Bitter and Nervous

I have spent a lot of time thinking about how to respond to last night's Game 6. I thought about taking the high road and congratulating the Red Sox for coming up clutch , but I decided against it. I've decided to be bitter.

The game was decided in the worst possible way - by the home plate umpire, who seemed bound and determined to do everything that he possibly could to make sure that this series goes to 7 games by squeezing Fausto Carmona at the plate as if he were a tube of toothpaste, and not returning the favor against Curt Schilling.

Dana DeMuth. Remember the name, Tribe fans, because he is the one who took the Indians out of this game. Once his pathetic skullduggery at the plate ensured that the inning kept going and going and going until the Red Sox scored, the game was pretty much over. Carmona not only threw a lot of pitches, but nobody in the park knew what the hell the strike zone was, By the time Carmona left in the third inning, he was pretty well toast. And Rafael Perez couldn't figure out DeMuth's cryptic strike zone either, and he got pummeled.

But it all comes down to the man behind the plate screwing the Indians. Royally. Relentlessly. Until they were hopelessly out of the game, at which point he started calling strikes for Aaron Laffey, probably because he was tired.

Of course, DeMuth was not alone. His counterpart in right field jobbed the Indians out of a home run in the first inning down the right field line.

Tom Hamilton , the Indians' radio play-by-play guy, who is normally a reliable, even-tempreed and even-handed game reporter, was completely mystified by the way Carmona was getting jobbed. If we had been playing a drinking game, and one was required to drink whenever Hamilton said "I don't know where that pitch was," one would have been totally blotto by the the third inning.

Yes, I know that Travis Hafner isn't hitting. For that matter the rest of the Indians' hitters pretty much picked a sucky time to slump together. But the Indians had little chance to recover from Dana DeMuth's handiwork, and if they had, there's no telling what DeMuth and this sad, sad umpring crew would have done to turn the game in Boston's favor again to ensure a seventh game.

Fox should be happy. ESPN should be happy because their darling Sawx have taken it to 7, so they can hammer us with Boston mystique and grit for another day. MLB is probably happy because now we have a game 7 and increased ratings and drama.

If I thought the Indians lost a fair game, it would be one thing. But right now, I feel like my team has been screwed by The Man. And it hurts like hell. And I'm pissed off that there is a Game 7 and nervous as hell, primarily because I am a Cleveland fan, and crushing defeat on the biggest stages (well, and the smallest one, too ) has been all I've ever known.

Seriously, if this is the best umpiring crew that Major League Baseball can run out there, we might as well put electronic sensors on the foul lines, and hook up voice recognition software to the Questec and fire every damned umpire. If these are the best, the rest must be awful beyond imagining.