Wakefield's been pitching out of his mind. Penny and Lester have been good, for the most part, but not great. Smoltz is still a giant question mark. Dice-K seems to have been rightly sent on the "Julio Lugo Not-Really-Injured Tour Of The World". The one constant, with apologies to Terence Mann, is Josh Beckett.

Throw out his uncharacteristically bad April, and Beckett has been everything the Sox demand of their ace. Last night he dropped his ERA to 4.61 (2.38 since May 1), shutting down Oakland for two runs in 6 2/3 innings. And then went into the clubhouse to bask in the praise of his comrades. "He’s fearless. Our guys look up to him", said Terry Francona. "He’s been our bulldog," added Jason Varitek. "He’s been that ace-type, shutdown guy. There aren’t too many in the league. And he’s one of them," chimed in Jason Bay.

Bay and Varitek were part of the offensive success in the 5-2 win (which seems like a lot of offense after Monday's stinkeroo). Bay hit his 20th home run and 'Tek knocked in two. Beckett also got flawless support from his bullpen, as Okajima, Masterson and Papelbon kept the Swingin' A's swingin' at phantoms in the late innings.

Bay's quietly efficient 20 home runs make us wonder what our old friend in L.A. is up to. Manny Ramirez got thrown out of the Dodgers' game in New York last night, and got booed by the fans, though the constant undercurrent of booing at the new Shea might have just been directed at the Mets or the Fates in general; it's hard to tell.

Across New York, the Yankees have had a crazy week. First, Derek Jeter was called out on a steal the other night in a play that makes us very sad in having to defend the Yankees against a crappy call by an ump. We've been trying to shower off that for 24 hours now. The Yankees were also told that they're not allowed to detain fans in their seats during the excruciatingly long playing of "God Bless America" in the 7th-inning stretch. All over baseball, meanwhile, pennant contenders are circling the Blue Jays now that Toronto has admitted they're willing to trade superstar ace Roy Halladay if the price is right. Don't count on him coming here.

This freaks us out a little bit: we know that Ron Artest just made a deal to go to the Lakers (anything that might cause Phil Jackson a headache is just fine with us), but what we didn't know until recently is that Artest decided last year, here in Boston, after Game Six, that he wanted to be teammates with Kobe Bryant. So much so that he couldn't wait, and went to go tell Kobe the good news in the shower. That even beats Shaq finding out about his trade via Twitter. (A fully-clothed) Rasheed Wallace is expected to be in town today or tomorrow to make his impending Celtichood a reality.

Image from Wikipedia.

Filed in Sports and tagged jason Bay, Josh Beckett, Manny Ramirez, Rasheed Wallace, Red Sox, Ron Artest, sports redux, sportsredux, Yankees

Comments [rss]