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September 24, 2004

Unbelievable

Wanted: one manager with pattern recognition skills. Taking a 4-3 lead into the eighth inning, Terry Francona performed his best Grady Little impression tonight, leaving Pedro Martinez in the game until a 4-3 Boston lead was a 5-4 Yankee lead, and eventually a 6-4 Yankees victory. The Yankees deserve credit for getting the job done, but Francona gets a key assist in making sure the Yankees won their seventh straight AL East title.

The Red Sox have faced New York in a must-win game three times in the past year. In two of those three games, the Red Sox manager has left Pedro Martinez on the hill after it was clear he was worn down, and the results have been a blown lead and a Red Sox loss. If I were to write this up as fiction, nobody would buy it; yet the Sox have somehow managed to pull it off. It will be interesting to see if Francona learns anything from these losses.