Yankees 4, Red Sox 0

 

This is the stuff of legends. Not the good stuff, to be sure, but the part of the legend where the hero is beaten down and seemingly defeated, cast to the dogs and abandoned. This is the suffering that all Red Sox fans have endured that makes the eventual victories so satisfying and meaningful.

The Red Sox-Yankees rivalry may or may not be the greatest in all of sports, but it's one that I've been caught up in for literally 50 years now. After the Bucky Fucking Dent incident in 1978, I got this close to actual fisticuffs with my own father, an ardent Yankees fan.   

Young Connelly Early is now 0-2 against the Yankees. He lost a playoff game last year, also by a score of 0-4, and again this year he pitched well despite his loss but got no support from the batters. For 5⅓ innings last night, he struck out four. He gave up one unfortunate homer to the first batter in the second inning after going 3-up-and-3-down in the first,  and then gave up only one hit, a single, in the next three innings. It wasn't until the sixth inning that he got himself into trouble, opening with a pair of walks and then giving up a two-run double. He was pulled after walking the next batter and finished with 92 pitches and 23 batters faced. Unfortunately for Early, the Red Sox bats gave him nothing, just like in his playoff appearance last year. Hard to win when your offense goes scoreless.  

Toronto won last night, so the Red Sox are now all alone in last place in the AL East, five back from New York.  

Ranger Suarez (1-1, 3.22) starts tonight against Max Fried (2-1, 2.97). In four career games, Suarez has yet to give up a run to the Yankees, while the Sox are 1-3 against Fried, with the one win coming in last year's playoff, when Yoshida hit a two-run double off him in the seventh. Let's make sure Yoshida starts today.  

Also, for those curious, the picture above is an AI version of the infamous time that Boston University students managed to hack into a Comm Ave. electronic warning sign. 

Bruins 4, Sabres 2

 

This is the kind of Bruins' game I like - entering the third period with a 3-0 lead, Viktor Arvidsson scored his second goal of the game in the first 16 seconds to break Buffalo's heart. Geekie and Zacha both scored in the second, and Pastrnak skated off the ice with two assists. Jeremy Swayman made 34 saves and held Buffalo scoreless for the first 53 minutes of the game.

The Bruins tie up their quarterfinal series, 1-1, and return with confidence and momentum to Boston, where they'll play Game 3 on Thursday night.    

Sixers 111, Celtics 97

 

You didn't thing we were going 16-0 through the playoffs, did you?

I don't care what the pundits say - the Sixers didn't "rise" to any challenge last night, it was the Celtics failing to play at their own high level. 

The quarterfinal series is now tied at 1-1, and while it's unfortunate the Celtics ceded home-court advantage to Philadelphia, it's as good a time as any for the Celtics to pick up a loss -  early in the playoffs and early in the series as a lesson in what can happen if you're not 100% while on the court and playing at your best. Also, and I'm speaking to Mazzulla here, don't bench González. He's your lucky charm, your talisman. He may not score a lot of points, but he's like sand in the gears of the opposing team's offense. 

Game 3 is Friday night in Philly. Win it, Boston! 

      

Red Sox 8, Tigers 6

 

The Sox manage to eke out a split in their home series against Detroit but the game wasn't without drama. 

Leading 2-1 after 2⅔ innings, starting pitcher Sonny Gray (2-1, 4.30) left the game with a hamstring pull. It's not yet clear how long Gray will be out, but he's currently listed on the Injured List as "day to day." He joins starting pitchers Kutter Crawford and Patrick Sandoval (15 days) and Tanner Houck (60 days) on the IL. 

Act 2 of the Patriot-Day drama came in the ninth. Leading 8-3, Boston reliever Ryan Watson gave up one  run and then bullpen ace Aroldis Chapman uncharacteristically gave up two more before getting the final out and earning the save. For a minute there, though, it looked as if the Sox were getting set to blow a five-run lead in the last inning.

But it was Patriots Day and the Red Sox won. They split the home series with the Tigers, 2-2, and improve to 9-13 overall. The Sox are still tied for last in the AL East with the Blue Jays and are four games back from the New York Yankees, who've regained first place.

To make things even more interesting, those first-place Yankees are bringing their pinstriped asses to Fenway for a three-game series starting tonight. Connelly Early (1-0, 2.28) will be taking the mound for Boston. The young lefty has made only 10 major-league appearances, four this season, but is emerging as Boston's new ace, what with Crochet off to a rough start. Early has pitched against the Yankees once before, in New York in a divisional playoff game.  He struck out six and gave up four runs on six hits in that game, but got no support from the Boston bats and lost the game, 0-4. Hard to win a game when you have no runs to back you up.

Early will be up against New York's Luis Gil, who's off to a rough start (0-1, 7.00). 

First pitch is scheduled for 6:45, but the game will still be competing with Game 2 of the Celtics-Sixers playoff series (7:00 pm) in the Garden and Game 2 of the Bruins at Buffalo (7:30 pm) in the Stanley Cup quarterfinals.    

                  

 

John Korir of Kenya won the Boston Marathon for the second straight time, finishing at 2:01:52 and setting a new course record. That's 26.2 consecutive 4-minute, 37-second miles (my personal best for just one single mile is a little over six minutes, and even that was back in 1988). Fellow Kenyan Sharon Lokedi, the defending women's winner, also repeated as champion with a time of 2:18:51.

Korir's brother, Wesley, won the race in 2012. Kenyan runners have won the men's division 26 times since 1988; West African runners have won in 34 of those 37 years (the race was cancelled in 2020 because of the covids). The last time the United States won the race was 2014 when Meb Keflezighi won, and he was an Ethiopian refugee.    

Kenyan and Ethiopian runners have won the women's division 26 times since 1997. The last U.S. woman to win was California's Desiree Linden in 2018.   

Marcel Hug of Switzerland, nicknamed "The Silver Bullet," won the men's wheelchair division for the fourth straight time and ninth time overall, with a time of 1:16:06, missing his own course record by 33 seconds. That's an average speed of 21 mph. He is now just one win short of Ernst Van Dyk's all-category record of 10. Eden Rainbow-Cooper of Britain won the women's wheelchair division, her second Boston win, in 1:30:51.

Sabres 4, Bruins 3

Look, when you give up four goals in the third period, you're not likely to win the game.

The Bruins headed into the third up 1-0 on a Morgan Geekie first period goal, and quickly made it 2-0 with an Elias Lindholm goal. Both were assisted by Pastrnak. But then the wheels came off the cart as the Sabres scored three even-strength goals followed by an open netter.  A Pasta power-play goal in the last seconds of the game made the score look a little better, but the Bruins head into the Stanley Cup playoffs ass first, losing their opening game in Buffalo.

Unless this is going to be another out-after-one-round playoff season for the Bruins, they better start playing better.   

Tigers 6, Red Sox 2

 

Oh, no! Garrett Crochet gives up five runs in five innings! He struck out eight, but he also gave up two home runs in his fifth and final inning. The Red Sox, obviously, lost again.

Willson Contreras homered for the Sox in the first, but that was about it for Boston. 

The Red Sox (8-13) fall back into a tie with Toronto for last place in the AL East. What little consolation there is can be found in the fact that they've still got a better record than the White Sox, the Royals, and the Astros, so they're not the worst team in the American League.

The Tigers take a 2-1 lead in this four-game series, and game four is this afternoon, inconveniently timed with the finish of the Boston Marathon to make traffic in town as bad as possible. Sonny Gray (2-1, 4.43) takes the mound against Jack Flaherty (0-1, 4.05). 

Can we at least get a series split on Patriots' Day?

 

Celtics 123, Sixers 91

 

Boston takes Game 1 of the opening playoff round decisively. The Celtics scored first in the game and never trailed after that. Jaylen scored 26 points and Jayson scored 25, along with 11 rebounds. Houser got all 12 of his points on 4-of-6 three-point shooting.

Hugo González got only one minute of playing time, but caught a defensive rebound and blocked a shot in that one minute.

Just an all-round great effort by the Celtics.

The Celtics take a 1-0 lead in the Conference Semifinals. Fifteen more wins to an NBA title.

 

Tigers 4, Red Sox 1

 

It says something, I'm not sure what, but something, when the only run Boston scored the whole game came on an RBI when the backup catcher hit into a double play. Other than that, the Sox struck out a dozen times, managed only five hits (four of those singles), and managed to leave 15 on base.

Fortunately for the Red Sox, the Blue Jays lost yesterday, too, so Boston is still in fourth place in the AL East, one game ahead of Toronto and four back from first-place Tampa Bay.

But it's Crochet Day and Boston can retake the lead in this four-game home series with a win today. Despite a 2-2 start and getting banged up in a 13-6 loss last week that ballooned his ERA to 7.58, Crochet is still the Red Sox' great shining hope. 

Against Detroit, Crochet is 0-1 but has struck out 27 batters and allowed only four earned runs in 20 innings pitched with no homers. Today, he's up against former Astro ace Frambler Valdez (1-1, 3.75). In six games, Valdez is 3-2 against the Sox, also striking out 27. The Red Sox have yet to get their first home run off Valdez, although they have managed to score a total of ten earned runs off him.

The Game starts at 4:35, after the smoke has cleared from Game 1 of the Celtics' first-round playoff game, and should end before the start of Game 1 of the Bruins' first-round playoff game, so you know what I'll be doing all day today.  

Red Sox 1, Tigers 0 (10)

 

Fenway, baby! The Sox are back, both back at home and back in the swing of things!

The Boston Red Sox win a second straight game, the third time this season they put together back-to-back victories. They're 6-3 in their last nine starts. The bats are finally coming alive and the pitchers are locking down. We're going to the World Series, baby!

Last night was a pitcher's duel - nine scoreless innings before Boston finally broke through in the 10th. Ranger Suarez went 8 full innings with no runs and only two hits, the same number of hits as Aroldis Chapman got in his 9th inning relief. Garrett Whitlock went three up and three down in the top of the 10th.

Finally, in the bottom of the 10th, with one out and Jarren Duran on third on a wild pitch, pinch-hitter Macho Man Masataka Yoshida knocked a single into right center, bringing Duran home. Red Sox win, 1-0, in 10 innings.  

Shout it from the mountaintop: THE RED SOX ARE NO LONGER IN LAST PLACE IN THE AL EAST! Not only are they not the worst team in MLB any longer, they aren't even the worst team in their division. That would be the Blue Jays, but that's another matter. Right now, the Red Sox are 8-11, one ahead of Toronto and three back from first-place Tampa Bay. The Red Sox have a better record than the White Sox and the Royals, than Houston and Seattle, then the Mets, the Giants, and the Rockies. 

Can they make it three in a row for the first time this season? This afternoon (4:10 pm), Brayan Bello (1-1, 6.14) takes the mound to face Detroit's Tarik Skubal (2-2, 2.22). Speaking of twos, the Sox are 2-2 against Skuball in five starts with 29 hits, including four home runs. Skubal's career ERA versus Boston is 4.91, tied with the Dodgers for the fourth highest of any team.  Unfortunately, Bello has yet to beat the Tigers in three attempts, with one loss, an ERA of 5.74, and 14 strikeouts.

Shadows

 

The Red Sox comeback was on pause yesterday and the Bruins and Celtics aren't starting their playoff series until Sunday, so the Gaming Desk gets a word in today. Because video games are e-sports, right? 

We finally finished Assassins Creed: Shadows! It took me 250 hours, but I finally got to the end credits. That's the longest, by far, I spent in a single playthrough of any video game. I spent nearly 99 hours on Assassins Creed: Valhalla, a notoriously bloated game, and 100 hours on God of War. I completed Death Stranding in 150. On the other end of the scale, completing BioShock Infinite took me 15 hours, and I knocked off the indie game Everyone's Gone to the Rapture in 10 hours.  The closest I've spent to 250 hours in any video game was The Witcher 3 (274 hours), which I've played more times than I can recall.      

According to the Google AI bot, it should take approximately 35–40 hours to complete the Shadows main story, while side quests can add 15 to 30 hours. Significant time can be consumed customizing gear and clearing map content, with some players logging over 100 hours and those aiming for 100% can spend over 100–140 hours exploring the open world. 

So it took me over 100 hours more than most OCD completionists need to complete every main and side quest and to check off every achievement, and I haven't even downloaded the DLC. I'm not sure why it took me so long, as I didn't even complete everything. There are some "search" quests where you're supposed to find certain objects across the map, and I never fully completed some of those searches. For example, Mayu's Offering requires you to find 69 randomly located statues. I found a lot of them, most of them even, but not all 69. Even more frustrating, another quest requires you to find 10 assorted "valuable objects" - I found nine, and the effort it would take to retrace my route through the entire game to find the one object I missed is incalculable.   

I lost some time because I'm apparently a dumb ass with slow reflexes who kept getting myself  killed and had to start some castle sieges and battles over and over again, but I'm pretty damn confident I didn't spend 100 hours repeating those quests. 

I think the lost hours were most likely spent in just slowing down and enjoying the game's world. I spent a lot of time travelling, traversing the countryside on horse or on foot, rather than fast-travel teleporting across the map. A lot of time taking selfies in photo mode. Many hours fidgeting with equipment, trying out new armor or weapons, and upgrading said equipment. 

So, after two calendar months in real time and 250 hours of playtime, I finally got to the end, and what did I do? Why. immediately start a New Game Plus, of course! Now that I know what I'm doing and fully powered up (I finished the first game and started the new game at Level 61), let's see how long it takes to actually complete all of the game, including those missing statues and objects and all.

Red Sox 9, Twins 5

 

Yeah, baby! The Boston Red Sox are so BACK! A rough start to the season, but yesterday, on an April afternoon, the team turned things around, avoided a sweep, and started a comeback of historic proportions. 

We're going to the World Series, and that's a guarantee!

It was Trevor Story, fittingly, who sparked the fire that lit the comeback. In the third inning, following a Yoshida two-RBI fielders' choice, Story hit a three-run homer 428 feet into deep left center. 5-1, Boston. Then in the sixth inning, Story hit a two-RBI double to deep right center. 7-1, Boston. 

And Story wasn't alone. In addition to Yoshida's RBIs, Andruw Monasterio got an RBI double in the fifth (8-1, Boston), and then came home on a Connor Wong sac fly. 9-1, Boston.

And then, the pitching! The pitching! Connelly Early lived up to his potential by going six full innings with one run on only two hits, striking out five and walking only two. Danny Coulombe was excellent in the seventh - three up and three down - while Garrett Whitlock got two K's in the eighth. Ryan Watson apparently didn't get the memo as he made things unnecessarily interesting in the ninth by giving up five runs on three hits, including a three-run homer, but worked his way out of it with a pair of fly balls to end the game. 

The Red Sox (7-11) are still in last place in the AL East - FOR NOW - but only 3½ back from . . . (looks at the current standings) . . . Tampa Bay. The Sox are no longer the worst team in MLB - they're a game ahead of the White Sox in the AL and the Rockies and the Giants in the NL. They're even a half-game ahead of the Mets.

One team at a time. Boston trails Toronto by a half game in the AL East - we need to catch them first, then Baltimore, then the stinkin' Yankees, and then Tampa Bay. And then the pennant and then the World Series.

The Red Sox are off today to travel back home and then will play a four-game home series starting Friday against the Tigers (9-9). Ranger Suarez (1-1, 5.02) will start the first game against Casey Mize (1-1, 3.94). 

Not to look too far ahead, but after the Detroit series, the Sox have a three-game home stand against da Jankees (10-8), and then a road trip to Baltimore and Toronto. One game at a time. When the smoke finally clears in May, we'll see the Sox at the top of the AL East where they belong.