Sox Score Safety But Give Up Nearly Three Touchdowns. Oakland Blows Out Boston 20-2.

How can this be put delicately? Oh, that’s right. It can’t. Oakland’s 20-2 ass kicking of the Red Sox Friday night was epic. As Dan Akroyd’s SNL character of the ’70s, Leonard Pinth Garnell, would have said, “Unrelentingly bad!”

As Boston slipped, slid and screeched through an August begging to be put in the rear view mirror (9-20), they were looking coming into Oakland to reverse a pattern of being on the wrong end of two sweeps in the past two weeks. The As had other ideas and Sox pitching appeared only two happy to oblige.

Aaron Cook‘s (3-8) sinker didn’t sink and he was gone after just 2.2 innings having given up 7 hits and 6 runs. With the exception of Junichi Tazawa, who threw 1.1 innings of shutout ball, a parade of Boston pitchers – Alfredo Aceves (2), Daniel Bard (1), Craig Breslow (5), Mark Melancon (4) and Vicente Padilla (2) – were collectively hammered by the As as they torched Sox pitching for 19 hits.

"Former Boston players Josh Reddick (two hits including a grand slam), Brandon Moss (4-for-5 with two doubles, a homer and four RBI) and George Kottaras (two homers and five RBI) turned Boston’s evening into a ceaseless chamber of horrors."

With the Dodger blockbuster trade behind them it was hoped that at least part of the seriously bad juju that dogged the club all of 2012 would be purged. Red Sox Nation, it’s time to bring in the Witch Doctor.

I see the bad moon arising. 
I see trouble on the way. 
I see earthquakes and lightnin’. 
I see bad times today. 

Don’t go around tonight, 
Well, it’s bound to take your life, 
There’s a bad moon on the rise.
– Bad Moon Rising, Creedence Clearwater Revival