Omens Can Be Misleading!--Peter

Well, tonight I attended the Sox game at Oakland Coliseum (That's the way it's spelled in Oakland--never noticed before tonight) figuring we should have a better than even chance at extending the win streak to eight. Wake was pitching and if his knuckler was doing what it should do, then the fact that Harden was throwing for the A's should be very nicely balanced out, with the Hose likely taking the game in the late innings after Harden had been removed. What further cemented this likelihood in my mind was the fact that as I opened my wife's door on our car in the Coliseum parking lot, I found a shiny new quarter on the ground. If, as traditional superstitions go, a penny's good luck, then surely a quarter just had to be that times twentyfive! Not..so...fast....!

The knuckler was moving as fast as it usually does, which is to say, if it topped out at 65, it was over the posted limit. At one point, Wake's ball was clocked at 55. That's right--the double nickle. His 'fast' ball got up a couple of times into the high 70's, but that's OK because Wake's bread and butter pitch is the flutterball. As any knuckleball aficionado will tell you, the thing that makes a good knuckler so effective is that no-one, and that includes the hurler tossing it up there, has any idea exactly where it will go. Oh, you know it will be somewhere within a few feet of the plate--in any given direction, but rarely the same direction on consecutive throws. It's like watching the flight of a butterfly--and a butterfly with an alcohol to blood reading of way over 0.8 at that! It darts; it drops; it rises; it dances, literally, side to side and then up and down--all of this in the short space of sixty feet, six inches. But what would you expect for a ball that's probably only moving at something only slightly faster than your neighbor's kid on his bike going down the hill a few blocks over?

The problem with it is that if it's not dancing, then it's almost like having it placed on a hitting tee. All one has to do in that case is take a good hard swing and it's going somewhere off in the distance. That, unfortunately, is what we got tonight. In the first inning, the A's quickly put two men on base; one quickly driven home by the next A's batter and then the Big Hurt--his mother, Mrs. Thomas knows him as Frank--drove the first pitch he saw over the fence--3-0, A's. A few innings later, we got something of a replay, though the guy driving the ball into the cheaps this time was the A's second sacker, Mark Ellis. As they'd already added a single run at the start of the inning, it was now seven-zip A's.

Most of Wake's stuff, while not really dancing the way it can on a good night, was at least decent. But all it took was two or three bad pitches and the game, for all practical purposes, was over. Were we facing some other A's hurler--perhaps Blanton or some other similarly marginal thrower, things could have turned out differently. Harden would have lasted his six innings, giving up the two runs he did, and then the Sox bats would have started banging on the A's bullpen. But those few bad pitches were thrown and that's the story. In the case of Thomas, it's understandable. He's done fairly well over his career against Wake, and he will be a first ballot pick for Cooperstown. Yes, he's deep into the twilight of his career--this could be his final year--but he's still the Big Hurt, and he still knows how to attack and drive a baseball. He proved it once more tonight, going 3-4, including aforementioned homer.

The quarter? It's in my pocket. Maybe I'll throw it away lest it have any A's karma. After all, it was the Oakland parking lot where I found it.

Pluses for the Sox--there were a few. Ellsbury got two RBI singles in four trips and, in a further example of how the night was going for our heroes, stole 2d cleanly late in the game. He was called out, correctly, after he had made the bag safely before the tag, and then gotten careless and found himself off the bag on the third base side. The A's fielder alertly had kept the ball and again swept his glove past Jake tagging him this time as he was off the bag. This was after the steal. But the official scorer only recorded it as a CS--no mention of the successful 20th steal of the season by Ellsbury.
Pedroia put one into the bleachers in left center for the Sox' first run on a hard flat shot, getting the faithful attending the game to hope it was the start of a comeback. Sorry--not tonight.

Pitching--it wasn't all disappointing. The bullpen collectively threw three consecutive scoreless, hitless innings. Hell, the last two of these were thrown by Jenn's favorite--Timlin. He even got a pair of K's as well as allowing no hits or walks. Can you say two perfect? That's three games in a row he hasn't thrown the game away. Jenn, are you listening?

Well, tomorrow's another day. By the way, that new photo you see is yours truly at tonight's game. Tomorrow things hopefully will go better as JB's taking the rubber, followed by Lester on Sunday.