No Joy in Leadville

Boston Spanks Colorado in the Rockies’ First World Series Game

By Jenny Shank, 10-24-07

Aw shucks.  As fervently as I have rooted for my cousin, Tommy Hottovy, a left-handed pitcher for the Portland Sea Dogs, to be called up by the Red Sox, the fact that he hasn’t yet gotten the nod left me free to loathe the Sox Wednesday as they pounded the tar out of my Rockies in game one of the World Series, winning 13 to 1.

The game was a mess from the beginning, when Josh Beckett struck out the first three Rockies and then Dustin Pedroia, the lead-off batter for the Red Sox smashed Jeff Francis’ second pitch over the Green Monster. 

Francis looked shaky throughout the four innings he pitched, letting early batters on base, failing to finish off batters that he’d gotten two strikes on, and ultimately giving up six runs before he was yanked in the fifth.  David Ortiz, stout as a bull, seemed to head to the plate again every other batter and reach every time despite being gimpy in one knee.  Behind him came Manny Ramirez again and again, looking like a swamp creature, his batting helmet covered with muck, his dreds writhing like tentacles down his back as he lapped the bases repeatedly.

Sox starter Josh Beckett was simply sweet, striking out one Rockies batter after another for a total of nine in seven innings.  There was something vulnerable looking about the Rockies, who seemed hopelessly young in their sleeveless jerseys and two-toned black and purple hats, playing against a team that had been around for over a hundred years, exuding all the confidence that comes from a wearing classic uniform that was created before all the basic colors had been claimed and the designers had to turn to whimsy.

Wary about the salt that the television broadcast was bound to pour in my wounds, I kept waiting for a certain grinning mug to appear in the Boston crowd, and Fox indeed offered its obligatory Ben Affleck shot in the middle of the fifth.  The movie star’s appearance seems to have hexed the Rockies further, because the bottom of the fifth could have been scripted by Stephen King. 

When the 21-year-old Venezuelan Franklin Morales came in to pitch that inning for the Rockies, he looked sharp and alert.  For about two pitches.  Then the onslaught began, walks and balks and hits to every corner of the stadium.  Speier replaced Morales, and Herges replaced Speier.  At the end of it, the fifth lasted for an excruciating 34 minutes, the Red Sox had scored seven runs off six hits and the score stood 13 to 1.

Various other things happened after that terrible fifth.  But the boredom had set in: the announcers jawed about a promotion Taco Bell was running, offering a free taco to everyone in America if a runner should steal a base, and the microphones caught a couple of Red Sox in the dugout speculating about whether the free taco offer stood for only the night of the game in which the stolen base occurred.

In the seventh, Ashanti was introduced as a “singer, songwriter, author, and actress,” to sing “God Bless America.” I must have missed her book.  Her eyelashes curled outward and upward for inches, like those of a Dr. Seuss creature.  Yes, by this point I’d grown bitter, wanting to hate even the perfectly decent singer that Boston had selected.

The game spooled out, but not soon enough for me, with the Red Sox trouncing the Rockies, 13-1.  I haven’t lost hope.  I’m keeping my fingers crossed that the Rockies will shake off the funk that gripped them in game one and demonstrate how they got to the World Series in their play tomorrow. 

But tonight I fear a nightmare involving Manny Ramirez and Ben Affleck cackling over a Taco Bell meal is inevitable.

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