And a Large Father shall lead them

Photo courtesy of Kelly O'Connor/sittingstill.net and used with permission

I don’t normally like to focus on the guys who always get focused on but, screw it, how about that David Ortiz?

Against Detroit, New York, Minnesota, Philadelphia and Tampa Bay, five series that everyone kept saying would “make or break” the Red Sox, Big Papi hit .400.  Over the last ten games, he has 14 hits, four home runs, 12 RBI and even 5 walks.  The guy is getting on base and scoring runs (eight in that 10-game stretch) and isn’t considered the easy out that he was back in April.  He was just a major contributor to the Red Sox sweep against the mighty Tampa Bay Rays and helped the Sox outscore them 19-3 in this series.

There are no more excuses.  You can’t tell me he was facing weak pitching (Phil Hughes, CC Sabathia, Joba Chamberlain, James Shields, Matt Garza…these guys are good, yes?) and you can’t blame Fenway for being an easy home run park (out of his last ten games, only one was played at Fenway where, admittedly, he had a a two-run home run against Scott Baker).  Whatever Papi didn’t have in April, he has now, in spades.  Welcome back, Large Father.

The rest of the team?  Not too shabby either.  Adrian Beltre went insane on the first place Rays’ pitching.  The team won this last series, pardon me, swept this last series, with their hitting and their pitching…how nice is it when that happens?

According to Michael Silverman, Papi will  possibly be in Queens today at the wake for his friend Jose Lima.  If that happens to be the case, I can’t imagine anyone could complain if it causes him to miss the game tonight.  I know I won’t.

Too many were so quick to write this team off and while I know there is still a lot of baseball in front of us and anything is possible I continue to have that good feeling that this summer is going to be one heck of a ride.  Sweeping the Rays, winning the series in Philly, sweeping the Twins, splitting with the Yanks (that’s a record of 8-2 if you don’t want to do the math)…this is just the beginning.

Best line of the night, uttered by Jerry Remy in the 9th inning:

“You can almost see them coming together as a group!”