J.D. Drew Dodges Batteries in Philadelphia

Booing is one thing. But they threw batteries at him, too. BATTERIES! I’m a mom and I’m allowed to say it. You could put somebody’s eye out doing that.

It all started in 1997 when J.D. Drew refused to sign with the Philadelphia Phillies when he was their first round draft pick. Since then, he gets booed every time he plays in the park. And Monday night they threw batteries at him, too.

But Drew responded in the best of all possible ways. He went four-for-five, with two singles, a double and a three-run homer and drove in four of the runs that lifted the Boston Red Sox to a 7-4 victory over the Philadelphia Phillies.

Boston took two games in the three-game series between two division leaders. They now lead the majors with a 7-2 record in interleague play.

Terry Francona, the Red Sox manager, managed the Phillies for four years and drew his share of boos, too.

The Philadelphia fans seem to be offended at the very presence of Drew in the City of . . . what was that again? Oh, yeah. Brotherly Love. Even if the Citizens of Brotherly Love can’t stand him, Drew seems to have plenty of fans. I sell J.D. Drew jerseys on my website, Baseball Fan Site Online. Sales have spiked in the last two days.

Want to Watch a Brawl?

Here’s video of the bench-clearing brawl today between the Boston Red Sox and the Tampa Bay Rays after James Shields hit Coco Crisp with a pitch. The incident followed Wednesday’s game in which Crisp slid hard into Akinori Iwamura, inciting a shouting match between Crisp and Tamp Bay manager Joe Maddon.

How About Those Red Hot Red Sox?

The Boston Red Sox won their 11th game in a row at Fenway Park Tuesday night by beating the Tampa Bay Rays 7-4. 

J.D. Drew and Mike Lowell hit home runs and Coco Crisp got a significant hit, possibly breaking a 1- for -25 slump.

It’s a good thing those guys are hitting because David Ortiz is in a cast and on the DL.  He has a partially torn sheath aroundd the tendon of his left wrist.  He will be in a cast for two to three weeks, then will have rehabilitation.  It is uncertain when he will be back in the line-up.  The Red Sox will miss his bat, as he is leading the team with 13 home runs and 43 RBI’s. 

Jonathan Papelbon posted his 17th save in 19 chances.  It was the 89th of his career, which boosts him past Jeff Reardon into fourth place for most career saves on the all-time team list.  Papelbon has pitched 7-1/3 scoreless innings in the last seven games.  His season ERA is 2.00.

The Red Sox are now in second place in the American League East, 0.5 games behind the Tampa Bay Rays.  Tampa Bay, of course, is making its own history.  Twelve games over .500, the Rays have never had a winning season in their 11-year history.

In my continuous effort to make improvements to Baseball Fan Site Online, I have more merchandise available on our Red Sox page.  So if you are looking for tickets, hats, jerseys for men, women and children, posters and current new stories, pay us a visit.  And visit our Facebook page.

Manny Ramirez Hits the Big 5-0-0

Manny Ramirez, the man with the exceptional locks, hit his 500th home run Saturday night.

The man is the 24th in baseball history to hit that many.  But there are other statistics that are even more fearsome.

Ramirez is one of only seven to have hit all of these milestones:

• 500 home runs,
• 1,500 RBI’s
• 1,000 walks
• 475 doubles
• .300 batting average.

He now joins the inimitable Hank Aaron, Willie Mays, Mel Ott, Babe Ruth, Frank Thomas and Ted Williams in sharing those records.

Only two players who hit 500 home runs have a higher career batting average than Manny’s .312.  They are Ted Williams and Jimmie Foxx. 

Williams, Foxx and Ramirez, by the way, are the only three Boston Red Sox players to have hit 500 home runs. 

Neither Williams nor Foxx, however, had such an extraordinary ‘do as Manny do.

 

Manny Ramirez Home Run Watch

Boston Red Sox outfielder Manny Ramirez hit his 499th home run Tuesday night.  He hit the one-shy-of-a-nice-round-number homer off Seattle Mariners starter Miguel Batista.  The uniquely coiffed Ramirez’ homer came in the sixth inning and drove in Dustin Pedroia and David Ortiz ahead of him.

The Red Sox lost in spite of the home run 4-3.

You can watch video of Ramirez rounding the bases, trailing his locks behind him, here.  You will need to click on the icon of a camera in the upper left hand side of the article and register with MLB.com, but registration is free.

Ramirez is 24th on the list of all-time home run hitters.  Immediately ahead of him is Eddie Murray, who retired in 1997 with 504 career home runs.

Jon Lester’s No-Hitter

Boston Red Sox LHP Jon Lester has pitched a no-hitter against the Kansas City Royals.  The final score was 7-0.

Lester threw 130 pitches on the way to pitching what was also his first career complete game.  It was the 18th no-hitter in Red Sox history.  The last Boston no-hitter was pitched by Clay Buchholtz as the Sox defeated Baltimore 10-0 on September 1, 2007.  But the last Boston no-hitter by a left-handed goes back more than a half-century to Mel Parnell’s no-hit outing in 1956.

Lester’s last noteworty game was his win in Game Four of the 2007 World Series against the Colorado Rockies.  He pitched 5-1/3 innings, allowing a trio of holy trinities with three hits, three walks and three strike-outs.  This game clinched the Series for the Sox, as they swept the Rockies in four games.  Not bad work for the first post-season start of Lester’s career.

But despite a no-hitter and a World Series win, the most remarkable achievement of the 24-year-old’s life is undoubtedly his struggle with cancer.  In August of 2006, he was put on the disabled list because of a sore back.  Tests revealed enlarged lymph nodes and that discovery led in turn to a diagnosis of anaplastic large cell lymphoma. 

After treatment of the cancer and minor league rehab, Lester returned to Boston in July, 2007.  His comeback from cancer earned him the 2007 Tony Conigliaro Award.

Now 3-2, Lester’s 2008 ERA is 3.41 after 66.0 innings pitched.  His career ERA is 4.28, with 210.1 innings under his belt.

 

Manny Ramirez Home Run Watch — May 18, 2008

You’re just teasing us, aren’t you, Manny?  We know you can do it.  You’ve already done it 498 times.  You want us to suffer.

Like the way the Boston Red Sox hit four home runs in their 11-7 victory over the Milwaukee Brewers today.  Four home runs.  One, or even two, by . . . you, Manny?  Nah.  You’re making us suffer.  David Ortiz hit two of them, bringing his total for the season to 10, and Kevin Youkilis (9) and Dustin Pedroia (2) each hit a four-bagger.  But you, Manny?  No, not you.  You’re making us wait.

Oh, and there was the way the Brewers hit four homers.  Of course, they lost both the game and the series.  But it was the same for them, home run-wise.  Four homers split among three batters.  Ryan Braun hit his twelfth and thirteenth, JJ Hardy hit his second and Prince Fielder chalked up his sixth for the season. 

But you, Manny?  Nah.  Not you.  You’re teasing us.  You’re making us wait.  You’ve done it, well, almost 500 times.  But not quite 500.  You want us to beg for it.  But you will do it, Manny.  You’ll hit number 499.  Then you’ll hit number 500. 

But you’ll make us wait.

And we will wait, Manny.  For your 500th home run, we will wait.  After all, patience is a virtue.

Manny Ramirez Home Run Watch

With 498 career home runs as of Monday night, Boston Red Sox left-fielder Manny Ramirez is closing in on home run number 500.  The eye-catchingly coiffed Ramirez is 24th on baseball’s all-time homer list.  Monday night’s two-run blast came in the first inning off Minnesota Twins‘ pitcher Livan Hernandez.  Although he leads his team with eight for the season, he had only a single HR in his previous 19 games.

Number 498 also brought his career RBI total to 1630, putting him in 26th place for that stat.

Ramirez’s first inning home run didn’t take the Red Sox as far as they wanted to go, however.  They lost to the Twins 7-3.  With a 24-17 record, the Red Sox are in first place in the American League East, 0.5 games ahead of the surprising Tampa Bay Rays.  The Twins are 20-17 for the season, in first place in the American League Central, 1.5 games over the second-place Cleveland Indians.

 

Beckett Gets 1000th Strike-Out; Red Sox Take Series

Josh Beckett took the win in the Boston Red Sox‘ 5-1 victory over the Detroit Tigers on Thursday.  The Red Sox have won six of their last seven games, while the Tigers have lost six of their last seven.  Boston is in first place in the American League East Division, 3.5 games ahead of the second-place Tampa Bay Rays, with a 23-14 record.  In contrast, the Tigers are in last place in the American League Central Divsion, with a 15-21 record, 3.5 games behind the first place Minnesota Twins.

Kevin Youkilis homered in Thursday’s game, bringing his HR total for the series to four and for the season to seven.   The Red Sox took three games in the series.

Losing pitcher Justin Verlander is now 1-6.  Last year, he didn’t lose his last game until September 18.

Beckett’s record is now 4-2.  The winner of the 2007 All-Star game, he also took the win in the first game of the 2007 World Series, which the Red Sox swept from the Colorado Rockies.  Before being traded to Boston, Beckett had played in the 2003 World Series, too, with the Florida Marlins, and was elected the World Series MVP that year.  Beckett can also swing a bat, being the only Red Sox pitcher in the last 35 years to hit a home run.

The 1967 Boston Red Sox Made Me the Woman That I Am Today

  

            We called them the Cardiac Kids because they had so much heart.  And that’s exactly what they had – heart.  They had no inheritance, no entitlement, no expectations of being champions.  In fact, in 1966, the Boston Red Sox had finished in second to last place.  Not dead last, mind you.  In that respect, they couldn’t win for losing.  But surely, at the start of the 1967 season, no one expected the Red Sox to win the AL pennant and play in the World Series.

 

            But the Impossible Dream came true.  That was the second cliché – the Impossible Dream.  The Cardiac Kids dreamed the Impossible Dream.  And the Impossible Dream came true on the last day of the season.  Four teams had a chance to win the pennant that day.  The Red Sox had to beat the Minnesota Twins for both of the last games of the season, and they did.  Once the Red Sox had won their last game against the Twins, they still had to wait for the outcome of the game between the California Angels and the Detroit Tigers.  Detroit’s loss provided the Red Sox’ championship.

 

            But if the Dream was Impossible, winning the season was deserved.  Carl Yastrzemski won the Triple Crown that year, leading the league in batting average, home runs and runs batted in.  No American League player has won the Triple Crown since that year, when Yaz did it.  Jim Lonborg won the Cy Young Award with 22 wins.  Yaz and Lonborg, joined by Rico Petrocelli and Tony Conigliaro, played in the All-Star Game that year.  They were a fabulous team.

 

            And the Sox kept it together even after we lost Tony C.  Tony Conigliaro, a home run hitting outfielder and a local boy, was hit by a pitch on August 18, 1967 by Jack Hamilton of the California Angels.  The pitch broke his cheekbone and his jaw, causing damage to his eye.  He was taken, unconscious, off the field on a stretcher.  He missed the rest of the season and, though he later returned to baseball, he never had the career that he seemed headed for.  But even without him, one of our All Stars, the Red Sox continued to win.

 

            The Cardiac Kids won the American League pennant and played the St. Louis Cardinals in the World Series.  Although we took the Series to seven games, we lost.  But no one thinks of 1967 as the year we lost the World Series.  It was the Impossible Dream year, the year we won the pennant, deservedly but unexpectedly.

 

            In 1967, I was a bookish girl growing up in Boston.  I had had no interest in any professional sports before that season.  But it was hard to live in the city without being infected with the fever.  So I came to love the Red Sox.  But more than that, I came to believe in the Cardiac Kids and the Impossible Dream.  The framework was in place before that year.  I was, after all, American, so I have always had a predisposition in favor of the self-made.  The United States Constitution bars Congress from bestowing titles of nobility, so we have a public policy notion that everyone needs to earn their own way.  As Americans, we also have national myths like Horatio Alger, in which an earnest, honest and hard-working young person aspires to and attains wealth.  In many ways, the 1967 Boston Red Sox, the Cardiac Kids, were just another version of those American stories.  It was the Cardiac Kids that impressed that ethic indelibly on my psyche.  Four decades later, I still believe that, in the right order of things, it is the kids with the heart that will win the prize.  It is the Impossible Dreams that are worth dreaming.  And it is the 1967 Boston Red Sox that taught me that.

 

            Thanks, Yaz.