Boston Red Sox make MLB history
After losing the first three games in the best-of-seven ALCS, The Boston Red Sox won the next three and looked to make history in Yankee Stadium on Wednesday night. And did they ever! They became the first team in MLB history to come back from a 0-3 series deficit to win 4-3 and advance to the 2004 World Series. After struggling at the plate in the first 6 games, Red Sox center fielder Johnny Damon lit up Yankee pitching for 2 homeruns, including a grand slam that put them up 6-0 in the second inning. Derek Lowe pitched on two days' rest, allowing one hit in six innings and Pedro Martinez made his first relief appearance in 5 years. It had been 100 years since Boston last won a pennant in New York, a 3-2 victory in a doubleheader opener at Hilltop Park in 1904. The Red Sox won game seven 9-3 and now await the winner of the Houston Astros and St Louis Cardinals for the World Series Championship.
Bonds in hot water (again)
Barry Bonds is back in the news after reports that a San Francisco newpaper has obtained copies of telephone conversations that prove his abuse of anabolic steroids. The report states that the secretly recoded telephone conversation has Greg Anderson, Barry Bonds' former weight trainer and a defendant in an ongoing BALCO federal criminal investigation, claim that Bonds was using an "undetectable" performance-enhancing drug during the 2003 baseball season. Bonds just had a monumental 2004 regular season, surpassing 700 career homeruns. Bonds may be a fitness nut and use the latest weight training techniques, but there has always been this nagging whispers of performance enhancing drugs being a reason for his success. This story will just give these doubters more life. An excerpt from the recording seems extremely damning:
"It's going to be in either the end of May or beginning of June, right before the All-Star break, definitely," Anderson was recorded as saying in The Chronicle story. "So after the All-Star break, we're like clear."
