The Boston Red Sox did some more crazy stuff over the weekend that ties in with the 20-run game I wrote about on Thursday.
On Thursday night, I decided to treat myself to some home theatre, the Red Sox against their nemesis at Yankee Stadium II in the first of 4 games, they’re always like Troy vs. Sparta. It was a four-and-a-half hour marathon with everything except flying elephants and a public beheading. The Sox won 9-8 after being up 8-2 and then giving up 6 runs to the Yankees in a seventh inning that lasted 45 minutes. Then, as they’ve done more often than any other team, they got to Mariano Rivera, scoring a run off him in the top of the ninth. The game finally over, I was exhausted, sweaty, panting and when my wife Anna saw me moments later, she asked, “What’s wrong?” “Oh nothing………how was your movie?”
The next night we were at my nephew’s wedding and I didn’t see the Red Sox beat the Yankees, 12-8. So, 20 runs, then 9, then 12, that’s 41 over three nights, not bad. On Saturday, Anna was recovering from the wedding (think The Wild Bunch meets Flashdance) and spent most of the day in bed, which allowed me to watch Part 3 of Sox-Yankees in the afternoon. It was a rare chance to catch some baseball while also achieving domestic brownie points, making lunch, dinner, serving tea, etc. Heh heh…..
Anyway, the announcers mentioned on Saturday that the first two games of this set marked the first time the Yankees had scored at least 8 runs in back-to-back games and lost both since 1911 – so long ago, they weren’t even called the Yankees, but the New York Highlanders. Saturday was a crisp, sunny day in New York and I wondered how it could be so beautiful there and so crappy here in Toronto. The Sox were certainly seeing the ball well, it was 10-2 by the third or fourth inning and I got to thinking…… they’re now up to 51 runs and counting in 4 games, that has to be close to a record. Just then, as if reading my mind, the announcer chimed in with, “In case you’re wondering what the Red Sox record for runs over four games is, the 1950 Sox scored 65 runs in 4 games against blah-blah-blah…”
I didn’t hear the rest. 65 runs in 4 games? That’s crazy, like over 16 per game. But that’s the kind of thing that happened with Ted Williams and Junior Stephens hitting in the middle of the line-up. They scored runs like Liz Taylor got married and still didn’t win a damn thing. Anyway, the Red Sox won the third game of the Yankee series, 13-9, 54 runs in 4 days.
In the paper the next day, it mentioned that this marked the first time the Yankees (actually still the Highlanders) had given up at least 9 runs at home in 3 straight games since 1912. That was the year the Titanic sunk and Fenway Park first opened. I swear to God, baseball is some kind of swirling memory vortex, a freaky-number whirlpool, things keep happening now that happened 50 or 100 years ago, and that’s just when I’m watching, never mind the rest of the time.
Anyway, the ghosts of the past desisted and normalcy – whatever that is – returned to the Bronx on Sunday, as the Yankees beat the Sox 4-3, in what resembled a regular baseball game. It’s just as well I didn’t see this, I probably wouldn’t have believed or understood it.
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