YU.P.
"A fly ball hits the top of the left-center field fence and bounds into the grandstand: homerun." - Rules of Professional Baseball

Actually, it was a 400' single. But who cares? There's always the next AB. It's not like it's the end of the world.

Manny being Manny. How many times have we heard that one?

Seems like Beckett gets "behind" on purpose. Gets to 3-0, or 3-1 pretty early quite often. Isn't that against orthodoxy?

Chuck,
You got your wish. It's going back to Boston. Beckett was awesome.

This will be fun. I think that Cleveland still has an edge, but Boston now has a realistic chance. The pitchers for Boston in games 6 and 7 don't inspire the confidence that Beckett does.

It will be a good weekend.

I hate to say "I told you so". Actually, I don't hate to say it at all. :) Enjoy the flight to Boston.

What else were you going to say? :) I would have enjoyed telling you the same thing if tonight worked out the way I envisioned.

Best pitcher won. Everything went right for the sox and nothing went right for the tribe. Funny how that stuff seems to turn on a dime.

Oh well, here we come Chuck. See you Saturday.

So let me get this straight....

The Indians flew in from Boston (or somewhere else) the opposing starting pitcher's ex-girlfriend, to sing the national anthem?

Wow... that's got some taunting undercurrents, eh?

Um, no, it was a 390 foot <b>single</b>. :D Too bad that Boston didn't lose by a run; you could still say "Oh, that's just Manny being Manny".

You know what's funny? Your pitcher throwing a hissy-fit because Lofton was styling, while Manny is doing the same or worse in the same game.

Btw, that was great base running by Manny when he got tagged out at the plate, wasn't it? :D Probably didn't want to get his pants dirty.....

I didn't think Lofton was stylin'.
To me he truely believed that pitch was ball four and the strike call was a touch slow. Almost before the bat slowly hit the ground, he was picking it up.:)

Kind of a late strike call by Blue as well. I can totally see why the BR thought that it was a ball: both by his view of the pitch and the PU's mechanics.

Let's start a list of team mates & opponents who would have knocked down Manny with either a fist or a baseball if he had been playing prior to 1980

I'll start.... team mates Billy Martin, Pete Rose, opponents Don Drysdale, Bob Gibson

<iiiiiiii>

There's a story this morning in USA Today quoting Lofton as saying that he and Becket have been going at each other since way back in 2005 over Lofton's habit of flipping the bat when he's walked.

Lofton has more than a bit of "Manny"(tm) in him......

Goose Gossage comes to mind immediately.....

A much shorter list would be who <b>wouldn't</b> knock him down......

Baseball has less and less tolerance for the "old ways" of handling disputes. The umpires tolerate deliberate HBP less and less, and they're following instructions. The owners have too much money tied up in the marquee players -- who get hit by accident enough as it is -- and it always seems to be they who engage in "stylin'" and deserve to be thrown at.

Since the players can no longer take care of this misbehavior themselves, and since it's not against the rules, expect to see more and more of it. Won't be long before we see some classless schlunk "hit the ATM" after knocking one out (or some similar NFL shenanigans).

I thought Betancourt might plunk Ramirez in game 4 after that dumb way he savored his home run (team still down 4). But Betancourt was too classy: he just got Manny to fly out to end the inning. :p

Either that or he realized that if he plunked Manny, the batter would end up on 1B and Betancourt would be ejected, neither of which would help the team. :(