“There’s no do-or-die games in July,’’ cautioned CEO Larry Lucchino as he stood behind the batting cage at Angels Stadium.
“It’s a long season, we’re going to lose games,’’ said a calm Kevin Youkilis, the man who KO’d Angels starter Dan Haren with a liner off the right forearm in the fifth. “We’ve still got 63 games left. There’s a long way to go.’’
That didn’t stop one reporter from asking Martinez (he cracked an RBI single on the first pitch he’d seen in over four weeks) if it was time for the Sox to “put up or shut up.’’
Sitting a couple of stalls down from Victor, a playful Ortiz urged the reporter to “stop being an ass.’’
The Sox lineup certainly looked a lot better with V-Mart in the No. 6 spot.
“Hey, everybody said we wouldn’t score runs this year,’’ said Youkilis. “That was the big theme all winter. Well, we were first in runs for most of this season, we’ve just hit a little dry spell. They come in streaks. We just have to start beating the teams we’re supposed to beat.’’
Youk was in the cleanup spot against Haren. Ortiz was batting third. Big Papi blasted a pair home runs in the park where he blasted the competition in the Home Run Derby earlier this month. That’s not the end of the good news for the big slugger. I drove past his eatery on Route 9 last week and the parking lot was jammed.
“We’re serving good stuff there,’’ said Papi.
With Buchholz back and Victor back, we turn to the wounded. Dustin Pedroia tried to run on his broken foot yesterday afternoon and was disappointed he couldn’t get out of the blocks like Usain Bolt.
“I couldn’t really do much,’’ said Pedroia. “But I’m going to keep doing all this stuff so that when the bone is healed, I’m in there. I don’t want one day to go by that I’m not in there.’’
