Rainy Shutouts to Royston Georgia

Our stay in Atlanta is coming to an end, but we did get to see a couple excellent games. After Curt Schilling had a less than stellar performance on Monday, the Sox bounced back the next two nights with Josh Beckett and Julian Tavarez. Tuesday night was a classic pitchers’ duel between Beckett and Tim Hudson, but Beckett proved to be the calmer under pressure and didn’t allow a run until the game hit a rain delay in the 6th - which proved to be his last inning of work as well. The bullpen came in to close out the game and keep the Braves scoreless. Then Tavarez followed up by retiring the first nine batters he faced on Wednesday. Once again his perfect game was broken up right after Dan and I realized it. We didn’t say anything, but some little kid behind us had to open his mouth and the next hit was a liner up the middle.



The Red Sox were never really in trouble though because the offense made their presence known on the third pitch of the game, when JD Drew hit a towering homerun to right field. Coco Crisp hit a three-run homer later that same inning. Big Papi and Manny Ramirez joined in on the fun with their own home runs in the 2nd and 7th innings respectively.

Just before the game started, we were both thinking about how there hadn’t been a big blowout in any of the 10 games we had seen so far. The most runs we saw by one team was probably the New Orleans Zephyrs, who scored nine. So, as you can imagine, we were both excited to see the Red Sox hit fest.

But, like I said, we're are leaving Atlanta very soon, which is a little said because we enjoyed the southern hospitality we were receiving. Today we took a day trip to the Ty Cobb museum in Royston, Georgia to pay respect to one of the greatest players the game has seen. It was a little surprising to find that the museum was only a few small rooms inside a larger building, but it was still a very worthwhile trip. We found yet another map that included all the special museum and baseball fan havens around the nation, such as the Ted Williams Museum in Tampa Bay and the Negro Leagues Hall of Fame in Kansas City.

Tomorrow we will drive all the way down to Clearwater, Florida where will may or may not catch a Clearwater Threshers game dependant on how exhausted we are from the drive.

Some of you may be wondering why exactly we would bother driving all the way down to Florida to watch baseball, and, well I don’t blame you for asking. But there are many reasons to do so. First, we’re never going to be down here again any time soon, so we might as well just bite the bullet. Secondly, we need to kill some time before we head up north for the first time in our travels. And lastly, we are lucky enough to see some great pitching match-ups while we’re down there. On Saturday we will see the Devil Rays’ ace Scott Kazmir pitch against the Dodgers – a game that also includes free Don Zimmer bobble heads. (AWESOME!) And on Sunday, we get so see a duel between two of the best lefty pitchers in the game today, Dontrelle Willis vs. Johan Santana.