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Buchholz, Red Sox complete sweep of Dodgers

Baseball Betting Lines

06/20/2010 - Boston, MA (Sportsbook Betting Lines) - Clay Buchholz pitched effectively into the seventh to pick up his 10th win of the season, and the Red Sox shut down the Dodgers, 2-0, to complete a three-game interleague sweep.

Buchholz (10-4) yielded just three hits and three walks while striking out four in 6 2/3 scoreless innings. The 25-year-old right-hander has pitched to a 1.62 earned-run average over his last eight starts.

Daniel Bard recorded four outs behind Buchholz, and Jonathan Papelbon closed out Boston's 8-1 homestand in the ninth.

David Ortiz and Kevin Youkilis each drove in a run, while Dustin Pedroia, who had the game-winning single on Saturday, went 3-for-4 with a triple and a run scored for the Sox, whose six-game win streak is their longest of the season.

Hiroki Kuroda (6-5) was solid in seven innings of work, giving up a mere two runs on six hits and a walk to go with nine strikeouts for Los Angeles, which has dropped four straight.

Buchholz wiggled out of a bases-loaded, one-out jam in the first by fanning Garret Anderson and getting Casey Blake on a comebacker to the mound.

Pedroia got the Red Sox on the board in the bottom half, singling with one out and quickly stealing second. Russell Martin's throw to second got past the bag, and with the infield shifted for Ortiz, Pedroia alertly advanced to an unoccupied third.

Ortiz was intentionally walked, and Youkilis' check-swing dribbler down the third base line stayed fair, bringing in Pedroia for a 1-0 lead.

The Sox got another run in the third, as Marco Scutaro singled, moved to third on Pedroia's base hit and scored on an Ortiz sacrifice fly to right.

Buchholz induced a double-play lineout off the bat of Matt Kemp to end the second and retired 10 straight before tiring in the seventh.

Anderson led off with a ground-rule double to right-center, and Buchholz was pulled after plunking Blake DeWitt with two outs. Daniel Bard entered and needed just one pitch to get Jamey Carroll on a weak grounder to short.

James Loney flied out to the warning track in left to end the eighth, and Boston wasted Pedroia's leadoff triple in the bottom half.

Papelbon retired Anderson, Blake and Martin in succession in the ninth to record his 16th save of the season.

Game Notes

Ramirez went 2-for-3 with a walk and finished the series 5-for-12 with a solo homer in his return to Boston, which traded the slugger to LA prior to the trade deadline in 2008...Buchholz joined New York's Phil Hughes and Tampa Bay's David Price as the American League's only 10-game winners. All three pitchers are 25-years-old or younger...Red Sox outfielder J.D. Drew sat out for a second straight game with an injured hamstring...DeWitt left the game after getting hit in the seventh.

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FOOTBALL TRASH TALK

NFL Football Trash Talk

Trash talk has a place in every competitive endeavor (except baseball; those stirrup-wearers are too busy chewing on their sunflower seeds and their supplements to worry about what their opponents are doing).

Fantasy sports is no exception. Any intelligent discussion of the subject would probably start with a thesis statement or a definition of terms. Thankfully, this wont be an intelligent discussion.

Let me just say that I am happy to take a place in this space alongside my talented colleagues, even our commissioner. (You should see how she bleats like a demented paper boy about league fees on our fantasy site).

Trash talking, I would argue, is primarily about amusing your friends, their sheeplike demeanors and sloping foreheads notwithstanding. The best place I have found for football trash talking is at www.SportsAlarm.com.

Beyond the entertainment factor, though, I would recognize that the sophomoric ritual has one advantage, when properly applied. It magnifies your fantasy triumphs and mitigates your fantasy failures by transforming the eventual point total into an afterthought. Winning makes it seem like your opponent really is a truss-owning, lapel-pin-wearing nitwit. And in defeat, trash talk can be the air bag to break the fall from your hyperbolic heights. The plug-necked yahoos on your team, you can say, will be sacking groceries by the end of the season.

The best trash talk, in my view, is layered and nuanced. And it doesnt focus only on your opponents team. It picks apart your opponent. The idea is to create a shock-and-awe-scale blizzard of nonsense, and the goal is to make your opponent drop his hands from his keyboard in exasperation.

What team does your opponent root for? Accuse a Giants fan of having a Joe Namath pillowcase. Wheres your opponent from? Give a look of concern no matter his reply, then say, I'll try to type slower for you next time. Is your opponent into politics? Label everyone a tax-and-spend corporate shill.

Cap all that with a liberal application of irrelevance. For instance, dont just conclude by saying your opponent is a twerp who drafts like my grandmother. Say that your opponent is a sweater-wearing, eyebrow-plucking twerp who drafts his team about as well as Zsa Zsa Gabor gave acceptance speeches at the Oscars. By the time your foe makes sense of that, his starting running back will have had puppies.

But what about you? Hmm? Recall a memorable slam? Have a tried-and-true technique? Know someone who seems impervious to insult? Take a moment and tells us about it. Put together some (fit-for-publication) thoughts. You wont be too busy returning phone messages from your friends, Im sure, to reply.

In addition to the trash talking, the Sports Alarm has a huge gallery of high resolution pictures of beautiful women and models in bikinis. The most popular models are: Lindsay Lohan, Carrie Underwood, Alessandra Ambrosio, and Paris Hilton.