Above:Curt Schilling checks to see if his foot is still attached to his leg.
And so here we go again. Game Seven. ALCS. In the Bronx. Red Sox-Yankees. History and all that. You literally cannot make this stuff up, there is nothing in history besides perhaps the Olympic "Miracle on Ice" US hockey team that compares to the comeback we witnessed from this band of idiots.
Curt Schilling had his tendons sutured together so that he could pitch last night, in a gut-check performance worthy of Steve McNair. He pitched lights out for the first six before surrendering a one run homer to Bernie Williams, the guy who already owns the record for the most post season home runs. He kept it together through that speed bump and gave the Red Sox seven solid innings.
Seeing as how this is Red Sox-Yankees playoff baseball, we must have some controversy. And we had plenty. Mark Bellhorn, hitting something like 2 for 1000 in his last at bats in this series hit a three run homer that appeared to hit a fan and fall back in to play. This being Yankee stadium, the play was initially ruled a ground rule double. But something is different this year, and a call that 99% of the time would have gone the Yankees way was overturned and the play was called correctly as a home run. You could almost feel the air leave the stadium after that call was overturned. It was as if the force had suddenly been drained from the Dark Side. Darth Vader was starting to get nervous. To further confirm the fact that this year the Yankees will not be able to rely on getting 99% of the calls, we had the Arroyo-Rodriguez moment at first base in the eighth. A-Rod hit a slow grounder towards first, and as Arroyo fielded the play he noticed no one was covering first base so he turned to tag out Rodriguez. A-Rod proceeded to attempt to slap away the ball out of Arroryo's glove, thus causing interference, thus he should be ruled out automatically. Instead, before A-Rod even reached the bag he was called safe (Hellooo?) and Jeter scored, cutting the lead to 2. But as I said before, there is something different this year, and again the umps had a pow-wow and ruled in favor of the Red Sox. A-Rod called out, Jeter goes back to first base, pandemonium ensues in the crowd, riot police are called out. Someone at the bar asked me how come they had so many riot police on hand, I replied that anytime you get 50,000 New Yorkers together, there will be a sizeable contingent of the cities finest available at a moments notice. Scheffield flied out to end the inning, the cops filed back off the field and play resumed.
Somehow the Red Sox survived yet another twist of fate and were able to pull through again. I'm telling you, there is something different this year from years past. I don't see the same swagger in the Yankees this year, and the Red Sox seem to still act like they are playing little league baseball in April. It seems as if the Yankees are all standing around waiting for someone to step up and make a big play, whereas the Red Sox have a different few guys each night making some unbelievable plays. It just feels different, I don't know.
Tonight will be the final test. Is this team for real? Can they finally slay the Yankee monster once and for all? Will the curse be reversed? And will someone explain to me how a guy can pitch 90 plus for seven innings while his foot is hanging by a thread to his leg?
Will I finally get some rest?.........stay tuned sportsfans...
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