No secrets left between Rays and Red Sox

Sunday, October 19, 2008 | Feedback | Print Entry

Game 7 will be the 25th game played between the Red Sox and the Rays since the start of the regular season. They've played more than 200 innings, and their pitchers have thrown nearly 10,000 pitches. Some hitters have made roughly 100 plate appearances against the other team. No secrets remain, except for maybe David Price, the young, hard-throwing left-hander who is mostly an unknown presence to the Boston hitters.

The Tampa Bay batters have a sense of how the Boston pitchers will work against them. The same holds true for the Red Sox. Some Boston veterans who have struggled this season might be benefiting in this series from their accumulated knowledge.  
 

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  • Buster Olney Buster Olney

    Buster Olney is a senior writer at ESPN The Magazine. He began covering baseball in 1989, as the Nashville Banner's beat reporter assigned to the Triple-A Nashville Sounds. Later, he covered the San Diego Padres (1993-94), the Baltimore Orioles ('95-96), the New York Mets ('97) and the Yankees ('98-2001). Olney joined ESPN The Magazine in 2003, after six years at The New York Times, and he's the author of the Times' best-seller "The Last Night of the Yankee Dynasty," a book about the Paul O'Neill-Tino Martinez Yankees dynasty of 1996-01.

    He grew up in central Vermont collecting baseball cards and listening to Red Sox, Expos, Phillies and Pirates radio broadcasts, and was a rabid fan of the Los Angeles Dodgers. He graduated from Vanderbilt University the same year as hoops legend Will Perdue, and ranks among the all-time leading scorers in pickup basketball at Memorial Gym. He claims to have witnessed the Commodores' winning football season in 1982 (although anthropologists have not yet confirmed this).

    Olney also contributes to ESPN.com, ESPN Radio, ESPNEWS, "SportsCenter" and "Baseball Tonight."

    Follow Buster on Twitter: @Buster_ESPN

    Ask Buster a question: Buster's Mailbag

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