a700hitter

It is rare for a Red Sox starter to make it to the 7th inning.

78

Penny's pitch count is very good.

Hughes lowered his ERA tonight giving up 3 runs in 5 innings, including 2 HRs.

Baldelli with a triple. Everyone is hiiting tonight. Give me a bat.

This is what you are supposed to do to crap ass pitchers.

The reverse lock for Yeszir.

I'm not sure if Barajas tagged Ellsbury, but the ump had no angle to see it. First HR for Big Papi!!!! Time to bring pain to AL pitchers.

Multiple Homer game for Varitek and still no homers for Ortiz. Go figure.

Baldelli up with two outs. Time to take a snack break.

Pedroia doesn't want Lowell to get to far ahead in the team lead in DPs.

Nice face-plant by Cecil. Ouch.

Correct, but these are facts too: Schilling tried to pitch in 2007. Foulke did not try to play.

Those are the facts as you want them to be, but they are not the facts. The quotes from Foulke in the article that I linked belie your version of the facts with regard to Foulke. There's nothing wrong with the actions of either and there is nothing particularly honorable about the road that Foulke took, and I will always be a huge Foulke fan.

Leave it to you to add something stupid to a perfectly fine thread.

He pitched in 2008 for Oakland. I'm not being harsh to Foulke. I think he is great. I am not saying that he is a bad person or that he has bad character. I am just saying that walking away from the game in 2007 was not an honorable act worthy of any note. If Foulke is a folk-hero, it is because of his onfield accomplishments. The way he left the game in 2007 was nothing special.

Foulke was lazy. I've got nothing against being lazy. That's okay, but let's not elevate it to an honorable quality. He came back the next season and sucked.

If they paid me $5 million to play, I'd show up and try my hardest to play. If I was physically unable to perform, I'd have lived up to my end of the contract. If I decided not to show up and try to play, I wouldn't expect a check, nor would I ask for one. The Sox signed Juan Gonzalez a few years ago. He never showed up. Do you think the Red Sox paid him. Foulke didn't want to play, so he didn't show up. If he wanted the $5 million, he would have had to show up and go through the Guardians program (i.e, treatment, physical therapy, rehab assignmentsetc.) for the entire season. That's work, not stealing. He didn't do the work so he wasn't entitled to get paid. If he showed up for his check without doing the work, the Guardians would have told him to get lost.

Should have signed jackie Robinson and Willie Mays too.

The Sox should have fired their doctor's. They didn't do their job. Schilling did his job. He maximized his earning potential.

Personally, I think Foulke was a schmuck in this regard. As long as someone is willing to pay you exorbitant amounts to play baseball, you should do it. When being paid to play, you should also give a 100% effort to play. The career of a major league ballplayer is limited even for the best players, so they should maximize their earning potential. To do otherwise is financially irresponsible. The "he wanted to go out on top" argument makes me sick. There are very few icons who have public images and legacies that need protecting. Babe Ruth got cut by the Yankees. Mantle was a shell at the end. Most players (even the greats) have the uniform torn off their backs and that's the way it should be. Does it tarnish their image? If it does, it is does not do so in any meaningful way. It's hard to find a better paying job. Edit: The biggest schmuck of all time IMO was Ryne Sandberg who walked away from the last 2 years of his biggest contract to spend more time with his family. Within 3 weeks of walking away in midseason, his wife filed for divorce, and the next spring he was back begging for his job. They gave him his job back at an 85% cut in pay. No wonder that his wife divorced the moron.