MayDay Summer

There was so much bad in last night’s loss, and so little good, that I’m going to have to settle for complaining about one thing, and it’s this: I’m as big a fan of patience at the plate as the next guy, but I draw the line at taking strike three on a three-and-two count when the runners are moving. Kevin Youkilis did this last night, precipitating a rally-ending double-play. Let’s just hope it was a rookie mistake and that Francona will take him aside and tell him never to do it again.

Eh, sorry, I have to complain about a few more things. Alan Embree should pitch against mediocre left-handed hitters only, and never against good ones. Francona should forget about percentages right now and get Ortiz as many at-bats as possible against lefties, so that maybe he can learn to hit them before the stretch run, when we won’t want to take him out of games and/or put Millar into them. It may be time to admit that Gabe Kapler has outlived his usefulness, since he's no sane person's idea of a defensive replacement (especially with McCarty on the same bench) and because he's resumed hitting his career average instead of sixty points over it. I wouldn’t think about trading Nomar just yet until this team starts scoring runs with consistency. And once Pokey’s toe heals, the lineup for the next month should look like this:

Damon cf
Bellhorn dh
Garciaparra ss
Ramirez lf
Ortiz 1b
Nixon rf
Varitek c
Youkilis 3b
Reese 2b

Enough about our annoying, underperforming home team. Let’s turn instead to Frank Thomas, whose long turnaround suddenly seems complete; before tonight’s play he was hitting .298, slugging .639 and OBP-ing .462, with 17 homers and 43 RBI. Before he got hurt, and before Selig started overwinding the baseballs, and before Sammy Sosa started stuffing his bat with wine stoppers, and before everyone else started sticking hypodermics in their butts, Thomas was the game’s only Triple Crown threat and one of the best ever hitters ever; before he got hurt in 2001 his OPS was the sixth-best all-time. I’m happy to have him back. Two or three more excellent seasons might make him the very last Hall of Famer to play for one team only.