The Year after the Year after the Year after Next Year

Boston Red Sox 2007

Copyright © 2007 Timothy Horrigan

Back before the 2005 season, I put up a page about the then World Champion Red Sox. I revised it a few times over the course of the season. It's still on my site, if you really care:

• http://www.TimothyHorrigan.com/redsox2005.html

My 2005 Red Sox page didn't get a whole of hits, but I went ahead and put up a 2006 page:

• http://www.TimothyHorrigan.com/redsox2006.html

And now I am putting up a 2007 Red Sox page... If nothing else, the eBay auctions at the bottom of the page are worth checking out.

 The Sox made it to the World Series for the second time in 4 years. Once again, they had to battle back from 1-3 deficit in the League Championship series. This time, however, they will not be an underdog: their World Series opponent is the lowly Colorado Rockies, who needed to win a 163^rd game by literally a millimetre just to be in the playoffs at all.

Post-Season Sox Box Scores:

• Division Series:

  1. Boston Red Sox 4, Pasadena Angels of Anaheim 0 (October 3, 2007 @ Fenway Park)

  2. Boston Red Sox 6, West Hollywood Angels of Anaheim 3 (October 5, 2007 @ Fenway Park): Manny Ramirez was the hero on Friday night: he ended the game a few minutes before 1 a.m with an amazing home run in the bottom of the 9th which looked like something out of a Home Run Derby. He hit it not just over the MassPike, but also over Route 128. (I am exaggerating, of course— but only a little.)

  3. Boston Red Sox 9, Laguna Beach Angels of Anaheim 1 (October 3, 2007 @ The Big A)

• American League Championship Series:

  1. Boston Red Sox 10, Cleveland Indians 3 (October 12, 2007 @ Fenway Park)

  2. Cleveland Indians 13, Boston Red Sox 6 (October 13-14, 2007 @ Fenway Park) I stayed up till the disastrous 11^th inning, which ran almost till 2 a.m. Luckily, I just had the TV on with the volume pretty far down, because one of my Second Life avatars was hosting a party at Gypsy's Midnight Club. And, at least the party was fun.

  3. Cleveland Indians 4, Boston Red Sox 2 (October 15, 2007 @ Jacobs Field)

  4. Cleveland Indians 7, Boston Red Sox 3 (October 16, 2007 @ Jacobs Field) Boston's big guns— Kevin "The Uke" Youkilis, Big Papi & Manny — fired off three huge blasts in the top of the sixth. The only problem was, the Sox were already down 7-0, and those three solo home runs were the only positive things the Sox did all night.

  5. Boston Red Sox 7, Cleveland Indians 1 (October 18, 2007 @ Jacobs Field) Manny drove in the winning run on a very Manny-like play. He hit what seemed to be a certain home run and went into his home run trot. However, the ball came down a little faster than expected and it hit the rightfield fence and bounced back into an outfielder's glove— and Manny ended up hitting a 375-foot single. He almost got thrown out at second. David Ortiz, not known as a speedy runner, scored easily from first on the play.

  6. Boston Red Sox 12, Cleveland Indians 2 (October 20, 2007 @ Fenway Park)

  7. Boston Red Sox 11, Cleveland Indians 2 (October 21, 2007 @ Fenway Park) This game was much closer than the score indicates: it was a tight 3-2 contest until the Sox exploded for 8 runs in the 7^th and 8^th innings.

• World Series:

1. Boston Red Sox 13, Colorado Rockies 1 (October 24, 2007 @ Fenway Park) Josh Beckett struck out the side in the top of the first, Dustin Pedroia hit a leadoff home run in the top of the first— and it just got better from there for the Sox.

2. Boston Red Sox 2, Colorado Rockies 1 (October 25, 2007 @ Fenway Park) This may very well be the last game of Curt Schilling's Hall of Fame career— and this win would certainly be a high note to go out on. The Rockies' Matt Holliday went 4 for 4 against the otherwise untouchable Red Sox pitchers— and yet he ended being the goat by getting picked off on a very bad baserunning play which killed off the 8th inning.

3. Boston Red Sox 10, Colorado Rockies 5 (October 27 @ Coors Field) Dice-K won this game with his bat as well as his arm: he drove two runs with a timely single.

4. Boston Red Sox 4,Colorado Rockies 3 (October 28 @ Coors Field) THE SOX WIN! This time Red Sox Nation only waited 3 years, not 86. Jon Lester, whose cancer diagnosis was the low point of the 2006 season, was the winning pitcher in the final game of the glorious 2007 season, contributing 5-plus scoreless innings.

 March 31, 2007: Traditionally, the Red Sox are supposed to fall apart in October.  In 2006, the Sox fell apart in August instead.  

Things looked very promising indeed until a five-game series with the Yankees in mid-August.  All summer, the Sox and the Yankees had been a game or two apart, trading first and second place in the East back and forth.  But then, when the much-anticipated August showdown finally happened, the Yankees won all five games in a row. After that point, the year turned into an almost unmitigated disaster.

The one saving grace was that the team's leader, the great slugger David Ortiz, broke the team record by hitting 54 home runs. He should have hit even more; he missed several games while being treated for a mysterious heart condition.  He was even rumored to be considering retirement, at the age of 30. His health problems seemed almost minimal compared to those of pitcher Jon Lester: Lester was diagnosed with cancer of the lymph nodes (more specifically, anablastic large cell lymphoma.)

The offseason was a great improvement over the preceding season. General Manager Theo Epstein lured one of the best pitchers on the planet, quite possibly the best of all, Japanese superstar Daisuke Matsuzaka, across the Pacific Ocean. He also signed J.D. Drew from the Los Angeles Dodgers, which means (unless Manny Ramirez finally gets traded), the Sox will open the 2007 season with three 100-rbi men in the middle of their lineup. (In 2006, Ortiz drove in 137 rbi's, Ramirez 102, and Drew 100.) Spring training went even better: the "Dice Man" has lived up to his hype, and Ortiz, Lester, and the other Sox have come back from their various ailments. So, hopes are high for the 2007 Red Sox, (as for each of the 29 other teams.) The regular season kicks off on the day after April Fools Day.

Also, the Sox now have a sister team. Fenway Sports Group (a holding company which owns the Sox, Fenway Park, and the NESN cable sports station) has acquired a 50% share of Nascar's Roush Racing— which is now known as Roush Fenway Racing.

 July 11, 2007: The first half of the 2007 season went great for the Red Sox. They slowed down a little bit in June and July, but they still had the best record in baseball and were 10 games ahead of the Yankees by the All-Star Game break. The early spring schedule was front loaded with Yankees-Red Sox contests: in April, the Sox won five of six games against the Yankees, including a wild April 21, 2007 game where they tied a record by hitting four consecutive home runs.

The Sox sent six players to the midsummer classic including an almost unhittable Japanese pitcher— not Daisuke Matsuzaka, but rather the "other" Japanese pitcher, left-handed reliever Hideki Okajima. The winning pitcher in the All-Star game was the Sox's Josh Beckett.

 September 2, 2007: The summer was an up-and-down time for the Red Sox. However, through it all, they stayed in first place, out of reach of the Yankees. The last week or so of the summer epitomized the rollercoaster nature of the season. The Red Sox played a four game series with the Other Sox in Chicago, and scored 10 or more runs in all four games. The composite score for the four games was Red Sox 46, White Sox 7. The the Red Sox came home and dropped three heartbreakers in a row to the Yankees. The Yanks' Roger Clemens and Chien-Ming Wang both took nohitters deep into their starts. Then after dropping another heartbreaker to the last place Orioles, the Sox broke their l4-game losing streak when rookie Clay Buchholz pitched a nohitter in his second career start.

• September 1, 2007: Boston 10-14-0, Baltimore 0-0-0

I always thought of the Sox as a team which has had relatively few nohitters. Perhaps this was because for decades (September 16, 1965 through April 4, 2001) the most recent Sox nohitter was by the otherwise forgettable journeyman Dave Morehead. Or perhaps this was because Pedro Martinez, Roger Clemens and Curt Schilling have all recently passed through Boston on their way to Cooperstown without ever throwing a nohitter. However, the Sox are tied for the American League record with 17, and really they should be credited with 18. (In 1992, Matt Young held the Indians hitless while pitching a complete game. However, because he lost a 9-inning game on the road, he only got to pitch 8 innings and hence he wasn't officially credited with a nohitter.)

 October 3, 2007: The Sox ended up in first place in the American League East, 2 games ahead of the Yankees. The Yankees did win the Wild Card slot, and if all goes according to plan, the rivals will meet again in the 2007 American league Championship series. But first, the Sox must get by the San Bernardino Angels of Anaheim. The final standings (as of Monday, October 1 were as follows:

The Sox's Josh Beckett ended up being the major league leader in wins, with 20. He got the Sox's postseason off to a great start on my birthday, October 3rd, with yet another win: a nifty 4-0 blanking of the Garden Grove Angels of Anaheim.

Some Red Sox links:

• Official Red Sox web site: http://redsox.mlb.com  

• Boston.com's Red Sox page: http://www.boston.com/sports/baseball/redsox  

• Baseball-Reference.com Red Sox page: http://www.baseball-reference.com/teams/BOS

• CBS Sportsline Red Sox Page: http://cbs.sportsline.com/mlb/teams/page/BOS

Web Directories about the Boston Red Sox:

• Boston Red Sox — Open Directory

• Boston Red Sox — Yahoo

• Boston Red Sox — Google

40-Man Roster (as of September 2, 2007)