It's time for Decision '07: Leading men or fall guys?

August 20, 2007|Dan Shaughnessy, Globe Columnist

It was pretty flat over at Fenway yesterday afternoon. The Red Sox and Angels seemed tired at the end of four games in three days. The locals trailed, 3-0, going into the bottom of the eighth and it felt like an appearance by Neil Diamond himself would not have brought any excitement to the proceedings.

In the end the Angels won, 3-1, and the Red Sox' first-place lead was cropped to four games. A few hours after Fenway cleared, while thousands of Boston fans rushed to Logan for a trip to Tropicana Field (Sox road-trippers have become the Parrotheads of sports), I bumped into a couple of guys who were arguing about the future of the hometown team over the final six weeks. It was a classic, Glass Half Full vs. Glass Half Empty debate. This is the way it went:

Empty Guy: Whoa. This is 1978 all over again. The Yankees were 14 1/2 games behind our guys May 29 and now it's down to four games and we still play them six more times. It's the Boston Massacre, the Curse of the Idiot, you name it. Something tells me Schill is going to regret saying, "We don't need him" when the Yanks brought Clemens back.

Full Guy: Calm down. The Yanks have exhausted themselves just getting back into the race and don't have the pitching they'll need to win in September and October. They're still spooked by what we did to them in 2004 and we've got Beckett, Schill, and Dice-K lined up to pitch against them next week in New York.

Empty Guy: Are you kidding me? Our guys aren't hitting and now we're heading on the road for 10 games. We can't even count on beating Tampa tonight. They've got Kazmir pitching and we've got this kid Cash trying to catch Wakefield's knuckleballs. I'm still having flashbacks of Josh Bard running to the backstop and now the ball's going to be bouncing all over that hardball aquarium in St. Petersburg.

Full Guy: Get back, big fella. Wake is on a roll and even if we have trouble tonight, everybody knows we love to play our Tampa cousins. We're 7-2 against those slugs this season and we play them nine more times. Plus, we've got the Orioles seven more times. That's 16 of our final 38 games against losers. No way we blow a four-game lead with that many bunnies on the schedule.

Empty Guy: Sorry, but I'm worried about the offense. We never come back in the late innings anymore and Manny and Papi only have 40 homers between them. David hit 54 all by himself last year. We're ninth in the league in homers. When was the last time we were that far down the ladder in power? Did you see that Wily Mo Peña hit a homer for the Nationals yesterday? Why can't we get power hitters like that?

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