Dougie Goes Deep, and My Site Meter Goes Wild

Tim Wakefield finally got some run support last night, but it didn't come until the fifth inning, and courtesy of his personal batterymate, Doug Mirabelli (pictured, with Dustin Pedroia). He blasted a John Lackey pitch into the Red Sox bullpen for his first home run of 2007 to tie the game with the Angels at 1. Mirabelli would also drive in another important run to give the Red Sox a 3-1 lead in the sixth.

As soon as he hit the home run, I said to a friend of mine I was watching the game with, "My Site Meter numbers are going to go crazy after this." That was in reference to the funny Doug Mirabelli "Day in the Life" article I have on my blog that I posted last July. Red Sox fans seem to find it all the time, but since the season began, the number of people finding has gone up dramatically. For those of you who may never have seen it:
http://quinnmedia.blogspot.com/2006/07/day-in-life-of-doug-mirabelli.html

And boy, did the Site Meter ever go wild last night. I had about 100 hits on my blog at about 5 PM yesterday for the day, but when I got home just before midnight, I had 175 hits from 5 PM on. And I checked to see where they came from, and about 90% where people looking for the Mirabelli post, and 95% of them were from New England. The numbers seemed to be the highest right after Doug hit the home run. (I guess it made many Red Sox fans run to their computers!) I had an amazing 275 hits yesterday. (My Site Meter numbers also spiked when Doug caught Tim Wakefield for the first time last week.)

Makes me wish Dougie played (and hit homers) more often.

As for the game, Tim Wakefield gave another sterling performance, pitching seven innings and allowing just one earned run. This time he got a well-deserved win, as Brendan Donnelly and Jonathan Papelbon shut down the Angels rally in the eighth, and the Sox added six runs in the bottom of the inning to ice a 10-1 win. Mike Timlin finished up in the ninth to finish it off. David Ortiz, J.D. Drew and Mike Lowell had two RBIs each in the eighth as the Red Sox busted out again after being shut down Wednesday night.