The Toronto Blue Jays are in town for what was supposed to be a three game series with the local nine. The rain came heavily this afternoon and washed out our chance to see Paul Byrd’s debut tonight.

Previously, I made a couple statements here that the Sox needed to go 15-7 in the games leading up to the final series at Yankee Stadium. So far, the boys are 10-3 with five games left at home against Toronto and Baltimore. There’s also three games in Toronto so realistically they can go 4-4 and make the mark. Thing is, Tampa keeps winning so as hot as the Sox have been, they are just keeping pace. With the Jays 9.0 games behind the Sox, even if the Sox go 3-2 against the Jays in the two series, it could be lights out for them as far as a playoff threat. That leads to statement #2…I said if the Sox took 2 of 3 against the Rangers, they would most likely fall by the wayside as a playoff contender. Well after sweeping Texas, they are a full 10.0 games back in the Wild Card and travelling to Tampa for a series with the Rays. As Josh Lile eloquantly put it in his Ranger blog today it’s time to “Punt”.

Now, the dose of reality. Yesterday and today, the Boston Red Sox and the Jimmy Fund at the Dana Farber Cancer Institute have held a two day fund raiser. The New England Sports Network (NESN) along with the WEEI radio network carried the telethon. The Jimmy Fund is an organization that helps eliminate cancer in children. I’ve been lucky, no one in my family has been hit with any form of this horrendous monster. In watching the telethon on NESN during the rainout tonight, I saw way too many kids that have been hit with various forms of the disease and how they are beating it. You know why these kids are winning? Because many people are donating their time and especially money to research. Last year, the total donations from this telethon made it to the $3.7M mark. The Red Sox set a goal of an even $4M this year. The telethon officially ends at midnight but around 8:00 tonight, the $4M mark was passed and there were still fours hours to go. (It’s 10:35PM and the number is at $4,708,358)

In these economic times over $4.7 MILLION DOLLARS HAVE BEEN RAISED IN JUST UNDER 48 HOURS. It would be sweet to see the $5M mark hit in the next 90 minutes so let’s see what we, here at www.sportstalkbuzz.com can do…

Here is the important info:

Call     1-877-738-1234

or click

http://www.jimmyfund.org/

http://www.dana-farber.org/how/default.html

All I ask is anyone that does make a donation - let’s put it in Kevin Lee’s name care of www.sportstalkbuzz.com

Let’s make a loud statement if we can

This seems silly to do now after that but here are the pitching matchups for the rest of the weekend:

Saturday

Byrd (7-10  4.53) vs. Halladay (13-9  2.72)

Sunday

Beckett (11-8  3.92) vs. Marcum (7-5  3.42)

Don’t forget, with the internet some deadlines never end.

Jim

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