That's gotta be rough for a Brewers fan. Go down 5-0, come back to lead 6-5, but then lose 7-6. Ugly second game with seven errors. Fans chanting "We want Gagne." Too bad Wake couldn't get the win. Nice job by Timlin to close it out with Pap unavailable. And I think Michael Leggett was at one of these games, so I'm glad he got a W.

So we win twice in a day. Awesome. Manny sat out game two, so he's still at 498. I'll be there tomorrow, rooting for two Manny dongs, as will Mighty Quinn, whose predicted day is 5/18. You can be there, too. Get four bleacher seats together and see the Sox on a Sunday afternoon. Or four together in the loge if you're rich. Ticket-hike dot com? No! The freakin' ticket office! Try it.

Between games we picked up some Vietnamese food from a place in Harvard Square. (Not too much VF in Boston--terrible!) On our way in, a guy came rushing up to us with a clipboard asking if we could do him a favor. He said he needed us to sign a petition, telling us to "just ignore what's on top of the page, the guy that runs this is a crazy right-winger--but this is for a church!" We read the top line: "I support George W. Bush and the Iraq War." So of course we just went, "Sorry!" (extra loud) and walked away. Isn't that weird? It seemed like a psychological experiment. Because why would a petition say that? What would the purpose be? And the fact that they went to a place where almost nobody would want to sign makes it seem even more fake. I think they were trying to see if people would sign anything. There were ten lines on the page, and they had four sigs, but they could've been fake to make it seem more real. Whatever. Real or fake, what a waste of our time. I'm fine with them wasting their own time, but leave us alone....we've got enough clipboard people to deal with in life.

At the funeral today, Kim and I are driving in the procession, and guess which song comes on the radio? November Rain! (Sorry if your generation doesn't get it.)

Got to listen to the Mets beat the Yanks in the car on the way back up here.

And now Papi has gone dong and we lead the Brewers 4-0 in the 3rd. If Manny gets 499 in this game, I just may head over to the park for game two and see what I can do. If not, I've got my ticket for tomorrow already....

Sox-Brewers, Mets-Yanks, and Jere and Kim's softball game rained out...

The Fox 3:55 game means the make-up game on Saturday will be at 8:35 PM.

The Rays won so we're 1.5 back.

Amazing Larry sez: Bring a raincoat! Brewers at Sox, Dice-K vs. (chuckle) Suppan, 7:05. Return of Gabe!

Here's a story about Giambi sharing his gold thong with other players. April Fools!! Oh, no, wait, it's real.

(Here's a side note for ya: Nearly every time I read a Yankees story on the Daily News' website, the top "related story" on the sidebar is "Derek Jeter injured in Yankee win." And every time I say, What's this, Jeter's hurt? But it always turns out to be the same old story from early April. It happens in the story linked above, too. In fact, click on any of the other related articles and the Jeter injury story is one of that article's top related articles, too! Check it out. What's up with that?)

Great stat: Yanks in games started by pitchers other than Wang: 13-20. Pretty much what we expected. Their rotation besides Wang is two senior citizens and two infants, so actually 13-20 ain't too shabby.

I was looking up my mom's memoir online to see if there were any new reviews. I found this audio clip from a site called Hold This Thought (if you can't get audio, it's written out there, too). I think it's cool that the passage that person chose is about a young me!

Then there's this review, which is really good. (The cover is the British one, which is nowhere near as cool as the American version...)

This page has comments that seem to be directed at my mom. Mom--you seeing these? The bread-deliverer's granddaughter is psyched he's in the book!

And this page has a lot of reader reviews. Almost all are great. But the rare negative ones make me wonder what I'm gonna do when our new book gets one. Her memoir wasn't written by me and still I hear someone say "read The Glass Castle instead," and I'm like, "you can take your glass castle and shove it up your pompous ass!" (No offense to whoever wrote The Glass Castle.)

Girls of Tender Age, by Mary-Ann Tirone Smith. Check it out.

UPDATE: So I went and started to order tix to other games, even the same game but different sections, stopping short of placing the order, and the $7 fee IS there! But I tried pavilion SRO again, and there was no fee! I can't figure this one out. There's also a new thing where you can have th ticket go to your phone, and then at the park they scan the image on your phone's screen....weird.

-----

Well I'll start with my usual message, which is that you can believe the people on craigslist who say things like, "35 dollars for a standing room ticket--look around, you ain't gonna get better than that!" Or you can go to redsox.com and buy the damn ticket for face value! 20 bucks! Plenty of SRO and everything else available for the upcoming homestand. If those sell, more will be released. (Also note that even if it was "the best price out there," that doesn't make it right for you to STILL sell the thing for nearly twice face value.)

But here's the good news. Since I can't go on Friday or Saturday, my next chance to see Manny's 500th dong live is Sunday. I bought one of the pavilion standing room tickets--love that view--and I noticed something that surprised me in a pleasant or otherwise anti-bad fashion:

$25 ticket, plus, "Total Convenience Fee for 1 seat $4.25," equals, "Price for 1 seat $29.25."

Okay, that's normal. But then:

"Subtotal: $29.25
Order Processing: $0.00
Total: $29.25"

A ZERO-dollar order processing fee! You know what it usually is? Seven bucks! In other words, if you buy the cheapest ticket, 12-dollar upper bleacher, the 4.25 fee plus the 7.00 fee means you're almost paying double face value. But if the $7 fee is gone, that changes everything! I just got Iron Maiden tickets and stupid Ticketmaster-bater charges about 17 dollars in fees per ticket. So 4.25 ain't bad. (And, of course, with the ticket-scalping agencies, you pay even more ridiculous fees...on tickets priced way above face value anyway.)

I don't know if this is permanent or if they just forgot or what's going on, but if this is the new thing, it's a big deal, at least the way I see it. Way to realize you don't "need" 7 extra dollars every time somebody places an order, Red Sox!

I've also been wondering if the Sox went against the S****ub deal because they don't want to get sued by someone claiming, "Hey, you told me to go to this other place to buy tickets and I paid WAY more than face value and then I found out you were selling them for face! Also, the back of the ticket says it's illegal to resell them for more than 3% of the face value..." Maybe that's why they went the "sponsorship only" route with A** Tickets.

I still don't know why anybody goes to those agencies. Unless, of course, your home team is so shitty that people sell on there for below face. But even then, you could just go to craigslist and avoid the fees.

The Rays beat the Yanks 5-2, as Ian "Sure to be awesome because we say so, oh, also, so are all the other pitchers we didn't trade for Santana, just so you know. Fear us." Kennedy was shelled again. The Yanks fall into last place. The Rays, meanwhile, are now a game ahead of us for first.

Okay, people, and Matty, I'm always ripping the media-types, so it's about time I talk about some of the people I like. I apologize if I don't do this enough.

Okay, we know how I feel about sports radio, and despite that I always say I'll never listen to it again, I always go back. I remember Ryan saying that Dale & Holley were pretty good, and I have to say, after hearing them a bunch over the last few months, it really is a pretty good show. The other shows I still just have no interest in, but those two do a good job.

Actually, there's another guy on that station, Mike Mutnansky, who does a weekend show. He's really smart and is there to talk about sports, not do poopy-doody sound effects and stuff. And he seems to have a Connecticut connection, and talks like one of us Connecti...cutians? That guy's goin' places.

I hope I've mentioned this before, but I consider Jeff Goldberg of the Hartford Courant somewhat of a "friend of the family" (even though I've never met him) because I guess his mother, Carole, used to interview my mom for the Courant back when Jeff and I were in short-pants. Or something. So we were very excited when he got the gig as the Red Sox guy at the Courant. And he's done a great job!

And then you've got the other non-fools like Rob Bradford who does a great job with his blog, and I never had anything against Gordon Edes either. There are plenty of others that I like not just in Boston or New York (Bob Raissman, the ultimate Yankee broadcaster-hater, if I'm not), but national as well. Unfortunately, the bad outnumber the good. So, anti-terrible job, non-bad media-types!

You know what my favorite play in baseball is? It's when somebody fields a ball, but can't get into position to throw it fast enough, so he/she flips it to another fielder nearby who then makes the throw.

A good example is from the 80s, when some Phillies pitcher fielded a slow roller on the third base side. All his momentum was going away from first base when he got the ball, so he flipped it to the third baseman, Mike Schmidt, who gunned the runner out at first. 1-5-3 on the putout.

It could also happen if a fielder makes a diving play and flips the ball to someone nearby who's standing up, and then that person makes the throw.

So...

Yeah. If I've said some other play is my favorite in the past, forget that one. I'm goin' with Jerk Store.

video credit: Sox & Dawgs. I ended up continuing to be lazy and not uploading it myself. Somehow I knew "uncut" video is where we'd see this stick. It's like em ell bee doesn't know there are other places to put video or something. I can just see their little minions heading back to base: "I scoured YouTube, sir. Got 'em all!"

MLB fast and furious takin' down all the uploaded vids of Manny's catch.

Here's the vid on the MLB site. This should work. Again, though, you get the crappy Thorne version.

NESN's got Manny's post-game interview up, but not the play.

[video used to be here--taken down by MLB]

This is the Orioles' feed with Gary Thorne. They don't even mention the high five. NESN had it in slo-mo and zoomed and everything. The game's on now on replay--maybe I could snag it, but I'm kinda lazy.

video credit: somebody called MuahMan

Okay, here's [nothing, vid also taken down]--it's the NESN feed, but A. it's one of those "film the TV set shots" and B. they cut it off before the zooming, slo-mo, reactions, Remy and Don talking about it, etc. Am I gonna have to do this myself, people?

A win would have at least salvaged a .500 road trip. But no. We lose 6-3, blowing 3-0 leads in each of our last three games.

We go to the weekend in the Manny contest. pweezil needs two on Friday. Jack needs two by Saturday. Mighty Quinn needs two by Sunday.

After LoPEZ dispensed of the first two O's in the 7th, Dustin couldn't come up with a grounder to his left. Then Mills brings in Hansen (the consensus seems to be that he is now good, almost as if A. everyone forgot the past or B. he's done anything at all to prove he's now good. I still have hope for him, but he still needs to get, you know, there.). Anyway, he gives up two more baserunners, and then Oki comes in and gives up a grand dong to Jay "can suck my butt" Payton. 6-3 them. We go to the eighth.

Now we're in the fifth. Tek just hit a dong to make it 2-0 us.

In the fourth, Manny made a great catch running toward the wall. He then climbed the wall, high-fived a fan, came back down, and threw into the infield where the runner was doubled off first. I love this man. If you're at work--go home and watch this immediately. Hilarious. Great shots of the rest of the team watching the replay in the dugout and cracking up.

Wicked first two innings for Lester, and we're up 1-0 after 2.

Buchholz to 15-day DL with "broken nail." Come on. So Van Every will come up to help out in the outfield since Coco's nauseous and Drew tried to scratch his right elbow with his right hand.

We lose a terrible one to Balty, but the Yanks lost in walk-off fashion to the Rays, who move into first ahead of us....

I'll be announcing tonight's game on YouCastr at 7 PM. Follow this link to get to the broadcast. My internet connection hasn't cut out once today so it should be smooth proverbial sailing tonight. But always know that if you hear nothing, a team of workers, meaning me, is working on the problem and the 'cast should be up again shortly.

Even though hardly anyone ever does this, I'll put it out there again: If you want to talk to me live on the air during the game between innings or on the "post-game," AIM me at Two2067 or Skype me at Gedman10. There's also a comment board on YouCastr where you can ask me questions or tell me to eff off or whatever. And I also usually follow the Joy of Sox game thread, too, so feel free to join that party.


[Of course, as I was about to post this, my connection cut out. So I tricked the jinx gods--we got the jinx out of the way now, so later we should be....ah well, you get the point. Shhhh.]

Tito's mother-in-law died, so he will miss the Baltimore series.

Also, my Auntie Margaret died this morning at age 90. She will be missed.

Here's a recent story about Dan Doyle from the Boston Globe. This is the man who's publishing the book my mom and I have co-written, which will be out this summer. He has a book of his own out, about sports parenting. Check out this article, or, if nothing else, go to page two and read the very end of it--the section titled "An Act of Forgiveness."

In my lifetime, the orange juice container hasn't changed much. First there was the classic carton, where you'd have to fold back the flaps and then push up and out. Then they made the carton plastic and bigger. Then they took the original carton and added a circular hole in the middle of one side of the top, and put a cap on it. Those last two styles have been what we're stuck with. Until now. Finally a fourth idea has been uncovered. The same plasti-carton, only with a flip-top.

So they got that goin' for 'em.

OJ > crappy coffee

Red Sox lose three out of four in Minny. With the Rays beating the Yanks tonight, they're only a half-game behind us for first place on May 12th. DeWayne Staats is psyched.

So Manny's got 498. Two dongs in Balty tomorrow night, tim wins the contest. Two by the next night, and Sosock wins. After that, Thursday off, and we'll talk about the weekend if necessary.

I want to announce a game soon. I'll probably do tomorrow or the next night, but I don't know yet.

Pettitte was drubbed tonight: 5 ER on 8 H in 4 IP. Yanks trail second-place Rays 6-0 in the sixth.

Double-H was worse. Seven runs. We trail 7-3 in the somethingth.

Here's a video I made a while back: It's the radio call of the play in which Tavarez dove at a runner on second from the mound when time had been called. (The video is just some shots I took of Trup and Joe in and near Fenway.) It was rare to hear Trup/Joe have those kinds of laugh-attacks.

Manny is II away from D!

He just hit dong number 498 to give the Sox a 3-0 lead in Minny in the first.

Tavarez has been DFA'd. I took a lot of pics of this guy as he would always be out in right field during BP. My favorite one is here.

In other news, the folks at Mike's Hard Lemonade have a new commercial out which implies that people who consume soy products are "soft." I hope their company goes bankrupt AND a dirty bomb lands on it just as everyone's clearing out their desks, and they all are left unrecognizable and suffer long slow deaths and have to drink their meals out of super-hard-and-extreme awesome-straws. How's that for soft, motherfuckers?

It amazes me how reactionary people can be when it comes to their defending champion, first place team. People are calling sports shows talking about how Lugo is a liability, and how we should just replace him with Lowrie and then and only then will everything be okay.

Lugo frustrates me. Largetime. I believe my quote from last season involved "leaving him at the hotel when the team flies to the next city." But come on, people, if he has a great couple of days and starts to settle in to his '08 season, nobody will say shit anymore.

I think this thinking comes from the fact that people look for the negative amongst all the positives. Every team wants to be perfect, but A. that can't happen and B. you don't need to be perfect to win the World Series. You don't need an All-Star at every position. You don't look at a team with eight All-Stars that's won the last five World Series and complain about the ninth player.

I look at our team like this: We've got great starting pitching. We've got a great closer. We've got a great line-up. Yes, there are issues with this team but we're built to win as we are. I'm all for arguments about how to make the team better and I know Theo & Co are always trying to do just that. But I don't think we should just look at a few weeks and judge everything based on that. If we did that, David Ortiz would've been let go in April, and Dustin Pedroia would be a star in some other city.

I also wonder about the whole "championships causing complacency" theory. For me, that's not it all. Because in 2004, all season, I just sat back knowing that our team was good enough to win, and that the Yanks could be beat. In other words, I was complacent to a degree without ever having seen my team win a World Series. It's more like confidence, I think. Only now is it truly justified, but I still had it in '04. The minute after Aaron Boone hit that home run, I knew we were winning the next year.

So, of course, get mad and talk about the on-field execution of players who cost us games at the time. It's fun and it's part of being a fan. But I hope, with this team and what it has done lately, and where it is now, people can at least calm down by the next morning.

[bottom note: Abe Alvarez was released from the PawSox. Too bad that career never took off. I was at Fenway for that first start of his in '04....]

In Morgan Burkhart's major league career, he played in the same starting lineup with four players currently playing in the Red Sox organization. Manny, Tek, Wake, and who?

Drew, the play's right in front of you. Stay at second.

Terribly I'd never read Joe Castiglione's book until now. Here's a great quote from it, considering it came out right before the 2004 season:

"I think 2004 will be the year of the Red Sox."

He follows that up with a sentence that begins, "A-Rod can't pitch...."

I like how Joe's thinking was in line with many of the rest of us. How many times did we all say "A-Rod can't pitch"? And years later, it's still true.

Red Sox at Twins, national Sunday night game....

Dongs: Youk, Crisp, Lowell, and Lowrie's first-ever. Sox beat Twins 5-2. Dice, win, Oki, hold, Pap, save. I was psyched to cinco-ocho right back in there. His bad luck streak continued with a dome-doomed pop-up, but he still got the job done. I liked seeing us come right back to win the game after a walk-off loss for the second time in a row.

So we're a game back of Arizona for the best record in baseball. The Space Coaster cruises on....

Manny 500 update: Novy needs three dongs from Manny on Sunday night. If that doesn't happen we've got Nick on Monday, truth on Tuesday as the Sox move to Baltimore, and Tim on Wednesday. Then it's an off-day, and then we're back home. Full list of predicted dates here.

And I want to clarify something for people who might be Googling "Papelbon Joba celebration" or whatever. We non-fools know the main difference between Pap's intense celebrations and Joba's intense celebrations is that when you see Pap doing it, it's because he just won the game. When Joba does it, it's in reaction to getting the last out of the eighth inning. So even if you think both reactions are silly or over-the-top or whatever, the mere fact that only Pap has actually won the game makes Joba's crap ten times sillier. (Okay, that's an arbitrary number but you get the picture.) What kills me is when people try to compare the two as if they're in the same situation. Especially when it happens on national TV. Today, the Yanks were on Fox, and Dick Stockton just threw it in as an afterthought. After discussing the Joba situation, he said, "of course, we've seen Jonathan Papelbon with a similar reaction after wins." Had he emphasized "wins" it would have been okay. But he emphasized Pap's name, implying we're comparing Pap winning a game with Joba winning a game. Which is wrong. Joba is *almost* winning a game. But hey, for the Yankees in 2008, *almost* winning a game, especially in the early months of the season, is about the best thing you can do. And I go to bed every night with a big smile on my face because of it.

The next time a Yankee fan tells you to "act like you've been there before," remind them of their favorite player who acts like he's just saved the world when he gets three outs in the eighth inning. In May.

I guess my old theory that Hanley Ramirez "doesn't exist" is pretty much completely proven wrong at this point. But we did get Beckett and Lowell for the guy....

Red Sox at Twins, 7:10 PM our time.

Tonight and two nights ago are type of losses that leave you hollow, but, more importantly, they don't make you think the team has any kind of fatal problems. You just have to move on to the next day knowing that this one is behind you.

But then you're like Clark Griswold going "Gah Dah Dah!"--we should have had this one...

Okay, moving on, forgetting about it, everything's fine...but road wins are tough to come by! Damnit!

All right, I'm okay now. I can see ignoring a runner in the ninth when you're up two. You say "that run doesn't matter." But in the ninth tonight, up one, we ignored the tying and winning runs. Not a big fan. Also, remember how last year my one worry was that we'd get to key October games, and Lugo will just lose his mind and make key mistakes? Looks like this year we've got the same worry, only he's making more physical errors than mental nowadays. Which get in his head, making him mentally and physically unsound. But he's got time to fix that. Again, we're a first place team, and we will be there in month number 10.

The Yanks pitched old buddy "No Dice" Kei Igawa tonight. He got shelled. They're under .500 again. The best part was that the Yanks had a comeback in the ninth and left the tying run at second. I love it when they almost win but still lose. Too bad we did the same tonight....

The purple team returned to the site of its famous comeback...and crapped the cot. I did get a hit in two at bats, but I, along with everybody else, screwed up a bunch in the field. I think it was 21-7 red team.

On our way home, we went through Kenmore Square. Sitting at the light, I noticed something as I looked up at the Citgo sign. Within the stalk of the "T" in CITGO, a little thing goes up and down, up and down. I think it's a light being turned off, making it appear as if a little bug is rapidly crawling up and down the T. The weird thing is, sometimes it goes to the bottom of the T, and reappears at the top. Like the way you can go off one side of the screen in a video game and come back on the other. It was constant. Maybe you have to be that close to the sign to notice. Does anyone know what I'm talking about? (Kim also noted as we started to drive away that "there was something going on with the 'O,' too."

Red Sox lead 5-1 in the seventh.

Update: Sox win 5-1. Our pitching continues to be, for the most part, the kind that makes you feel like there will be October baseball. With winning. And Youk is a dong-machine so far this year. This should have been a four-game sweep. But we'll take 3 of 4.

Cleveland just scored 3 off Moose to tie it up in the fifth.

Update: Yanks win 6-3 and are a .500 team again.

Red Sox (Beckett) at Tigers (Verlander) at 7-ish.

That was a really difficult ending. Papelbon comes in with a one-run lead. First guy gets on an an accidentally-hit tapper on a check swing. Next guy grounds to Lugo who "Renteria"s the play, ironically with Edgar himself having hit the ball. Next guy bunts the runners over. Next guy ties it on a ground out. And the last guy gets a broken bat bloop barely out of the shortstop's reach.

The Yankees would've been proud.

Pap does not deserve that blown save. He still got pissed, O'Neill-ing over some water coolers. If anything, he should have taken out his aggression on Lugo!

I'm still completely baffled as to how a guy can be ready to let a ball roll foul but then happen to slip, causing his foot to kick the ball JUST before it crosses the line, allowing the runner to reach first, as Double-H did tonight. I just keep thinking that one extra Tiger hitter because of that play cost us the game. (Or saved it from being a ten-run loss, you just never know.) Great job by our O for not giving up tonight. But they never do.

All the other teams in the east lost except for Toronto, though. The Yanks were blanked by the Indians, the team who used to play in the stadium where Warrant's Jano Lane saw Def Leppard, Thin Lizzy, Bob Seger, and more. Sorry, on our way home tonight, we heard Warrant on Rock Line. Same number since the 80s: 1-800-344-ROCK.

We watched the game at our friends' house, which is on the water up north of Boston. On our way up, we stopped here:
Jere Road! Last night I was checking Google Maps for things like Jere Road or Jere Street. (When your name's as unique as mine--it's just Jere, not short for anything--you look for this stuff. If my name was Main McGee or Broadway Davis I wouldn't need to do this crap. Then again, my last name's Smith, so once again I'm Even Steven. Which is weird because my mom said she almost named me Steven.) Anyway, I found there were three "Jere Road"s in the US. Incredibly, two are seven miles apart...and are both in my county! One's in Reading, Mass., the other is in Wilmington. There is also a Jere Street in Texas, a Jere Avenue in Tennessee, and a Jere Court and Lane in Missouri. So naturally our first stop on the Jere tour was Reading, where I snapped the above picture. We'll have to get Wilmington on a different day. It was pretty cool that this road was actually on the way to where we had planned to go tonight days before I got the idea to search for roads named after myself.

Above is the sweet view from our friends' place. The sun went through a band of clouds, and gave it this effect like it was an Alka-Seltzer just hitting a glass of water. I also like how the sky above the sun seems to never end. As the sun reached the bottom of the cloud band, it created this crazy galactic effect:

I had seen that the Yanks were up 3-2 in the seventh. Wasn't really paying attention to them tonight as we watched the second half of the Celts after the Red Sox ended. Later I checked the final: 5-3 Indians. I thought, Ooh, this could be a Joba bed-shitting deal. I clicked for the story, and sure enough, I was delighted to see Terrible Joba's name right there in the headline. He'd given up a two-out, three-run dong to David Dellucci in the eighth.

Of course, the first line of the article said that the Yanks were "shocked." Why? Because a guy who's pitched 37 innings in his career didn't get everybody out? Oh, but he's hyped and we hear his name a lot, okay, I see. I'll give him this: He really is Cy Young...when you compare him to Hughes and Kennedy!

But the fact that I'm not shocked with his not succeeding doesn't make me any less ecstatic about it.

First place Red Sox win 5-0 in Detroit. Amazing job by Wake, going eight shutout innings. Papi and Manny went back-to-back, dong-wise. Manny's 497th came on Freddy Dolsi's first major league pitch. Ow.

Terrible job by a Celtics fan tonight. Guy was holding a big sign of Garnett's face. At the bottom you could see little triangles on his collar--a telltale sign of his old Timberwolves jersey.

Check out Michael Leggett's writing for Fenway Nation. I've grown quite fond of his unique writing style that we all have come to know through his comments and his own blog.

Oh, and my hometown is in the news, as a kid who lives there finally took off the Favre jersey he'd been wearing for five years. Thanks to Chan for the heads-up.

Do you know about the 1904 Red Sox? We all know that they won the American League, but weren't given a shot to play the New York Giants in the World Series. The Giants' owner, John T. Brush (from the staircase!), didn't want to risk losing to the champs of the "inferior" league, especially if that champ was his crosstown rival, the New York Highlanders, who were later renamed the Yankees.

But have you ever heard the story of how the Red Sox (who weren't called the Red Sox yet) ended up beating New York for that year's AL title? For some reason, it's hardly ever talked about. But it fits right in alongside all the other famous Red Sox accomplishments and Yankee failures over the years, haha.

The Yankees started as the Baltimore Orioles in 1901, and moved to Washington Heights, in upper Manhattan, for the 1903 season. That year the Boston team ran away with the American League, with New York finishing in fourth place, 17 games behind. Boston topped the Pirates, five games to three (winning the last four), to become baseball's first "world champions."

The defending champs started the 1904 season with a three-game series at New York. Opening Day saw a snowstorm, but 15,000 still turned out, and Boston lost, 8 to 2, with Cy Young getting touched for five runs in the first inning of the season. (Young finished the year 26-16 with a 1.97 ERA, with a league-leading 10 of his 40 complete games being shutouts.) Boston would win the next two, and go on to win 26 of their first 36 games.

By the 4th of July, though, the Highlanders were within a game and half of the first-place future-Sox. But Boston won three in a row in New York a few days later, with Cy Young outdueling Jack Chesbro--their third match-up of the season--in the third game. Boston scored in the ninth to win, 2-1. New York salvaged game four, but Boston left with a three-and-a-half game lead.

The two teams were a half-game apart going into a series in Boston in mid-September. Three doubleheaders would be played. The New York Times' story of day one of the series starts

Manager Clark Griffith and his Greater New York team lead for the American League championship, and Griffith says he will hold the lead until the end.

In classic Yankee style, their boast would be immediately foiled. The Sox had lost and tied in the first doubleheader in a downpour, but won and tied on day two, to get the lead right back again. "Until the end" would mean "one day." On day three, New York took game one, but Cy "Farmer" Young beat them on a day where Boston saw its biggest baseball crowd ever to that point, nearly 23,000 people.

On September 26th, Boston swept a doubleheader at Detroit, while New York was swept in Cleveland, giving Boston a two-game lead for the pennant. But Boston would lose its next four in a row, and the two teams were again tied at the top as the calendar moved to October.

The two clubss would play a five-game series to wrap up the season starting on October 7th. Boston won each of its October games up to that point, while New York won all but one of theirs, meaning the Highlanders would be a half-game behind going into the final five versus Boston. This was it. Essentially a best-of-five series for the American League--which, in 1904, was as far as you could go. This would be the closest thing we'd ever have to a Red Sox-Yankees World Series.

Game one was in New York. The later-Yanks won, 3-2, with fans rushing the field and carrying "Happy Jack" Chesbro off the field. The "Greater New Yorks" had just gotten off the train from St. Louis and had to play the home game in their road uniforms. New York was back in first by a half-game with four to play.

The next day, Saturday, games two and three would be played in Boston. We kicked Happy Jack's ass in game one, and took a shortened game two behind Cy Young when darkness fell. About the day, the Times wrote:

Baseball "rooters" are beside themselves with delight to-night because of Boston's double victory over New York, which may mean retention of the American League pennant another year. Nearly 30,000 people tried to get into the ball grounds, and 10,000 more gathered about the newspaper bulletins down town, watching for the returns. Every reserved seat was sold a week ago, and the bleachers were filled an hour and a half before play began. Temporary seats had been placed in front of the grand stand, accommodating several hundred. The outfield was black with crowded humanity. Every inch of standing room was taken, hundreds lining the fences. So dense was the crowd on the field that it was agreed before the game that a hit into the spectators should be counted a two-baser.

Boston victories of 13-2 and 1-0, and now, with two games left, the New Yorks needed to sweep a doubleheader back in Manhattan on Monday to take the pennant. One Boston win, and the champs would successfully defend their title.

The Times, October 11th, 1904:

Probably no such interest ever was taken in a baseball event in this city as was manifested in the double-header of yesterday. Some 200 Boston "rooters," accompanied by Dockstader's Band of this city, had the extreme left end of the grand stand to themselves, and with the aid of the band, megaphones, and tin horns kept a constant din throughout the nine innings.

The Boston fans were outnumbered, considering 28,000 people were there, but the rooting must have worked. After New York had scored two in the fifth, Boston tied it at two in seventh when New York second baseman Jimmy Williams, after missing a grounder earlier in the inning, threw wildly to home allowing two runs to score.

Boston had the go-ahead run thrown out at the plate in the eighth, and the two teams, with the pennant on the line, went to the ninth, tied 2-2.

Lou Criger started the ninth for Boston with a base hit. Pitcher Bill Dinneen (who completed all 37 games he pitched in 1904) bunted Criger to second. Kip Selbach moved him to third with the second out. Jack Chesbro (he started 51 games that year, completing 48) then threw a wild pitch, scoring Criger. 3-2 Boston going to the bottom of the ninth.

New York got two walks in the ninth, but stranded the pennant-tying and -winning runs when Dinneen struck out Patsy Dougherty. The Bostons were champs again. (The Yanks won the second game of the doubleheader in 10 innings to officially end the season 1.5 games back.)


That sounded like a great pennant race. Too bad it's rarely ever mentioned. And look at the interest in these teams--the Red Sox were only in their fourth year in existence. So were the Yanks, and they were only in their second year in New York. But people were nuts about their teams. Kind of like now. I wish they'd let us carry players off the field, though.

And, of course, the writing in those articles is so amazing. I recommend going to the NYT site and just searching through that stuff. The really old ones are free. Check out the April 15th, 1906 article--another Cy Young/Jack Chesbro battle. It's like reading Greek mythology. You'll also notice the Yankees are called the Yankees in that article. That's 1906. In the next few years, the Times was regularly calling them that, but the "official" records say 1913 was when they went from Highlanders to Yankees.

I also found a great obit for Bill Dinneen in the 1/26/55 issue of The Sporting News, which can be found at Paper of Record.

Red Sox win 6-3 with homers by Lowell, Youk, and Papi. Always good to beat that bully Bonderman. I say "bully" because he reminds me of the kid in first grade who pushes you and has snot running down his face and looks like Kid Rock only the mustache is made of chocolate milk. Scary.

Dice-K walked every batter nine times but gave up negative one runs. They finally replaced Tina. And it was lefty night in Detroit, as Bill Lee, Allan Wood, and Laura Kaminker were in the crowd.

Eck on Rocket: "I don't believe anything he says." Nice.

She "doesn't brake for Red Sox fans."

In less "murderous Yankee fan"-y news, if Manny gets three dongs this week, he'll be one away from 500 going into the weekend. Friday we've got I'm a Sox Girl, Saturday, it's Novy, and Sunday, Nick. Come on, Manny, let's crown a champion.

In 1997, Pedro Martinez became the first player in Major League Baseball history to do what? (As per ususal, it's gotta be "what I'm thinking of...")

I'm a regular UniWatch reader. You know I love that site. But sometimes somebody says something and you just cringe. Today, after a full year of the Red Sox bullpen doing the pirate thing, Paul asks, "does anyone know why the Red Sox have a Jolly Roger hanging in their bullpen?" Ouch. To me that's like asking "does anyone know what the B on the Red Sox hat stands for?" But then I realize, Hey, I guess if you're not a Sox fan and you don't obsess over this stuff on a daily basis year round, you're gonna miss some stuff...

Open Studios was fun. It's just great to meet other artists, and watch people react to the work you created. (I can't see your faces when you look at my pics online...) If you met me this weekend and are now checking out this site and saying, What the hell is this?, well, if you want to see more pics, check out the Photo Galleries section down on the right side. And if you want to buy one of the framed shots you saw, send me an email. Thanks. And thanks to everyone who came out.

I heard DeWayne Staats, announcer of the Devil Rays, in an interview with Joe and Dave before Friday night's game. He was going on and on about how the win over the Red Sox the previous Friday was one of the best in team history. And that their three-game sweep of us was the most important series they've ever played. I'm sure Rays fans are excited, but come on, those games happened in April. You're making an absolute fool of your self, D-Staat. O'Brien made a point to bring up what Staats had said today as the Sox were on the verge of sweeping the Rays. The funny thing is, Staats used to be a Yankee announcer in the MSG Network days, and he was one of my least-hated Yankee announcers.

Red Sox lead the division by three games. Second-biggest lead in baseball. Tied for third best record in baseball. Again, with the Japan trip, this is all excellent news.

We're about a month into the season, so let's take a look at the two completely inexperienced and unproven starters they started the year with: 1. 9.00 ERA, currently on the DL. 2. 8.37 ERA, currently in triple-A. I hate, no, love to say I told the Yanks so.

And yes, as an ad-saturation hating vegetarian, I'm doubly offended by the Houston ballpark's obnoxious Chik-Fil-A sign that runs all the way down the foul pole.

One. Tonight, Manny threw out a runner at the plate, and as he was running to the dugout, did the "windmill" arm motion. Remy referred to this as "Manny loosening up the arm." But I've been watching Manny, and he's been doing this a lot, either when a runner doesn't attempt to score on a ball hit to him, or when he throws a guy out at a base. I think he's mocking the third base coach "waving him in" sign. But I could be wrong.

[One-A. (added 11:12 PM) During post-game, TC watches the replay of the above play, and shows he's been influenced by Remy's call: "Manny loosening up the gun," TC said, quite sure of himself. I still say Manny's gotta be mocking the waving in of the runner! Who's with me on this one? My further proof--they showed Manny actually loosening up his arm during tonight's game, and he does it clockwise (if you look at your right arm while winding it). But when he does this mocking motion, he goes counterclockwise--which is the same direction the coaches arm would be going from Manny's perspective in the outfield.]

Two. A Ray of Devil hit a dong right off the "496" above the Monster. And it made made me realize that, terribly, I hadn't to that point visualized Manny hitting a homer (preferably his 500th) off off those numbers! So that's what I'm rooting for now. Specifically, a ball that hits the numbers and makes the 499 fall on its own, revealing the 500. Though it would be crappy if, say, only the middle number fell off, sending Manny back to 409.

But he needs four dongs tomorrow if he wants to get 500 on this homestand. After tomorrow, we hit the road for 10 days.

With our win tonight, we're 2 games up in the east.

A 7:05 game that starts after 9:30. Fun. I should've gone over to Fenway and got a really good seat. But we had a pizza coming...so I stayed home and ate it. Red Sox win, 7-3. I predicted 11-1. But I meant 7-3, so...

Sked ad update: They have fixed the home/road thing, so now Indy sits in a red square, and is sized to fit the square much better. So they "fixed" one part of this, but the key is, the ad is still there. Terrible job.

Tomorrow is the first day of Open Studios. Tonight I went to the space and set up my stuff. It was cool framing some of my Fenway pics. Some of them came out really nice. Others, I didn't account for the shot to get its edges cut off upon printing, and then for the new edges to get cut off by the matting within the frame. So, some shots didn't get used. Others, I winged it. Wang it? It should be fun. 50 Thurston St., Somerville, if you're in the area. 12-5 Saturday and Sunday. It's free to get in by the way, and there are 15 other artists in the space I'll be in. You can also take the little trolley all over town and see all the other artists' work.

I was really looking forward to this "Red Sox Memories" show. I missed the first one, but the second one--it seemed like a show I'd seen already. And it spoke to me like I knew nothing about the history of the team. But, hey, there are a lot of people in that category who need to learn.... Oh, and there was one scene where they're showing Fisk up in Game 6 of the '75 series. Or Carbo, really doesn't matter. The point is, they cut to a shot of Zimmer clapping encouragement from the third base coaches box. Only Zimmer was clearly IN Cincinnati, not Fenway Park. (If the background didn't give him away, the road uniform sure did.) Do they think we don't notice this stuff? The next episode is about rookies, hopefully it will be better. Speaking of editing, there's a shot in the Spaceman doc of Bill Lee walking off the mound in the '75 Series, and then they cut to a close-up, and suddenly it's clearly a regular season game. Funny thing is, in the commentary, Lee spots it and points it out to the co-commentator--the guy who made the movie.

Oh, and the new camera angle! NESN is suddenly going with the "pretty much directly behind the pitcher" view* on pitches. The stubborn side of me is saying, "Gimme that classic angle." But the (oppressed) sensible side is saying, Hey, you can really see pitches breaking, and you have a better view of balls and strikes. It takes getting used to for certain things. I'm still having trouble judging how far balls are going off the bat, and whether they'll be fair or foul on balls down the lines. I'm also wondering--since they still use the old shot occasionally, what is the cameraperson in the traditional camera-well doing the whole time? Is he just filming every pitch, knowing his shot goes unused forever? Also, you know who really gets the shaft on this angle? Drinkwater and Kapstein....


*This was tried by ESPN a few years ago--I think the Mussina broken-up-by-Crazy-Carl perfect game was shown from that angle. But when they did it, it felt like you were watching from the blimp. NESN's view is higher than the old angle, but not as high as ESPN's. So the pitcher's head isn't high enough on the screen to block the view of the pitch crossing the plate, yet he doesn't appear to be way below the plate, like on ESPN.

Battle for first tonight. DEVIL Rays at Red Sox, 7:05. I'll miss a little of this one as I'll be setting up for open studios this weekend.

Are you looking to buy tickets to the Yankees-Orioles game on May 22nd in either Baltimore or New York? Need to fly there and stay in a hotel? Need to know what time the game is and how to see it on TV or the internet, so it won't conflict with the new Indiana Jones movie you'll be seeing on the same day? And what trinket you'll get at the game? Well you're in luck! This square's got everything you need:

Dori looked like a lock on her Manny prediction, but he's been stalled at 496 for some time now. If Manny gets four dongs in the next two nights, doublenicks will win with his May 3rd guess. May 4th was my predicted (yet unwanted, since I had a ticket to that game but won't be able to make it) date, which is looking worse and worse (or, better and better--see previous parenthetical note). But Monday through Wednesday are taken by vineyard vacationer, Mike, and Boston Fan in Wichita. All three of them have a shot, though they'd look better if, say, Manny dongs twice tonight! Most May dates are taken, so this should be fun! (full list here)

This is bullshit:



I never realized how sacred the baseball schedule was until I saw an ad for a movie literally on one of the calendar days. They'd infiltrated it to the point of advertising on the spaces before the 1st or after the 31st on the grid, but now they've taken the final step.

I don't own a calendar. Every year, the Red Sox schedule IS my calendar. And now, they've shit all over it, squeezing in a picture of ol' Indy right on one of the game days. The schedule is supposed to be an informational tool. Yes, the pocket schedules have always been covered with ads. But the little calendar squares--those are supposed to tell me who we're playing, where, and at what time. And look at that--the "Indy" day is a home game. It's supposed to be in red as per their key. But they've changed it to white (which signals an away game), JUST SO THE AD WILL SHOW UP BETTER. They care more about making money than they do about telling you the key piece of information about one of the games.

And yes, this ad is on all the MLB schedules.

I'm moving to Cuba.

September 18th, 1993. I've just turned 18, and I've been at college in Nebraska for less than a month. I'm on the phone with my parents back in Connecticut on a Saturday afternoon. One of my Yankee fan friends is visiting my parents. They're all watching the Red Sox-Yankees game, giving me updates. It's the ninth inning. My mom is announcing what sounds like the final out. The Red Sox have won--or have they? I hear my friend in the background happily yelling. I hear my dad UNhappily yelling. The final out is negated as time had been called when some Yankee fan ran on the field just before the pitch. The ambidextrous Greg Harris then gives up a few hits, and the Yanks win the game in the classy way only they know how to. Story here. (And Allan was at the game!)

In tonight's Red Sox game, Coco Crisp made was appeared to be the last out. The non-Dirty Water music even started to play. But apparently a balk had been called. Coco got a hit, bringing the tying run to the plate, but Jed Lowrie was called out on strikes to end it. I guess we'll have to save our "appear to lose but then win" for some future game. Against the Yanks. Oh, wait, we did it in 2004. Without the aid of a fan. Nice. The Yanks have not won a playoff series since....

Speaking of America's most despised franchise, Johan San--oh, no, that's right, they didn't get that guy...it was Phil Hughes, yeah, he's out till, like, July now. Too bad. I liked seeing him in there. I like seeing Ian Kennedy in there, too. He pitched tonight and they lost, 8-4. They're 14-16 now, 5th-worst record in the league.

Have you seen the commercial for "VitaPacks"? Doesn't it look like a fake commercial for some kind of "food of the future"? Like, "mmm, I love my pill meal! All I need is this handy bag o' pills and I'm set for the day." If the people in that ad were wearing silver suits it would be perfect.

I'm adding a clue to the recent kwiz, which no one has taken a shot at yet....

Also, have you noticed there are two different movies out now with a "pee in the sink" scene in the trailer?