NEW YORK, NY – It’s been a busy sports week here. Big Papi said farewell to Yankee Stadium, while Mark Teixeira walked him off. And the NHL preseason started with a couple of New York Rangers wins.
The Red Sox came into this week’s series with the Yankees needing only one win to clinch. But the Bombers made things very difficult. It was the last time that David Ortiz would take the field at The Stadium, where he had done so much damage over his lengthy Red Sox career. But Boston’s party was spoiled by a Yankee sweep, helped by a walk-off grand slam from the outgoing and oft-injured Teixeira on Wednesday night, and a shut-down performance by the plump and portly CC Sabathia last night.
Ortiz was scheduled to be taken out of last night’s game after his second at-bat. Sabathia granted Papi and unintentional intentional walk so the slugger could be removed for a pinch runner and get his applause. Red Sox fans made up a lot of the crowd at the Big Ballpark in the Bronx last night. And the Yankee fans did a good job of showing respect to their chief tormenter of the last decade and a half.
Tex, whose name nobody can is ending his big league career with a bang. He hit a big home run and a bigger bat flip in Toronto to end his road career on a positive. And Wednesday’s walk-off against the Bosox will put a nice punctuation mark on his career. The Yanks will finish the season above .500. They’ll fall short of the wild card which the Orioles clinched last night. The Yanks host the O’s this weekend in a series that now means absolutely nothing.
On the ice, the Rangers opened up preseason with a couple of wins against the Islanders and Devils. The kids are alright. Last night Youngster Brandon Pirri scored twice and had an assist in last night’s 3-1 win over the Devils. Jimmy Vesey played well also. the new young Rangers forwards are looking sharp. The future is bright. Hopefully the old guard on the blue line can pull their heads out of thier collective behinds and play better defensively than they did last season. We’ll find out soon. We’re just under two weeks away from the NHL opening night.
Canada won the World Cup of hockey, which should surprise nobody. The United States didn’t make it out of the group stage. They finished bottom of the group losing all three of their games. I guess that isn’t such a shock considering John Tortorella. Team Europe did well to make the finals. The team was stacked with European all-stars.
