The problem is that no matter how you slice it the umpire was calling Willits out while 'tek was falling and dropping the ball. That's baseball...the runner is out.

Obviously, someone doesn't like the Red Sox. Did you lose a bet during the weekend? Veritek tagged the guy, fell down, and then dropped the ball. How long does a player have to hold the ball after tagging an opposing player? Would an hour suffice? Don't be a douche. Tek tagged him with the ball in his glove; the guy was out; end of story. The Angels lost because they had poor defense (overall) and terrible base running.

Are that quick to look for conspiracies. How could we complain about Boston being given Garnett--especially when any real fan was happy to see him get away from a club whose owner insisted on lying about the best player the Wolves ever had after he left?--when we were given Pau Gasol? No, the sad thing is that we saw the weaknesses in our team exposed to the whole world in a series that was horrible to watch. We hope for a better year this year with Bynum back and a little more toughness coming from that bad experience.

Yeah and Willits was out.

Hey folks, Just get a life and get on with it already. It's over. Stop whining.

If the Red Sox go on to win the world series, remember this tag play.

For years afterwards, you will be hearing about it from Angels fans. Not all of them. Just a few angry ones. Why? Because they believe their team "deserved" the World Series, and were cheated out of it by the Red Sox on that controversial tag.

If you don't believe me, let me tell you what it has been like to follow the Pats since 2001. Every year when they were heading for another Super Bowl, the Colts fans would be writing to our newspapers and websites saying it was all a fraud because one of the Patriots' linemen may have bent the rules in a goal-line stand in the 2001 regular season, and that may have decided home-field advantage. The Raiders fans would be writing in about the "Tuck Rule" call.

It didn't matter that the Patriots beat the Colts in several subsequent playoff games. It didn't matter that the Raiders have barely been able to put their uniforms on successfully in years. The Patriots were inferior, and they won, so they must have cheated.

So then we get Spygate, and everybody rushes to conclude that, based on a fairly minor and ineffectual bit of cheating, the Patriots' whole run was fake. Not because they had the evidence. Because they wanted to believe.

Yankees fans still occasionally accuse Big Papi and Schilling of steroid use out of the blue. Lakers fans think the Celtics cut some kind of sweetheart deal to get Garnett, or bribed the referees, or something, to win the NBA.

Not all the Yankees and Lakers fans are saying this. Just the ones that write in. I can only assume this happens to everybody who wins everything.

I don't want to take issue with King's opinion of the tag play (he's wrong) or question the strategy of Mike Scioscis (it was not good), but rather I want to take issue with the author's last paragraph:

"The Rays and Sox had a brawl in June, highlights of which you'll see 47 times between the time you read this and the first pitch Friday. It was a defining moment for the Rays, who took the opportunity to tell the world that they were tired of getting pushed around by the bullies on their block, the Red Sox and New York Yankees."

King may not know this but any good Red Sox fan (like myself) would know that the Rays and Red Sox have brawled countless times over the years dating back the Devil Rays days and Pedro drilling them every so often - there always been a lot of bad blood between these teams and it never helped the then Devil Rays be any better than a terrible team. The reason the Rays had a great season is not that they finally stood up to the Red Sox it's that they finally have a good team - the biggest change is that their bullpen which only last year was statistically the worst bullpen of all time was terrific this year and that their young players finally came of age and that Garza and Sonnanstine gave them a reliable middle of the rotation - this is a good team and I am concerned about the Sox ability to beat them - but the brawl has nothing to do with it- and any fan who was watched these teams fight over the years knows that.

With all this talk, it's looking like a (slightly) better strategy would have been for Scioscia to have called for Willits to steal home directly, rather than try the squeeze. That way it would have been a play at the plate, and if Varitek had dropped the ball there, he would've been safe.

On the other hand, once the bunt was missed, that's essentially what you had, except apparently Willits wasn't thinking of it as a straight steal and instead tried to get back to third. And with a right handed pitcher and a lefty batter it's not an ideal time for a steal attempt anyway.

Not a force play. Runner bowls over the catcher as the catcher is holding the ball in front of him. Catcher is knocked over, falls backwards. His hand hits the ground hard and the ball is knocked out.

Safe!

Good points, all. I guess my issue is that the double play wasn't in order, and that's a huge motitvation to sacrifice bunt late in the game, IMO.

The other thing I thought was interesting is that the instant Aybar came up, and announcers starting talking suicide squeeze. It was that obvious. And in this day and age of diminished bunting skills (the previous sac-bunt notwithstanding) it really seemed like a stretch to try and push a run over with one out and a man on third.