Yesterday I attended my first ever social event with the MIT Club of Southeastern Michigan at Comerica Park to see the Tigers take on the Red Sox. For the second time this season, I saw a great Red Sox game… with a less than desirable outcome. And this with four of the five Tiger All Stars starting on the bench — although Pudge Rodriguez came in to pinch hit in the eighth.
By the end of the fourth, the Tigers were up 6-2 mostly on a disastrous 4 run inning for Daisuke Matsuzaka where he gave up four hits, two of them homers. I really was hoping to see a more dominant pitching performance from him, but with only four strikeouts and six earned runs given up, that wasn’t the case at all. Instead, the dominant pitcher of the day was Nate Robertson of the Tigers.
With only two unearned runs in the third, the Sox couldn’t seem to muster any offense early on. Wily Mo Pena’s shot to deep center in the fourth seemed to be the start of something… but in an amazing display of athleticism, Curtis Granderson leaped over the wall to rob him of a homerun. The bottom of the Sox line-up tried to make up for the rest of them in the later innings with back-to-back homeruns in the 7th (one of which was the first major league hit for Jeff Bailey) and an RBI double in the 8th to bring the Sox within one. (Manny was brought in to pinch hit for Bailey in the 8th, but Manny-just-being-Manny struck out looking. Seriously — when are people going to figure out that he’s not good in the clutch?)
In the top of the 9th, with a runner on base, I thought we might get to see some Big Papi magic save the Red Sox yet again. But alas… there was no joy in the MIT alumni section: the Mighty Papi had struck out.