It was a night of "who can do the best Dice-K impression" in Tropicana last night. What I mean by that, is in 17 half-innings played, 9 times the lead-off hitter reached base, Shields threw a lot of pitches and was done before the end of the 6th, while Brett Myers looked awful early on but settled in nicely. Both pitchers pitched themselves into trouble - Shields had to pitch his way out of situations with men on third in less than two outs in two or three consecutive innings. But the Rays were able to pull out the 4-2 victory behind strong situational pitching by Shields and David Price giving them 2.1 acceptable innings (2 Runs).
But let's rewind for a second. For the first game of the World Series, the Tampa Bay Rays invited none other than the Backstreet Boys to sing the national anthem. At the time I thought "Wow, that's the best you can do!? It's the World Series, dammit." Well I underestimated the Tampa Bay boys, and for last night's anthem, they invite Los Lonely Boys (pictured below).
Please, take a moment to let that sink in and familiarize yourself with their music if you'd like. I'll wait. OK, welcome back. Now in their defense they did sing a very good Anthem, but still, can't get a decent, more widely respected performer?
Now the paragraph was written about the anthem because as a game, it wasn't that good. There were plenty of exciting moments, from Rocco Baldelli picking off Jayson Werth at first base on a fly ball to right, to Werth throwing out Baldelli at home plate. But the Rays scored two runs on sacrifice ground balls in the first, and never looked like they were going to lose this game. Their other runs came on a safety squeeze (a bunt with a guy on 3rd, effectively) and a bases loaded single. Shields threw 104 pitches through 5.2 innings, and continually pitched himself in and out of trouble, but the top of the Phillies order (Rollins, Werth, Utley) went 1-for-14, and never looked good swinging the bats. Throw in an 0-for-3 by Burrell and the Phillies just did not look like a team that was going to win this ballgame.
David Price came in to finish off the 7th and stayed to pitch the 8th and 9th. He allowed Eric Bruntlett to hit a solo home run with two outs in the 8th, and a run on an Evan Longoria error in the 9th, but otherwise looked solid once again in the back of that bullpen. This guy will be a force to be reckoned with whether he ends up being the stopper in that bullpen or is moved to the rotation.
At some point, watching the TBS guys made me decide that I'd prefer Buck and McCarver as announcers. Well, by the 3rd inning I realized those two are absolutely f@#king morons. If they mentioned Rocco's mitochondrial disease one more time I was going to vomit. Don't get me wrong, it's a great story, but we don't need to hear it every time the man is put on screen, while they talk as if they have any idea about how the disease is managed or how it affects him. That and their crazy convictions, said with absolute confidence neither of them deserve to be speaking with. I love baseball, but I might not watch the next game on TV if I have to listen to those two morons again for 3 hours.
So we move to Game 3 over in Philly, in an outdoor stadium. Series tied 1-1.
Win: James Shields (1-0, 0.00)
Loss: Brett Myers (0-1, 3.86)
Player of the Game: Fox went with James Shields, I'm going with David Price. Price came in and despite not pitching perfectly, never left any doubt who was going to win this game.
As an aside, the Rays fans were fairly good this game early on. I'd say it was the best Rays fan performance for three innings that I've ever seen. That said, they still don't deserve a World Championship.
Written by Shaolin Monk, Kyle Baxter
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