Friday Night's Sox Game

Well, with less than 24 hours between the end of my bachelorhood and my wife and daughter's return on Saturday, I took a friend up on an invite to Friday night's Red Sox-Angels game at the old ballpark. Josh Beckett against Ervin Santana. The Sox, behind rookie pitcher Clay Buchholz's Major League debut, had won the afternoon make-up game, 8-4. It was a beautiful night for a game.

Our seats were in the right field grandstand, which, in World War I-era Fenway Park design "ingenuity," means that the seats face directly toward center field--not toward home plate or, dare one hope, even the infield. It's a gas to pay $27 for the privilege of craning your upper half of the body 45 degrees to the left while your lower half is squished into a crevice of 1-inch-by-2-inches between your knees and the back of the seat in front of you.

Still, right field grandy's aren't the worst seats in the joint.

This is.

Anyhow, it was a decent pitching match-up. So good, in fact, that the game moved incredibly fast. It was 8:30 p.m. and we were through the first 5 innings, after only 90 minutes. That is a rare treat these days.

And then the bullpens came in. It was 4-1 Anaheim (oops, I mean California...no, wait..Los Angeles) going into the bottom of the 8th. The Angels brought in wunderkind closer Francisco "K-Rod" Rodriguez.

K-Rod's wind-up is fascinating to watch. Clutching the ball in his glove, he brings his legs together and squats almost like a batter' stance, then spaces them apart a bit, tilts his body back toward second base (away from home plate), lifts his left leg, then slams his left, front leg forward before delivering the ball. All of this motion is so violent and driven that, once the ball is heading toward the catcher, K-Rod's momentum carries him toward first base, his right side exposed to the batter and catcher.

Well, all of this force and momentum meant nothing, as the Sox rallied to score 4 runs off him in the 8th. David Ortiz, "Big Papi," drove in 2 runs and the place went nuts! I've been to Fenway probably 50 times in my life, and I fail to recall a time that I've ever heard it as loud as it was that moment. On K-Rod's very next pitch to Manny, he drove in Ortiz and the park went bonkers again.

Wait 10 minutes, and in comes the Sox's most questionable move of the season, Eric Gagne. He stank up the joint, thanks in part to being gassed after hurling 13 pitches to the first batter he faced, who fouled off a slew of his offerings. He was booed terribly. What a disaster he was. The Sox ended up losing, 7-5. Still, it was an exciting few moments when they rallied to go ahead, 5-4.

I'm hoping to get to one more game in September, when the Minnesota Twins come to town. Oddly, they are the only American League team I've never seen in-person.