For this, the Boston Red Sox spent all that time, energy and money last winter? They built the team for this series? This is the best they could do?
They throw their best two pitchers -- two of baseball's best pitchers -- at the Yankees, and they might as well have used Bobby Sprowl and Casey Fossum.
Now they go into Game 3 tonight with a youngster, Bronson Arroyo, who has pitched well recently but who has never pitched a Game 3 of a major-league postseason series with his team down, two games to none.
It is possible, of course, that just when the outlook for the Red Sox appears bleakest, they will rally themselves to an unexpected triumph.
Get serious.
The Red Sox are saddled with a pitcher (Curt Schilling) who won't pitch again in the series, or if he does will do it with the same debilitating ankle ailment that undermined him in Game 1, and another pitcher (Pedro Martmnez) who has become a 100-pitch pitcher and who has taken to talking about daddies and mango trees.
Before the American League Championship Series began, it was the Yankees that were suspected of having a pitching problem.
Two outstanding performances later (by Mike Mussina and Jon Lieber, one better than the other), the Yankees look as if they have a staff of Cy Young award winners.
Kevin Brown, their starter tonight, is capable of duplicating the performances of Mussina and Lieber.
Mango trees? While Pedro waxed poetic and philosophic about mango trees, the Yankees looked like redwoods to the Red Sox. They wondered what they could do to turn the series around, or at least make it competitive. Hey, we're here, too, the Red Sox would like the Yankees to know.
Jason Varitek, the Boston catcher, said the Red Sox scored enough runs to win the first game, but their pitching foiled them.
In the second game, he added: "We didn't do it offensively, and we did a good job pitching. Those things have to match up."
As in poor pitching and poor hitting, perhaps.
The Red Sox seem more likely to achieve that combination than the one they yearn for.
How, Varitek was asked, were the Red Sox to win this series, or any games, after losing with their two best pitchers?
"We won a lot of games with a lot of different guys," he said. "Different people contributed all year. We just need a quality outing."
The Red Sox will not receive any assistance from history. In the 18 years the league series has been best of seven, seven American League teams and six in the National League won the first two games.
Only once in each league did the team that lost those games come back and win the series.
Kansas City did it to Toronto, and St. Louis did it to Los Angeles, both in 1985, the year the series went from best of five games to best of seven.
It hasn't happened since, and the Red Sox and their passionate but bizarre fans would waste their time and brain energy if they engaged in wishful thinking.
Those fans should remember well their team's experience in league series when the Red Sox lost the first two games.
In 1988 and in 1990, the Red Sox lost the first two games to Oakland, then lost the third and fourth games as well.
Those results spelled S-W-E-E-P. The word, if they can even say it, terrifies Red Sox fans.
RSS