Good morning!
What a season it’s been, the sort that will grow larger with time when latter day Roger Angells wax poetic about the two hardball heavyweights that came out fighting. The Red Sox started 17-2 and the Yankees won 17 of 18, and on Friday morning they stood in a flat-footed tie for first place with identical 26-11 records.
Is this fun, or what?
And yet the haughty Yankees appear to have the edge in the race to avoid second place. Indeed, Boston is the embodiment of Paul Bunyan and his axe and New York is Slimey Legree and his chainsaw.
They have the edge because Boston has a problem. Actually more than one problem, but let’s start with center fielder Jackie Bradley Jr. The position historically connotes power at the plate — Mantle, Mays and the like, but JBJ is prized for a throwing arm that’s gunned down 38 runners in six seasons.
The 28-year-old Virginian hit .294 in the minors and showed flashes of having a hot bat in Boston. Two years ago he batted .267 with 26 home runs, but otherwise, he’s a career .221 hitter. This season he’s batting .173 and after a three-strikeout night against the Yanks on Tuesday manager Alex Cora benched him and moved Mookie Betts to center field.
His replacement in the batting lineup was Mitch Moreland, who hit a home run in his first at-bat, then went 0-for-7 with four K’s and never got the ball out of the infield.
Defensively, third baseman Rafael Devers will never be compared to Brooks Robinson. Indeed, Robinson or even Mike Lowell would’ve snagged Giancarlo’s Stanton’s laser line drive that grazed off his glove in the fourth inning on Tuesday.
Devers works the bubblegum hard, and still has that deer-in-the-headlights look. He has half the team’s errors (9 of 18) and after an 0-for-4 on Tuesday, Cora dropped him from sixth to eighth in the lineup and he responded with three singles in eight at-bats.
Then there’s the David Price attitude problem. On Monday, the club sent him back to Boston where he was diagnosed with carpal tunnel syndrome. Price doesn’t have a sore arm, he has sore wrists from playing video games. “I got my first PlayStation when I was 12-years old,” he told the media. “That’s my generation. That’s what we do.”
Hey, a guy’s gotta have his priorities.
The Red Sox arguably could have swept all three games. They were tied 2-2 in the seventh inning on Tuesday until Aaron Judge drove in Tyler Austin with the winning run, and the next night, Cora blundered by bringing in Craig Kimbrel for a five-out save with two runners on base and one out. Brett Gardner tripled them home, and Judge put a Kimbrel pitch into the upper deck for the 9-6 win.
It was a John Farrell-type of move and it smacked of panic in the Big Apple. Kimbrel had 35 saves last year, but in November his daughter Lydia Joy Kimbrel underwent surgery four days after she was born. He missed all of spring training to be with his wife Ashley, and can’t be faulted for any lack of focus this personal crisis is causing.
Something else happened Wednesday that was disturbing for Red Sox fans. In the top of the ninth inning, J.D. Martinez bounced a single down the right field line and collided with reliever Aroldis Chapman who was covering first base. Martinez argued that it was fielder interference, but umpire Eric Cooper declined to award him second base.
It was shocking not to see Cora come out to protest. Earl Weaver, Terry Francona and probably John Farrell would’ve gone jaw-to-jaw with Cooper. When he was with the Tigers, Brad Ausmus got tossed for covering home plate with his sweatshirt.
Red Sox fans like to see a skipper get fired up, but Cora’s come off as the laid-back sort who spits sunflower seeds and drapes his arms across the dugout railing.
Ausmus wanted to manage the Red Sox. He was born in New Haven and educated at Dartmouth. He would’ve been a good fit here, but the Arkansas billionaire who owns the team (and by extension, the city) made the politically correct choice.
They nearly collapsed on Thursday by allowing the Yankees to score four runs and tie it in the seventh inning, but were saved by Martinez’s eighth-inning blast off Dellin Betances.
They hammered five home runs in the final two games but still miss David Ortiz to stare down the Yankees’ new murderers’ row of Judge, Stanton and Sanchez .
The final three games of the season are against the Yankees at Fenway Park. You get the feeling they’ll still be battling for first place, because it’s shaping up as that kind of a season.
There was a Norman Rockwell moment in the second inning on Tuesday, when Christian Vazquez, Alex Cora, trainer Jon Jochim and umpire Gary Cederstrom all huddled around Drew Pomeranz and stared at the pitcher’s bruised fingernail.
The game resumed after Jochim reached for his nailclipper and snipped off a few loose ends. “He just needed a little manicure,” said Yanks’ announcer John Sterling.
During the delay, I perused Ben Bradlee Jr.’s “The Kid — The Immortal Life of Ted Williams” and read of an incident that happened 68 years ago yesterday.
Williams had a magnificent swing and a terrible temper, and the Boston press corps fed off both for their stories. During a game against Detroit, Vic Wertz hit a bases loaded single into left field. Williams misplayed it and all three runners scored.
Williams was slumping at the plate, and Bradlee wrote that the crowd of 27,758 “jeered Williams mercilessly as he ran off the field.”
Rather than stare straight ahead and duck into the dugout, Williams stopped, turned around and gave everybody the finger. Infielder Walt Dropo recounted the incident years later. “Ted began, ‘You in left field f—- you!’ and he saluted. And then he went to center field and then to right field. Ted had had enough. He just vented his emotions there in front of everybody.’”
Williams wasn’t suspended or fined, but owner Tom Yawkey angrily demanded he sign off on a written statement to the fans: “Ted is sorry for his impulsive actions on the field yesterday and wishes to apologize to any and all whom he may have offended.”
It was a different era. There was no “code of conduct” and Wally the Green Monster wasn’t doing the rumba on the Red Sox dugout. TMZ wasn’t around and the only local paper to get good shots — The Boston Post — declined to publish the photos “for the sake of the children, ladies and normal persons.”
Colleague Jay Butynski wrote a poignant article this week about Mike Markol, who was recently diagnosed with cancer. Markol embodies the Powertown spirit, and his illness has affected the entire community. You’re in my prayers, Mike, you’re one of a kind.
SQUIBBERS: NMH lax attacker Gillian Eby is finishing her PG year at Northfield-Mount Hermon and will attend Navy and play for coach Cindy Timchal next year. Eby’s prolific scoring at NMH included a stretch of 29 goals in seven games, two against Deerfield in what was an otherwise forgettable 18-3 defeat. … After seeing the photo of a four-foot long pike taken from Spofford Lake in New Hampshire, a patron at the Mt. Pisgah Diner commented: “That’s why there’s no fish. They won’t let you ice fish, so they swim around all winter eating all the little fish.” … That was no playoff atmosphere at Yankee Stadium, not when Hanley Ramirez is apologizing to Tyler Austin for bumping into him at first base, and Giancarlo Stanton’s all buddy-buddy with Xander Bogaerts. The fans were into it, but fraternizing doesn’t happen in the playoffs. … A’s pitcher Daniel Mengden’s mustache is a perfect knockoff of Rollie Fingers’ stache from the 1970s. … The NHL Network reported that Maple Leafs coach Mike Babcock and star forward Auston Matthews had a sit-down after the team’s early exit from the playoffs. Older coaches everywhere are having trouble connecting with the earbud generation. … The critics are on the Caps for literally popping champagne after beating the Penguins, but came you blame them? If baseball teams can celebrate winning the wild card, these guys can celebrate beating a longtime nemesis. … Capitals’ forward Alex Ovechkin and comrades Evgeny Kuznetsov and Dmitry Orlov want to quaff from Lord Stanley’s Cup in Red Square. First the election, now this.
Chip Ainsworth is an award-winning columnist who has penned his observations about sports for four decades in the Pioneer Valley. He can be reached by email at sports@recorder.com.