Another good start by David Price, another game added to the the longest hitting streak in the majors, another win for the Boston Red Sox. The fun continued at Fenway Park last night, the Red Sox stretching their current winning streak to three games with an 8-3 inter-league win over the Colorado Rockies.
The Sox have now won eleven of their last fifteen, but the streak everyone is watching is twenty-eight consecutive games with at least one hit for Jackie Bradley, Jr. It's been two years since a hitting streak has gone that long, and it was a player on the field last night for Colorado, Nolan Arenado, who reached the mark. Twenty-eight also matches the second longest hitting streak in Red Sox history, achieved by a pretty good hitter named Wade Boggs, and while most headlines have noted that JBJ is now half-way to the legendary record of fifty-six games held by Joltin' Joe Dimaggio, let's not talk about the Yankee Clipper just yet and see if Bradley can first catch Dimaggio's brother Dom, who holds the all-time Red Sox hitting streak at thirty-four games. Bradley had two hits in last night's game, David Ortiz thumbed his nose again at Father Time with two hits and four runs batted in, Dustin Pedroia went three for four, and Christian Vazquez tripled for the first time in his promising young career, all backing up Price who looked like the ace the Sox were eager to spend all that money on, scattering five hits over seven innings to improve to 7-1 on the year.
So while all is right and good in Red Sox Nation, there is a nagging feeling, kind of like an unexplained chill you can get sometimes even in a warm room. Yes, I'm talking about the NY Yankees, no longer in the AL East basement, now in third place behind the Red Sox, back at .500 for the year, and winners of six in a row after pummeling the Toronto Blue Jays 6-0 last night. They're not raining on the Red Sox parade just yet, but they are adding some ominous gray clouds to the otherwise clear blue sky. Nathan Eovaldi and the impenetrable Yankee bullpen combined to turn the normally heavy-hitting Blue Jays bats into little more than oversized pretzel sticks, allowing just two hits on the night. Carlos Beltran homered for the Yanks, his tenth of the year, and Ivan Nova will try to keep the resurgent drum beat going when he gets the start against Marco Estrada for Toronto, who have unhappily taken over last place in the division from New York.
That other team from Gotham is still trying to figure out what's wrong with the Dark Knight. Matt Harvey's struggles continued last night against the Washington Nationals, a rematch of a game just a week ago when Harvey matched up against the Nats' Steven Strasburg, and the results for Harvey and the Mets weren't any better this time around. Strasburg struck out eleven, and is still undefeated on the year at 8-0, while Harvey has dropped to 3-7, victimized chiefly by the long ball as Washington smacked three of their season high five home runs against the struggling former ace of the Mets' staff. The question for the Mets amounts to what would Commissioner Gordon do if he kept putting up the Bat Signal every time the Joker came to town and was rewarded with nothing but maniacal laughter when the Dark Knight failed to repel the threat.
To the NHL playoffs, and to push the comic book analogy a bit further, hockey fans in Tampa Bay, all four of them (yes, I know, that's unfair, there are at least five) saw The Penguin invade their home ice last night. Actually, many Penguins, including Sidney Crosby, Phil Kessel, and Kris Letang, all of whom scored goals last night in the Penguins' 5-2 win over the Lightning, forcing a deciding game seven back in Pittsburgh for the right to go to the Stanley Cup finals.
Some other hockey news regarding the Boston Bruins and their efforts to rebuild after missing the playoffs for a second straight season. The Bruins announced they've signed former UVM defenseman Kevan Miller to a four-year, ten million dollar deal, and that, frankly, is more than a bit bewildering. Nothing against Miller per se, and good for him for the big pay day, but the Bruins most glaring deficiency last season was a slow-moving defensive corps with an aging Zdeno Chara and a lack of fleet footed, puck-moving defensemen, especially after trading away Dougie Hamilton. Miller is a tough, solid stay at home defenseman but speed and offense are not his game. And now the Bruins have ten million dollars less to spend in free agency against the salary cap.
With apologies to Monty Python, but the NBA finals have the potential of looking like something completely different. That is, different from what most were expecting, which was a rematch of the Cleveland-Golden State final of last year. But now the Oklahoma City Thunder have the defending champs on the brink of elimination after a 118-94 win in Okalhoma City last night. Russell Westbrook threw down a triple double on the stunned Warriors, hitting for thirty-six points, with eleven rebounds and eleven assists. Reigning league MVP Steph Curry poured in nineteen for Golden State, but the Thunder will take that every time given that Curry's average is thirty points per game. Game five is back in Oakland but now the Warriors have the daunting task of taking three straight from the Thunder if they're going to get a shot at defending their title.
At the French Open, it took two days technically to do it, but the mens' number two seed Andy Murray avoided a disastrous first round exit, coming back from a two sets to none deficit to defeat Radek Stepanek in five sets, the match completed after being postponed when darkness fell over Roland Garros Monday night. Serena Williams on the womens' side cruised to an easy round one victory, and Novak Djokovic and Rafael Nadal breezed to round two as well.
