The Long and the Short of It

 Red Sox pitcher Chris Sale stands 6’6” and weighs all of 180 pounds.  As any White Sox fan knows, when Sale looks in the mirror, someone 80-100 pounds heavier stares back at him.  Red Sox first baseman-dh Steve Pearce stands 5’11”.  When Pearce looks in the mirror, he probably sees one lucky journeyman of a ballplayer who found himself at the right place and the right time.

According to the papers today, Sale went Sale—by which I mean he channeled the same part of himself that in 2016led him to pick up a pair of scissors to cut up White Sox throwback uniforms he detested—on Saturday in the Boston dugout with his team down 4-0 in the seventh inning.  That’s when the Incredible Hulk went into action.

With Dodgers’ starter Rick Hill holding the Red Sox scoreless, Sale shouted to his teammates, “He’s got two [stinking, frigging] pitches!” not once, not twice, but three times.  And that seemed to do the trick.  Boston scored three in the seventh, one in the eighth and five more in the ninth for a 9-6 win and a 3-1 series lead.

“It scared me a little bit,” admitted Red Sox third baseman Rafael Devers through an interpreter, “because I had never seen him yell like that, and the words that he was saying, I had never heard that come from him before.”  Trust me, Rafael, White Sox fans and players know all about that Chris Sale.

Pearce must’ve gotten the message, tying the score in the eighth with a homerun before launching a bases-loaded double in the ninth.  And no doubt Sale’s voice was still ringing in Pearce’s ears yesterday because Pearce hit two homeruns good for three runs.  Nothing says Series MVP like a two-run shot in the top of the first of what proved to be the deciding game for Boston.  Let me note here that Sale entered the game to strike out the side in the ninth, with Manny Machado ending the Series by nearly screwing himself into the ground with his last swing.

I can only hope that Yoan Moncada and Michael Kopech, the centerpieces of the trade for Sale, were watching; they could’ve learned something.  And I can only hope the White Sox front office realizes Sale is a free agent after 2019.  They could rectify something.