Snake Strike(out)
Mark Reynolds struck out all four of his at bats, not an uncommon thing for the slugger who mans the hot corner for the Diamondbacks or the rest of his teammates for that matter. As a team Arizona leads the entire league in strikeouts with 625. The next two teams aren’t even in the 600s: the Blue Jays are in second with 535 and the Marlins rounding out the trio with 523.
Reynolds holds first and second season-highs in whiffs; in 2008 he had 204 and 2009 he upped it to 223. All the other hitters on the list, such as Ryan Howard, Jack Cust, and Adam Dunn, at least have the restraint to keep their punchout marks under 200.
Despite the opposition’s free-swinging ways, John Lackey didn’t get a season-high number of strikeouts in a game, but turned in a solid line: 6 innings pitched, 8 hits, 4 runs (3 earned), 2 bases on balls, and 5 strikeouts. The game started one hour earlier to minimize the overlap between the Red Sox regular season series conclusion and the NBA Finals Game 7 finale.
While Boston’s baseball team swept its series, the roundball team was unable to overcome the Los Angeles Lakers. For the first three quarters of the game, NBA officials Joe Crawford, Dan Crawford, and Jeff Foster let the teams play hard. But once the fourth quarter rolled around, foul calls favoring the Lakers abounded.
At the end of the struggle, the Lakers had 37 fouls called in their favor compared to the Celtics’ 17. Twenty-one of the Lakers’ free throws came in the final quarter. Rasheed Wallace wanted to have a discussion with the Crawfords and Foster after the game but was turned away at the door.
Now that Boston is the new Toronto of the film industry, perhaps the Hollywood acting methods that serve their NBA rivals so well will rub off on the next Celtics team. I was trying to research which technique Pau Gasol uses to mesmerize referees to not call fouls against him and at the same time causes the slightest touch to be called a foul, but it seems to be an intensely guarded secret. Whatever system he uses, it was not enough to wrangle the Finals MVP from Kobe Bryant, which was like Martin Scorsese winning the Best Director award for The Departed rather than Raging Bull.
| Game 68: June 17, 2010 | ||
| Diamondbacks 26-41 | 5 | L: Dan Haren (7-5) |
| 2B: Miguel Montero – 2 (5), Chris Young – 2 (16) | ||
 Red Sox40-28 | 8 | W: John Lackey (8-3) H: Manny Delcarmen (7), Hideki Okajima (8) |
| 2B: Daniel Nava – 2 (4), Marco Scutaro (18), Victor Martinez (20) HR: David Ortiz (14) | ||
