the plank

i guess i shouldn’t be surprised to hear the rampant talk of how the red sox’ lousy performance in the alcs is all terry francona’s fault. it’s not unique to red sox fans, although in keeping with how baseball fandom is here, its fair to say that it’s like everywhere else, just turned up to eleven. the mix of the radio on the drive in this morning leaned much more towards npr than ‘eei, suffice it to say. i had no patience for the people demanding francona’s and epstein’s heads on a platter for a variety of sins that are a mix of hindsight, unrealistic expectations, or just plain wrongheadedness. nick cafardo has a much more evenhanded take on it in today’s globe, which i’m more inclined to agree with.

to be honest, i find myself feeling more than a little protective towards tito; it seems like at the end of every season, someone in the paper ferrets out a whole pile of crises that he was dealing with that we never saw, and we all go, ‘damn, he’s a good dude and a fine manager’ sometime in january, only to forget it on a biweekly basis with the season’s ebb and flow. And then between his health problems and the rocking and pacing in the dugout, i half worry that he’s just going to keel over one day and it’s going to be all our fault. i don’t have a lot of worry that management has lost faith in him; they’re smarter than the conventional ‘wisdom’ most of the time.

j.d. drew notwithstanding. he’s been getting a few hits, but has put up shitty at-bats of late. i agree with the hordes—ellsbury should get a start. as for coco crisp, oft-criticized, it’s worth noting that he sees a ton of pitches (i was surprised to see him in an article about pitches-per-atbat the other day); he’s not youkilis, but he does a good job of fouling stuff off. and, unfortunately, hitting balls right at people. things need to turn around pretty quickly, though.

but i’m not so foolish as to blame anything but an ill-timed-and-synchronized run of poor performance in key spots. that’s playoff baseball.

oh, and i apparently owe garrett’s fiancee $10, because dougie let me down.