Before the first pitch is even thrown in the first game of the American League Division Series pitting Your Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim against the Boston Red Sox (game time is 6:37 p.m. Thursday at the Big A), manager Mike Scioscia has been asked incessantly about the same painful subject: His Halos' string of playoff losses to the bruisers from Beantown.
Strangely, he is not asked so much about the Angels' mastery of the Sox during the regular season.
The critics have a lot of cannon fire: there were, of course, the losses to Boston in October of 2007 and 2008.
But the Angels' skipper is also being pressed about the most disheartening defeat of all, Game 5 in the 1986 ALCS, which Boston won with Dave Henderson's ninth inning homer.
Fortunately, Scios' has a good comeback for that one . . .
]
“A lot of our guys weren't even born [in 1986].”
* * *
Read Alt. weekly 2009 Baseball Throwdown coverage for:
St. Louis Cardinals: http://blogs.riverfronttimes.com/therundown
Boston Red Sox: http://www.weeklydig.com/blogs/mlbthrowdown
Minnesota Twins: http://blogs.citypages.com/blotter/baseball/
Colorado Rockies: http://blogs.westword.com/latestword/baseball/
New York Yankees: http://blogs.villagevoice.com/runninscared/archives/baseball/
Los Angeles Dodgers: http://blogs.laweekly.com/ladaily/sports/
Anaheim/LA Angels: http://blogs.ocweekly.com/navelgazing/baseball/
OC Weekly Editor-in-Chief Matt Coker has been engaging, enraging and entertaining readers of newspapers, magazines and websites for decades. He spent the first 13 years of his career in journalism at daily newspapers before “graduating” to OC Weekly in 1995 as the alternative newsweekly’s first calendar editor.