Red Sox Baseball

Bob Acton asked:


In the past several years, as the Boston Red Sox have lurked around the top of the American League East, the one constant and reliable figure on the hill has been Tim Wakefield. The knuckleballer was second on the team with 119 2/3 innings, but after grappling with back discomfort for the better part of a month he could land on the disabled list.
For now he is considered ‘day-to-day’ and will undergo a more thorough medical evaluation on Tuesday. Regardless of whether Wakefield ends up on the disabled list or not his injury highlights the team’s continuing struggle to get innings from its starters.

After enduring six occasions in the last 10 games in which the team’s starter lasted five or fewer innings, the Sox are famished for innings. If they do not receive more substantial contributions the club could overtax its bullpen.

LHP Jon Lester, Tuesday’s Red Sox starter, has averaged just 5 1/3 innings per start despite an impressive 2.89 ERA. The 22-year-old has run up high pitch counts partly the result of occasional wildness and partly the result of an effort to be precise. While his excellent three-pitch repertoire could allow him to succeed while attacking the strike zone, the Sox don’t want to force the issue.

380 — The number of games that Red Sox players spent on the disabled list through July 14!

The other Sox’s team and defending champion White Sox No. 3, 4 and 5 hitters, which have mostly been Jim Thome, Paul Konerko and Jermaine Dye, entered the second half hitting a league-best .319 with 77 home runs, 236 RBIs, 199 runs and 137 walks.

The Tigers are a combined 3-10 against Chicago, Boston and the New York Yankees, but most of the games were closely contested and came early in the season when Detroit was not nearly as confident in itself as it is now. Detroit encounters one of the few teams to blemish their season Tuesday when the second-place Chicago White Sox visit Comerica Park for a three-game series.

RHP Jason Grilli has pitched well in a spot relief role this season. Grilli has allowed a total of one run in 14 of his last 18 outings. He’s been used to get a single specific batter out, been asked to go an inning or more, worked early relief, mop-up and to keep his team in the game so it can come back.

The Tigers were only the 10th team in the last 30 years to win 60 games before they had played 90.

Dustin Moseley was far from spectacular, but good enough to win his major league debut Monday in the Angels’ 10-5 victory over the Indians.

Now it’s Joe Saunders’ turn.

The Angels will start a pitcher just called up from triple-A Salt Lake for the second straight game when Saunders opposes the Indians sporting a 10-3 record that he compiled at Salt Lake.

The newcomers are needed because Jered Weaver and Kelvim Escobar suffered injuries, but the Angels are hopeful Weaver can pitch on Saturday and Escobar on Sunday. The Angels have a 12-1 record in July and a season-best seven-game winning streak following a 10-5 win over the Indians. It is the first time in the club’s history that the Angels have started any month with a 12-1 record.

Sidney Ponson hasn’t been on the mound since July 6 when he went six innings for the St. Louis Cardinals against the Houston Astros. He was designated for assignment the next day, was waived, and then was claimed by the Yankees last Thursday. He will make his debut in pinstripes on Tuesday against the Mariners.

Now 54-36, the Yankees joined the Tigers, White Sox and Red Sox as the only teams playing .600 baseball. At least one of those teams won’t make the playoffs which sets up an interesting summer for online sports betting.

Bob Acton

Online Sports Betting



IGNACIO

Bishara asked:


The arrival of the spring awakes the citizens of the red nation of Sox and annual research for a victory of series of the world by the nine buildings. They started in 1901 like the pelerines of Boston of the lately formed American league. They gained the first series of the world in surplus 1903 that Pittsburgh pirate. In 1908 they changed their name into red Sox. 1912 they entered the new park of Fenway, where they play always today. In 1918, red Sox gained their fifth series of the world, thank you partly in a jug gauchist to hold the first role called **** Ruth, which could also strike ‘ know you what ‘ out of the ball.
After the season 1919, the owner Harry Frazee de Sox sold Ruth in New York Yankees. During the 86 years to come in spite from durable fidelity by nation from Red Sox the team suffered a variety from tearing off disappointments of intestine and aucunes victories of series of the world. After the exile of the baby towards New York, thirteen years futile followed including/understanding nine last place campaigns. Reappearance started in 1933 when the millionaire Tom Yawkee bought the team, transformed the park of Fenway, and the money exhausted for large named players.

By the Forties and the Fifties, the team continuously competed with for the flag but they were thwarted several times, often by the Yankees. In 1946 they gained their first flag since 1918 but were beaten by the cardinals of St Louis of the series of the world. They passed by another dull period of the end of the years ‘ 50 until “to the rêveuse team” impossible of 1967; carried out per incredible triple season of crown of Karl Yastrzemski’ S. The love affair between the ventilators with baseball of the England News and red Sox was Renee. Since the magic park of Fenway of the season ‘ 67 was uniformly filled with the capacity.

In following years Sox gained flags in 1975 and 1986, captured three divisional championships, and made four aspects of wild-card. In winter of 2002 the era of Yawkee finished with the sale of the team to a group carried out by Henry of John of owner of principle. In 2004, eight decades of immense sorrow were purged for always. In A.L. Championship Series, Sox descended the three apparently impossible plays to any to the Yankees. Surprisingly they reversed the tide and overcame new Yorkers four times right to take the flag. Four plays later with St Louis, when the soulagor Keith Foulk fielded the bouncer of Edgar Rentaria¹s of shortstop of cardinals to the monticule, and threw the ball with Doug Mientkiewicz at the first base, Boston Sox that red were finally again the champions of the world of the baseball.



PARKER

CaptainTaco2 asked:

A tribute to the Boston Red Sox, my lifelong favorite team, and…

FELIX

nikkibaby33 asked:

The Boston Celtics came to the Red Sox Game on 3 ducks boats and…

ROSCOE

Paul Mroczka asked:


The final match-up of the World Baseball Classic featured two teams from countries where baseball is a beloved sport - Cuba and Japan. Both countries are noted for producing fine players, some of whom are enjoying stellar careers in America. Presently, Ishiro and Matsui from Japan are two of the best and most consistent players in the majors. Making it in the big leagues in America is a big deal in Japan, a country that loves baseball and embraces its own professional teams.

American teachers first introduced the game to the island country in the 1870’s, and it firmly took root. By the turn of the century, it was a sport throughout the nation and in 1936 the first professional teams were established. The current professional structure was created in 1950, with teams playing in either the Pacific League or the Central League.

The exchange of players between the Japanese leagues and Major League baseball is not a one-way street. The first American to play baseball in post- World War II Japan was Wallace Kaname Yonamine, a Nisei Japanese American who had played NFL Football but never had a spot on a Major League Baseball club. Yonamine had a Hall of Fame career in Japan.

When major leaguers from America first started to compete in the Japanese League, they were often at the end of their careers. In 1962, right-handed pitcher Don Newcombe became the first MLB player to sign and play with a team in Japan. During his 10 years in the majors, Newcombe posted a 149-90 mark, with 1129 strikeouts and a 3.56 ERA. He is still the only player to win Rookie of the Year, MVP and the Cy Young. Newcombe was the first of many Americans to go to the Far East to play what many consider “the” American sport.

In the past decade something has changed concerning the emigration of professional players from America to Japan. The men who go to the Japanese League are no longer at the end of their careers. They are now, more often than not, mid-career players who can’t seem to find an everyday role on a major league team. Often, these players decide to go to Japan because they will have a chance to contribute every day.

Some players find a home away from home in Japan, while others go and get some daily experience and come back to parlay that into a starting role in MLB. Still, others struggle in their foreign environs and come back looking to play in the big leagues, even if it’s as a utility player.

Alex Cabrera is an example of the first type of player, while Lou Merloni seemed as though he might fit the bill for the second category but didn’t quite get a break in Japan or make the cut when he came back to his homeland. Gabe Kapler illustrates a player in the final and least desirable of the three groups.

First baseman Alex Cabrera, who spent nine seasons in the minors with the Chicago Cubs, Tampa Bay Devil Rays, and Arizona Diamondbacks, finally got his chance to play Major League Baseball in 2000. In 31 games he hit 5 homer runs, scored 10 runs, knocked in 14 RBI and accumulated a .262 BA. Then, in 2001, the Seibu Lions of the Japan Pacific League bought his contract from the Diamondbacks. For Cabrera it was the perfect move at exactly the right time.

Cabrera immediately became a star in Japan. In his first season he hit .282 with 124 RBI and 49 HR. In 2002, his second season, he won the Pacific League’s MVP award and tied the single season homerun mark (55) set by the **** Ruth of Japan, Sadaharu Oh. (Tuffy Rhodes, another former MLB player also tied the record in 2001.)

In 2004, Cabrera hit two homeruns in game three, including a grand slam, and a massive dinger in the seventh game of the Japan Series to help the Seibu Lions defeat the Chunichi Dragons 7-2, leading his team to their first championship since 1992.

Cabrera totes a .308 BA with 413 RBI and 147 HR in his first four years with the Lions. Life is great for the first baseman and he loves Japanese ball. Except for one thing. In an interview with ESPN.com he acknowledged his frustration at not being allowed to break the record set by Sadaharu Oh.

Cabrera noted, “All my teammates wanted me to break the record. A lot of the players on other teams wanted me to break it, too. The pitchers want to throw me strikes but the managers and coaches don’t let them.”

“They didn’t want me to get the record,” he acknowledged. “All records are for the Japanese. The last 20 at-bats of the season, I think I only saw one strike.”

There are aspects of the game with which MLB players have difficulty. Cabrera said it very clearly, when he complained, “Here, if you hit a home run your first at-bat, they walk you the next three. In America, you get a chance to hit more home runs. They challenge you.”

In the same article, former Japanese player and present Yankee Hideki Matsui observed, “In the past there has been more of that sort of unfairness,” Matsui said, sympathizing with Cabrera. “But it has been decreasing in the last couple years and I just hope that in the future it will get better.”

Although Cabrera has found a home with the Lions, he’s certainly willing to come back and play in America. In fact, he’s anxious to prove that he can hit big league curveballs - something scouts claim he can’t do - and pound 40-plus round trippers per season in the majors.

Lou Merloni and Gabe Kapler both did their time in Japan for the same reasons and with similar results. Merloni and Kapler were enticed by the chance to play every day, something that had eluded them when they were both with the Boston Red Sox.

In 2000, Merloni went to the Yokohama Bay Stars with the understanding that he would be the team’s regular third baseman. But the player he was supposed to replace decided to stay with the team, and so Merloni spent much of the season on the bench. Although he found it to be a frustrating season, he also thought it was a once-in-a-lifetime cultural experience.

The game is pretty much the same, except there’s a rule prohibiting tie games from going more than 3 extra innings, which means the game ends in a tie. First, there are the pre-game workouts and warm-ups, lasting hours. Then there’s all the cigarette smoke - Japanese players light up a lot. Also, there’s the fact that when the club is on the road everyone has to dress for the game at the hotel because there are no visiting locker rooms.

The media never tired of asking the third baseman if he’d like to marry a Japanese woman. When Merloni answered questions, he often felt his translator was editing his comments along with reporters’ queries.

Along with the possibility of being an everyday player, there’s the bump in salary a player who’s been in the states realizes. Usually they’re making six to 10 times what they made in MLB! That’s quite a payday. After Japan, Merloni came back to the Red Sox and played for them and the AAA team for the next three seasons before going to various other major league clubs. He seemed like he might have found a starting role with San Diego part way through the 2003 season, but after 65 games, they dealt him back to the BoSox.

Gabe Kapler was offered a similar opportunity in 2005, and like Merloni, he took it. With a contract valued at approximately $2 million, the utility outfielder was excited about getting to play every day and experience an entirely different culture. But after being a part of Boston’s first World Series winning team in 86 years, Japanese ball seemed to lack the spark of the game played in his homeland.

Missing were the overly expressive fans, the rich heritage, and the knock ‘em down rivalries. Kapler also didn’t perform up to expectations and found himself sitting on the bench by the second-half of the season. When he got back to the states and was signed by Boston for the rest of the 2005 season, he was overjoyed as were many Red Sox fans, who always admired Kapler’s hustle, work ethic and intelligent play.

In a strange twist of fate, the outfielder, who was on first base when Tony Graffanino hit a homer, ruptured his Achilles tendon after rounding second. As Kapler lay in the base path unable to get up and in agonizing pain, it was clear that his 2005 season was over.

In 2006, he was no longer on a major league roster and neither was Merloni, who had played a utility role with Cleveland in 2004. For both players, Japan never panned out, while Alex Cabrera has achieved more than most Japanese players. The irony for Cabrera is that despite his winning ways, the Japanese League will never accept him. That non-acceptance, which seems to affect every foreign player, is one thing that definitely separates baseball in Japan from baseball in America.



WILL

anewfoundhurley asked:

This is a slideshow presentation I made to commemorate the 2005…

HUNG

Freelance Writer asked:


Near the end of the 1919 season, Harry Frazee, then owner of the Boston Red Sox, decided to sell a group of his star players to the New York Yankees. Among them was George Herman Ruth, also known affectionately as “Babe”. Ruth’s career reflects the change in strategy and the shift in dominance from pitching to hitting at this time.

Babe Ruth had a reputation for being one of the fiercest “leftys” to ever take the mound. It was soon discovered that he wasn’t too bad with a bat either, and Ruth became the most celebrated and successful player in Boston. He was practically an institution. When many Bostonians awoke on January 6, 1920, and opened their morning newspapers, they mourned the fact that an icon had been sold to New York. The **** was gone.

Boston did not seem to be able to recover from this catastrophe until the 2004 World Series, when the “Curse of the Bambino” was finally put to rest after 86 years. From 1903, when the Red Sox were established, until 1920, the club had appeared in five World Series, and won every one of them.

In the 1916 and 1918 World Series, **** Ruth set a record, not for hitting home runs, but for pitching when he notched a 0.87 ERA while pitching 29 and 2/3rds scoreless innings. This record for shutout innings would stand for 43 years. In 1919, Ruth hit 29 home runs, the most ever by any player at the time. Unfortunately, the Red Sox finished in sixth place that season. For a club accustomed to tremendous success, this was a disaster.

Frazee responded by selling players, Ruth included, that started a rebuilding period in Boston. The strategy did not work and Boston finished in last place nine out of the next eighteen seasons. They wouldn’t win another pennant until 1948.

When Ruth arrived in New York, the Yankees had never won the American League pennant, let alone been to a World Series. They won their first pennant in 1921, and then won their first World Series in 1923. In 1920, the **** hit 54 home runs, a mind-boggling number given that baseball was just coming out of its Dead Ball Era. Yes, this was a new era, an exciting one with tremendous offense and tremendous flamboyance on and off the diamond.

Ruth hammered 59 homers the following year (1921), and was showcased in the World Series. **** Ruth’s 1921 season was arguably the best batting year of any player ever. He played in 152 games and hit .378, collecting 204 hits, 44 doubles, 16 triples, 59 home runs, 177 runs scored, 171 RBIs, 144 walks, 119 extra base hits (a record that still stands), an .846 slugging average, and 457 total bases (another standing record).

From 1923- 1931, Ruth led the league in homers each season, except for one. In 1927, he had his best year for round trippers, knocking 60, a record that would stand for 34 years. Some still say to this day that the 1927 Yankees’ “Murderers Row” was the best offensive team to ever play the game of baseball.

The sheer numbers for the Yankees in 1927 make their own argument. The Curse of the Bambino may have been a nightmare for Boston Red Sox fans, but for the rest of the baseball world, Ruth was the messiah of a very worried and downtrodden sport. The 1919 White Sox (eight of them) had just thrown the World Series, causing the integrity of the game to be questioned by a disenchanted public.

Ruth lived with great enthusiasm, and he seemed to immediately become a living legend after arriving at the media capital of the world. When he started producing monstrous offensive firepower, baseball was suddenly exciting again, and the fans that had turned away in light of the White Sox gambling scandal started returning to the ballparks. He was “bigger than life,” and he was the drum major that marched America into “the Roaring Twenties.”

He was a media magnet and hype machine. Some sports reporters surmised that in one season with the Yankees the Sultan of Swat “might” slug more than his single season record of 29 homers. When Ruth destroyed the home run records year after year, Yankee fans were overjoyed. When he continued to raise the expectations of fans everywhere, baseball had been resurrected from the depths of despair and corruption to a bright and shining era of hope and enthusiasm.



WILFREDO

Bishara asked:


The arrival of the spring awakes the citizens of the red nation of Sox and annual research for a victory of series of the world by the nine buildings. They started in 1901 like the pelerines of Boston of the lately formed American league. They gained the first series of the world in surplus 1903 that Pittsburgh pirate. In 1908 they changed their name into red Sox. 1912 they entered the new park of Fenway, where they play always today. In 1918, red Sox gained their fifth series of the world, thank you partly in a jug gauchist to hold the first role called **** Ruth, which could also strike ‘ know you what ‘ out of the ball.

After the season 1919, the owner Harry Frazee de Sox sold Ruth in New York Yankees. During the 86 years to come in spite from durable fidelity by nation from Red Sox the team suffered a variety from tearing off disappointments of intestine and aucunes victories of series of the world. After the exile of the baby towards New York, thirteen years futile followed including/understanding nine last place campaigns. Reappearance started in 1933 when the millionaire Tom Yawkee bought the team, transformed the park of Fenway, and the money exhausted for large named players.

By the Forties and the Fifties, the team continuously competed with for the flag but they were thwarted several times, often by the Yankees. In 1946 they gained their first flag since 1918 but were beaten by the cardinals of St Louis of the series of the world. They passed by another dull period of the end of the years ‘ 50 until “to the rêveuse team” impossible of 1967; carried out per incredible triple season of crown of Karl Yastrzemski’ S. The love affair between the ventilators with baseball of the England News and red Sox was Renee. Since the magic park of Fenway of the season ‘ 67 was uniformly filled with the capacity.

In following years Sox gained flags in 1975 and 1986, captured three divisional championships, and made four aspects of wild-card. In winter of 2002 the era of Yawkee finished with the sale of the team to a group carried out by Henry of John of owner of principle. In 2004, eight decades of immense sorrow were purged for always. In A.L. Championship Series, Sox descended the three apparently impossible plays to any to the Yankees. Surprisingly they reversed the tide and overcame new Yorkers four times right to take the flag. Four plays later with St Louis, when the soulagor Keith Foulk fielded the bouncer of Edgar Rentaria¹s of shortstop of cardinals to the monticule, and threw the ball with Doug Mientkiewicz at the first base, Boston Sox that red were finally again the champions of the world of the baseball.



JAME

BattingStances asked:

ode to boston red sox batters past and present.
http://www.battingstanc…

JESS

JayJunior asked:

Here is what it was like watching unfold as it happened

ERICH