Appalling

No, not the Red Sox play this week, although that has been atrocious enough. I'm talking about the reporting by our beloved sports press which has been the equivalent of rubbing salt in the wounds.

First off are the nimrods who pronounced the Rays dead after Game One. Why would you ever write that in a seven games series?

Secondly, we have the people who stubbornly cling to the idea that the Red Sox are going to make a miraculous comeback. They aren't. The team can't hit or pitch. They could not beat the Kansas City Royals at this point. Injuries and awful luck have taken their toll. The Sox would be just as screwed even if they had won Game Two. This team - as currently constituted can NOT win three games in a row. They were lucky to win ONE game. It doesn't just seem like it's over, it is.

Thirdly, someone needs to criticize the team. I either see people praising the Rays to the high heavens or glossing over the fact the team is playing poorly. Some one needs to come out and say it. The Red Sox absolutely suck. Many of these wounds are self inflicted. If you can't hit or pitch, you can not win, period. Francona would be better off suiting up the Lowell Spinners.
I have a theory that when you get blown out, half of it is your own damn fault. This is not college or high school where there is a massive talent discrepancy. Yes, the Rays have played well, but they played well in the first and second games, both of which were competitive. If the Red Sox play well, the games will be competitive. If not, you get annihilated.

The article that really set me off this morning was Bob Ryan's piece on why the Rays are unbelievably awesome. While I'm certainly not in the position to argue that point right now, he goes on to say that the Rays are the team of the future and we should all get ready for them to be a power for years to come. I enjoy Bob's writing and I think he might be the best sports writer in Boston. But did he suddenly forget the great young players on the Red Sox who helped them win the WORLD ****ing SERIES last year?

Is that basically what it comes down to? We should just give up because Team Awesome will be around forever and ever? Great, I'm going to stop rooting for the Red Sox and reading the Globe, and I'll encourage the rest of my friends to do the same because we are now powerless before Cowbell Nation (maybe I should trademark that!) and watching baseball is futile. They should just call themselves the Tampa Bay Borg. And when the Red Sox fans disappear and the Globe is out of business at least Bob will be right.

Just taking things to their logical conclusion.

Failure!

Well, that was painful. The Tampa Bay Rays have not technically clinched the AL East, but with a 2 game lead and the tie-breaker, this part of the post-season race is just about over. Without harping too much on how bad the Sox looked, credit must be due to the Rays who looked phenomenal after getting squashed on Monday.

But since this is a Red Sox-centric blog, we'll focus on how lousy the Red Sox looked in this series. No offense and yet another bull pen implosion on Tuesday. Little offense and horrific starting and relief pitching yesterday. Eek. Fortunately, there are a few more weeks to go because the team looked awful last night. Then again, they looked pretty abysmal last week and they turned around and took 3 out of 4 from the charging Blue Jays to get back in the race. Here's hoping that the same trend holds this time around. It is a good thing the playoffs do not start today.

More failure:

-Planet Mikey on WEEI. Does anyone involved in this show realize that Jason Bay is now the left fielder for the Red Sox? I listened for 20 minutes on Tuesday, and I thought I'd entered a time warp.
-The Red Sox bullpen. This has been a problem all season. It didn't ease my troubled mind when Papelbon almost coughed up the lead to Toronto on Sunday. With a better bullpen, the Red Sox are WELL ahead of Tampa Bay.
-The Big Show. Why would you irritate the 80% of your audience who plays fantasy football by bashing it? When did it become open season on Boston sports fans in BOSTON?
-Dane Cook day in Boston. Why? Just... why?
-Joey Porter. Let's see, you play for what was the worst team in football last year. And now you think the Patriots will be an easy win? Are you also in a time warp? What do you think about Manny?
-The Red Sox post game show on Tuesday. The game was tied going into the ninth. That's not a gutsy "come from behind win". That's one bullpen being better than the other.

Patriots Game Review Week Two...

With the exception of the three Super Bowl wins, this is the sweetest win I can remember as a Patriots fans. So many people can pretty much bite me this evening:

-The New York press who was all but begging for Belichick to be publicly executed after the Jet "embarassed" the Patriots. How did that turn out?
-Jets fans who started chanting 18-1. How does 4-12 sound? Because if this is the best you can do, you'll be headed back there.
-The Pink Hamster. This "loser" in a Bruschi jersey enjoyed every moment of this. Stick to mooning over your sticky Sarah Palin photos and leave the football commentary to people who like sports. If you wanted to "shoot your way out" of your WRKO contract by bashing WEEI, you failed. Again.
-Shaugnessy - the Curly Haired Boyfriend - who started this nonsense by saying the Pats would make the Super Bowl. Just please. Stop. No more.
-Everyone on ESPN who - without exception- picked the Jets. Take my advice to Shaughnessy and just give up. I can't predict anything and apparently neither can you.
-The Patriots "fans" jumping off the bandwagon after the Brady injury. You're not fans. Go away. And leave the Red Sox and Celtics alone as well.
-The walking turds on the Herald message board - especially the Howie Carr apologists (just leave the state already), the idiot Jets fans, and the twits who said Brady "deserved" his injury because he wasn't faithful to Bridget Moynihan. What the hell does that have to do with sports? Talk about failure on a titanic level.

So now that my immature trash talking is over, the Pats find themselves matched up with a horrible Dolphins team next week. It seems easy, but the Pats struggled against a miserable Chiefs team and a massively over-hyped Jets team. Not to mention the fact that Pats were clueless on offense up until the touchdown drive in the third quarter. Eventually, Cassel and Randy Moss have got to get on the same page. I was pleasantly surprised by Lamont Jordan - I'd like to see more of him - and the defense got MUCH better in this game. Only Brett Favre's creativity kept the Jets moving. The special teams had a great game as well. It looks like this team is moving in the right direction despite the obvious lack of a Tom Brady.

Well, that was quick...

With yet another Friar season in the books, it behooves me to analyze what went wrong, what went right and what needs work. To whit:

Season Highlights:
-Taking 3 out of 4 points from then #5 UMASS
-Sweeping Maine at Alfond
-Taking four points from NU in one weekend
-Beating the defending national champions at GLI
-Great OT wins over UVM and UML
-Tyler Sims breaking the shutout record
-Taking 5 points from BC
-Clobbering Brown 8-0.

Seaon Lowlights:
-Everything else.

What needs work:
-PC needs a sniper. Or two.
-Physical presence in our forwards. It is wwaaaayyyyyy too easy for bigger teams (BU, ahem!) to press PC into the boards and hold them there.
-Abandon Pooley hockey ONCE AND FOR ALL. The past two weekends have seen a return to the Dump and Watch, cataclysmic defensive turnovers, and undisciplined penalties. This needs to end. NOW.
-Can we please figure out how to get a power play goal?
-A good goaltender to spell Ryan Simpson. Or, more accurately, start.
-Whatever Tim Army does before the playoffs, needs to stop IMMEDIATELY. The team has played a grand total of one competetive playoff game in the past 3 years. The scores of the other games: 4-0, 4-0, 6-0, 5-1, and 5-1. That is beyond pathetic.

The last month of hockey has absolutely poisoned my outlook for this team and extinguished any hope that this will be anything more than long drawn out rebuilding process. I'll still be back for next season of course, but I'm not going to get my hopes up. For a while, this team was #14 in the polls, over the bubble for an NCAA slot and within sniffing distance of second place. The wheels came off the wagon during the Merrimack weekend and - if you discount the win and tie against BC - never came back on. The team was miserable during final series and BU and even worse against a BC team they had OWNED in the regular season. This is the second time in three seasons that the team has gone on a protracted slump at the end of a season. Until PC can finish with home ice and show some pulse during the post season, there is nothing to make me think this won't keep happening.

To make matters worse, UVM finally got home ice, UMASS will probably rebound from their horrible finish, UML is getting better, NU is getting better, Merrimack is getting MUCH better and - this is the scary part - I very much doubt Maine will be down for very long. PC's failure to get anything done during a three year period where the league was arguably as week as it has ever been is very discouraging.