Time to Go Home

This picture pretty much illustrates how things went for the Indians last night. As you can clearly see, Lofton's hand is on the bag while Dustin Pedroia, with the ball, is actually tagging second base. His eventual tag of Lofton was high, up on Lofton's shoulder, but that didn't stop umpire Brian Gorman, who is clearly in position to make the call, from calling Lofton out.

This was a close series, and in the last three games with their backs to the wall, the Red Sox made more breaks for themselves, got all the close calls and non calls, and took advantage of them. When the Red Sox made mistakes, the Indians failed to capitalize. The Red Sox outpitched the Indians, the Red Sox outhit the Indians, the Red Sox outfielded the Indians, and Major League Baseball out-umpired the Indians.

So, just about everybody's happy. The Magical Mystery Tour of Red Sox Nation keeps chugging along, Fox is going to get high ratings and make a ton of money with a major eastern market squad in the World Series, the Eastern SPorts Network can keep shoving Red Sox Nation down our throats to the exclusion of everything else and Bud Selig and all his Major League Baseball cronies can pretend that everything is hunky dory with the game. If MLB has to run over the Cleveland Indians and their fans to make it all work out for their darlings, well, that's just collaterel damage.

When money is no object, you can buy a team like the Red Sox. They have the best big-game pitcher in the game (Beckett) because they could afford him and Florida could not. They have a future Hall of Famer, and one of the best hitters in major league baseball (Ramirez) because they could afford him and Cleveland could not. They have a core of battle tested players who came up big in the clutch where Cleveland's young squad did not.

The Red Sox proved that they are a better, more opportunistic, more composed team than the Indians, who spent the season being better, more opportunistic, and more composed than every other team they played. I wish I could believe that they beat the Indians fair and square, but I can't even believe that right now given the sorry-ass umpiring in this series. Maybe, after the pain wears off and I am able to be rational again, I'll put the conspiracy theories aside. But that doesn't mean that I have to like them or their fans.

Manny Ramirez is a showboating egomaniac, and has always been one, even when he played for the Indians. Red Sox Nation, now that they finally won their World Series and broke the curse of Babe Ruth, is full of bandwagon fans and now carries the same attitude of entitlement that makes Yankees fans unbearable. Dustin Pedroia (or as RSN likes to call him PedROYa) is a cocky punk. Matsuzaka? $103 million. What else is there to say?

Oh yeah, there is one more thing to say: Go Rockies!