World Series? More like the WTF Series.

There have been four games played in the World Series so far, and each team has made plays of inexcusable stupidity in two games. As a result, we’re tied at two.

I had to eat my words twice. The Red Sox were trailing one to nothing and Stephen Drew came to the plate. I was begging the baseball gods to have Farrell pinch hit Napoli. What happened? Drew hit a sac-fly and tied the game. Thanks, Steve! Later, I was calling Gomes an automatic out. What did he do? Nothing, just hit the game winning three run home run. I will gladly eat my hat on that one. Thanks, Johny!

And the play of amazing stupidity? Two outs in the bottom of the ninth, Cardinals down 4-2. There’s a runner on first, and Carlos Beltran, arguably the best post season hitter ever, is at the plate. The Cardinals put in rookie Kolten Wong as a pinch runner.

And he gets picked off.

W. T. ever loving F?

As if the obstruction buffoonery in game three wasn’t bad enough, game four ends with the tying run at the plate on a pick off! At least the winning run didn’t score as a result of the pick off. The Cardinals have that going for them at least. The Red Sox idiot play is still the idioter.

Game five is tonight. We’re back to the game one starters. I have a lot of confidence in Jon Lester’s ability to hold St. Louis down.

As for the Red Sox pitching last night. Buchholz pitched four solid innings. He gave up one unearned run, thanks to an error in center field by Ellsbury, but otherwise he was very good. He was clearly less than 100%. His fastballs only topped 90mph a couple of times, if that. His location and movement was excellent though. Many of us here in Boston were fully expecting to see Buchholz scratch himself from this start and would have (rightfully) flayed him alive for his pussitude. It didn’t happen though. He came through. Felix Doubront came in and was lights out for two innings. He now leads in the race for mayor of Boston by a huge margin. Workman came in after that and sucked again. It’s time to nail his ass to the bench. He has to be done.

That brings us to the eighth inning. Who came in to pitch? None other than John Fricken Lackey. Your game two, and now scheduled for game six, starting pitcher came out of the pen and put the Cardinals away, bridging the eighth inning gap to Koji. Koji pitched the ninth. He did let a runner on, but then picked his ass off first base in a move for the ages.

Somehow, despite their mountain of errors and dumb ass plays, the Red Sox are in a 2-2 tie in the 2013 World Series.

Game five is tonight.

Go Red Sox!

Here are a few thoughts on the horror that we all witnessed last night.

I wasn’t watching. I was sitting on my bed, listening to the radio through a really sweet pair of cans, with my laptop on my lap, reading everything coming across the old twitter feed. At this point I refuse to watch a replay. If the Red Sox manage to survive and win this thing, then I’ll watch the play on the victory DVD. Until then, I’m done with it.

The one thought that keeps coming back to me is that Saltalamacchia has to go away. If I were Ben Cherington I would have cut him this morning. It’s bad enough that he’s an automatic out at the plate, but the play he made was absolutely inexcusable. I don’t care whether or not Middlebrooks obstructed the play (he did, intention is irrelevant), Saltalamacchia never, ever should have thrown that ball to third. The fact that he threw it away makes it 1000 times worse, but the simple fact is he should have held the ball.

I give Saltalamacchia 100% of the blame for the bottom of the ninth.

Of course, he might not have ever been in that position had Farrell not screwed up mightily in the top of the ninth. The fact that Brandon Workman made his first professional at bat in the ninth inning of a tie game in the World Series proves that Farrell is in way over his head. Add to that the fact that Mike Fricken Napoli was sitting on the bench, available to pinch hit, leads me to the belief that Farrell needs to go away. That move, or lack of move, is every bit as horrifyingly awful as Grady Little’s decision to let Pedro Martinez stay in the game against the Yankees in 2003. And we all know what happened to Grady Little as a result. Farrell should be tarred and feathered.

I look back at the aftermath of game one and I cannot believe that I ripped on the Cardinals for their defensive play. I apologize wholeheartedly to the Cardinals and their fans. Their lapses in game one were nothing, nothing at all, compared to the shit the Red Sox have pulled in games two and three. Given the Red Sox defensive performance, it is clear that they have no business being in the World Series.

Back in 2002, all those years ago, Rush recorded a song called “Ghost Rider”. In it Geddy Lee sings the Neil Peart penned line, “From the lowest low to the highest high.” That is exactly the opposite of what Red Sox fans are feeling.

For Red Sox fans it’s from the highest high to the lowest low.

We won game one and the universe was ours to command. All of the secrets of creation were in the palm of our hand. Then we lost game two and civilization has collapsed. We are crushed by a depression so profound that it’s as though heaven was in our grasp and then was yanked (yankee’d) away from us.

When the Cardinals had their flash of playing like a little league team in game one we all thought, they can’t be that bad, they’ll not puke all over themselves (figuratively) again. Now that the Red Sox have had their little league moment too, we have to think the same thing. Peavy pitches tomorrow. He was pretty bad against the Tigers. He needs to be the pitcher he was when he first came to Boston. Those first few starts were beautiful. We need more like that. As for game four… who knows. Will Buchholtz be able to go? Is the team’s training staff supervising his sleep behavior to make sure he doesn’t hurt himself again?

Based on the pitching match ups, games three and four are winnable for the Red Sox. If Peavy and whoever goes in game four can pitch a decent game and keep the Cardinals offense at least down to Earth, the Red Sox should be able to handle the St Louis starters. I am still cautiously optimistic, I’m just not in a state of elation the way I was 24 hours ago. The worst part is that we have to wait until tomorrow night for game three.

The series is tied at one game a piece. The Red Sox have plenty of time to recover from the bad news bears that was the seventh inning last night. Just forget it ever happened and win yourselves the best of five series that remains.

Go Red Sox!