My blog will be doing double sports duty today, as of course there is plenty to talk about with the Red Sox, yet there is also a controversy on my school’s hockey team involving two players who have now been kicked off the team.

We’ll start with the Red Sox first.

After getting embarassed by the Orioles, the Red Sox have now taken two games from the Angels while showing the pitching talent Theo Epstein had promised in the off season. Buchholz was good enough on Monday night, departing the game in the sixth with a 7-4 lead, and Lester threw a gem last night, holding the Angels to one run on five hits through eight innings.

On Monday, the Red Sox batters actually looked like batters, exploding for 17 runs on 20 hits, highlighted by a seven-run sixth inning. Seven players had multi-hit nights. Mike Lowell went 4-for-4 in the DH spot with three doubles and four RBIs, Kevin Youkilis was on base five times, J.D. Drew went 4-for-5, and Dustin Pedroia, Youkilis, Adrian Beltre and Bill Hall all went yard.

It looked good.

Last night, the Red Sox struggled a bit more at the plate, but they were able to hit when it counted, batting around in a four-run eighth inning en route to a 5-1 win.

But keep this all in perspective. The Angels have the third worst pitching staff in all of Major League Baseball, besting only the Pirates and the Diamondbacks. They have the worst pitching staff in the American League. The Red Sox are still below .500 27 games into the season, and they have a tough weekend ahead of them against the Yankees. This success on the mound and at the plate will be good for the Sox’s confidence, but I still think it’s too early to think this team’s problems are solved.

And now, we move to what is being dubbed “St. Patty’s-gate”.

As some of you may know, I attend Boston University. Here, hockey rules all. We don’t have a football team or a baseball team, and our basketball team isn’t quite an elite force yet.

Our hockey team, however, has a legacy of domination. We won the national championship last year, and have won 29 of 58 Beanpots. Whenever something happens with the hockey team here, it’s big news.

So consider this. On St. Patrick’s Day, two days before an elimination playoff game that BU lost, at least four players were out drinking. Two were underage. The hockey team has a rule that players who are of age are allowed to drink only on Saturday nights. March 17th, St. Patrick’s Day, was not a Saturday night.

In a subsequent bike ride that was punishment for breaking team rules, at least one of the players who was drinking on St. Patrick’s Day, 20-year-old Vinny Saponari, showed up late.

Yesterday, almost two months after St. Patrick’s Day, Vinny Saponari was kicked off the hockey team. He told the school paper that he was being dismissed for breaking team rules and then showing up late to the bike ride.

Corey Trivino, another 20-year-old player who was drinking that night, was suspended from the team. Victor Saponari, Vinny’s older brother who is of age and was also involved, was also kicked of the team for what BU coach Jack Parker called cumulative behavior unbecoming of a Boston University hockey player. Adam Kraus, a fourth player drinking that night who is also of legal age, has not been punished to date. Vinny Saponari was the only player of the four in the line-up for the playoff game two days after the drinking incident.

It’s a sad turn of events for BU hockey, as both Trivino and Vinny Saponari are valuable forwards on the team. The punishments seem to indicate that Vinny Saponari had to have done something drastically worse than Trivino, yet no information has come out yet on what that might be. The timetable also seems a bit sketchy, as it is now almost two months after the original event occurred.

I’m keeping an eye on this story as it continues to develop, but meanwhile, I’m trying to focus on the Sox’s offensive improvements and the Bruins’ playoff run. Until next time,
-A