Angels and Kobe

Angels 9, Boston 2

So the Angels swept the Red Sox. Again. But this time, they did it in Fenway behind another strong outing from Hokie Joe Saunders. Despite accumulating only 2 strikeouts through 6 innings of work, he gave up only 2 runs, both on a Crisp homer in the fifth that brought the Sox within one.

Josh Beckett still needs to shave and, for some reason, has forgotten how to pitch to the Angels. Terry Francona is also mortified at the concept of bullpen use, so he's been leaving in failing starters far too long. Thus, the Angels had a 5 run sixth inning, during which Boston committed 3 errors (4 total in the game). Interestingly, those errors lead to only 1 unearned run, with the other 4 runs in the inning all being charged to Beckett. His line was a weird 5.1 IP, 11 hits, 7 ER, and 8 K's. That's usually the linescore of a pitcher who's all over the place, but most of his pitches weren't particularly bad. He got hosed by little league Fenway Park when Garret wrapped a 280 foot line drive homer around the pole in right. Some folks get offended when I call Fenway "little league," but it is.

GA finished 4-5 with 4 RBI. Interesting side note: His first two AB's, he saw a combined two pitches, got two hits, and 2 RBI's.

Mark "Not a Ranger Anymore" Teixeira had a tough day at the plate, going 0-4 with a walk. He struck out twice, but reached twice, thanks to the walk and an error on Kevin "Overrated Defensively" Youkilis in the fifth. I still Youk would be defensively better without the dumb beard.

Torii slammed a pitch into the Monster seats in the ninth. He's been on fire lately.

Despite all this, I won't be happy until the Halos beat the Red Sox in October. They went 8-1 in the regular season this year and got their first sweep at Fenway since 2001.


USA 114, Turkey 82

I actually woke up at 8 AM to watch Kobe, LeBron, and the rest of the Americans take on a talented (but not Olympic-quality) Turkey team. I've been getting chills reading about and watching this team, so I'll probably be dedicating what time I can to watching them.

The first quarter was a little rough for the US. They weren't playing particularly good perimeter defense and committed a couple dumb turnovers on the offensive side. Coach K had them refocused at the start of the second, though, and they allowed only 10 Turkey field goals over the next two quarters.

At this point, the US was running all over Turkey, and had a couple pretty spectacular plays. The best was probably a Kobe bounce pass to Melo that turned into a gorgeous dunk. they're having fun out there, and it's fun to see. It's also nice to see them refocus on defense when they're obviously not acting cohesively.

This is a very good team with a very good coach.