Jason Varitek Retires

By: Tom Nappi

Jason Varitek will announce his retirement Thursday, Varitek came up with the Red Sox in 1997 and never left as he spent all 15 years of his career with the Sox. He Played 1,546 games in a Red Sox uniform, had a career batting average of .256 with 193 Home Runs, 757 Runs Batted In, 306 Doubles, 14 Triples and 1307 hits in 5,099 At Bats, Varitek also had a .341 on base percentage and a .435 slugging percentage.

Fielding wise as a Red Sox catcher, Varitek was one of the best fielding catchers in Red Sox history with a .994 fielding percentage and only 69 errors in his 15 year career. Varitek also only had 105 passed balls with 25 of them coming in his first year as a full time catcher for the Red Sox with 25 passed balls.

Varitek was one of the greatest catchers in Red Sox history and should always be remembered as one of the heroes that brought home the World Series trophy in 2004 and 2007.

You Will Be Missed, Mr. Varitek and we hope to see you take on a coaching role very soon with the Boston Red Sox!

John Lackey Divorce

Rough year for Red Sox pitcher John Lackey isn’t getting any better with the team fighting to stay ahead in the wild-card race.

MLB STANDINGS

Pennant races are heating up. Where is your team in the playoff chase?

After helping the Red Sox knock off the Yankees 7-4 in 14 innings Sunday in Game 2 of a doubleheader to keep their wild-card lead at one game, Lackey came into his postgame news conference angry.

“Let me tell you the truth,” Lackey said. “Thirty minutes before the game, I got a text message on my cellphone from one of you . . . somebody in the media, talking about personal stuff. And I shouldn’t even be standing up here having to deal with this.

“I’m sitting here listening to music. I don’t know who got my phone number, but that’s over the line.”

Early Monday morning, gossip website TMZ reported that Lackey had filed for divorce from his wife, Krista, who is currently battling breast cancer.

The couple married in 2008 and, according to TMZ, have a prenuptial agreement. The website reported that the petition was filed Aug. 30 in Texas and states “the marriage has become insupportable because of discord or conflict of personalities.”

Asked if the text message was a distraction, Lackey said, “This is unbelievable I’ve got to deal with this.”

UHHH Doesn’t John Lackey know by now the Boston Sports Media does not report on personal issues unless they were brought up this was a story originally revealed by the celebrity stalkers at TMZ. What do you think about this?

Sports News for Thursday September 22, 2011

This is Craig D’Alessandro with your SPORTS BLAST Update, Tune into the SPORTS BLAST on MASPORTSWEB.COM and tonight on http://www.thelook247.com 8-midnight/et

The Boston Red Sox dropped 3 of a 4 game series to the Baltimore Orioles. Wednesday’s starter Josh Beckett went 7 and one third innings, giving up 6 runs, 4 of which come off the bat of Orioles’ slugging first baseman Mark Reynolds.

With the loss, the Red Sox Record in September falls to 5 and 16, the Sox get a much needed day off before a Pivotal 3 game series with the AL East Champion New York Yankees, who clinched the title with a day-night double header sweep against the Tampa Bay Rays.

Current Standings in the Wild Card:  The Red Sox led by 2 ½ games over the Tampa Bay Rays and the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim.

The Boston Herald is reporting that The Red Sox have tried for the last week to acquire New York Mets pitcher Chris Capuano to pitch Sunday’s series finale against the Yankees.  If Capuano is acquired, he would be ineligible to pitch in the Post Season, a deal is not expected.

The New England Patriots head to Buffalo this Sunday to play the Surprise 2-0 Bills.  Tom Brady will look to keep his stellar start to the season alive against a team he has fared very well against in his career with a current 17 game winning streak against the division Rival.

The Patriots announces some roster moves this week, including placing Dan Koppen on the season ending injured reserve.  The 32 year old center broke his fibula in the season opener against the Miami Dolphins, The Patriots were hoping to get Koppen back late in the season, but with Dan Connelly filling in, the Pats did not want an injured player take up a spot on the 53 man roster.

Other injures include tight end Aaron Hernandez who is out from anywhere from 2-6 weeks with an MCL injury and punter Zoltan Mesko, who injured his knee in the win against the Chargers, he has since returned to practice and Safety Patrick Chung underwent thumb Surgery earlier this week, his status for the Game against the Bills is uncertain

Getting their first game action since winning the Stanley Cup, the Boston Bruins opened up their Pre-season dropping the first game to the Ottawa Senators in a 2-1 overtime loss.

October 2 is officially the final day a New NBA collective Bargaining Agreement can be reached without the NBA losing out on a full season.  NBA players and owners are scheduled to meet tonight but a deal is not expected anytime soon.

Power Bats and Power Arms and Lackey by: Joseph McCann

Power Bats and Power Arms and Lackey

24/Aug/2011 Filed in: Boston Red Sox | Joseph McCann

Article by: Joseph McCann

The 2011 Boston Red Sox are an offensive symphony with the thunderous bats of Kevin Youkilis, Adrian Gonzalez, and David Ortiz, the speed (And an unreal power surge for a man who previously had 20 HR in 1372 AB and now has 22 HR in 509 AB. Steroids much? Or at least HGH? Or maybe swallowed a radioactive cow to give him superhuman ability much like I believe Bartolo Colon did last off season yet have no proof of there being any valid truths to this statement) of Jacoby Ellsbury, or the AB grinding, doubles machine that is Dustin Pedroia. This team gets it offensively.

They’ve survived 5 months of Carl Crawford hitting like Cindy Crawford to wield the second highest scoring team in the majors. Quite an accomplishment considering he’s making $14.8 million this year, the highest of any position player on the team. In fact if I had no recollection of Carl Crawford’s contract/career prior to this season and you gave me the words “Carl Crawford” and “14.8 million” and told me to correctly compete a thought using those two words as my sentences backbone, my answer would be “Carl Crawford has swung at 14.8 million curveballs in the dirt in his lifetime, put it on the board, Alex!”

This team has two of the elite power arms in all of baseball in Josh Beckett and Jon Lester. The best 1-2 punch this side of Cliff Lee and Roy Halladay, but certainly the best 1-2 in the American League. In October you need two things to win: Power Bats and Power Arms. The Power Bats are not an issue. The Power Arms are 4/5th not an issue. I believe you need three trustworthy starters and two workhorses in the back of your bullpen (Bard and Papelbon). Who’s that 5th slice of the pitching pie? (Who the hell slices a pie into five pieces?)

It appears that Clay Buchholz won’t be back this year, leaving the Sox with the unfortunate position of choosing between an egomaniacal, meatball throwing, head scratching, waste of money like John Lackey or rolling the dice with mid-season pickup Erik Bedard. Lackey has pitched in the playoffs before and he has been relatively successful in those appearances (3-4, 3.12 ERA, 1.33 WHIP), including winning Game 7 of the World Series in 2002 as a rookie. Bedard has never pitched in the playoffs thanks to spending his career in Baltimore and Seattle, making him an unproven commodity at this time.

The beauty of October is that you never know where your heroes will come from. Edgar Renteria was the World Series MVP last year despite leaving all of his discernable talents in St. Louis six seasons prior. Maybe John Lackey will transform into a postseason workhorse who lives up to his enormous and excessive contract (Much like JD Drew did in 2007. Wait, that’s exactly whats going to happen! It all makes sense now! I’m definitely not being a homer!). This Red Sox team has a chance to be special, but we’ll have to wait until October to see how/who’ll make them special. If they can find some magic in the October air, look for this team to be playing deep into October with their eyes on a 3rd World Series title in eight years, and the Phillies.

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