ALDS GAME 4: The light's fading.

Yeah, that was a bad loss. Bad enough that the very dependable automated typewriter the Globe secretly replaced Dan Shaughnessy with after the 2004 season broke down:

"Fenway Park is already a morgue. Six feet under. So bad. So bad. So bad. So bad. So bad. So bad. So bad. So bad. @@)(#*)!)($_@#. Crush. Kill. Destroy."*

Tim Wakefield was chucking up lobs early and often, although Manny Delcarmen's return to shite form sealed the deal. But on the bright side, it was our best performance against Andy Sonnanstine yet! That'll come in handy when he comes back later in this series. Right?

(Checks pitching match-ups.)

Oh yeah. Right.

This is not 2007, in that this is not "Win one, go home for two." It's win one, pray that something resembling Josh Beckett shows up, then take your chances in Game 7.

It's bad. So bad. So not good. So bad. Tan mal.

*Quote slightly embellished. Could you tell?

On losing 2 of 3 at home to the Rays....

I'm too sleepy, hungover, and pissed off to say much about a series I feel like we really should have won. Having such a glorious comeback crushed in game 2 was bad enough; being unable to get much together against Sonnastine, playing Jon Lieber to Josh Beckett's Pedro Martinez circa game 2 of the 2004 ALCS, just pissed me off. Now we've got four games with the hottest team in baseball. The wild card still looks good, but fuck that.

Fuck.

Fuckity fuck fuck.

Poop.

Did it have to be Jay Fucking Payton?

I'm not watching the rest of this fucking game, and I'm not watching the Baltimore Orioles get a mini-sweep over a team that is finding ways to lose. Especially since that way to lose had to be a fucking grand slam by asshole #1 Jay Payton, who knowingly/tragically took a reserve OF role with us in '05 before crying/moaning/bleeding/sucking his way out of that. Not Jay Payton. It's too much. Goodbye cruel world. (Until tomorrow.)

GAME THIRTY SIX: @#*#$@)(#*@#*(@ with your @#(@(ing *(@@#*.

I'd never seen someone blow a save without being the pitcher, but I can definitively say I have now. Julio Lugo did it in the midst of the luckiest come-from-behind game imaginable:

Accidental check swing bunt single.
Bobble on possible double play ball by Julio Lugo.
Sacrifice bunt runners to second and third.
Groundball to second plates one runner, advances other to third.
Broken bat single gets over a leaping Lugo. (No, not even Ozzie Smith with the wings of a bat could have caught this ball, but I'm just noting detail.) End of game. (Lugo, B, 1.)

Let's recap: That's one semi-genuine hit, and two fucking runs, ruining what would have been a great come from behind game in which the Sox dug out of a 4 run deficit, then a 3 run deficit. Bad luck is a part of baseball. Bad defense is a substantial part of Julio Lugo. Drinks on the house if I don't down every bottle first. No chasers, no ice. Let it BURN.