After thanking Nomah and then immediately complaining about him in first game of the series, it’s only appropriate to also thank the other starting SS from the 2004 Sox team: Orlando Cabrera. Cabrera deserves an even bigger thanks from Red Sox Nation, and not because of what he did five years ago for the Sox. Unlike Nomah, Cabrera grounded out to short in all four plate appearances last night. Now that’s the performance I want to see from former Sox players coming home! Combine that with Beckett and Bay, and the Sox are the first AL team to 50 wins!

Welcome back, Nomah. It’s great to see you too. Yes, we missed you and your Andre the Giant sized nose. That’s why we’re going to give you a two minute standing ovation before your first at bat. Aww, the heart tap from you is very sweet. What a nice hugfest we have going on here at Fenway…wait, did you really just take the first pitch? And wtf is up with that RBI single against Smoltz? We even gave you a video tribute and this is how you repay us? You know what Nomah, there’s the door, please don’t come back until you’re the Nomah we know and love (AKA the Nomah who helps the Sox, not hurts them).

Watching the games this weekend was very disappointing. It’s unacceptable to lose two of three to the lowly Mariners especially when both loses were tied going into the 9th inning. Listening to Don and The Mayor was a new experience though. Since Eck was busy doing TBS junk (by definition, if something is on TBS, it’s junk) and Dave Roberts was (I guess) busy, we go Sean Casey to fill in.

Casey had a number of great anecdotes. As a big fan of the team, I feel like Casey gave viewers couple of great, and most importantly honest, nuggets about what it was like being in the clubhouse on the 2008 team. In general though, if you turned on the game when Casey was speaking you had a 90% chance of hearing one of the following two things:

1) Casey laughing/giggling uncontrollably
2) “He didn’t try to do too much…”

Every time a Sox player got a hit, whether it be a home run, a clean single or a seeing-eye single Casey told us the reason was that “he didn’t try to do too much…” After losing the first two games, I kind of wish the Sox did try to do a bit more (I’m looking in your direction Ramirez and Saito). However, it does seem like the perfect motto for Tim Wakefield.

Wake made his 383rd start in a Red Sox uniform on Friday night, which makes him the all-time leader in starts for a Sox pitcher. Ignore the number for a moment and just think about the idea that in the 108 years of the franchise, Wakefield has now made more starts than every other pitcher to put on a Sox uniform. If you’re not impressed yet, then remember that for the first 60 or so years, most teams employed a four-man rotation, not a five-man. (With a 152 game season, a pitcher would still get an average of five more starts per season.) Wake never had that benefit. Still not inspired? Then how about the reserve clause? For the Sox’s first 75 years there was no such thing as free agency. So if you signed a young Nolan Ryan, it meant that he would make every start of his career for your team. But in this era of free agency, five-man rotations, and even a stint as a closer, Wakefield now stands alone as the Sox pitcher to throw the first pitch the most. It’s great to see somebody who loves the Sox as much as we all do to get that honor. No insult to Cy Young, but do you think he would have essentially signed a reserve-clause like contract if he had the opportunity? I kinda doubt it. If you need a face of the franchise, it’s not Papi or Youks or Beckett, without question (and now with the numbers to prove it), it’s Tim Wakefield. Congrats Tim, you never tried to do too much and look at where you are now.

Luckily, other people, including Joe Maddon, have apparently noticed what Wakefield has done for this franchise, and gave him the “lifetime achievement” all-star game roster spot. It only took 17 seasons, 383 starts and another 137 games coming out of the bullpen to get the honor of having to ask Pedey what to wear to the all star events. (I really hope that Pedey tells him to wear plaid pants with a hawaiian shirt.) I’d love to get to watch the game with Stud Who GIDPs, Bard and Kottaras as they get to watch Victor Martinez try to catch the knuckleball.

I know that there are a few of you out there who read Dirty Watah religiously, and I can’t thank you enough. But for those of you who show up on occasion or stumble here by accident and decide to read a post or two, I recognize that some of the lingo may be hard to interpret. Who is H1N1E6? Or who are the MFY?

In order to try and help everyone out I’m going to start putting together a Dirty Watah Glossary. If I come up with a new nickname or a not regularly known term, I’ll add it to the glossary. Then, thanks to the magic of Wordpress, every time I use that term it will be underlined and you can hover your mouse over it to get a quick definition.

If there are any terms you remember that you had trouble with, please leave a comment and I’ll make sure to add it to the glossary.

I don’t believe what I just saw. I don’t believe what I just saw. Is this really happening? – Jack Buck after Kirk Gibson’s World Series HR in 1989

It’s a good thing he repeated the first line because each of the last two games deserves its own repetition. The Sox blow a 10-1 lead in the 7th one night, only to pull their own Houdini act the next afternoon and come back from a 5-1 deficit in the 9th. It’s like they found a way to drown in an inflatable kiddie pool one night, and the next day escaped from being locked in a cage at the bottom of a 30 foot pool with their hands and feet tied and sharks circling. I’ve been advised by my psycatrist that for the sake of my blood pressure I shouldn’t go into specifics about the first game. But I will point out that the Sox had a 0.4% chance of losing, and still found a way to do it.

So let’s discuss Wednesday instead. I was expecting to have to talk about Jason Bay’s new H1N1E6-esque look at the plate, or the fact that Beckett never gave the Sox a chance in this game. Or that Luke Scott looks like he should have to register at familywatchdog.us. But something funny happened on the way to the 9th inning, the Sox found their swagger (or maybe they finally got Brad Bergesen out of the game, I’m not sure). The comeback was almost the definition of a “bloop and a blast”, but not in that order. Youks took care of the blast part with a 2-run homer to right. But the pinch-hit 2-run bases loaded “bloop” may have been more impressive. Rocco’s single was less of a bloop and more of a forward moving bobble-head baseball that skipped past the pitcher, past the left side of second base, past the Jeterian dive of Robert Andino and into center field. Rocco must have sacrificed a whole chicken to the BABIP gods for that one. I’m guessing that H1N1E6 made a sacrifice of his own during Rocco’s ceremony since his game-winning single in the 11th bounced about five times before getting past the draw-in infield to score Tacoby from 3rd. Hard to believe, but here’s the fangraph for the game:

Oh yeah, and that bullpen that allowed 10 runs in two innings on Tuesday? They and Beckett combined to end the game with 24 straight outs. I was almost hoping for the Sox to win it in the 12th so they could throw a perfect game, but after Tuesday I wanted a win as quickly as possible. Good thing it was a day game.

That’s about all I have to say.