Monday afternoon, I ran across this fine piece of analysis on Yahoo! Sports.
Most important, the Sox should be worrying about themselves. Where is their spark? Where is their sense of urgency? Why is it that Guillen appears to have more fire than most of his players?
We know Guillen is a passionate guy. But his players? As a group, they lack his combativeness. I'm not suggesting they don't care, but even the brawl failed to fire them up sufficiently to mount a comeback against the Royals. It only succeeded in firing up the Royals more.
I was going to make a post about it, which, no doubt, would have featured the world "clearly" prominently. But it's way more fun to post it now, after the Sox came back from a 6-1 deficit after what should have been the mid-point of the game, then overcame another 2-run deficit after 9 solid innings of relief work with a 4-run 14th inning.
* * * * *
Joey Cora made you appreciate the fine job that Ozzie does as a manager, making a number of non-moves that seemed obvious at the time. For example, he went with Bobby Jenks for only 1 inning in a tie game headed to extra innings, which lead directly to Matt Thornton being used for parts of 4 innings. Thornton was awesome, even though he gave up a 2-run HR to Placido Polanco, the last batter he faced. Thornton was replaced by Adam Russell, who does nothing but win ball games, and the rest of history.
Russell's presence on the mound kicked the offense, which had been unable to scratch across a run in the previous 5 innings, into high gear, culminating with Nick Swisher's walk-off, perhaps the signature moment of the (hopefully) still young season.