i won’t get into the whole backstory or the “why” of it, but i am a boston red sox fan. through and through. yes, the angels are my “local team”, and i live within a half hour of their stadium. nonetheless, as big a fan of the angels as my wife is, i am for the sox. and i am also a tremendous baseball geek. i will watch / listen to just about any game that is being played.
when i got the chance to get some tickets (thanks, jessica!) to one of the few games the sox were playing at the big A this season, i took it. i love going to sox games here and soaking in the opportunity to see all of the other sox fans in attendance (so you will see plenty of “atmosphere” photos here as well).
i will even give some blog space to some of the sox haters as well (on the right, below)….
starting pitcher for the sox for the night: clay buchholz. this kid threw a no-hitter in his 2nd ever major league start previously.
i used to love coming to the park when i was a kid, with my dad, in time for batting practice. i think i had forgotten how much i enjoy that still. how often do you get to watch some of your sports heroes do things like this?
and there goes clay, through the slice of sunlight on the field, to throw his warm-up pitches in the bullpen:
i like to think this is how this conversation went on the field:
“how many home runs you got in ya tonight?” “i feel like maybe two”
and it was true. this is where the home run derby and all star game were held a week or so ago, and papi (david ortiz, below) won the home run derby. he apparently was not done, as he hit two out during this game.
this was a big night for the angels. just the day before, they had made a fairly large trade, acquiring pitcher dan haren from the arizona diamondbacks. they ended up starting him on monday night, his very first day with his new team. here are his first moments on the mound of his new home field:
and some moments from his first inning of work, sitting down papi with a strike-out to end the inning:
that tiny slice of light spent a few minutes on the infield, creating quite an annoyance for jed lowrie during the second inning:
during the 5th inning, kevin youkilis shot a linedrive towards the middle of the infield. it struck the angels new million dollar invested pitcher in his arm. ouch!
and thus ended dan haren’s night and first start for the angels…
time for the 7th inning stretch… and it’s root root root for the red sox…
baseball players say “good game” ;)
coolest glasses on this fan. from what i saw, he wore them the entire game.
and here is papi rounding the bases after hitting his second home run to nudge the red sox into the lead. i edited this image in an old-fashioned way because i always think of papi as an old-time big bopper:
there are always plenty of fireworks in the stands during red sox/angels and yankees/angels games, it seems. i will not bore you with my take on that. but, something happened between an angel fan and this red sox fan below. she was 4 rows or so in front of him, so who knows what happened. but after they threw the angel fan out, they came down to collect her as well.
nope. not budging. you can’t make me!
she gave in fairly quickly after the above and started playing to the people all around who had been watching the events. it was pretty hilarious.
one of my favorite players, maybe of all-time, kevin youkilis. i zoomed in on this photo and he is almost or possibly looking right at the camera.
and for the ninth inning, it was papelbon time… and in most cases (and this was no exception) that means a win for the sox.
thanks for humoring the sports lover in me… that should be my one sports related post for the year. you can allow me that, right? :)
by Tim
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