Why the Boston Red Sox will win the World Series in 2011

Why the Boston Red Sox will win the World Series in 2011: Fan debate
By Elbert Blanchard, Yahoo! Contributor Network
Apr 29, 12:40 pm EDT

The Boston Red Sox lost quite a few games to start the season, but now after a few weeks have passed they have finally started to look like the championship team that everyone thought they would be before the season started. Over the last ten games the Red Sox have shown that they are deep in starting pitching, and have an offense that can hit any pitch right out of the park for a home run.

Sometimes when you add free agents to your team like Adrian Gonzalez(notes) and Carl Crawford(notes), it takes a little while for everyone to get use to playing with each other. The Red Sox have almost broken back to even in the standings, and are only a few games out of first. The offense has come alive, and has finally started to hit. Scoring chances have increased, and timely hitting has become normal for a team only weeks before left more men on base than any team that I have ever seen.

Josh Beckett(notes) has shown over his last two starts that he once again has the ability to be a staff ace. Putting together Beckett, Jon Lester(notes), and Clay Buchholz(notes), you have a 1, 2, 3, punch that should produce three sixteen winners on one team. Add in your number four and five starters John Lackey(notes) and Dice K, you get two additional pitchers who should both see double digits in wins.

While April has not been the month to declare anything in baseball, what has taken place with the Red Sox team over the last ten games has lead me to believe that the slump that everyone saw at the beginning of the season was simply an extended Spring training for the team.

The Red Sox are marching forward, and are not looking back. At home, and on the road, both teams and baseball fans alike are going to discover why this year's Boston Red Sox are the team to beat. While the season is a long one, the Red Sox have both the combination of great pitching and great hitting to lead them through the season, into the playoffs and then onto a World Series victory in 2011.

Go celtics!!

go bruins!! boston is turning back into a hockey town again!

Over the last ten games the Red Sox have shown that they are deep in starting pitching

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Lol. Overstatement of the year....

This is why we don't read YAHOO SPORTS

i need to change my avatar soon ....

5t the equal opportunity bumper

Aceking said:

i need to change my avatar soon ....

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Nah, its cute.

Aceking said:

i need to change my avatar soon ....

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here ya go....shrink it down and Enjoy

barman said:

here ya go....shrink it down and enjoy

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good one

http://bostonherald.com/news/regional/view/2011_1002die-hard_fan_at_a_loss_for___team_pride


Die-hard Red Sox fan at a loss for team ‘pride’
By Peter Gelzinis**| **Sunday, October 2, 2011**|**http://www.bostonherald.com**|**Local Coverage

Photo by Ted Fitzgerald
By his own calculations, Tom Cullity, a former math teacher, figures that out of the 81 years he’s been alive, the Boston Red Sox [team stats] have broken his heart 72 times.

Next to God, his late wife, his two sisters and their families, our boys of summer have been the undeserving recipients of this gentleman’s eternal devotion.

Last Wednesday night, as Tom put it, “The Red Sox put a dagger right through my heart.” Again.

You should understand that when Carl Crawford booted that last out Wednesday night, Tom Cullity was sitting in his wheelchair inside Baltimore’s rain-soaked Camden Yards.

Because Tom is in the fifth stage of kidney failure, he needed two dialysis treatments at Baltimore’s Mercy Hospital in order to see the Sox fold and break his heart for the 72nd time.

“And if he’s still here next year,” said Susan Jarvis, the niece who drove her uncle to Baltimore to see those last three games, “we’ll definitely be going back to Camden Yards.”

Why Camden Yards?

“Because the common man can no longer afford to go to Fenway Park [map],” Tom said yesterday, from the comfort of his South Boston living room, surrounded by the scrapbooks and mementos that document his love affair.

Sixty-five years ago, Tom and his sister, Marion, slept on Lansdowne Street so they could buy $1.50 bleacher seats to see the Sox lose the 1946 World Series to Enos Slaughter and the St. Louis Cardinals.

“That was the game where Johnny Pesky held the ball,” Tom said, still wincing. “Everybody in the whole park was screaming at him.”

The last 72 years of Red Sox history is etched into his brain, all the names, the plays, the batting averages. “On Sundays, after I finished serving Mass at St. Francis de Sales in Charlestown,” Tom recalled, “I’d walk from Sullivan Square to Fenway to save a dime in carfare.

“Sunday was always a double-header, and for 50 cents I could see Jimmy Fox, Bobby Doerr, Lefty Grove, Joe Cronin and Ted Williams.

“Cripes,” he sighed, “for the common man to take his son to a ball game today, it costs him a week’s pay.”

Tom Cullity understands the laws of big business. Though he can call back every piece of Red Sox history, good and bad, over the last seven decades, Tom is not trapped in the past.

“I know it’s become all about the money,” he said, “but I worry about what’s happened to the pride. You have players like Jacoby Ellsbury [stats] and Dustin Pedroia [stats], who play with everything they have, like all those players I used to watch. What I can’t understand is how you can be making all this money for playing a game and still be stuck in this . . . this malaise, almost as if you don’t care.”

On the coffee table in front of him, a tiny Fenway, surrounded by a miniature skyline and team pennants, revolved to the sounds of “Sweet Caroline.”

“Yes, I will be with this team come spring, if I’m here, God willing,” he said.

“Why?” he was asked.

“Because they’re the team I love,” Tom said, “and you never abandon those you love.”

Article URL: http://www.bostonherald.com/news/regional/view.bg?articleid=1370343