Ignoring baseball because it’s the Cup

This is Tuukka Rask. He does not play baseball.

Last night, the Red Sox were down to their final strike when Will Middlebrooks, batting against Tampa Bay closer Fernando Rodney, laced a change-up into the outfield for a bases-clearing double. The Sox went up 4-3, Junichi Tazawa picked up the win in relief, and if I’m imagining the scenario correctly, most of the crowd went home happy, since this took place in Tampa and no one there seems to care about the Rays one way or the other.

Apparently, it was a hell of an at-bat for Middlebrooks, who is rebounding from a minor slump and on his way back towards the torrid pace he carried through April, when the Red Sox were busy surprising a jaded fan base and sitting in first place. The mighty Jon Couture actually has a great breakdown of Middlebrooks’ at-bat here, complete with his growing patience and his success reading the pitcher and the situation.

They’re a game back of the Yankees this afternoon for the top spot of the American League East, and they’re playing some fun games, even when they lose. But don’t ask me about details, because I’ve missed all of them lately. Simply, it’s because the Bruins are in the playoffs, and it is functionally impossible for me to concentrate or devote any sort of emotional focus on the Red Sox when this is the case.

 

The depressing near-reality of the umpire order

Former White Sox owner and colorful chapter in baseball history all his own, Bill Veeck, once said the single most accurate anecdote about baseball umpires that will ever be said: “[Umpires] should be reminded every payday that they’ve been placed on the field, like the bases, only to keep the game going.”

I think most of them get that. I’d feel better, at least, if most of them did, anyway.

But a certain number of them don’t. Angel Hernandez, as illustrated in last night’s bizarre refusal to acknowledge video evidence while watching it, doesn’t get it. John Hirschbeck, ever willing to point out that he’s in charge, certainly doesn’t get it. C.B. Bucknor might be too awful an umpire to ever get it. And Joe West, Joe West, Joe West…

It would be one thing if any or all of them were singularly terrible, stuck in their positions by seniority and used as little as possible. But they call World Series games. They call national broadcast games. Sometimes they record country music albums. They’re the stars of the show in their own minds, and it’s infuriating in a way that is nearly unique to baseball (the NBA has their share of diva referees, to be sure).

So, what can be done? Fans and writers can’t suspend or fire umpires. Major League Baseball seems content with all of them. Maybe it’s just time to bend to their reality, one in which the four of them have banded together, aiming to take baseball by storm and bend it to their sick, selfish vision. Maybe he’s not Country Joe West, but Hollywood Joe West. Maybe, these four umpires are, in fact, baseball’s New World Order.

God help us all.

 

David Ortiz and the city of Boston

At this point, every David Ortiz card could just say “Red Sox,” no other name required.

On Sunday afternoon, David Ortiz came to the plate in the seventh inning with one out and Daniel Nava standing on second base. The scoreboard above the centerfield bleachers had his line for the game along with his current stats.

I was in the standing-room section above Fenway Park’s right field when a fan next to me noticed something.

“Hey, look at that. His average fell to .500 today.”

Within a pitch or two of that quick little comment, Ortiz ripped a pitch into the corner below us. Nava screamed around the bases, and Ortiz trotted into second with a little less vigor. He’s been on a tear since coming back from a heel injury to start the season late, and where he might’ve tried for a triple a few years ago, he had to settle for the double and a 6-1 lead over the Houston Astros.

 

Toasting the Oakland A’s

Coco Crisp is just one of several links between the Red Sox and A’s.

A buddy from my tumultuous stay in the Phoenix area gave me a call just before Felix Doubront’s first pitch yesterday to the Oakland A’s. He had stationed himself at a bar on a night off to catch his hometown A’s, and since they were playing my Red Sox, he wanted to catch up, talk baseball, all that.

We text back and forth a bit on whatever might be happening, whether it’s a baseball game or a rock show or, occasionally, drinking. Perhaps more than occasionally drinking on the weekends. But he gave me a call, knowing I’d at the very least be tuning in and, maybe, would even be catching the game at Fenway Park.

I didn’t make the trip to the park yesterday, but I’ve always like watching the A’s play, for any number of reasons. I like that, whether through personal convictions or financial restraints, they build their teams the right way — through the draft and augmented with character free agents, not the other way around. I like their green-and-gold color scheme enough that I stole the colors for the logo of my fantasy baseball team (and I am enough of a nerd to make such a logo).

 

Boston

As I sit here, the Red Sox are on the road, taking on the Cleveland Indians, wearing black bands on their sleeves in order commemorate the victims of the horror show that took place in Boston yesterday.

I don’t know how to cope with something like this. I know that I was at work, a rarity on Patriot’s Day, but that if I hadn’t, I might’ve been down at Kenmore Square, hanging out at the Baseball Tavern or the Lansdowne Pub watching the Red Sox matinee with the Tampa Bay Rays. And after the game, yeah, maybe I would’ve walked down with my friends to Copley Square to take in more of the race.

I do know that on Sunday, I had a great day at the park. More than a dozen of us bought tickets on the right field roof deck at Fenway Park, and as I scored along, I noticed that Clay Buccholz had a no-hitter going through seven innings. After quietly noting that to a couple of my friends with particular baseball savvy, I thought to myself how Buccholz has a tendency to pitch well when I’m in the stands, and how, even with a cold wind blowing in, that there’s nothing quite like being in Fenway when the Red Sox are rolling along.

When I didn’t live in Massachusetts or even along the Red Line, I always wore my love of Boston on my sleeve, and often quite literally. I displayed my pride in the city with stories of hanging out in Quincy, or with my affinity for Dunkin Donuts coffee, but most commonly, I got to do it with sports. I’d wear my Bruins jersey often. I’d bring a Red Sox cap everywhere. I wanted people to know that Boston was a part of me, and that I never really wanted to leave.

I’m back here, and the only thought I could muster in the moment, beyond the terror and the fear and the sadness, was how proud I was and always am of Boston. It can seem like a loud, boorish place to outsiders; everyone’s loud, no one knows how to drive, every other word out of our mouths seems to be “fuckin’” or “bullshit” or “asshole.” But it’s a well-worn exterior. This area is really a family; it’s more a community than a city, displayed in the way that in addition to Boston and its neighborhoods — Roxbury, West Roxbury, Dorchester, Southie, the South End, Eastie, the North End, Charlestown, Beacon Hill, Allston, Brighton, Jamaica Plain, Roslindale, Mattapan, etc. — the surrounding community is just as much part of Boston. With few exceptions, if you can call Quincy, Braintree, Cambridge, Somerville, Newton, Watertown, Dedham, Medford, Milton, Arlington, Lexington, Concord, Woburn, Winchester, Reading, Chelsea, Everett, Weymouth or any number of small towns and cities I’m not thinking of right now home, then you’re from Boston, too.

And that much was obvious in the immediate aftermath. The stories of people putting themselves in harm’s way to help others, runners running to hospitals, folks opening their homes to those displaced, they’re numerous and real and heartbreaking. We were always in this together.

And so, here we are. Some of us were down at Copley yesterday, some of us were at work, some of us were watching on TV. Some of us know people who were hurt or killed. Some of us were those people. But we’re all in this together now. And we’re all trying to pull together and move on.

So tonight, the Red Sox are playing, and it’s an hour or two of distraction. And they’re playing for their city. It’s a small thing, but right now, it feels good. It’s a start.