Blue Jays 1, Red Sox 0 (F/11): You Love Brett Lawrie. You Love Him.

Hey awesome it's Chris Woodward over there on the left!

It's only right that Geddy Lee was in his customary seat behind home plate on a day when Brett Lawrie sent everyone home happy with a walk-off home run in the eleventh, because he is awesome and so was this. And it is only fitting that Geddy Lee was not at all in his customary seat behind home plate, but in fact nowhere to be seen when that mighty wallop was indeed walloped, because this game took forever: the Red Sox insistence on dragging out every last god damned pitch has gotten to the point that Geddy can't take it anymore. That's how dire this situation has become: the way the Red Sox play baseball is too long and drawn-out for a guy who plays in Rush. 


It was a relief, of a kind, when Josh Beckett left the game early with an apparent leg strain or something. Sure there was going to be that massive delay that happens when a pitcher comes in from the bullpen completely cold to replace an injured starter and is given as long as he needs to warm up, but at least then things would start humming along after that, right? Well, they did, sort of, until Papelbon. Until Papelbon. For a minute there, and by a minute I actually mean about half an inning, it seemed like Blue Jays radio ace Alan Ashby was about to join Geddy, wherever he was. Ashby was so sick of Papelbon's shenanigans, you have no idea. Utterly disgusted, and completely unwilling to hide it in any way. Misses outside and I can't effing believe we're going to have to wait another eighty seconds before he throws again. (That is not a direct quotation or in fact a quotation of any kind.) The inning was only rescued for me by my wife's observation, "Papelbon jeans; boots with the fur." 


Anyway, Jerry Howarth noted about an inning before it happened that, with everything else that has gone Brett Lawrie's way in his brief time with the club, it's almost surprising that he had yet to get a walk-off hit of some kind. And then there we were, bottom of the eleventh, watching the ball sail out to centre, just below where there once was a restaurant called Windows but now there are only windows, an ideal finish to a nail-biter that saw five innings of shutout relief after the young arm of Henderson Alvarez went a scoreless six. If only Geddy had stuck it out . . . 


KS 

Yankees 6, Blue Jays 2: Brett Cecil Down, Chris Woodward Up!

Sweet circle change, bro.

After last night's 6-2 comedown against the Yankees, I was all set to start this post by being all, "I don't want to be an alarmist or anything but is it too soon to be really worried about Brett Cecil?" And then I find out that he'd actually been sent to the minors. This is being described as a surprise move, and you can forilla gorilla number me among the surprisèd. Cecil had a really solid 2010, and I figured he was our number three guy for the foreseeable future. Maybe he will be once he gets straightened out, but for now, this is just weird. That makes Cecil and Litsch demoted in the last week, and yet somehow Jo-Jo Reyes remains. At a certain point you just have to embrace the mystery, and I know it's only three weeks into the season, but I am just going to ahead and embrace it now (preemptively, really, before it deepens further).


No less mysterious is the call-up of Chris Woodward, who I recalled with probably disproportionate fondness here. As I said there, I have watched a lot of shitty baseball in my time, and Chris Woodward was certainly the starting shortstop for a good deal of it, but Chris Woodward is a player with whom my problem never was. I welcome his return to the fold, even if I do not entirely understand it.


KS

You know who my problem was never with? Chris Woodward.

Easily the best Chris Woodward action shot available on the web.  Easily..

I've watched a lot of shitty baseball in my day, and Chris Woodward was the starting shortstop for a good part of it.  But you know what, I never had a problem with Chris Woodward.  He wasn't, like, astounding in the field, but he was slick enough that you never worried.  Never really hit for much average or showed any real power except for the night he hit three home runs against Seattle.  Strangely, I wasn't there that night.  It was only the third game I'd missed in 2002, and I was sorry I missed it, not just because of Woodward's homers but the four others that night, and Jose Cruz Jr. throwing out two base-runners, including Ichiro at the plate (imagine that!).  But my records indicate that my softball team won by twenty-seven runs that night, so I probably made the right call. My records also indicate that I write a lot of things down and never throw anything away.  


In his post-Blue Jay era, Woodward has bounced around, among Baseball Feelings teams and others: the Mets, Braves, Yankees, Phillies, Brewers, Mariners, Red Sox, and the Mariners again.  He's spent good chunks of time in the high minors, too: add up his last five years, and you've got just about one full season worth of big league appearances.  But he was a 54th round draft pick in 1994 and was still working his way into major league lineups in 2010.  So good for him.  Long may he run.  My problem was never with Chris Woodward.  


KS