The Patriots started out by proving, once again, that they are so much better than just about any other team in the NFL. The rest of the AFC East is the junior varsity compared with the Patriots. Keep in mind that the Pats barely had a running game yesterday and made several defensive miscues that could have burned them big had they been playing a competent team. Yet the Pats still hung 49 points on the Fins en route to a 21-point win. Tom Brady, as usual, made things look positively easy. In order to give himself a challenge, he decided to toss a long bomb to Randy Moss in double coverage. Moss hauled in for a TD, then Brady did it again, with the same result. Whenever the Dolphins challenged and made the game remotely close, the Pats responded with another strike or three.By about 2:13 p.m., the Pats had locked things up and Bostonians could start thinking about Sunday night's main event. With the ALCS tied at 3-3, the Sox needed one final win to complete their comeback and make the World Series. While the Indians silenced the Sox bats and the hitters lit up the Sox pitchers in Games 3 and 4, you could feel the tide turning after Josh Beckett's Game 5 gem. A victory in Game 6 almost seemed like a foregone conclusion, and by the time Game 7 rolled around, you had to feel that the momentum was heavily tilted in the Sox' favor.
Popular opinion held that the Sox had a great chance to tee off on Jake Westbrook. He had pitched one great game in the series and people thought he wouldn't be able to follow it up. They were wrong. Westbrook pitched six strong innings, and while the Sox were able to manufacture three runs by playing small ball, that lead was nowhere near safe, especially with Daisuke Matsuzaka predictably losing his dominance in the fourth and fifth innings. When the hitters were stymied, a little bit of Fenway magic was necessary for the Sox to keep the lead. Kenny Lofton was incorrectly called out after stretching a single, then was inexplicably held at third when he had a chance to head for home on a fast grounder down the third-base line.
Finally, in the seventh, the bats began to come alive for the Sox. Dustin Pedroia hit a Monster shot to give the Sox breathing room at 5-2. In the eighth, the game officially became a rout, with a bases-loaded double by Pedroia and a two-run homer by Kevin Youkilis. Once Coco Crisp caught a deep fly ball to the triangle, showing utter disregard for his own physical health in the process, the heavily-anticipated celebration could begin.It's funny how quickly a city's attitude changes. In 2003, Sox fans were left wondering how their team would screw things up, because that's what always happened in the past. Sure enough, a hanging knuckleball by Tim Wakefield was smacked out of the park by Aaron F---ing Boone in the eleventh inning of Game 7. But in 2004, something special happened. The Sox refused to give in, despite being down to their last out in Game 4, and rallied for the greatest series comeback in baseball history. In that series, the hopeless resignation of Red Sox Nation was replaced by a feeling of invincible faith. This time around, people knew that the Sox could turn things around by winning the final three games of the ALCS and move on to their second World Series in four years. It's a great time to be a Boston resident.
Oh, and I hear there's some college football team that plays around here and is now ranked second in the nation.
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