Sit Coco Crisp down RIGHT NOW, Francona. Put in Ellsbury. PLEASE!
(Take out Lugo while you're at it. Those two are experiments in patience gone HORRIBLY wrong.)
At least it's not the Yankees.
P.S. I hope you have crucifixion insurance, Francona. 'Cause you're about to get nailed to the tree, '04 WS notwithstanding.
P.P.S. Let me be clear about something. (This is not hindsight being 20/20, in that I had come to this conclusion before the game, though I don't expect any of you hacks to believe me.) Francona should have started Beckett. Even if he just switched Beckett and Wakefield to pitch games 4 and 5 (to allow Schilling to pitch game 6 on full rest), he should have done it. I understand that Beckett will have to pitch another game regardless of tonight's outcome, Beckett pitching in a game down 3-1 is FAR DIFFERENT than Wakefield pitching in a game tied 2-2. The Red Sox HAD TO WIN tonight, and Francona didn't trot out their best horse.
Don't get me wrong: I love Wakefield. I cannot wait for the Sox to pick up his option so that we can watch him puzzle so many hitters next year with a 68 mph pitch. He has pitched in a number of great games for the Sox and has been a valuable asset for them. But seriously, we're talking about Josh Freaking Beckett, the second coming of Christy Mathewson and Sandy Koufax in the postseason, a guy with a PROVEN FREAKING TRACK RECORD on pitching on three days' rest.
Wakefield looked good tonight, and for a while it appeared like he was going to save Francona's bacon. That doesn't make the decision to start him a good one, and Francona is going to catch a bunch of crap for his decision. Rightly so, as his decision to leave Beckett in the wings for game 5 was flat out stupid.
Finally, in case there's any confusion about my angst, let me state it clearly: Cleveland has played better than the Sox thus far. They deserve to be up in the series, plain and simple. Despite their mediocre play, the Sox are not losing this series: the Indians are winning it.
Dang, and I was hoping for the "Rox–Sox" World Series. *sigh*
P.P.P.S. And this isn't sour grapes, but seriously. Get a freaking halfway intelligent home plate ump in there. The guys in the past two games even have the idiot savant, Tim McCarver, commenting that pitches "appeared" to be off the plate. (Nevermind that the freaking strike zone thing showed the ball CLEARLY off the plate. Shut the hell up, McCarver.) Home plate umps should have to attend a class before they are allowed to call a game behind the plate in which a knuckleballer is pitching. And if your strike zone visibly and obviously changes by four inches over the course of four innings (I'm looking at you, Game 3 home plate ump Brian Gorman), you should be punched in the face.
Does anybody "get" David Cronenberg? Having seen Eastern Promises a couple of weekends ago, and having suffered through A History of Violence, I'm convinced either I just don't get him or the critics are all idiots. Both movies are slow, cliched, poorly-acted, overwritten, absurd executions of potentially-interesting premises. EP less so than AHoV (which is probably on my top 5 worst movies list), but Cronenberg's fingerprint is still there. I haven't seen any of his other movies[*] due to them looking stupid (eXistenZ and Crash especially), and now I probably won't. Should I?
[*] I don't count Naked Lunch, which I saw in my high school years, since (a) I don't remember it at all, and (b) I watched thinking I'd be seeing something other than bugs. "Naked" Lunch my foot — boo false advertising!
Over at Think Christian a few days ago, we started a bit of a discussion about some problems with Yahoo's Search Assist feature. It seems when one searches for "Jesus", Yahoo suggests that perhaps one is looking for "sweet jesus i hate bill o'reilly". More surprising to me than that was a response and followups (1, 2) by one of the readers on there. This is my overly long response to her, saved from cluttering the comments on the TC page.
Hi again, Christiane, [Ed: of course, this is directed toward all of you, dear readers, at this point.]
You are, of course, free to ignore my questions and "answer" with questions of your own. I will choose not to ignore your questions and will answer them here.
1. Unbelievers have no more responsibility than the law requires of them. If the law does not prohibit an unbeliever from saying "sweet Jesus", the unbeliever has no responsibility to forego saying it.
2-4. These all deal with names universally reviled (at least, NOW they are) for the oppressed and downtrodden in society. They are people that, at least historically, have had no power with which to defend themselves. Are you oppressed and downtrodden when an unbeliever says "sweet Jesus"?
Now, I know what you'll say: we have to defend Christ's good name! And I'd even cautiously agree with you on that, though I suspect we'd disagree on the method by which we do so. I'm not going to get all hot and bothered and puff out my chest accusing those who DON'T get offended of having "moronic ideas" (even after I gave you the chance to retract!). Frankly, if you get offended about every "sweet Jesus", feeling like you need to defend the God who refused to even defend himself when faced with much more than an unkind word, you're going to come off as a shrill decrier of every slight, large or small, real or perceived. And you'll be INEFFECTIVE; if your goal is to actually reach the people to whom you're responding, you will defeat yourself.
To summarize my response to 2-4: you are confusing words against the downtrodden that frequently accompanied violence against those same powerless people with a flippant remark using God's Son's name. Also, you're invoking Godwin's Law so I don't suspect we're much longer here.
5. It's easier to bear the cross of Christ (at least in some part) by justifying those who spit on Him. I get the feeling that I missed your point, if one existed, with #5.
Finally, let's not get into "rah rah, America used to be so great when everyone liked Christians". All of your previous points, especially those concerning American blacks, are pretty hollow when those same Christians (who sure knew not to say "sweet Jesus") were enslaving and murdering men, women and children for the color of their skin. So... when did everyone understand that respecting your Christianity was the reference point of free civilization? They sure didn't respect even THEIR OWN Christianity enough to stop slavery, much less the Christianity of their slaves.
To summarize my entire argument: to get needlessly offended does not accomplish the goal that we are given with all nonbelievers. We are called to love, serve and reach them. This does NOT mean we coddle them; part of loving them is certainly speaking truth in love. Being shrill complainers about seemingly everything, especially when those to whom you're complaining have no internal understanding of why you're even bothered by "sweet Jesus", does not demonstrate love to them. It demonstrates that you're easy to rattle — it will only turn them off and get yourself branded as a whiner.
Now, if you don't have answers to my previous questions, I'll go ahead and bow out of the conversation. You can even have the last word. [Ed: Yes, you can even have the last word on my own blog; if you, Christiane, continue to not answer my previous questions, you won't elicit a response from me.]