Hot Sox face Royals … and lose?

Editor’s Note:  This post comes to you from Justin Klugh, our Philadelphia Phillies lead writer on That Balls Outta Here.

I imagine when the Royals come to town, it sounds like a carnival of clattering garbage. I hear the distinct sound of empty tin cans clanking into each other when I think about the bus with KANSAS CITY ROYALS painted on the side pulling into the parking lot. It sounds cruel, its the kind of assumptions that come from a team suffering from such cataclysmic ineptitude for the last few decades. […]

And then the Red Sox lost to them.

I’m sorry, but is it “ironic” or “just funny” that the Sox cap off a world-destroying, barnstorming tour of the Rays’ worst nightmares and then lose to the Royals? I mean, before I even really go into the details of the game, just from a zoomed out perspective, you guys took a huge bite out of the best team in baseball and then watched your knees buckle at the thought of taking on a team that tells guys they can play baseball incorrectly all they want as long as they are willing to fork over the cash it costs to not make an adjustment to their defense since grade school.

Royals 4, Red Sox 3

I mean, Brian Bannister hadn’t even won any of his last four starts against the Red Sox until last night. On the other side, Daisuke Matzusaka took a no-hitter into the eighth against the Phillies last week and pretty much had all the skill and precision of a malfunctioning robot against the Royals. Its games like this that make me think baseball is just one giant, 162-game joke.

He walked FIVE BATTERS in the fifth inning! Five! What the–

But, the good news is that Kevin Youkilis got on base for the 26th time in a row, and Adrian Beltre did a thing. A single, I think. So his reign of terror just keeps on going. Just not hard enough to… beat the Kansas City Royals.

Hopefully, a loss to the Royals isn’t enough to quell the white hot Sox right now, so tonight, with someone, anyone, other than Daisuke on the mound–wait, its Wakefield?! He just shut out the Phils, too. If this pattern is any indication, he’ll be unable to knuckle his way out of the third inning. Kyle Davies, on the Royals side, is the most recent victim of their lack of run support, giving a swift dose of what Zack Greinke has been choking on for a few years now. Against the Rockies, he hurled six strike outs and didn’t walk anybody… and still lost.

Meanwhile, I think the Boston Globe is trying to make a joke here about Jacoby Ellsbury and the DL and the phrase “spare ribs” but I don’t understand it and the more I think about it the more I feel like it is a waste of a perfectly good pun. Whatever’s wrong with his ribs made him cranky enough to half-criticize team doctors, who apparently clowned their way to a misdiagnosis. But you can’t blame the guy–even though he apologized–the Sox are in the middle of an ever-critical comeback tour, and Ellsbury both deserves and is needed to be a part of it.

Also, is it good or bad that Joe West is getting all this attention? I think more attention should be paid to the fact that Ozzie Guillen actually made a good point while speaking into a microphone. But the whole idea is that he’s, somehow, a diva who is also an umpire and likes to insult people for the sole purpose of seeing his name in the headlines and then, I don’t know, jerking off, I guess. With everybody talking about him, isn’t he getting exactly what he wants? Other than a cheeseburger the size of a house? That he could eat, but also live in while he worked through it?

That is a dangerously fat man, people. Like… real fat. I saw a clip of him jogging on Sportscenter with the sound off and assumed it was a report on his heart exploding.

Anyways, he umping this Sox-Royals series and said that those really mean things he said before about the Yankees-Sox game times are still true and he’s not sorry. Great. So now we get to be privy to a report of Joe West’s feelings even if they don’t change?

“No, I don’t need that kind of publicity, I get in enough trouble on my own,” Joe West said. Oh, Joe, you’re such a likable rebel.

Wait, no. The opposite. A fat jackass on a power trip. Also, he plays country music. Could you manage to cram anymore unlikeable character traits into a single person?

Good luck out there, Boston.