Game 10: KC @ Bos

Game 10 of our trip featured the Kansas City Royals (for the 2nd time) and the evil Boston Red Sox. We had a special guest for game 10, Spencer and Maxwell's friend, Kit!

Pregame:

We spent a lot of time before the gates open, wandering around Boston, and ate at a pizza place, the pizza was very nice. For me, I hated being in Boston, I felt incredibly out of place as I texted me dad, “we’re behind enemy lines… SAVE ME!” Anyway, once at Fenway, Ned Yost had recently replaced Trey Hillman as the manager of the Royals. When asked about his new manager, the 2009 AL Cy Young Award winner, Zack Greinke said "he looks like he used to manage the Brewers, he probably managed the Brewers..." Mr. Greinke is of course right about this. So, at Fenway, Sam yells "Mr. Yost! You look like you should manage the Brewers!" Yost did not understand the joke at all. Baseball players and coaches claim to not read the newspaper, apparently they are telling the truth. At Fenway, we walked around to different parts of the stadium, including on top of the green monster. We also tried to talk to Mr. Greinke, who was busy showing off his skills as a baseball player to the fans by gunning the ball as hard as he could as if he was a catcher. I don't think Greinke was a fan of ours, in partciular Sam. During this game, we caught and recieved 0 balls. Remember our buddy, Bruce Chen of the Royals from Cleveland? Well, throughout much of warmups and batting practice we yelled "BRUUUUUUUUUCE" to get his attention and he would always wave, and apprecaited the attention. So, on his way into the dugout at the end of bp, he comes up toward us and tries to bounce a ball to us, but it bounced to the right and these 2 guys from Chicago who we were talking to recieved the ball. These guys have been to numerous stadiums over the last few years, but did not go all at one time like we have been doing. The Red Sox opted not to take batting practice, which lowered our chance of getting foul balls.

The Game:

The starting pitchers in this game were Daisuke "Dice-k" Matsuzaka for Boston and right hander and former NY Met great, Brian Bannister for KC. The game was scoreless for the first 3 and 1/2 innings even with a shaky Matsuzaka who at that point had handed out 3 walks and hit a batter. With runners on first and second, Adrian Beltre hit a clean single to left that scored first baseman Kevin Youkilis, giving Boston a 1-0 lead. Everything fell apart for Dice-K in the 5th inning. He walked 5 batters, surrendering only 1 hit in the inning but allowing 3 runs which scored on rbi’s by David Dejesus, Billy Butler, and Jose Guillen giving KC a 3-1 lead. Matsuzaka didn’t even get to finish the inning as he was taken out of the game in favor of reliever, Joe Nelson who finished off the inning. The Red Sox chipped back in the bottom of the inning on a solo homer by centerfielder Bill Hall. The teams traded 2 out RBI doubles in the 6th inning, Dejesus again for KC and Boston’s beloved captain, Jason Varitek for the Sox. It was 4-3 after 6 innings. And the bullpens took control of the game in the 7th inning as no one reached base for the rest of the game following Varitek’s double. Joakim Soria closed out the game for Kansas City in the 9th as the three of us went home happily with a Red Sox loss.

Win- Bannister
6IP 9H 3ER 0BB 4K

Loss- Matsuzaka
4.2IP 2H 3ER 8BB 1K

Save- Soria
1IP 0H 0ER 0BB 0K

Fenway Park
Fans: 8 (we deducted a point because they did the wave, and it went around 3 times…)
Food: 6
Seats: 4 (expensive and far back… ew)
Overall Experience: 7

We really did enjoy our experience, and having Kit there was a lot fun. The only thing that we ate at the ballpark was some New England clam chowder. Spencer and Sam both had some and said it was very good. The game itself once the Bullpen took over was really well pitched. Spencer and I loved the end of the game when the Red Sox lost. Kansas City seems to have the ability to not lose on the road. The Mets won in Philly, and KC won on the road twice, other than that, it’s been all home teams. Next stop… THE BRONX!