You know things are bad for a baseball team when they call for a closed door meeting after the game. Baseball players don't like to talk, they like to play baseball, but right now the Boston Red Sox aren't playing baseball so much as letting baseball play them.
The Tampa Bay Rays, a team that had lost eleven in a row, pummeled the Red Sox 13-7 in St. Petersburg last night. Nick Franklin drove in a career high five runs for the Rays and there's no mystery to what's going on with the reeling Red Sox. It's starting pitching, or the lack thereof. Eddie Rodriguez was simply awful again last night, giving up nine runs on 11 hits and failing to get out of the second inning. It got so bad that at one point Dustin Pedroia came in from second base to yell at Rodriguez, a show of frustration that no doubt is filtering throughout the clubhouse as the Sox fall to four and a half games behind division leading Baltimore.
The NY Yankees aren't faring a whole lot better these days. They lost to the red hot Texas Rangers after a ridiculous nearly four-hour rain delay at Yankee Stadium that saw the Rangers come back with four runs in the ninth to beat the Yankees 9-6 in a game that finished around 2:45 in the morning before a raucous crowd of about thriteen people stubborn enough to have stayed at the Stadium.
It's been more than a month since Noah Syndegaard lost a start for the Mets but it happened last night as the Washington Nationals unloaded on Thor and the Mets for an 11-4 win in the nation's capitol. This after the Mets had opened with a 4-0 lead that Syndegaard could not hold, as lasted just three innings, surrendering a season-high five runs and three walks in the loss.
In NY Penn League action the VT Lake Monsters went to extra innings against the Staten Island Yankees and lost when Drew Bridges of the Yankees led off the top of the eleventh inning with a home run off Tyler Painton, good for a 3-2 win at Centennial Field.
In NECBL action, the Upper Valley Nighthawks also went extras, but emerged victorious when Charlie Concannon hit a home run in the top of the 13th inning to give the nighthawks a 4-3 win over the Sanford Mainers.
The Vermont Mountaineers have struggled early on this season but broke out the bats yesterday in a 15-1 walloping of the New Bedford Bay Sox, and made some team history in the process. Troy Scocca hit for the cycle, the first time a Mountaineer has accomplished the feat. He hit a two-run homer in the third inning, doubled in the second, tripled in the sixth and finished of the cycle with a single in the eighth.
The big news out of Wimbledon is for a British tennis teacher ranked number 772 in the world winning, who won his first round match at the all-England Club. Marcus Willis pulled off the story book upset over the number fifty-four player in the world Ricardas Berankis. Willis makes about forty dollars an hour teaching tennis to middle school aged kids, and now all he has to do to keep the dream alive is beat Roger Federer when he faces him in round two on Wednesday. Federer is reportedly terrified.
The last thing England needed following the rancor and worry over the recent Brexit vote was to have their national soccer team sent home from the Euro '16 tournament by a country with a population about half that of the state of Vermont. But that's what happened yesterday when Iceland defeated England in the Euros 2-1 and kept their amazing Cinderella run alive. The English scored first on a penalty kick by star Wayne Rooney but that lead lasted all of thirty-four seconds before the Icelanders tied it on a long throw-in from Aron Gunnarsson to Kari Kari Arnason, who flicked it on to defender Ragnar Sigurdsson for the equalizer. Iceland went ahead for good on a goal by Kolbeinn Sigthorsson on a shot that got partially blocked by the keeper but trickled through. The Icelanders are now through to the quarterfinals to face France.
In the other knock out game yesterday Italy defeated defending champs Spain 2-Nil and now will face defending World Cup champion Germany in the quarters.
There were two Vermont swimmers competing in the U.S. Olympic team trials yesterday. Kimball Union Academy graduate Hannah Cox of Hartland finished eighth in the finals of the 400 meter freestyle and will compete again today in her specialty event, the 200 meter freestyle. Tasija Karosas of Stowe also competed yesterday, taking sixth place in the 100 meter backstroke, but did not advance to the finals.
