A few seasons ago, the Boston Red Sox had the most dangerous one-two batting punch in the majors with David Ortiz and Manny Ramirez. With the addition of Adrian Gonzalez and the resurgence of the 35-year-old Ortiz, the Red Sox, once again, have the most potent one-two batting combination of any team.
Ortiz is batting .320 with 15 home runs and 36 RBIs. Gonzalez is doing even better, hitting .338 with 12 home runs and 57 RBIs.
The Red Sox have just completed their second consecutive sweep of New York’s other team, the New York Yankees, at that team’s new home. Three-game Boston sweeps didn’t happen too often in the real Yankee Stadium.
Adrian Gonzalez tripled home one run and Ortiz blasted a two-run home run to help the Red Sox to a 6-4 win in the first game of the series. After hitting the mammoth blast, Ortiz flipped his bat, which angered Yankees manager Joe Girardi.
Perhaps Mr.. Girardi prefers that a hitter only flips his bat after striking out, as the great Alex Rodriguez did in the seventh inning of a game against the Toronto Blue Jays on July 6, 2009.
The next night, the Yankees held Ortiz and Gonzalez to one hit in eight at-bats, but the one hit was another Ortiz two-run home run, this one in the first inning, coming off former nemesis A.J. Burnett. It helped Boston to a three-run first inning.
Yankees general manager Brian Cashman demonstrated his baseball acumen when he signed Burnett for five years at $16.5 million a year. The fact that Allan James almost always beat the Red Sox was a major factor in the signing.
Much to Cashman’s chagrin, the former farmhand of New York’s most beloved team, the New York Mets, has not won in his last nine starts against the Red Sox, the last eight with the Yankees.
Burnett is 0-4 with an obscene 8.01 ERA over that span.
Brian Hock of Major League Baseball reported that, after the game, Joe Girardi provided the media with his usual sagacious comments.
“It’s not what you want,” Girardi said. “The book is not closed on A.J. here and what’s ahead of us, that’s for sure. He struggled tonight, but that book is not closed—that book is wide open—and he’s going to have another opportunity.”
The final game of the series was delayed for about three hours by rain, but the Yankees management, always putting the fans’ interests first, realized that the reason fans paid to get into the ball park was to see a game, even if it didn’t start until about 11 PM.
C.C. Sabathia started against Yankees nemesis Josh Beckett. The Yankees hadn’t scored a run off Beckett in either of his first two starts against them, but this time, they jumped out to a 2-0 lead in the first inning. They wouldn’t score again until the ninth inning, when it was much too late.
Sabathia cracked in the seventh inning. Who got it started? Why, David Ortiz of course.
Ortiz singled to right field. Jed Lowrie tripled him home with the first Boston run. After Carl Crawford grounded out, former Met Mike Cameron doubled home Lowrie with the tying run, but the Sox were far from finished.
Jason Varitek, an old catcher who still gets a hit once in a while, singled Cameron to third. Jacoby Ellsbury, who is the kind of player that Brett Gardner would like to be, singled home the lead run.
With two outs, Gonzalez singled home Varitek, and before the inning ended, Boston had scored seven runs.
Ortiz had two hits in four at bats, while Gonzalez had two hits in five at bats.
For the three games, Mark Teixeira had one hit in eight at bats and the great A-Rod had a hit in 12 at-bats.
The Red Sox have the top one-two punch in baseball despite the protestations of the St Louis Cardinals fans, who prefer Albert Pujols and Matt Holliday. By the end of the season, they may be proven correct, but Yankees fans should remain silent.
A-Rod and Teixeira won’t top either.
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