The umpire calls strike three on Jack Cust for the second out in the ninth

Why, yes, I was just at Fenway on Saturday sitting in Chris Morse’s seats while he was out of town. Why, yes, I was back again tonight in the same situation… only this time I took Forrest instead of Harvey. We made a pact to make dinner plans more often because it seems that every time we do, someone offers me Red Sox tickets.
It rained for most of the day, but cleared up just in time for the game… and stayed perfect ballgame weather until the 9th inning. Luckily for those of us in attendance, the Red Sox were up 5-2 at this point and Papelbon was in from the bullpen to quickly mow down the A’s with three strikeouts to end the game. As soon as he did, the grounds crew ran out the tarp — I’ve become very familiar with that tarp this season.
I’d like to nominate Aaron Bates for player of the game because, well, he could use the confidence boost. After two full major league games, he’s yet to get a hit. However, he does have a non-zero OBP thanks to a walk in the 6th inning. And because of this walk (as opposed to his usual strikeout), Pedroia was able to come up to bat in the same inning and single in Ellsbury for the Red Sox fifth run. And even though it was just an insurance run, I still think the kid deserves the confidence booster.

Thanks to Chris Morse being out of town and not being able to use his season tickets, I was lucky enough to spend the afternoon of Independence Day at Fenway Park watching some baseball with Harvey Jones, who managed to get to Boston from New York as soon as I mentioned that I had a spare ticket. As an added bonus, today was the 70th anniversary of Lou Gehrig’s “Luckiest Man on the Face of the Earth” speech. To honor Gehrig and ALS, we were treated to a (somewhat awkward) reading of the speech by Curt Schilling.
Unfortunately for the Red Sox, their luck was not as good as mine. While they jumped ahead quickly in the second off a two run blast by Captain VariTeX, the Mariners quickly chipped their way to a tie by the fifth inning. And tied the game remained, through the 7th inning stretch and the 8th inning rendition of “Sweet Caroline.”
But then Saito came in to pitch for the Sox in the top of the ninth and loaded up the bases on walks with only one out. Chris Woodward hit a Texas Leaguer to right for an RBI and, well, quite frankly, Saito is lucky he only gave up one run that whole inning. Despite a pinch hitting appearance by Big Papi that got the crowd going, the Red Sox went down 1-2-3 in the 9th… and we left with “Que Sera Sera” as our entrance music instead of “Dirty Water.”
But it was the 4th of July and there was baseball… not even a Red Sox loss could spoil this day.

I have the best boss ever.
Today, I, two co-workers, one coworker’s girlfriend, Forrest and Karolina, and Quinn and Keila were able to sit in the front row of Right Field Box 90 and watch a very exciting ball game… all because my boss couldn’t use the tickets. Great seats, great game, great weather… his loss, our gain!
It turns out this was Quinn and Keila’s first time at Fenway. At one point, Quinn remarked to her, “You know how all the tourists in Puerto Rico [her home] sound like idiots to you because they don’t know where anything is or what’s going on? That’s what we sound like to Rhode right now.” Yeah, that was true. But I was highly amused when he tried to explain to her that a grand slam was when a homerun was hit over the Green Monster.
At the other end of our group, Forrest may have been the only person in the stadium who appreciated the fact that I brought a Homer Hanky. (It’s in my baseball bag, which also generally includes my glove, a poncho, and my scorebook.) In return, he showed off his lucky red socks… the Red Sox have only lost one game that he’s ever attended while wearing those socks. And that game was against the Twins, so we figure they’re lucky.
The game itself was an excellent one with the lead see-sawing a bit at the beginning before settling into a tie from the top of the 6th to the bottom of the 8th. Then Papi almost hit his first homerun of the season… but settled for a double. He scored on a follow-up double by Jason Bay to put the Sox up 4-3, where the score remained going into the 9th. Then came Papelbon accompanied by the Dropkick Murphy’s “Shipping Up To Boston” (kind of like this). This resulted in my favorite quote of the night, courtesy of Keila: “Wow, people get so excited. I mean, I guess it could be worse — it could be golf.”
And I did say that Papelbon came in in the 9th… so you can fill in the rest pretty easily. The Rays snuck in a runner on third with no outs, but Papelbon responded with three consecutive strikeouts to end the game and send us out with “Dirty Water” serenading us (something like this, only it was almost midnight).