Seriously, after that Papi single, they showed an absolute mass exodus from the good seats. That's pathetic.

Papelbon in for the cheapie save.

Papelbon in for the cheapie save.

Great. He's got a day off tomorrow, I'll take the cheapie save any day.

I do not like this practice of cycling services at midnight eastern time. Can't it be scheduled for 4AM?

These are the playoffs. You gotta win the game at hand.

About what percentage of the crowd is RSN, do you reckon?

Game three last year, it was somewhere between 1/4 and 1/3 Sox fans, I'd guess. We bought our seats on eBay from an Angel fan. We lied when he asked us if we were Angel fans, but I didn't get the sense he really cared.

I'd have been down there for these games this year if I weren't leaving for Maui this weekend.

That's the furthest I've seen a foul ball ricochet off a catcher. Ow.


I think that the farther a ball ricochets, the less it hurts. The farther it ricochets, the less energy the catcher absorbed.

Varitek lays down a bunt, then the stand-up fastball works!

DOGS and CATS, living together!

Chip, thanks for the info. Catching the Red Sox in Maui doesn't seem like such a bad deal to me.

Look at those empty seats. You'd think they could fill them with Rally Gimmicks.

Chip, thanks for the info. Catching the Red Sox in Maui doesn't seem like such a bad deal to me.

No, it's not. Plus the games are on that much earlier!

Nice swing.

Terrible ball to swing at.

back-to-back splitters. looks a bit like teddy's old "sandbagging" theory in action.

And actual good splitters. Not the lazy humpback ones he was throwing a few weeks ago.

Papelbon appeared to convince Tek to use a pitch Tek didn't believe in.

And he misses with it. Unless it's a setup pitch.

Well, that win is huge.

And there's game 1.

Struck out the side. That was vintage Papelbon.

Smoked. I'm not sure how anybody hits Papelbon's FB. Maybe he hangs the splitter. I don't know.

Besides the good splitters, great late movement on those Paps fastballs.

10 straight vs. LAA.

God only knows what happens Friday, with DiceK pitching, but worst case scenario is a split in Anaheim, and that's more than good enough.

huge win

huge

For a pitcher with a sub-3.00 ERA over 200 IP, I have surprisingly little confidence in Dice-K in Game 2.

If Manny had made that baserunning blunder, the press weasels would have ripped his flesh by now.

If Manny had made that baserunning blunder, the press weasels would have ripped his flesh by now.

RZZZZ!

I bet Vlad's Inexplicable Baserunning Decision Percentage is no worse than Manny's. I feel like I've seen him do that kind of thing constantly.

No better, rather.

Also, five Z's in "RZZZZZ!"

Anyway.

Just looked at the score, didn't know! Cable was out...YEAH!!!

We were in section 129 D and most of the fans there had stayed. After Vlads baserunning mistake, popcorn, peanuts and beer was thrown from behind us somewhere. THE boston fans in front of us, in the first row, were total dicks to the angels fans. BUt, some angel fans threw stuff at my wife and me (as well as others) when we were leaving the park. Good quotes "GO back to boston, you are not wanted here", "Boston was lucky to win that game". "Don't sell your tickets to any BOston fans", "If we would have played like we usually do, your team would have lostAN (personally said to me)". My only response was "If my grandmother had balls she'd be my grandfather".

My wife had told me she read an article that the BOS fans were supposed to outnumber the Angels fans. This, from where I was sitting, was untrue. In fact, I have never seen so few BOS fans at ANA. THe 'let's go RS' cheers were much smaller than in 2004. And, the #### talking from the Angels pre-game was annoying (plus some fans would walk by RS fans with their clappers and 'clap' them right into people's faces. There also didn't seem to be any 'joy' from the Angels pre-game or when they were winning. It seemed more like entitlement/cockiness and then anger when they started losing. Which, even down 1 run, the crowd seemed very subdued and almost like they felt it was over.