Randy Moss?  Wow.  It might be time for me to jump back on the Patriots bandwagon again. 

Anyway, on to the national pastime.

Yesterday, I tried to be clever, and posted that little photoshopped milk carton, featuring Manny and his trademark blissfully ignorant shrug. 

Well, Manny sent me a nice little “F.U. for doubting me, you impatient idiot” and went 2 for 4 with a HR today.  The opposite field shot came in the 8th inning off of Yankee reliever Sean Henn, and was the third Red Sox bomb of the day.  David Ortiz and Alex Cora also went yard (Cora actually missed a 2nd HR by an inch or two, settling instead for a triple off the wall).

The Sox handed sinkerballer Chien-Ming Wang his second straight loss, and took the rubber match of the series, marking the 5th win in the last 6 games against New York.  His counterpart, Julian Tavarez, pitched surprisingly well in 5 innings, yielding only 3 hits and 3 runs (all of which came on a HR from Doug Mientkiewicz, of all people).  Other than the third inning, Tavarez had no trouble with the powerful New York lineup, and induced plenty of ground balls for the Sox infield to handle.  Perhaps Jon Lester’s welcome wagon isn’t as close to Fenway as we might think?

Jonathan Papelbon worked the final inning for his 8th save of the season, but the story of the bullpen (and perhaps the story of the 2007 thus far) is our left-handed reliever, Hideki Okajima. 

Hideki’s first month in the major leagues was a phenominal one:  12.2 innings, 17 Ks, 5 hits, 1 run, 0.71 ERA.  Of course, 12+ innings is what you might consider “a small sample”, but this guy has not had any trouble in 12 appearances since than first HR off the bat of Royals catcher John Buck on opening day. 

I’ll be touching on Okajima’s auspicious start, along with the rest of the team’s performance in the first month of the season, in an off-day feature for Tuesday morning. 

One off topic thought: the death of former Sox pitcher Josh Hancock hits a little close to home, as he was born exactly 4 days before I was.  I remember when the Sox drafted him, and it wasn’t long ago when he was considered one of the team’s best pitching prospects.  R.I.P, buddy.