Yesterday sucked. Plain and simple. If you are a sports fan in New England, Sunday was a terrible day. In fact, you could make a case that it was one of the worst sports days in a long time. For those of you who live under a rock and have no idea what happened, let's recap:It all started at 12:07 when the Red Sox, who had barely showed up in the first two games of their annual American League Divisional Series matchup against the Angels, took the field. In games 1 and 2, the Sox had managed to score 1 run on 8 hits. That was in both the games combined. Pedroia and Youkilis were non existent. The two-headed monster of Lester and Beckett were defeated. The Angels were outplaying the Red Sox in every phase of the game. Then in Game 3, Boston jumped out to a 5-1 lead. Buchholz was looking great. The bats had finally woken up. Everything was just dandy. Even when Los Angeles closed the gap to 5-4 in the 8th, the Red Sox responded with a run in the bottom of the frame. Perfect. 6-4, going into the 9th, with Jonathan Papelbon and his squeaky clean playoff slate coming in to close out the game and keep the Sox alive.
Paps mowed down the first two batters. Then he got a quick two strikes on Eric Aybar, the last hitter in the Angels lineup. But Aybar singled. Then Chone Figgins walked. Then Abreu hit a double. 6-5 Boston. two batters later, Big Bad Vlad Guerrero (he ain't all washed up yet) lined one up the middle. 7-6 Angels. Papelbon gets taken out in the middle of an inning for the second time in his career (the first time was when he blew out his shoulder). Then in the bottom of the 9th, the Red Sox go down in order. Not even a whimper. Game over, series over, season over for the Red Sox. As my friend Ryan put it "these are the losses that bring me closer and closer to the crack pipe." (You can't make this stuff up people!)
At first, I blamed Papelbon. I wanted to run him out of town. But then I realized that the series wasn't his fault. The Red Sox had only 15 hits in the 3 games. Jacoby Ellsbury led the team in batting average this postseason. He hit .250. Kevin Youkilis went missing before game 1, and his look alike replacement hit .083. David Ortiz was in the lineup, unfortunately he reverted to the David Ortiz of April and May. Nobody was hitting, the pitching was average, and in the end, the Red Sox just weren't that good. No one player lost this series. It was a team loss. The Angels were simply the better team, and the Red Sox played like they had the last two weeks of the season. But what was really upsetting for me was the lack of heart the Red Sox showed. They went down without a fight in this series, and seemed defeated after game 1. Honestly, this was one of the more disappointing seasons I can remember.
Any Red Sox fans looking to be cheered up by a Patriots victory were severely disappointed. Once again, things started off perfectly fine. Brady looked good (not great, but he looked like he was improving yet again). The defense was playing solid, just as they have been all season. And at the half, the Patriots had taken a 17-7 lead into the locker room. But that lead wouldn't hold. In the second half, the offense was ineffective, Brady was terrible (more on this later), the secondary had more holes than a soccer goal net (by the way, when are the Patriots going to get a good cornerback again? The only good one they've had has been Asante Samuel. I'm seriously tired of the Duane Starks's of the league finding their way into the Pats' secondary. Mini rant over.), and the result was a 20-17 OT loss. Sickening, especially when it's compounded with a Red Sox collapse and elimination from the playoffs earlier that day.
As for the Brady rant that I promised, I want to address all the New England fans who want him out. Obviously Tom isn't the same. He is overthrowing receivers at an alarming rate. He can't complete passes consistently. He looks down receivers, and doesn't notice wide open guys. To this point, he's having his worst season yet. But you know what? He's still Tom Brady. The guy is coming back from major knee surgery and didn't play at all last season. Give it some time. He's one of the best quarterbacks of his generation (only Peyton Manning has been more successful, at least in the regular season). He might need another 2-3 games to really get going and make this offense effective. And who knows? Maybe he'll need the whole year to recover. But in this case, I think the guy deserves a pass. He is (as I already said) one of the two best quarterbacks of his generation. He has helped bring 3 Super Bowl rings to New England. Give Brady a break.
And so, what was a terrible weekend came to a close. But hey, it's not all bad! We still have the Celtics in a few weeks! Go Ubuntu!
(sigh)
