Sox-Yanks game one post-mortem

Well, that sucked. First, Melky's mad dash in the first inning: this is why I hate the overshift with men on base. To set the stage, Melky was on first with one out. Giambi was up, so the Sox shifted, with Lowell essentially playing shortstop and Gonzalez playing second. Beckett bounced one in front of Varitek, and when he couldn't find it right away, Melky made a late break towards second base. Varitek rushed a throw that went wide of Lowell and got past Gonzalez backing up. With the ball in the outfield and nobody covering third because of the shift, Melky kept running. Varitek realized that third base was empty, so he ran towards it to receive the throw.

In the confusion, the throw back to the infield went to Youkilis for some reason (probably because nobody knew where they should be positioned in such a situation, and because Gonzalez isn't used to hitting cut-off men from short right field), but with Varitek heading to third, nobody was covering home. Melky saw this (even though Larry Bowa didn't) and kept running. Varitek realized what was happening and basically raced Cabrera back to the plate. He lost, but he couldn't corral Youkilis' throw anyway, so it didn't matter. I was in disbelief watching on TV, so I can only imagine how that unfolded in the stadium.

In the second inning, Beckett was garbage. That's about all you can say about that. Bonus points to A-Rod for stealing second base with a six-run lead in the second inning with his best pitcher on the mound on a 3-0 count.

But the third inning drove me to switch to OLN permanently for the rest of the night. Again, setting the stage: one out, Bernie Williams on first base, Miguel Cairo batting. Cairo hit a ball almost straight down into the ground, and Varitek pounced on it in front of the plate. He tagged Cairo out, and threw to second to try to get Bernie.

Now, the home plate umpire's body language was kind of hard to read - at first, it looked like he threw both hands up and called it a foul ball, but if he yelled out "foul," Varitek would have heard it and held onto the ball. On the replay, you can see the ump point to Cairo with one hand and raise his other hand as if to signal an out, after pseudo-signaling that it was a foul ball.

Anyway, back to the play, Varitek threw to Gonzalez at second, but Bernie beat the throw. For some reason, probably because he saw the ump at home throw his hands up, Bernie turned around and started to walk back to first, and Gonzalez tagged him out. Double play, inning over.

But it was a lot more confusing than that, because the first person to run out and argue was Terry Francona. But once he saw the double play call, he stopped and went back to the dugout. Then Torre came out to argue, and NESN went to commercial thinking the inning was over.

Not so. When they came back, the Yankees were still batting with two outs, and Bernie was on... first base. I guess Varitek tagged Cairo, but it was a foul ball, so the ball was dead, but Cairo was still out, or something. The whole thing made no sense. At the time, the score was 8-2, but the Yankees promptly scored five 2-out runs to put the game out of reach, chasing Van Buren and basically making the Red Sox burn their entire bullpen.

Now, burning your bullpen is bad. Burning your bullpen in the first game of a 4-game road series is worse. Burning your bullpen when you have seven games in the next six days is even worse. And when two rookies are expected to start two of those games, including one making his second start ever, in Yankee Stadium, the next night... well, it's the kind of thing that can de-rail an entire week.

On the plus side, I could be an Edmonton Oilers fan right now, with my starting goalie injured in a Game One that my team should have won on the road. So I guess I shouldn't complain.