Theeeee Red Sox Win!

You're up next, Daisuke! (Photo courtesy of Kelly O'Connor and used with permission)

Raise your hand if you had John Lackey and Josh Beckett as the first two pitchers to get a Red Sox win.

Now put your hand down because you are a liar.

Where John Lackey got the win on Friday in spite of his pitching, Josh Beckett earned every bit of his “W” last night.  103 pitches over eight innings made me happy enough…but the two hits, ten strike outs and only walking one made me practically delirious.   While Carl Crawford was the only Red Sox player who couldn’t get a hit off of the Yankees, Robinson Cano and Eric Chavez were the only Yankees who could hit the Red Sox last night.  These are all things we should be happy about.

The Red Sox came into this home stand with a record of 0-6.  They were facing the New York Yankees, including their ace CC Sabathia, and needed to at least win the series if not sweep to save any kind of face.  The “lowly” Red Sox who were previously swept by a powerhouse Texas Rangers team and a supposedly mediocre Cleveland Indians team got nine hits off of CC.   Nine.  Last night, Boone Logan was the only Yankees pitcher to take the mound who didn’t give up a run.  These things, they are all good.

For various reasons, I was up for most of the night.  I passed the time by reading message boards, blogs and Twitter accounts and came out with this:  Many people, some Red Sox fans, think that we would be silly in celebrating what happened this weekend.  I say foo on you people.  Are we supposed to whine about the team until they’re over .500?  Do we not celebrate any wins until the team sweeps a series?  We wanted and needed the Red Sox to win and they did…two out of three times…I’ll take it any day of the week.  (Also, it appears many Yankees fans believe the home plate umpire last night was biased in favor of the Red Sox because MLB wants the Red Sox in the race.  I actually read/heard this from handfuls of people from different forums, including email to me, and they were serious.  I know it’s tough to lose to a team whose record prior to the series was a whopping zero wins, but this is just sad…especially in April.)

I will happily take the two wins and bring them to this next series.  The Rays are struggling as the Sox are so both teams need to step it up tonight.   Much to my surprise, I’ll be at tonight’s game thanks to a phone call offering up a seat.   (Confession: I had no intentions of going to any games against the Rays this year because of Manny Ramirez.  I didn’t want to have to deal with anger at people booing him, anger at people cheering him and my own confusion about what it all meant to me.  Sadly, Manny fixed that for me so I don’t have to worry about it.  More on Manny later.)

So bask for a little longer, folks and then come back ready for another series that will probably try our patience and test our fortitude.

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Random stat that doesn’t mean anything so don’t let the Boston sports media freak you out today:  From 2008-2010, Daisuke’s ERA against the Tampa Bay Rays is 6.00

Blog suggestion for the day:  Allan over at Joy of Sox details the Clay Buchholz contract extension (which is much deserved and makes me very happy even if the timing of it is quite humorous!).

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