I mean resembled the type of story a grandparent tells you about getting a gallon of milk from the store when they were 10 years old. If I didn’t have the XM to show me the score, I probably wouldn’t have known that the Angels were leading until the 8th inning, even though they overcame a 4-0 deficit back in the 3rd.

Kim and I did make it down for Thursday’s game, mostly just so we wouldn’t have to listen to Larry, Curly and Mo again. Instead we got to witness 12 innings of futility, and we were of course in attendance till the bitter end. We got to watch Papi look terrible at the plate all seven times, leaving an astounding 12 men on base. (Even from the upper deck, he looked awful). We got to watch H1N1E6 actually look, well, good. No famous E6’s and no GIDPs. We also got to witness first-hand what a terrible outfielder Ellsbury really is. His routes to the ball are hideous and he thinks that the outfield wall is an electric fence. We got to watch Tito get ejected for finally telling home plate umpire Bill Miller that a drunk college student who is seeing double would have a more consistent strike zone. And last but not least, thanks to the extra innings and frustration, we got to drive back in rush-hour traffic while still fuming that the MVP couldn’t put the ball in play for the go-ahead run. (For those keeping score at home, I’ve now been to three Sox games this season and have watched them lose in 12 innings twice.)

Seattle wasn’t much better. Lester, in his home town, blew a 4-0 lead by giving up TWO HRs to Ichiro. And NICK GREEEEEEN finally demoted himself back down to being called just Nick Green with his airmailed throw from short to the 4th row of seats that turned out to put the winning run in scoring position with 2 outs in the 9th.

Earlier in the season the loses were clearly the fault of bad starting pitching, but you can’t blame this 1-4 stretch on the starters. Hopefully we can have our normal offense back and will score more than 5 runs in one of these games.

For once I’m not going to complain about leaving a ton of runners on base because they weren’t from the Sox! The Sox stole this one. You don’t normally give up that many baserunners, trail by two in the 8th on the road and pull out the victory.

Nancy, Tek and Papi deserve high praise in this one. Nancy tied the game up at one in the 2nd, and then singled and scored the winning run in the 9th. Tek used his intangibles to hit a line drive RBI double into the gap in the 9th, as opposed to right at Torii Hunter like everyone else. And Papi finally came through with a clutch HBP with the bases loaded in the 8th.

Masterson should have been CRUSHED. He had Helen Keller’s control and managed to only allow two runs in six innings. He loaded the bases with one out in the 1st, loaded them with two outs in the 2nd, and had runners at 2nd and 3rd with one out in the 4th yet only gave up two runs. Masty may be filling Dice-K’s spot in the rotation, but ignoring the strike zone and always working out of jams is not the best way to impress upper management. His new nickname might have to be Houdini.

Speaking of new nicknames, I came up for a new one for Lugo when he booted a ball to start the bottom of the 8th right after the Sox scored two in the 8th to tie the game up. He shall forever be known here at Dirty Watah as H1N1E6. He’s the swing flu but worse, the swine flu can at least catch.

That save by Paps was either the most or least impressive save I’ve seen. I’m just not sure which.

Buried deep inside baseball clubhouses everywhere is the 10 commandments for closers. I risked life, limb, and losing my credentials the last time I was in there to steal half of them from the Mariners (hey, it’s not like it would help Aardsma anyways). We always knew that Paps doesn’t like to be told what to do, but this is kinda absurd:

“Thou shalt not walk the leadoff man, for he shall come around to score…unless he doesn’t.” — Only took five pitches to break that rule

“Thou shalt not put the tying run in scoring position with a terrible pickoff throw” — Paps did this before making his first pitch to the 2nd batter of the inning

“Thou shalt not throw mediocre fastballs down the middle” — Funny, you throw a fastball down the middle and even the number 8 hitter will get a single to center. Lucky for Paps, Iwamura stopped at 3rd.

“Thou shalt not fall behind 3-1 to the major’s home run leader” — This is the point when Red Sox fans start hoping for Paps to get out of the inning tied instead of behind.

“If all else fails, thou shalt strike out everybody” — Wait, this one he listens to? Of all these rules this is the one he decides is the one to obey? It was certainly spectacular, but wouldn’t it just have been easier to listen to the first couple of rules?

Paps striking out Pena, Upton and Crawford with the tying run on third was a sight to behold. In fact, using one of those cherry-picked stats, it was the first time a pitcher had struck out three straight batters to end the game with the tying run on third in 20 years. Which clearly makes it an amazing save, but much more of these type of saves and I’m going to need a respirator to watch the 9th.

Oh yeah, and Bay hit the game winning RBI in the 8th…again. Ho, hum.

In honor of Jason’s latest home run heroics (yet ANOTHER late inning game tying home run), here’s his new jingle:

Who do you call when your windshield’s busted? Call Jason Bay!

1-800-44-J-Bay

Done right, done fast! Yeah wherever you are.

Call Number 1-800-44-J-Bay

From Maine to Providence, Worcester to Cape Cod and the islands, the big Canadian bat will deliver clutch hits to you over the Monster and onto the Pike. J-BAY!

(If your windshield was busted on the Pike in the last couple of weeks, it probably is his fault!)

That was quite the sixth inning the Sox had. I know the Indians’ pitching staff is supposed to be bad, but twelve runs without an out bad? That’s the stuff you tell your grandkids about. How bad was it for the Indians yesterday? They gave up not one, but TWO hits to Julio Lugo…in the same inning! That’s rarer than seeing an unassisted triple play, a perfect game and a steal of home, all in the same game. It’s reasonable to expect that in a batting-around inning, Bay would get a game-tying double and a 3-run homer, but I still can’t get over Lugo. Maybe when he was made the designated hitter he suddenly thought he could hit? Although going by that logic, when he plays short you’d think he could field.

What made the outburst even more impressive is that half of these players probably should be batting in AAA right now. A lineup of Lugo, Pedroia, Bay, Lowell, Baldelli, Drew, Bailey, GREEEEEEEN, and Kottaras should never be able to reach base consecutively. Between Lugo and Drew somebody should have killed that rally before it even got to the fearsome trio of Bailey, GREEEEEN and Kottaras. Maybe that’s why nobody had done this since the 1953 Brooklyn Dodgers.

It wasn’t all good news yesterday. Los Angeles Dodgers left fielder Manny Ramirez (anybody remember him?) was suspended for 50 games for using performance enhancing drugs. I got multiple emails from friends asking if I was laughing about this. Why? Why would I laugh about a player that I loved for years cheating? A player who was the MVP of the 2004 World Series, who carried the Red Sox more times than I can count on his back. No, I’m depressed about it.

Manny, for all his clubhouse shenanigans, will forever be linked with the 2004-2007 Red Sox. Which means that now performance enhancing drugs will forever be linked with the 2004-2007 Red Sox. Not so funny anymore, huh?

Tell me if this story sounds familiar. Masterson starts a game and looks great. The offense gets him a little run support. Nothing extraordinary, but enough that when the 5th inning rolls around, you’re thinking “yeah, we got this one.” You’re even pretty confident two outs into the 5th when the Sox still have the lead. And then the wheels fall off. Maybe it’s a grand-slam to Evan Longoria followed by a solo shot to Carlos Pena, or in last night’s case a 2-run double followed by an RBI single. Either way the Sox have suddenly gone from ahead to losing without stopping at tied. Is five some kind of unlucky Jamaican number?

Clearly when a starter has the lead and is in the 5th, you want to give him every opportunity to qualify for the win. But it’s almost like Masty has Derek Lowe disease, over-thinking the last out he needs for the win before he gets it. It would be nice to see Jon Farrell do his job and calm down Masty whenever he’s in trouble in the 5th inning when he can still qualify for the win, instead of waiting for him to be in line for the loss.