Brian MacPherson Email
0928 Marco Scutaro.JPGBALTIMORE -- Had Camden Yards been packed full with orange-clad Baltimore fans, Marco Scutaro might never have thought about slowing down, let alone coming to a complete stop.
Had so many Red Sox fans not flocked to Camden Yards for what should have been a victory lap rather than a fight to the end, he'd have been able to assume that cheers meant only good news for the Orioles and bad news for the visiting Red Sox -- and he'd have been correct in doing so.
But as Nolan Reimold dove full-extension to try to catch a slicing line drive off the bat of Carl Crawford in the eighth inning Wednesday, Scutaro lost sight of the ball for a moment.
He heard cheers. He thought the cheers meant Reimold had caught the ball. He came to a complete stop halfway between second base and third base.
"I heard the screaming, but I don't know if it was their crowd or our crowd, so I don't know if he made the play or not," he said. "I just got a bad read. I should have just kept going."
By the time Scutaro realized the ball instead had rolled to the wall, all of his momentum was gone.
Third-base coach Tim Bogar nonetheless waved Scutaro fervently toward the plate. The relay throw from Adam Jones to J.J. Hardy to Matt Wieters needed a few extra hops to get to the plate, but it still beat Scutaro by enough for Wieters to slap the tag on the sliding shortstop.
As it turned out, the run Scutaro failed to score in the eighth inning could have saved the Red Sox' season.
"It seems like, the whole September, nothing works out for us," Scutaro said. "Everything went different ways and everything was against us, pretty much. I guess it was our destiny to be out of the playoffs. Nothing worked out. We didn't play good enough. What can I say? That's baseball."
0928 Marco Scutaro.JPGBALTIMORE -- Had Camden Yards been packed full with orange-clad Baltimore fans, Marco Scutaro might never have thought about slowing down, let alone coming to a complete stop.
Had so many Red Sox fans not flocked to Camden Yards for what should have been a victory lap rather than a fight to the end, he'd have been able to assume that cheers meant only good news for the Orioles and bad news for the visiting Red Sox -- and he'd have been correct in doing so.
But as Nolan Reimold dove full-extension to try to catch a slicing line drive off the bat of Carl Crawford in the eighth inning Wednesday, Scutaro lost sight of the ball for a moment.
He heard cheers. He thought the cheers meant Reimold had caught the ball. He came to a complete stop halfway between second base and third base.
"I heard the screaming, but I don't know if it was their crowd or our crowd, so I don't know if he made the play or not," he said. "I just got a bad read. I should have just kept going."
By the time Scutaro realized the ball instead had rolled to the wall, all of his momentum was gone.
Third-base coach Tim Bogar nonetheless waved Scutaro fervently toward the plate. The relay throw from Adam Jones to J.J. Hardy to Matt Wieters needed a few extra hops to get to the plate, but it still beat Scutaro by enough for Wieters to slap the tag on the sliding shortstop.
As it turned out, the run Scutaro failed to score in the eighth inning could have saved the Red Sox' season.
"It seems like, the whole September, nothing works out for us," Scutaro said. "Everything went different ways and everything was against us, pretty much. I guess it was our destiny to be out of the playoffs. Nothing worked out. We didn't play good enough. What can I say? That's baseball."
