Looking for some zing

Steve:
Ah, frig, a split double header never fails to befuddle me.

 

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Steve:
If I focus on the win, it's feel like I'm ignoring the reality of the loss.

 

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Steve:
If I let the loss carry sway, I feel like I'm being too pessimistic in not giving the win its due.

 

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Mike:
Yeah, well, I can't help but look at the Texas series as a whole and not feel so good …

 

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Mike:
We were sanguine in the face of dropping 2 of 3 to the Yankees in the Bronx. But dropping 2 of 4 to the Rangers in Fenway right aftah?

 

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Mike:
You've got melancholic in my sanguine.

 

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Steve:
Hopefully the Sox can get some groove on against the struggling Twinks at the always joyless Metrogloam.

 

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Mike:
But before that even, maybe the US National Team can surprise the #2 ranked in the world Czech Republic and put some zing in my day.

 

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Comments

[Kelly the Ballgal is Hot]

The loss yesterday would sting less if we didn't send out our B squad to face the division leading Rangers? Why didn't we just let the Pawsox play the second game?

Anyways - lets kick some Czech ass today. U-S-A... U-S-A!!!

[Kelly the Ballgal is Hot]

The loss yesterday would sting less if we didn't send out our B squad to face the division leading Rangers. Why didn't we just let the Pawsox play the second game?

Anyways - lets kick some Czech ass today. U-S-A... U-S-A!!!

[IkeG]

Ortiz's walkoff doesn't seem so great when you consider that it came against the crappy Rangers bullpen :). Heck with that ... I was excited anyway.

Good luck, USA!

[Karen]

The Sox dropped 2 of 4 to the Rangers

[h.b.]

The Sox dropped 2 of 4 to the Rangers

After all the rainouts, delays, reschedulings, I'm totally lost.

Feels like the lost 5 of 10 to the Rangers :)

[Redsauce]

Anyone know of a place to listen to the US game online for free? I'm stuck at work but desperately want to listen to the game.

[bos1]

There's a gamecast at ESPN.com. I don't know if it has audio, but there is a commentary and a graphic that rivals mlb.com's gameday. (Really, Frogger and Pong have better graphics)

[Dave S.]

Go USA! Was yesterday not a great all-time sports day? Of course, there's baseball. Then the French Open men's final, the World Cup, and game two of the NBA finals.

[paddyb24]

Does Francona think the Sox are good enough to win a game with four starters on the bench with a rookie pitching? If so, he's mistaken. Does he think forfeiting a game is conducive to winning a pennant? If so, he's mistaken. The Yankees don't forfeit games. Francona did the same thing last year, when the Sox forfeited a game that lasted only five innings. They only needed a few runs but the starters got to "rest up" for five innings. How many games did the Sox finish out of first? With the "A" team facing Wasdin, a five run outburst was a real possibility. Tito, please rest one player at a time, instead of forfeiting games.

[Devine]

Hee hee! My second-ever Fenway Park game was the Papi walk-off yesterday! (The first was, incidentally, the night before...Rangers 7-4.) Considering I did not have to digest anything but the final score of yesterday's 2nd game (I was on a bus back to New York for the duration of that game), I have nothing but optimism after that weekend. I'd like the lead to be 2, but after yesterday, I'm optimisitc with any lead.

What a frickin' thrill to ACTUALLY BE THERE for a two-out, two-strike, do-or-die homer by the big man. So electric, so...well, it's pointless to use words, isn't it? I happened to pick the right game to be at (though actually the s.o. bought tickets for my birthday!), and it was fantastic. And I got to see Manny homer once in each game (both to opposite field), and he's my favorite, so that made me happy too.

[Griffin]

I don't know how many times this can be repeated before people understand, but you can't sacrifice one game for a season. Francona has a much better idea about who can play and who can be effective than a bunch of people "managing" from their living rooms.

At any rate, it was the pitching that lost that game, not the hitting. A couple of decent pitching performances and they might have won. But what were the options? Who else are you going to use? Riske and Manny D. did a great job in first game, and you can't use them in the second. So who do you use? Papelbon for five innings?

A split in a series in which the Sox had to use two rookie starters is just about what I expected. Meanwhile, the A's sweep in NY. Thanks, Oakland!

[americantrotter]

Let's beat the Twins. One game at a time. We'll get a bat and an arm before the deadline.

AND

USA! USA! USA! I am totally psyched. I even brought my jersey to work to change into to watch at lunch.

[Kaz]

I've gone out and played 18 innings of baseball before. It's not a hard task. I don't understand why a fielder/hitter needs "rest" when facing the task of playing 18 innings of baseball (with a break in between the 9's!)...especially given an off day today!?! Rest on your days off. Play the games that come your way.

These guys get paid every two weeks what I make in a year. It's not all for the entertainment, trust me...the second game was nowhere near the land of Entertainment. I don't ever want to see Lowell (5 LOB) protecting Papi in the lineup ever again.

[Billy Mahty]

You all might get a kick out of

[Billy Mahty]

hrrm.. not sure what happened with that post.

You might get a kick out of... my incompetence? Yanks' losing 4 straight? Damon making friends in the clubhouse by saying that losing three in a row is embarrasing? Maybe all of the above.

[Kaz]

All your World Cup Soccer listening needs:

http://livefooty.doctor-serv.com/

I don't vouch for any of the streams it lists or whether they are in English...I'm just checking them out now.

In the meantime, I also found that BBC Five Live is claiming to cover the game on their feed as well, although the link that I clicked to get here said (UK Only)...but there's nothing that I could find where it checked or prevented me from getting the feed because I'm not in the UK.

BBC">http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio/aod/fivelive.shtml">BBC Five Live Player (Requires Real Player)

[Rob in CT]

<>

Ha! Is THAT an understatement. Remember the slew of hurricanes that came piling through Florida? I recall the D. Rays being late arriving for a game at The Toilet because of the weather and Steinbrenner demanding a forfeit. F-ing tool!

Fortunately, the MLB front office decided otherwise. One of the Commish's better decisions.

[yazbread]

Switched from World Cup to the Sox literally as Ortiz was beginning his downswing. Awesome. Caught the previous pitch on ESPN this morning. Wow. Also saw Manny's HR. I love Manny but I can't help but think he is asking to be drilled by watching his HRs so lovingly.

World Cup coverage on ESPN2 is fantastic. No commercials, so you get a feel for the flow of the game. Knowledgeable announcers from around the world so the Joe Morgan soccer equivalents are nowhere in sight. And no 'up close, in depth' profiles of the players. The coverage is sports as it should be done. Hopefully the network does not revert to form with the US team. Personally, I think the NBA and the ongoing finals can't hold a candle to World Cup soccer.

[Rob in CT]

Sorry, was supposed to be quoting Paddyb24's comment stating "The Yankees don't forfeit games". Don't know what happended there. Monday, I guess...

[Kaz]

Wow. I just downloaded Stream#1 from the livefooty website. It uses a player called "TVUPlayer" to show sports from around the world!

You can watch ESPN2 live through a crazy modification on BitTorrent. Streaming hosts are sending out the live packets from digital cable. Just like BitTorrent, where you get packets of a large file from multiple peers (other people running the software who have already gotten those packets)...this software sends the live TV packets (on enough delay to let the network of peers propogate the packets). The end result is streaming video of whatever the serving hosts are showing.

In this case, it's ESPN2 and USA v Czech on my computer screen! This is awesome!

[h.b.]

Just took a bit of comp time to extend my lunch and watch the US team during lunch at my coworkers who lives walking distance from the office..

Not pretty. They're playing like zombies.

Here's hoping they get their collective shit together and come out strong for the next match.

[Rob in CT]

Yahoo has a cast of the match at:

http://fifaworldcup.yahoo.com/06/en/w/match/template.html?id=10&day=12&month=06&year=2006

If you are at work and the 'Net Police' don't allow you to download and install programs and drivers to your workstation, this might help with your need for a foosball fix.

[illegitimate son of dwight evans]

Not pretty. They're playing like zombies.

Here's hoping they get their collective shit together and come out strong for the next match.

I think someone was saying that the loser of the US/Czech match has to play Brazil in an elimination game in the round of 16. I don't know how true that is (I'm not sure how the tourney works) but that'd be a real kick in the face.

[the gorry kid]

Looks like the zing just dropped out of your day 3-zip. Did the USA "play" today? I think not.

[louclinton]

Talk about no zip. USA didn't challenge for balls, and didn't press much of an attack. The first Czech goal was as soft as they come. Almost as boring as the weekend series v. the Raingers.

lc

[Griffin]

//I've gone out and played 18 innings of baseball before. It's not a hard task. I don't understand why a fielder/hitter needs "rest" when facing the task of playing 18 innings of baseball (with a break in between the 9's!)...especially given an off day today!?! Rest on your days off. Play the games that come your way.

These guys get paid every two weeks what I make in a year//

That's pretty funny. You ever play 162 straight games over 6+ months, mixed in with flying thousands of miles in between?

Sure, they get paid a lot. But somehow I don't think a player's body is going to say "I'm not hurt/tired! I get paid a lot!"

[Bob]

God, the U.S. looked like they were coached by George Romero today.

[h.b.]

I generally tend to not be too critical of coaching because, as someone else pointed out earlier, no matter how "dumb" they may seem from our perspective, the truth is they are quite a bit more knowledgable than the fans.

But I can't help thinking that for many of the European and South America teams their coaches prohibit them from even having sex in the weeks leading up to and during the World Cup.

Meanwhile, the US team is allowed to have wives and children along and staying in their rooms during the WC.

I'm just sayin'...

[Kaz]

Give me a break, Griffin. You can't use an argument of scale without giving any consideration to what the change in scale does to effect the original argument.

You're seriously trying to convince me that 3 hours among the 4500 hours of 6+ months time is meaningful rest? Or are you now going to argue that on the small scale it's meaningful to, say, Tuesday's game effort? Well, ok, I *have* done 18 innings one day and then gone out 2 days later and played another 9 innings. It's not chinese water torture. These guys are also in far better shape than I was when I played a bunch of baseball. It should definitely be within their realm of expertise to handle one extra game in a day every blue moon.

I don't hear the other half of the team that showed up for both games crying about no evening rest yesterday. I doubt we're going to see any difference between Manny's numbers tomorrow (because he had the game off) than we will for Ortiz (because he didn't).

AND remember that they had an extra day off Wednesday because of the NYY rainout.

Meanwhile, it looked like USA was hoping that the Czech team would stay home today and get a 1-0 forfeit. When that didn't happen it was just going through the motions to eat the one game we couldn't lose. We're going to bite it against Italy...probably win Ghana (but not if we come out like today)...

If Italy wins the game right now, we have to pray for any chance to get out of groups. I don't see Czech losing to Ghana and Italy v Czech won't matter to us at that point. 1-2-0 won't get us out of this bracket with Italy likely going 3-0-0 and Czech now probably getting 2-1-0. Had to win today but they played like it didn't matter.

[Dave S.]

Ugly game there. From what I saw, the U.S. just didn't look like it even belonged on the same field as the Czechs.

[americantrotter]

"World Cup coverage on ESPN2 is fantastic. No commercials, so you get a feel for the flow of the game. Knowledgeable announcers from around the world so the Joe Morgan soccer equivalents are nowhere in sight. And no 'up close, in depth' profiles of the players. The coverage is sports as it should be done. Hopefully the network does not revert to form with the US team. Personally, I think the NBA and the ongoing finals can't hold a candle to World Cup soccer"

God I hope I missed the sarcasm. The ESPN coverage is shite. Absolute shite. I often switch to the Spanish channel despite my momo-lingual skillset. Hopefully the US bounces back.

[COD]

I watched Portugal and Angola for about 20 minutes last night on the Spanish channel. Later, when watching Sportscenter, I realized I had the teams confused the entire time :)

[Kaz]

This site is so much cooler in Safari on OSX than on Firefox on my PCs...I never knew how cool the fonting was here until today.

[uksock]

I heard Dan O'Brien was doing the ESPN coverage and apparently doesn't have the first idea about the World Cup, is this true? You're US boys looked distinctly average today though the czeck's are a very good side and could go far, with a fair wind you might get something out of the Italy game and Ghana aren't the most organised team so don't despair yet. Man I love the World Cup, come on England!!

[Matt]

As I mentioned the other day, h.b., I appreciated the sanguine tone after the Yankee series, but...

This isn't 2004, and Pauley, Clement, Wells, Seanez, and Foulke aren't the answer to this year's hopes. Ortiz can only bail us out so many times.

[Griffin]

//This isn't 2004//

Yup, on June 12, 2004, the Yankees led the Red Sox by 3.5 games in the AL East.

On June 12, 2006, the Red Sox lead the Yankees by 1 game in the AL East.