Seesaw
Game 69: June 20, 2005
Red Sox (39-30), 10
Indians (37-31), 9
W: David Wells (6-4)
S: Keith Foulke (14)
L: C.C. Sabathia (5-4)
When I was a girl, I did those hand-clapping rhymes that the boys would make fun of. One of them went:
See see you play me
Come out and play with me
And bring your dollies three
Climb up my apple tree
Slide down my rainbow
Into my open door
And we’ll be jolly friends
Forever more, more
Shut the door
Kids’ rhymes always have some great homoerotic subtext going on, don’t they? This is the rhyme I think of when I hear Sabathia’s initials. We bestowed upon the rotund lefthander the most runs he had ever had (9) in just 4 2/3 innings, with 3 doubles and 2 home runs. He supersized it, much to Eric Wedge’s consternation. When pulled out of the game, Sabathia went to the clubhouse and changed into his “Property of Manny Ramirez” t-shirt.
Nine runs going into the 8th inning with a 4-run lead seems comfortable until you see certain members of the Red Sox bullpen take the mound. Myers, Timlin, Embree, and Foulke combined for 4 innings of agony, racking up 5 earned runs, 3 walks, 4 strikeouts, and 2 home runs. Embree and Foulke gave up back to back home runs in the penultimate frame, which winnowed the lead to a single run.
Johnny Damon led off the 9th with a homer on the third pitch after David Riske threw him 2 straight balls. This turned out to be an essential run as Damons’s name-mocker, Jhonny Peralta, doubled in the bottom of the inning after Foulke walked the leadoff batter, allowing yet another run and bringing Cleveland within 1 run, yet again. Foulke not so much closed the door, but left it ajar, realized that he was letting some flies in, and then lackadaisically got up to shut it. Grady Sizemore and Coco Crisp, his last 2 outs, could have easily been base hits, but Payton and Damon made the required catches.
I didn’t expect the game to be a cakewalk, since the Indians had won 9 in a row. It’s not every night where a blowout turns into a nailbiter. I guess I should send a little thank you note to the bullpen for bringing some excitement into my life. I’ll include the bill for the automated external defibrillator I had to buy.
Comments
I have no problems seeing Timlin take the mound. Even Myers I'm okay with. It's that dangblasted Embree...
Daryl ∙ 21 June 2005 ∙ 11:05 AM
wow, that is the song I sing to my neice. The words are slightly different, as often happens with these oral tradition things. Also, I could not remember the line "and bring your dollies three," so I replaced it with "hang out with your auntie" which, of course, makes the song so much better.
Rebecca ∙ 21 June 2005 ∙ 12:15 PM
Reb, you can also replace the dollies three line with "And beat up the Yankees."
Daryl, I saw last night as a sort of near-blown save jam, with Myers letting on Belliard, who would eventually score on a Victor Martinez single off of Timlin the 6th. But, no doubt, Embree was the lead vocalist on that one, the executive chef du fromage.
Empyreal ∙ 21 June 2005 ∙ 1:09 PM
A nursery rhyme on gay prostitution....I can't say I've never heard it before. Hahah
PTH ∙ 21 June 2005 ∙ 5:08 PM
"When I was a girl, I did those hand-clapping rhymes that the boys would make fun of."
Haw Haw!! You were a girl. /end Nelson Muntz
Edmund Dantes ∙ 22 June 2005 ∙ 12:54 PM