Monday, April 07, 2008

Managing Expectations...or "It's a Long Season"

Ugh. Y'know, I thought I had the perfect setup for a lovely weekend. The BoSox are playing in Toronto, an easy three hour drive from my digs in Rochester. Tickets are a mere $9 each...granted that's in the nosebleed section, but hey - for nosebleed section the seats were pretty good: almost in a straight line behind home plate. We could see all the infield action nicely. And the weather was beautiful for the drive up and back...I was vaguely surprised they didn't open the roof. Toss in about $30 for munchies and sodas, another $25 for parking, and perhaps $25 worth of gas, and we've got a $100 Saturday that was guaranteed to be a lot of fun.

I mean, c'mon...it's the Red Sox against the frickin' Blue Jays.

Errr....ummm....yeah. So much for that idea. Yeesh, I wasn't expecting Buchholz to throw a no-hitter, but to get through five without looking ridiculously shaky would've been a reasonable expectation. Not to mention the bullpen to, y'know, not suck the big one? Yeah, that'd be nice, too. A reliever that didn't pitch so bad they designated him for assignment right after the game? Is that too much to ask?

Plus was I alone in thinking Buchholz really needed to stop throwing to first in a vain attempt to pick off a runner and focus more on just striking out the guy in the batter's box? Apparently not, given the hordes of Jays fans around us that booed him long and loud about it. And while obviously I'm no baseball expert, I still think the Sox management are trying awfully hard to put a positive spin on this 10-2 disaster (itself part of an 0-3 weekend of ugliness).

Oh yes, for the record? I still think Yankees fans are nastiest, but really the Sox fans - obnoxious as they are - are no worse than the Jays fans. I suspect all baseball fans are more or less the same after seven innings of Budweiser, though.

On a related note, I've been to Montreal before, but never Toronto. It was exceedingly strange to be in a foreign country that seemed, for all intents and purposes, exactly like the United States. I mean, besides the speed limit signs being in km/H instead of MPH...and the appearance of different kinds of money here and there...you'd be hard-pressed to know you were in Canada just by driving along the highway. I guess you've got to get off the road and experience the local character more, but we wanted to get back before it got too late so we didn't stick around and had dinner on the road. Eh, perhaps later in the season when the Sox visit again.

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