Life In The Cell

A 2-Game Swing, Euphoria, and a Wave of Momentum

Sox win 10-8! Sox win 10-8! Sox win 10-8!

First to any Tigers’ fans who may stumble upon this, wow, I’m sorry that you just had your heart ripped out through your stomach.

Anyway, back to my core audience (Sox’ fans), this was a brutal game to watch, but I think everyone will agree the end justified sitting through the first 5 hours of baseball. I’m trying to remove all sense of exaggeration from this statement, but I don’t think I’ve ever gone from so deflated to so euphoric in such a short span of time. The only game I can think of is the “AJ Dropped 3rd Strike Game” but I was more disheartened than deflated prior to AJ’s magic. Today’s events were set up perfectly to increase the suicide rate in Chicago ten-fold, but thanks to a little luck/magic/karma/Darwinism, there’s no need to look up as you walk past skyscrapers.

A crueler set of circumstances couldn’t be dreamed up for Sox’ fans.

First off, the Sox clawed back from a 6-1 one deficit (more on that later), which of course reinvigorate Sox’ fans. That first comeback coupled with the fact that the Twins were trailing 6-3 to the woeful Mariners sent Sox fans on a joyous trip of hope imagining a 1-game cushion in the division. To borrow a line from The Dark Knight the night is always darkest before the dawn. In this case, your heart can only climb to its highest after being plunged down below your stomach to the point where basically each step you take, you’re trodding on your heart making the pain worse and worse (And I’m hardly overreacting). I’m not sure which blow I took harder Placido Polanco’s or Mike Lamb’s. Seriously, this is how things played out, for those of you that missed it:

Matt Thornton enters the 14th, to begin his 4th inning of work after a dazzling 3 innings where he allowed all of zero base runners and struck out 5. Renteria leads off with a single and is followed by a botched bunt by Granderson which resulted in a pop up to first base. Next batter is Polanco who rips a no doubter down the line to put the Tigers up by 2. Actually I had a 1/2 second of doubt. I was able to get my hopes up for the ball turning foul just long enough so they could crash viciously downwards once realization struck that it was indeed fair.

That feeling of anger and despair wasn’t enough though; little did I realize my heart could sink lower. Right around when I was mulling over the fact that I just pissed away 5 hours of my life, news comes that the Twins have taken the lead, 7-6. This led to a series of thoughts which I will try to recreate here (heavily censored of course):

Freakin’ Twins. Of course they freakin’ come back to take the mother freakin’ lead against the freaktastically awful Mariners. Why the freak wouldn’t they? It was probably some countface (remove the ‘o’ for the original word) like Mike Redmond who lives for the sole purpose of torturing the piece of crap White Sox. Freak it to hell. It’s so freakin perfect that the Sox blow the game and the Twins piranha their butts back. 1 game deficit here we come. Freak it all to hell, I might as well watch this crap fest, maybe Quentin will pull some awesomeness out of his butt.

Those of you who have read my stuff consistently know I’m pretty damn level headed, but I was seething at this point. Call it a combination of a crappy road trip (by the Sox) and next to no sleep the past 3 days for myself.

That low point, though, sure as hell made that high point that much sweeter. OC’s 1-pitch AB just seemed to point to a potential comeback. 1 pitch, 1 baserunner is a pretty good way to start things off. Even after AJ’s pop up, I wasn’t discouraged; it wasn’t a DP after all. Maybe at this point, I was so beyond despair that all I had left was to hope against hope. Carlos Quentin ripped a double which sent the winning run to the plate. After JD’s grounder was booted by Renteria, putting the Sox within 1, I actually started believing the comeback could happen. I was petrified of a Jim Thome GB DP, but once he struck out, I was ready to mentally will Nick Swisher to hit a homer. The homer sent everyone in my house into euphoria and resulted in far too many high fives. Nothing at this point could dampen the mood, nor could anything heighten the happiness, at least so I thought. A little later while still basking in the glow of the Sox second comeback of the night, the unbelievable happened. The Twins lost the lead, and it wasn’t just anybody who gave up the lead. It was lights out, I’m freaking (that’s freaking, not the censored form as I was using above) amazing, Joe Nathan. It was the perfect capper for the night. The Sox went from looking at a likely 1-game deficit in the division race to a 1-game lead instead. It was quite the turn of events and hopefully, it can help propel the Sox to a run of good play.

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Some quick bullet points about the game now that I’ve gotten all the emotion and joy out of the way.

-Of everyone, I think I’m most impressed with Matt Thornton. He pitched in a total of 4 innings and retired 9 batters. The bullpen was all but out of pitchers (only Russell was left) so he had to pitch well and had to pitch for the foreseeable future if the Sox wanted to win this game. He did just that. Prior to the start of the 14th, he had struck out 5 of 8 batters he faced and allowed nary a baserunner. As bad as I felt about the Sox potentially losing the game, I still found myself thinking that Thorndogg didn’t deserve to get the loss in this one.

-Thorndogg’s performance leads me onto Adam Russell, affectionately known as Nessie over at SSS (the progression of that nickname isn’t even worth explaining). Russell continued to exhibit his unique ability to come into a game and poach a victory. He now stands at 4-0 and has basically seemed like an afterthought in all four of those games. This is actually the third time he’s come into an extra inning game and walked away with the victory.

-Coming into this game if I had to rank who on the Sox I would want to hit a walk-off homer the list would go: 1.) Paul Konerko 2.) Nick Swisher 3.) Ken Griffey Jr.
Paulie got his homer in the 6th and number 2 on that list, Dirty Thirty himself came through with the walk off. I’m am just plain happy for him, though I was slightly disappointed that nobody grabbed the Swisher poster to cap off the celebration.

-Carlos Quentin and Alexei Ramirez have combined to completely change the outlook on this team in the present and the future. These two look set as fixtures in 2 of the 9 positions on the diamond. All they cost was around $1 million and a now struggling in A-ball. Q went 4-7 including a solo shot and the aforementioned double. Alexei went 3-6 with a double and that 2-out homer off of Farnsworth to tie it up in the bottom of the 8th. Swisher will get all the hoopla and love for this game, but don’t forget Alexei who got the Sox to extras.

-I already mentioned the tremendous job that Thornton did, but I failed to compliment the rest of the ‘pen. Floyd struggled a bit (of course this was his first start after I had given him my full vote of confidence), but the ‘pen picked up the slack going 10 innings and giving up just 3 runs. Wassermann gave up 1 run in his 1 1/3 inning of work which kicked of a string of 8 straight scoreless innings by the ‘pen. Before Thornton got the call, Boone Logan (2/3 inning), DJ Carrasco (2 innings), Bobby Jenks (1 inning), and Octavio Dotel (1 1/3 innings) completely shut down the Tigers. In fact that group of 4 relievers scattered 4 hits throughout all their work.

-I may write about this more tomorrow, but here’s hoping this is that galvanizing type of game that drives the Sox to bigger and better things. Sort of like the JOE CREDE!!! game in ‘05.

-I nearly forgot: Hat tip to Juan Uribe for a fine defensive performance at 3rd base. He made a handful of great plays, two in particular (the diving stop and throw to first and the humpty dumpty throw to second after rolling backwards onto his back). Juan you do suck at the dish, but man you can flash some leather.

Picture courtesy of the AP