One cannot tell the complete history of the Boston Red Sox without considering the game they played tonight, Monday, May 18, 2026. I mean, one can, but they’d be doing the team a disservice. Tonight’s game counted and the record should reflect that. It doesn’t matter how wack the team has been and should be looking to the future in the both the near- and long-term. Like, Roman Anthony has suffered a setback and everything. And yet we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the next thing the Red Sox do. Fuck the past; how is the future? For one night, it seemed pretty rad.*
*(Just now, in writing this post, it occurs to me that I said Kyle Isbel was the starting pitcher. While objectively funny, that’s a very stupid thing to do. That’s a Monday special, folks.)
Anyhow, Sonny was great and outdueled Padres legend Seth Lugo, who got bit by a two-run Willson Contreras dong in the fifth to open the scoring.
Hey Seth: Why don’t you lu-go fetch the ball from the stands? Idiot.*
*We have no idea if Seth Lego is an idiot and one pitch cannot provide evidence one way or the other. It sounded cool tho and he got rocked so deal with it.
Sonny Gray gave up one run in 6 innings, tho that one run was in the 7th, so use ur noggin on that. Broader point: He was Good Again. And when he struck out Bobby Witt Jr. he tied Bobby Witt Sr. for strikeouts all-time. You just can’t predict baseball, folks.*
*Kalshi would disagree. And as much as I hate it I set up an account to bet $10 that JD Vance would *not* be the GOP nominee in 2028 at like 1:1 odds. It’s a win-win vote because he sucks so hard! If he’s the nom he’ll lose! That’s worth $10!
Outside of a brief Gray/Justin’s Laten hiccup in the 7th, the Sox’s pitching was immaculate, including an impressive ultimately shutdown inning from Garrett Whitlock in the eighth. The Sox faced old friend John Schreiber in the 9th and he got pulled after walking Jarren Duran, which serves him right for no longer being on the team, whether his fault or not.*
*It wasn’t.
I wish it would stop doing that. I’m just trying to—*
*But you’re doing it.
Fair enough.*
*Wrap it up!
Fine. Aroldis Chapman came out and finished the Royals off which was the dream of the French for hundreds of years. (They didn’t have the power of a failed Starling Marte challenge.) All that even if the early years of “England” as we know it was run by French people and the king didn’t speak English for a long, long time. The French hating the French? Mon dieu! That’s not what we’re here to talk about tho. Those kings are just as dead as KC was tonight. For (New) England! (England sucks too tho. That’s why they made a New one.)
Enough of all that. Sox win!