Thursday, April 7, 2011

Crawford Busts Out With 12 Hits in 4 AB's

We're not talking about any Curse of the Craw-bino or anything--I mean, that's got no ring to it--but the Red Sox, and their star left fielder, Carl Crawford, are clearly struggling mightily. (Real-Time Update: Sawx and Tribe are zero-zero midway through today's day game, amidst a forecast of "Light Snow" in Cleve-town.)
Red Sox manager Terry Francona seemed to single out Crawford, and perhaps Adrian Gonzalez, in his comments to reporters yesterday.
"When a hitter's struggling, you see him try to go 3 for 1," said Francona.
As any fan of the game knows, you simply cannot go 3 for 1 in baseball, just as you cannot hit the rosin bag with any true authority, and you cannot hit a five-run homer--other quirky euphemisms for trying to do too much in one at bat.
Miguel Cabrera, for one, tried his best to hit a five-run home run after letting his team down with an ugly drinking incident late in the 2009 season, with the Tigers in a playoff push.
His first game back, he went 0 for 4 and stranded six runners. "That night, I was trying to hit a five-run homer every time I came up, because I knew I had made a horrible mistake and I wanted to fix it," Cabrera said. "I was just putting too much pressure on myself."
Speaking of the beloved five-run homer, here's a nifty bit of sports satire related to Derek Jeter stroking a five-sacker to show up his movie-star-dating infield neighbor.
Writes SportsPickl.com:
Alex Rodriguez crushed a grand slam home run into the upper deck last night before a capacity crowd at Yankee Stadium, but later that inning his feat was quickly upstaged when teammate Derek Jeter hit baseball’s first-ever five-run homer.

Jeter’s blast flew clean out of the stadium and hit the facing of a highrise several block away. On impact the ball hit a downspout, breaking it open and freeing an adorable puppy that had been trapped inside.
Carl Crawford--and his new Sox mates--will hope for a similar smash today in Cleveland.



 

No comments: