Happy Birthday Kyle! (Original photo taken by Tex @ redsoxdeepintheheartoftexas.blogspot.com.)
I wondered this online last night and I’ll wonder it again here: Yesterday all the professionals were talking or writing about how the blowout on Tuesday night was proof of Tampa Bay’s dominance over the Red Sox. Jerry Remy went so far as to say (before the start of last night’s game) that it was proof the Ray’s were worthy of the playoffs and the Red Sox weren’t.
Over the last three games, the Red Sox handed the Rays two blowout defeats. Let’s forget about the standings for a moment and focus on that. If you are of the mind that the blowout on Tuesday (when the Sox lost) had some kind of significance for the season what do the other two games signify?
Last night, Tim Wakefield beat Matt Garza (becoming the oldest player to win a game for the Red Sox, overtaking Dennis Eckersley). Last night Marco Scutaro hit two home runs and went 4-5. Josh Reddick had three hits last night while Lars Anderson got his first Major League hit and RBI. Adrian Beltre, Victor Martinez and David Ortiz all also hit home runs. The Red Sox are nine games out of first place and 6.5 games out of wild card contention with 22 games left in the season. It’s not impossible but it’s, according to all the experts, improbable. Even with the improbability of it all, we still watch and we still hope and we still get excited over games like last night.
Three years ago today, I was on an Amtrak train heading home to Boston while a group of my friends stayed behind in Baltimore to watch a Sunday afternoon Sox/Orioles game. I began receiving excited text messages from my friends because during batting practice they approached Kyle Snyder and got him to pose for a picture with Steve T Ferret. All the specifics aren’t important but Steve and Kyle had become linked in the minds of my gang of friends and a photo of Kyle posing with him was what we called our “Holy Grail”. As you all can imagine, I was disappointed to have missed the moment in person, not just for the opportunity to see Kyle with Steve but because that day that my friends engaged Kyle in conversation and got him to pose with Steve also happened to be Kyle’s birthday. So the photo at the top of this page marks the first time Steve met Kyle as well as Kyle’s 30th birthday. (Steve would go on to meet Kyle again in 2008. Kyle has been quite the good sport in regard to Steve, as witnessed by his autographing the above photo TO Steve.)
No way I could let the day pass without a shout out to Kyle. Hope he has a happy birthday and his rehab is going well!
There are only six games in MLB today and only two taking place in the American League (the Jays being the only team in the AL East to play tonight) so we get a bit of a day of rest before we jump back in with a slew of west coast games. Rest up, folks!