Congratulations, Tim Wakefield

I've been thinking for most of the day about what to write about Tim Wakefield's All-Star selection, trying to avoid a sappy listing of plaudits while still expressing my admiration for the man and his pitching. Eventually, I realized his selection came down to two very simple ideas.

First, the selection has an aura of added respectability, like the selection is one of those lifetime achievement awards that the Academy hands out at Oscar time, adding yet more luster to the career of the athlete who's carried the Pro torch on a marathon pace in Boston. Red Sox fans love Wakefield because he represents all that we think modern athletes don't have: the virtues of loyalty, team spirit, and lack of ego. He's a folk hero in Boston sports and we love to see our folk heroes recognized by the institutions that helped create them.

Second and more importantly, there is a very "well, duh" feeling behind the choice. To be sure, Wakefield is not having the kind of career year he's been fortunate enough to have twice in his life - the kind that, were he able to reproduce with year-over-year consistency, would surely grant him a spot in the Hall - but as he's aged, he's become the anchor of the Boston pitching staff, the guy who fans can rely on to eat up innings, make thirty starts or so a year, and not land on the DL. His flashes of brilliance are the more precious for their unpredictability, making the guy look like a magician when the volatile mixture of elements that can make a knuckleball dance act in harmony. If Pedro in his prime was great to watch because he looked like a god come to Earth, Wakefield in his element is great to watch because he looks like an everyday working guy who happened to have caught a bolt of lightning for the day. Red Sox fans have known this idea for years. We're just glad the rest of the country will finally get a chance to see him in the same light.

Game 20: Soup's On!

Final Score: Boston Red Sox 6, Baltimore Orioles 1

[Note to anyone out there in RSS land: yes, you just saw a whole bunch of posts pop up from the past two years at the top of your reader; I went back and retagged anything mentioning Daniel Cabrera. My apologies to Dan and all of you other wonderful subscribers.]

Did anyone else think that game was one of the weirdest pitching duels they've ever seen? On one side, we had Curt Schilling: coming off a weak outing against New York, toting a lifetime ERA over 5 at Camden Yards (although one ESPN tells me has improved in the past few years), hoping to pull the Sox out of a two game slide and needing to uphold the legacy of Baltimore butt beatings Boston has built (how do ya like that alliteration) over the past couple of years. On the other side, the Storefront Indian, out to prove that the modicum of control he's developed over his first two starts is a result of Leo Mazzone tutoring and not some cosmic fluke.

Cabrera actually pitched well for the first five innings, limiting the Sox to a smattering of hits, a walk or two and a surprise home run by Alex Cora, who's quickly establishing himself as this year's successor to the crown of The Pro (he's even got a game winning hit off of Rivera. You tell me that's not significant.) He even had some nasty, nasty movement on his two-seam fastball and kept up his end of the dramatic near-miss match up playing out on the mound by stranding runners with just enough tension to keep things interesting.

Then came the sixth inning meltdown, where Cabrera's rapidly mounting pitch count started to catch up to him and his control completely disappeared. By the seventh inning it was like seeing the Cabrera we all know and love all over again.

The rest of the game was almost textbook in its simplicity: the Sox took the Orioles bullpen for a ride on the offense train, jumping all over the three relievers and pushing the score far out of reach, Schilling, Okajima and Donnelly did their part and strains of "Dirty Water" were soon floating through the minds of Sox fans everywhere. It seems like Robin was right: after a tough case of bird flu, the best cure is to make some oriole soup.