Sarah and I will be live-blogging today’s Sox-Phils tilt. Game time is 1:35 p.m. EST. It’s Beckett vs. Happ, and somehow, ESPN’s Accuscore projection says the Phils are favored. I guess you can’t argue with science.
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Hi there, team. Sarah here. Coley and I had intended to essentially g-chat and just post updates from our sure-to-be-witty, trash-talking chat, but we forgot about the MLB.tv delay. So, we’re taking it inning by inning. Should be interesting.

Top First – Sarah:
Sarah: UGH LUGO LEADING OFF
Coley: Lugo had four hits yesterday
Sarah: I know there’s a downside there somewhere – we just don’t know what it is yet
Coley: If the Phils win this game it’s going to be a miracle. Beckett is on a roll right now, and JA Happ, like Bastardo, is due to get figured out.
Sarah: Lugo strikes out, then spends 5 min talking to umpire. Typical
Coley: The game has started already? Shit. I am on a delay – Happ just delivered the first pitch
me: Well, this should make it interesting. You’re about to see something exciting involving jacoby ellsbury!
(Jacoby bunts his way on to first, then acrobatically leaps out of the way of Ryan Howard to avoid a tangle.)
(A few minutes pass)
(Jacoby steals second, Howard’s throw gets past Jimmy Rollins, Jacoby to third.)
Sarah: hahahahahahhahaha. Wait til you see what’s about to happen!
Coley: I hate this stupid delay.
(But, of course, it all comes to nothing as Jacoby is stranded on third, and Bay on first, when Mike Lowell flies out. Oh well.)
Coley: jayson werth’s sunglasses are terrible. baseball eyewear in general is bad
Sarah: new category? Unfortunate Baseball Eyewear?

Bot First – Sarah:
I miss the first two outs while updating this post. Also, I’m currently living with my parents (ONLY BRIEFLY! I AM NOT A BLOGGER WHO LIVES IN HER PARENTS’ BASEMENT! SHUT UP, MURRAY. Of course I wouldn’t live in the stupid basement. I live in my old bedroom.) which means that they keep interrupting me as I attempt to liveblog. Suddenly out of nowhere I watch as Beckett fields a slow roller by firing an apparent 96-mph fastball at Kevin Youkilis, who has to do some sort of aerial somersault to stop it from going into the outfield. Now there are runners at the corners I have no idea what is going on. This liveblog is going to suck.
(Phillies grab a run. Somehow.)
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I’m watching the game—it’s just the bottom of the 4th now—and the Red Sox have coughed up yet another early lead to the Rays. Evan Longoria only hits home runs. So, too, B.J. Upton. Scott Kazmir has suddenly remembered how to pitch. Meanwhile, David Ortiz struck out on three pitches earlier and can’t hit the side of a barn. I think I heard some Fenway Faithful actually just boo him.

It’s pretty depressing. But here’s one thought: Daisuke Matsuzaka should win the Gold Glove. Seriously. We all know the Gold Glove for a pitcher is sort of a joke award, but he’s had two really spectacular (for a pitcher) plays tonight, and it’s not even that unusual—Dice-K always fields his position well.

Anyway, if the Red Sox can somehow pull this one out, I’ll be excited for them to head back to the Trop–where at least they played reasonably well in the first two games.

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So here we are people, live-blogging this one-game playoff to set the mood for the eventual playoffs. To quickly recap the steps we had to take to get here:

* White Sox were up 2 1/2 games last Wednesday, before the start of the Twins-Sox series.

* Twins sweep, winning three games straight, to pull ahead half a game.

* Last weekend of the season, both Sox and Twins lose two outta three against the Indians and Royals, respectively, maintaining the status quo.

* As a result, the White Sox played a make-up game against the Tigers yesterday. Because the Pale Hose won, they evened up with the Twins at 88-74, hence tonight.

Live blog after the break.

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7:10 pm Josh Beckett takes the hill and promptly retires the first three Rays’ batters without much effort. His last outing was great (7 K’s, no walks, no runs in five innings in his first start since missing time with tingling/numbness in his fingers), but he hasn’t been very Beckettian this season (4.20 ERA). If the Red Sox are going to advance at all this October, they need Beckett to be Beckett.

7:15 Paul favorite Andy Sonnanstine’s pitching for the Rays. He gets the speedy Ellsbury leading off, but super-gutty gamer Pedroia hustles to first and gets there just in time! The throw from Bartlett was high–they just charged him with an error–but that was a nice bit of running from Pedroia. He’s not known for his speed, and yet he has 17 steals this season and just one caught stealing. I think that says just as much about his brain as his legs.

7:20 Sonnanstine gets Papi to strike out and then Kevin Youkilis flies out. I run into the kitchen to check on my peach cobbler. It’s bubblin’!

7:23 Dang! Ultimate gutty infielder Pedroia takes a bad hop off the chest and Floyd is on base. Because the official scorer likes him better than Bartlett, it’s a basehit. And this is followed up by a triple from Aybar–and the Rays send Floyd home! That’s nice, aggressive baserunning. Rays up, 1-0.

7:27 And I feel the need for a glass of rose. That “e” needs an accent aigue, but I don’t know how to do that in html. And while I was trying to look it up, Beckett broke off a beautiful curveball and struck out Hinske!

7:28 Gabe Gross at the plate. He looks constipated. Gross.

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The Red Sox and Yankees meet tonight for the first game of a three-game series. Both teams have won five games so far. Both teams have lost five.

Before we get under way, a quick preview:

The player I know mostly as J.D. Poo (or just “Poo” for short) is hitting .440. He went three-for-three in last night’s game before commanding an intentional walk. However, no matter how torrid his bat, I will continue to call him “Poo” until at least the end of June.

Alex Rodriguez, who I sometimes call A-Rod, A-Hole, or A-Douche, is also off to a hot start, scoring seven runs and batting in seven runs. That makes him somehow involved in nearly half of New York’s runs so far this year. This will only make it more painful for Yankees fans when the inevitable October chokage comes home to roost.

Papi’s power stroke is still AWOL. On the other hand, the Yankees have averaged just 3.1 runs a game thus far, so they’ve got their own troubles, not least of which is that Jorge Posada, suffering from “a dead arm,” will not be available to catch in this series. To get him in the lineup, the Yanks will have to DH him.

Because Mike Lowell is on the 15-day DL with a sprained thumb and Alex Cora is feeling “twinges,” the Red Sox brought up some infield insurance in the person of Jed Lowrie, their AAA-level shortstop.

Because Derek Jeter’s quad is still balky, and his weekend baseball activities are likely limited to casual games of catch, the Yankees brought up some infield insurance in the person of Alberto Gonzalez, their AAA-level shortstop.

As for tonight’s starting pitchers, for the Red Sox, Clay Buchholz has struggled so far this season. He had a rough Spring Training and a mixed performance in his previous start in Toronto—on the one hand, he only went 5 innings while giving up six hits, two walks, and three earned runs. On the other hand, he did strike out seven. Clay threw 89 pitches before he got the hook, whereupon the Red Sox bullpen promptly gave in to a fierce shellacking. Conversely, New York staff ace Chien Ming Wang has started the season strong. In two starts, he’s combined for 13 innings, 10 hits, four walks, just two earned runs, and 8 K’s. Wang was economical as well, managing to get relatively deep into the game on a low pitch count (yay for groundballs!).

Let the game begin!

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Earlier this week, I was hustling to make dinner so that I could get going on this week’s Metro column. Yanking my bowl of soup out of the microwave, I suffered a freak Joel Zumaya-esque accident as the steaming liquid spilled all over my right forearm. I was wearing a wool sweater, which soaked up the scalding soup like a sponge and kept it simmering against my tender forearm flesh for second after agonizing second. I of course did the only rational thing: I flung down the bowl, screamed like a banshee, and stripped off half my clothes.Now, writing seems like a placid, harmless pastime, where one is exposed only to a slight risk of carpal tunnel syndrome or, if one is old-school, a paper cut or two. So what could ever stop one from writing?! No physical limitation could do it—when Milton went blind, he just composed Paradise Lost in his head. No time-management problem is a sufficient excuse—after all, Jane Austen managed to knock out six novels while shoving her drafts in a drawer every time someone walked into the room. And the truly dedicated cannot be deterred even by a growing sense that maybe it’s time to get a real job—Virgil spent 10 years writing the Aeneid (working at a painstaking rate of three lines per day) and still hadn’t finished it when he died (quitter!).

But I defy anyone to write a sports column while their right arm is covered in blisters and submerged in a bucket of ice water. (Unless, of course, you’re left-handed.) Oh, I ultimately got the column done. But it wasn’t pretty. And I had to scale back my blogging, leaving Team UmpBump in the lurch. (Unfortunately, there’s no Jed Lowrie in the UmpBump farm system, largely because we don’t have a farm system.)

So to the 120 baseball players on the disabled list and the dozens of others who are day-to-day and playing through their bumps and bruises, I salute you. In a new and quite literal way, I feel your pain. And tonight, I’m popping some Advil and coming off the DL. I’m liveblogging the Red Sox-Yankees game, busted arm or no. We can call it, “The Bloody Sleeve.”

5:09 – Sorry gang, but it’s looking like my laptop is none too happy. Will try and take care of it and come back.

5:05 - Nothing much is happening in the game. But the New York Megamillion Jackpot is not over $135 million. Thought you’d like to know.

4:48 – I’m embarrassed. The Mets are down in Florida right now and the Mets fans have already begun a “Yankees Suck” chant. Way to shed that inferiority complex, fellas.

4:43 – It’s ludicrous how many Mets fans are there down in Florida. Santana gets through the Marlins lineup 1-2-3 and the crowd in Dolphin Stadium goes wild. What the hell?

4:41 – So here we go with Johan Santana throwing his first official pitches in a Met uniform. That changeup is just killer. Has a nice sink and tails away from the right handed hitter. Hanley matches up with Reyes toe-to-toe and strikes out as well.

4:37 – For all the crap we all give him about his defense, Hanley Ramirez just got a great jump and snagged a flyball that looked like it would drop in shallow left. Well played, sir. Well played.

4:36 – Beltran hit a weak bloop to center – Cody Ross dove for it, had it, then dropped it. So instead of the third out, now it’s second and third with two outs (Castillo walked earlier).

4:28 – Some weird people once said that the first at-bat of the season determines both teams’ fates for the entire year. Reyes just struck out on three pitches. Awesome.

4:20 – We’re twenty minutes into the broadcast. And I’ve already lost count of how many times the word “collapse” was used. Ladies and gentlemen, your 2008 New York Mets!

4:15 – OK, so it looks like we were able to fix the problem we were having with the site. Anyhow, here’s the starting lineup for both teams:

NY Mets:

1. Jose Reyes – SS

2. Luis Castillo – 2B

3. David Wright – 3B

4. Carlos Beltran – CF

5. Carlos Delgado – 1B

6. Angel Pagan – LF

7. Ryan Church – RF

8. Brian Schneider – C

9: Johan Santana – P

Florida Marlins:

1. Hanley Ramirez – SS

2. Dan Uggla – 2B

3. Mike Jacobs – 1B

4. Josh Willingham – LF

5. Cody Ross – RF

6. Jorge Cantu – 3B

7. Luis Gonzalez – RF

8. Matt “Mr. Misty May” Treanor – C

9. Mark Hendrickson – P

It pains me to write “Angel Pagan” in the #6 slot…

It’s incredible how much of a drop-off Jorge Cantu is when compared to Miguel Cabrera.

12:15pm: Today starting at 4pm EST, I’ll try and give this crazy “live blogging” thing a whirl and cover Johan Satana’s regular season debut as a New York Met when he takes on the rapscallion Florida Marlins.

So if you’re depressed that you’re at work or in class or whatever the devil it is that you do on a Monday and wish that you were, like me, at home wrapped in a blanket eating chocolate chip cookies with a cup of coffee, come on by to UmpBump at 4 pm EST.

PS: Did you ever think you’d see the day when Mark Hendrickson will have “Opening Day Starter” on his resum

NOTE: This was an interesting experiment in liveblogging by only using a partially-updated box score and info that could be found on the internets. While diverting in its own way, this experiment is not likely to be repeated. D’oh.

So, my UmpBumping friends, I’m sitting here in my cube refreshing the box score of this Mets-Red Sox spring training game, and despite my own low expectations, I’m starting to get pretty excited.

Johan Santana has struck out 4 in 3 innings of work and has allowed two hits.

Jon Lester has struck out 4 in 2 and a third, and has walked one and allowed one hit.

The game is scoreless. As stuff happens, I’ll update.

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