The Battle for First Place

Since the beginning of the month, Drew's been one of the most reliable of the Red Sox. He's 7 for 13 with 2 homers, 5 RBIs and a stolen base. Plus, he's made at least three tremendous catches out in Right Field.

Today he went 2-3, made one of the great catches, drove in a run and scored two others as the Red Sox took sole possession of first place from the Tampa Bay Rays. It's about time. Both for Drew to be preforming and for the Red Sox to be ahead of Tampa Bay. Tonight J.D. got to hit third in front of Manny, so maybe he's seeing better pitches or something.

In other news, Coco Crisp seems to be in the middle of a feud with Tampa Bay. I didn't notice all this during the game, but I found it on the Red Sox web page. Crisp stole second in the sixth, and apparently jammed his finger because Shortstop Jason Bartlett put his leg in front of the bag to block him. Crisp called Bartlett's actions "shady" after the game and went on to say something along the lines of, "If you try to hurt me, I'm gonna come back and try to hurt you."

In the eighth, Coco again tried to steal second, but this time slid feet first and hard as if breaking up a double play. The only problem was Bartlett wasn't covering, Akinori Iwamura was. Yeah, it was a hard slid, but watching it live, I thought it was a good hustle play, and maybe I'm wearing my Boston tinted glasses, but I think the tags high and Crisp is safe. Granted at the time I didn't know Crisps intents, but at least he didn't pull an A-Rod and give Iwamura a flying elbow smash. I don't know. You be the judge.

Tampa Bay manager Joe Maddon was pretty mad about it and later on while making a pitching change, started screaming at Crisp who yelled right back at him and did his version of the P.J. Stock wave, only with a Red Sox jersey (note the Hockey reference, Cale.). Coco played well tonight, going 2-2 and adding a run and an RBI to his stolen base. It'll be interesting to see if anything carries over to tomorrow night's game.