Boston Smackdown - ALCS game 4

[vaticanplum]

What is going on with Boston, seriously? I can't even enjoy this as much as I'd like because they just seem to be having a mental breakdown. The pitching in particular, but the whole team just doesn't seem that fussed.

Cleveland is on an exciting, well-deserved tear, but Boston is better than this. The wheels just seem to have come off and gone flying...those who follow this team, is this something you think they can rebound from or has something fallen apart?

[westofyou]

Most boring off season since 1950.. not that I was there.

[Matt700wlw]

One of the few times I enjoy anything from Cleveland win anything.

Less Red Sox and less Yankees is good for me

[RFS62]

They can, but it's going to take a massive effort.

Beckett should send it back to Beantown, and after that, Curt the wonder dog and DiceK will have to step up big time.

[vaticanplum]

Originally Posted by Matt700wlw

One of the few times I enjoy anything from Cleveland win anything.

Less Red Sox and less Yankees is good for me

This little team stands a very good chance of knocking out both the Yankees and the Red Sox in succession at this point. Media histrionics aside, that's quite something.

And if they do, they'll go onto play an invincible-looking team that has never even been to the World Series before. I have to disagree with woy, I'm finding this League Series pretty intriguing.

[Matt700wlw]

I'm enjoying it....it's nice to see the little guys....the underdogs accomplishing something...

Makes me feel better that the Reds may not be as far away as we think from being a contender....they just have to be SMART

[vaticanplum]

Youkilis and ortiz homer back to back. Oops.

[Reds Fanatic]

Back to back to back homers. 7-3.

[Matt700wlw]

Wow....

The danger that is the Red Sox lineup

[gonelong]

I am enjoying the heck out of the NYY and now the BoSox getting their butts handed to them.

GL

[reds44]

Boys, this game is far from over.

[BoydsOfSummer]

Kevin Youkilis is an odd looking man.

[Matt700wlw]

Rafeal Betancourt could be a closer on my team any day of the week

[KronoRed]

Originally Posted by westofyou

Most boring off season since 1950.. not that I was there.

I disagree, I find a sweep or a blow out can be exciting

What's boring is the 7 day gap in games we get if the Indians finish the Sox off tomorrow

[redsmetz]

Well this is long, but here's Tom Boswell's column in today's Washington Post about last night's game, the offseason and the beauty of baseball.

A Line Drive, a Tipped Ball And the Beginning of the End?

By Thomas Boswell
Wednesday, October 17, 2007; E01

CLEVELAND

The slightest lucky break, the tiniest mistake in judgment, can crack the dam in October baseball and create a massive flood of runs. When equally balanced foes sense such an opening, the fortunate team uses the leverage to release the floodgates to victory. In the case of the Cleveland Indians, who beat Boston, 7-3, in Game 4 of the American League Championship Series on Thursday night, that minuscule yet enormous instant of truth came in the bottom of the fifth inning with the Indians ahead, 1-0.

With men on the corners and one out, Cleveland's Asdrubal Cabrera hit a fairly hard line drive back toward Boston pitcher Tim Wakefield. If such a ball had streaked at him in May or August, the 41-year-old vet might have remembered in a blink where his infielders were positioned and simply allowed the ball to pass him untouched. If he had, the drive would've skipped straight to Dustin Pedroia, standing near second base, for the easiest of double plays: step on the bag, flip to first.

On such infinitesimal moments, whole seasons sometimes can turn. It may not be fair, but it's certainly the nature of playoff baseball, in which every break resounds like a rifle shot in both dugouts.

Had Wakefield done nothing, the inning would have ended quietly. Instead, Cabrera's shot flicked off Wakefield's glove and rolled behind the mound for a run-scoring infield hit. One out later, Victor Martinez's RBI single knocked Wakefield out of the game and brought on reliever Manny Delcarmen -- a one-man Boston massacre. The first batter he faced, Jhonny Peralta, sliced a three-run homer barely over the right field wall by perhaps two feet, only a 360-foot drive, but devastating for a 6-0 lead. Before Delcarmen could retire the side, the Indians had amassed a seven-run inning for a 7-0 lead.

If the score had remained 1-0, perhaps Indians starter and winner Paul Byrd would have continued pitching effectively. We'll never know. What actually happened, however, is that the Red Sox began their next turn at-bat with a barrage of three consecutive home runs by the first three Red Sox hitters -- Kevin Youkilis, David Ortiz and Manny Ramirez.

In New England, where they obsess over their baseball all winter long, you will find thousands, perhaps millions, who will vow that, if Wakefield had escaped that fifth-inning jam with a mere 1-0 deficit, that those three heart-of-the-order explosions by Boston's power bats would have turned this game -- and perhaps this ALCS -- in the Red Sox' direction. Or maybe not.

What is certain, however, is that those three blasts looked almost ridiculously inadequate against the magnitude of Cleveland's lead. To make matters worse, Ramirez, after his breathtaking 451-foot tee shot over the center field fence, had one of his vain, oblivious Manny-being-Manny moments. With his team still losing by four and its season in jeopardy, Ramirez posed for several seconds at home plate with both arms over his head, just as he did in a now-well-known photograph of his walk-off homer in Game 2 of the Division Series against the Angels.

Earth to Manny: When you're still behind 7-3, forget the hot-dogging and just run around the bases. If the Indians needed further motivation to finish off this victory -- or this series, for that matter -- the ex-Indian Ramirez may have given it to them.

This crucial contest began with one of the most curious pitching matchups in many Octobers. "This may be the slowest-throwing right-handed matchup of all time in the postseason," the self-deprecating Byrd said of his showdown with Wakefield and his 65-mph knuckleballs.

The tradition of great Indian pitchers is not subtle. From "Rapid Robert" Feller, "Sudden Sam" McDowell and Herb Score through mammoth C.C. Sabathia and Fausto Carmona, the common Cleveland thread is intimidation and power. But on this night, Cleveland tapped Byrd, a veteran speed-changer who sometimes double pumps during his windup like an old-time '50s pitcher. Desperate for the slightest advantage? Absolutely. Effective? Yes, that too. It was Byrd who also won the Indians' clincher at Yankee Stadium last week.

Teammates love to tease Bird, who'd look like actor Jack Black if he gained 30 pounds, about his lack of a fastball. "Birdy is the unsung hero here," said Casey Blake, who had both a leadoff homer and an RBI single in the seven-run eruption.

"I hit 90 [mph] a few times a year. I did it once tonight," Bird chuckled. "I came back in the dugout and said, 'Hey guys, pick me up here. I just hit 90.' " The Indians responded by batting for 35 minutes and, perhaps, deciding this series.

The Indians now find themselves on the verge of a chance to win their first World Series since '48. And their aces -- Sabathia and Carmona -- are scheduled for the next two games. The sense already is in the crisp air here that two teams of destiny -- the long-frustrated Indians and the inconceivably hot Colorado Rockies -- soon will have a date with Series history. If the Red Sox ('04) and White Sox ('05) could end their enormous world championship droughts of 86 and 88 years, then isn't it obviously Cleveland's turn? On the other hand, who knows if the Rox, winners of 21 of their last 22, will ever lose?

For improbabilities that push hard against the boundaries of what seems possible, baseball in October seems to hold a unique place in sports. The game establishes parameters for our expectations over a six-month season; then, in a fraction of that time, it smashes our assumptions to pieces with glee. Even the players themselves are amazed at the sport's ability to dazzle them, with the Rockies as the current Exhibit A.

Indians Manager Eric Wedge, who may soon stand in the path of the Rox' karmic freight train, certainly grasps the magnitude of Colorado's current streak. For sheer mathematical improbability, it may already surpass any other late-season run by any team in any major sport.

"I can't understand it," Wedge said. "I don't think it's ever happened before, to have that type of streak late in the season and take it into the playoffs. It's almost freakish. But it's baseball. . . . The game continues to amaze people. You continue to see things on the field that you've never seen before. And that's why I think it's the greatest game in the world."

Leave aside the question of "best." This postseason already has given us documentation of why baseball is, incontestably, the most variegated and unpredictable of all our great games. The Rox, who were in fourth place in the National League West on Sept. 14 -- utterly off the radar and on the edge of mathematical elimination -- now are the hottest and most magically pixilated team ever to reach the World Series.

Whom might they meet there? Why, most likely the Indians -- a team with a third the payroll of the Yankees and less than half that of the Red Sox. On a roaring night at chanting, towel-waving Jacobs Field, we were given yet another example of how subtly, almost quixotically, postseason baseball chooses its champions. What was the turning point of this crucial game? A Boston pitcher forgot to do nothing.