Ninety Feet to Victory

Wipe the week-end's tilts from your memory, Rooters of the Beantown Heroes! To-night, General Joshua P. Beckett will command the foot soldiers of Flannel Company A in their march on Cleveland.

I smell a Victory in the offing. Let the good General deliver his orders with haste, and his horsehides with the precision of a veteran soldier. Imagine the General staring down from his hurling mound, arm cocked like an infantryman's rifle, ready to fire his wadding!

Good General, shoot that wad! Shoot it straight and true!

A race to the finish!

Last week, as I was sunning my paleness and nursing ale after ale on a remote Maine island, I had little knowledge as to the coup young Theodore Epstein was cooking up in his Fenway office. He most certainly wore his Number 2 to a nub scratching out various "trading" scenarios, and reportedly considered offering J.D. "Old Aches and Pains" Drew to the Padres of San Diego for a barrel of sorghum and a case of hermetically sealed Zwieback toast.

But fate intervened and, when the dust settled, the Red Stockings were among the few trade deadline victors in all of base-ball. Coming to Boston was Victor "Loose Limbs" Martinez, the crowd-pleasing, switch-swatting catcher-cum-first-sacker that has so energized the Indians of the Ohios. Since joining the Heroes in Red, Loose Limbs has performed admirably, engendering plaudits from the men Rooters and swoons from the ladies in attendance at the ballpark.

Above all, it seems Loose Limbs also has provided a much-needed spark in the clouting department, as Boston's offensive ensemble has begun swatting with the urgency of a man trapped in a gibbon cage.

Meanwhile, it is good-bye to Justin Masterson, the gangly deliveryman who has showed much promise on the mounding in his short time with the Major League Club. Alas, we hardly knew ya, Ol' Master-tone! Cheers to your future hurling exploits in your home state, and may you forget your refined pretzel delivery upon next facing our heroes of the Fens!

Other assorted pieces of the dug-out puzzle were put into place, including a farewell to Mr. Adam LaRoche, and a huzzah to Casey Kotchman, yet another able-bodied first sacker. (Perhaps Mr. Epstein believes that the key to championing is a roster replete with first sackers, whose lithe frames and dextrous mittens may offer hints of excellence in other areas of fielding?)

Today begins a difficult stretch for the Bostons, as the face a two-tilt set with the Champs from Tampa, and a four-gamer with the hated Yankees of the Bronx. Indeed, sitting one-two-three atop the American League, the Yankees, Red Stockings and Tampas are snuggling together for what is certain to be a clever finish to the regular season. August is early, but the nip of the September air is soon to be felt among our flannel-clad heroes.

Friends, this is when base-ball matters. This is when prowess with the pill and the ash stick separates he-men from street lads. This is for the whole kazoo, chums!

Let us be victorious!

A race to the finish!

To-day's unseasonably warm weather in Maine has led me to strip my necktie and un-button my waist coat. My 20th Regiment flag flutters gaily in my back-yard, and I hear the whirring of a pushed mowing machine in my neighbor's grass patch. And though the day is a beaut beyond compare, my summer reverie is complete only because I have thought many times to-day of Jason "Argonaut" Bay's decisive four-pillow-roundabout in last night's tilt with the Clevelands.

A ninth-chapter clout in a scoreless ball game? Leave it to our resident Canadian to steal quietly to the plate and unload a full boat of northern aggression on the spinning pill, lofting it high into the grandstands whilst the assembled Clevelanders hung their heads in shame. Shame!

A reverential nod to our good hurler, Timothy "Knuckles" Wakefield, for his crafty deliveries that kept the opposing squad's ash sticks silent for much of the evening.

Eleven wins in a string. A dozen, we hope, will come this eve!

A Win For the Ages!

To the base-ball gods, the Boston Rooters salute and lay down their appreciations for such a well-played match!

The night's gamer had in the home half of the scoreboard the Cleveland squad, whom the Bostons bested in last year's Championship Series after losing three games and winning but one. Twirler Jake Westbrook pitched for the natives, while Jon "Seattle Slop" Lester took the riser for the visitors. Neither delivered the pill effectively, though Westbrook emerged from near-scrapes in many innings, including the first. Old Seattle Slop varied his delivery, but fooled few of the opposers.

Indeed, the match seemed lost for the Bostons after Seattle Slop hucked mush-ball after mush-ball at the natives, allowing multiple home-team runners to stamp on the final base in consecutive chapters. Fortunes happy, however, as Julian "Tele-phone" Taverez ponied up to the challenge of his rivals, eliminating three consecutive lumbermen with three strikes apiece. In all, he knocked down four men in two-and-two-thirds innings. Huzzah, Tele-phone!

But with a two-notch deficit, the visitors had no quit in their eyes. The Beard For the Ages stirred trouble in the eighth inning with a decisive full circuit clout. The ball skyed into the chill of the evening and landed earthbound into a crowd packed at the left field concessionaire. Alas, that plating was all that would occur in that frame.

But into the final inning of the evening, when all was at its most dire, Julio Lugo led off the frame with a taunting double-bagger off the home-team closer, Joe "Soapy" Borowski. What followed was base-ball at its best: A run manufactured by bunt and sky fly ball, the latter walloped by the diminutive Dustin "Spats" Pedroia.

A "tie" game!

But not for long, as the Collossus improved his average with the second of the evening's two base knocks, and The Wonder stepped up to the plate and smacked a drive that could favorably be compared to the Great Pyramids, the Hanging Towers of Babylon or the Cable Cars of San-Francisco, California! In fashion of The Wonder, he rounded the bases with jazz hands flapping, a game-ending sight to see for the Rooters who had steamed to Cleveland to glee with the Old Town Team!