After only two hours of virtually waiting online and pressing redial constantly on the phone, I finally got through to the ticket office. It was the phone line that came through. It's weird, you get so used to "boo doo weee, all circuits are busy now" that when suddenly you hear the robotic female voice of the Red Sox ticket office, you're totally shocked. And psyched. My heart was beating almost as fast as it was yesterday, when I was trying to type in my credit card info within the three minute time limit they give you. But those were for the 85 dollar seats, today I was goin' upper bleacher, baby. I wanted to get some games where I could go with a foursome. So the 12 dollar seats were key. I got a Jays game in July, and the Reds in June. The Reds at Fenway, crazy! First time since '75, when I was a month and a half old.

This turned out to be a really good year for me for tix. Got pretty much exactly what I wanted. The ten games of the ten game plan, which gives me two Chokers games and a playoff game; a sweet field box game; and two mega-cheap games that I can go to with three other people.

And all this before the yankee tickets go on sale, which are all done by random drawing this year. So the holy grail of the Opening Day game at Fenway is really the last thing I'm hoping for. But I'm on a roll, so I think I've got a shot at being a lucky winner. (Lucky enough to get to spend MORE money.)

Let's talk about these ticket office phone people. The electronic lady who you buy from is okay to deal with, a little annoying, maybe snubbed a lot in life, maybe had a bad childhood. Talks in a monotone voice. Rather bored. But when you hear her, you know you're getting tickets, so it's cool. The guy you get when you call the 877-REDSOX9 number, that's a different story. He seems pissed. I imagine him as Terry Francona, but maybe that's because his voice comes on after a recorded message from Tito himself (hopefully his message will be re-recorded this year so he can say who the World Champions are.) But the voice is kind of similar to his. He's so stern. He says, "For all NON-TICKET related questions, press one." Like he's mad at you for not listening in the past. "Okay, people, listen up, I'm gonna stress the IMPORTANT words cuz' the Boston Red Sox don't have time to fuck around!" I feel like I want to press the wrong buttons just to piss the guy off further. "Pound?! That wasn't even an OPTION! You're banned!"

I'm near Long Island Sound right now, and I have to say it looks amazing. It's weird to see a frozen ocean. The ice looks like snakeskin on top of the water. Very cool. Also cool to be in the summer mindset, getting baseball tickets for July, and looking ut the window at this snow/ice/water world. Totally sunny and clear, but snow everywhere like the Sta-Puft Marshmallow man was just destroyed.

Speaking of water world, you know how that movie was called Fish-tar, because is was a flop, like Ishtar, but took place in water? Well, I was thinking of some other examples of this method. Gone In 60 Seconds: Ish-car. Tin Cup: Ish-par. Coyote Ugly: Ish-bar. Any Woody Allen Movie: Knish-tar.

The problem with that one is that Woody Allen movies rule, so it doesn't fit with the scheme. But some people really liked Ishtar in the first place, so the whole thing wouldn't work for them. Unless you're talking strictly box office money made.(I never saw Ishtar or Waterworld, or those other three I mentioned.) Hopefully Chan finds this funny, because I have a feeling no one else will.

Today I had my Red Sox Nation official barcode neck-tattoo scanned, and in return was rewarded with FIELD BOX seats for a game at Fenway this summer. Terrible job, Dirt Dog, you too could have had this opportunity. But hey, your dignity is intact. Oy.

Only if the guy sitting next to me at that game turns to me and says, "I'd never heard of these so-called Red Sox until they won the World Series. Now, I'm an official member of Red Sox Nation, see my card? Now who's this long-haired fellow..." will I admit that DD was right. But that's not going to happen. The people who got the card were already "real" Red Sox fans, and got it for the benefits, not because they'd never really felt a part of Red Sox Nation (a term that didn't exist for the first 90 years of the franchise's existence, anyway) until they got a special card.

Of course, we all know that Dirt Dog got an ID card right away, and told everyone not to get one so that he'd have a better chance at winning these ticket lotteries. You know this is the first time I ever got selected in one of these? I went on there at the "pre-designated time," and within five minutes had sweet seats.

I really hope BS Memorial tells of his meeting with Krist Novoselic at his book signing tonight in NYC. I wanted to go to it, but the logistics of it all were a little too -gistic and not enough logi-. i.e. I just couldn't possibly make iT. Well I could have, but it would've involved me wearing the same clothes like three days in a row, since I'd have gone straight from work, and I'm going to the city tomorrow as well and...don't worry about it.

The other day I promised a Zimmer-related post. It's late. Sorry.

Click here for the background info on my letter to the New Haven Advocate.

My letter, a reply to a letter by a very dumb yankee fan, has been published this week. Click here to see it in the paper. It's the last one on the page. And they didn't cut anything out!

The first letter on there is quite interesting, and I have to say I pretty much agree with it. The person is shooting down the paper for glorifying porn, which most corporations are guilty of nowadays. Maybe not so much porn, but definitely the use of sex to sell products. Besides being completely uncreative, there's just something messed up about it. Like, I wish these companies would let kids have some time to be kids, instead of plastering boobs and cheesy innuendo everywhere. And you can tell me that porn and ads that use sex don't objectify women, because the women choose to take part in them, but I think that's missing the point. A little boy grows up seeing this stuff, and he's going to think that girls are there for his pleasure. And when every boy in the class gets this mindset, then every girl in the class willl have to accept their submissive role (while thinking they're cool for doing it) or risk being an outcast.

And I see all these porn stars getting fame and stuff, and it's like, come on, can you try to do something creative or something that just might help another human being, or would you rather just take your clothes off and let someone take your picture? Talk about taking the easy way out! Can you even try to do something else first? But you know what, society is such that a woman makes less money to do a job than a man makes, if they're lucky enough to get that job in the first place. So who am I to be mad if they choose to find an easy way out? Either way, ask someone to name all the female artists they know, and then all the female porn stars they know. And Avril Levine doesn't count, I said artist. The answers you get will make you feel like Evo Shandor. (society's too sick to survive--it's from Ghostbusters)

And I'm not a Jesus freak, either. I'm not religious at all. I've got too much common sense for that.

The person who wrote that letter is from Guilford. I'll have to ask my friend Jen (currently in a heated debate with Sam in the comments section of this post if she knows that person. You know, so we can drink Coke and smoke candy cigarettes and watch Sesame Street together. Wild!

Click here for a really cool site.
When you're there, click on the link to these guys' August '04 road trip. They went to a lot of parks, and it was interesting to get these outsiders' take on Fenway...

They also saw the Sox play in Toronto. If you look at the picture of the foul pole, you can see the spot I was in when I got the Daubach BP home run this season. Hey, I don't do pictures, I have to live vicariously through other sites. It was also cool to hear them talk about how many Sox fans were in Toronto. And they seem to love Johnny Damon.

Much like Don Flamenco in Mike Tyson's Punch-Out!, Rich "El Guapo" Garces has returned. He was not kidnapped. He went to the beach. For ten days. I hope he packed a picnic basket. Actually, I'm quite sure he packed several. According to this story (in Spanish), which my dad translated for me, the family just thought he was kidnapped since he often spoke of his fear of being kidnapped.

Good to hear that El Guapo is okay, and all the good-natured fat jokes can continue as normal.

About Rich Gedman: Dirtdog recently spoke of Stanley and Gedman's "coming undone" in Game 6 of the '86 Series. This, as you can read elsewhere on his site, is because he's very pro-Buckner, and is always looking for other people to blame for Game 6. I'm like him in that way, meaning I'm totally pro-Buckner, and I've always been a little hard on McNamara on this one, but to just blame any player is stupid, as all of them helped to get the team to where they were. To blame Geddy, specifically, is ridiculous. He was key in Game 5 of the ALCS, going 4 for 4 with a home run. And after a grueling year of catching, including calling Clemens' 20 K game, I can't fault him for missing that horrible pitch by Stanley. Gedman seems to be getting the full brunt of it from the "We're smart enough to know it wasn't Buckner's fault" crowd. He's like the scapegoat for people who aren't satisfied with the scapegoat.

My letter to the New Haven Advocate in response to the idiot yankee fan who was sure the Red Sox have only won 2 championships WAS published this week, so I heard from my cousin, who saw the paper. But their website isn't loading right now, so I'll post a link to it when I can find it.

People everywhere from my frequent commenter Sam #1 to, I don't remember, East Coast Agony I think, are saying how defense isn't all that important for a first baseman. You may be comfortable saying that if you've had average or above average first basemen on your favorite team during your lifetime. But as someone who sat through the below average defense of Brian Daubach, Mike Stanley, Carlos Quintana, Dave Stapleton, Billy Jo Robidoux, Nick Esasky, Bill Buckner, Jose Offerman, and Mo Vaughn (bless his heart, as my mom would say) for most of his life, I have to say I was psyched to see an actual trained first baseman out there during the end of last season. Look, I was at the game where Andy Dominique played first last year and it wasn't pretty. I love Millar, and I'm glad he's staying, but what happened to that whole "defense wins (won) championships" thing? Again, I trust Theo, but I don't buy the thing about D not being that important for first basemen.

You know, maybe I'm just I'm just taking it personally because in minors (the name of the 9-year-olds division of Little League where I grew up) I made a spectacular catch of a line drive off the bat of Timmy Benson, then stepped on first to double off the runner, ENDING THE GAME, while playing first. I bet you no one else on that team makes that play. That's called awareness, my friend. Knowing the situation. And I never even went to wherestheplay.com.

And don't tell me Doug M's QLK rating was 5.83 repeating, because I don't know what that means. What I do know is that the Red Sox had a first baseman who was digging throws out of the dirt! Scoop! What is that? Offerman sees that ball comin' in low and he pretty much hopes he gets a nice bounce off the fence behind him after he lets it go by.

And about this new guy, I guess we're all going with "The Blade" over my much more creative "Blades of Steel"?? Come on. BLADES OF STEEL. I didn't write that in caps to make it appear cooler, but so you'll say it in the official BLADES OF STEEL voice from the beginning of the video game.

I'm frustrated now. Bed time. Tomorrow I talk about euthanizing Don Zimmer.

Blades of Steel.

I've been studying the Red Sox schedule that I have pinned up at work, daydreaming of summer days and stuffy car rides to Fenway. I think I might do Jacobs Field this year, and there's a weekend series in Philly. (Those bastards make you get up at SIX AM to buy tickets the day they go on sale.) By the way, I printed the "printable schedule" from redsox.com, and it's got problems. The opening yankee series according to it is Sunday, Wednesday, Thursday. And one game later in the year has two starting times listed. I was actually psyched, thinking there might be a good old-fashioed scheduled double-header. But after counting every single game (it's pretty slow at work), I realized they just put two times by mistake--neither of which was right according to the regular monthly schedule on the site.

So that's what I do at work.

Oh, right, so I quickly went through each series, keeping a tally in my head of how many games I "want" the Sox to win. I came up with 102. Then I wrote down the number of times we play each team, then did another in-head calculation of how many times we should beat each team. I came up with 92. My final step--follow closely, now--was to AVERAGE the two amounts. This is why I'm known as a genius. So I took that 97, added one, because while sometimes my autism says odd numbers are good, this time it told me to go with an even number, and I wasn't about to subtract a win. So, my early prediction, which I reserve the right to change daily, is 98-63. You'll notice that only adds up to 161 games. That's because I'm predicting a rain out against Baltimore which doesn't get made up. No, scratch that. 98-64. The new field will drain better, I can't be predicting any rain outs. And 64 is even.

I had been confused about the digging up of the Fenway field, and how it would affect the areas by the walls. (See some other post of mine from, I don't know, a month ago-ish.) I even heard some announcers saying how the walls will be higher since the field will be lower, so it wasn't just me. Well, there's an article on boston.com explaining it. I guess the two feet of digging is in the center of the infield. They're taking the crown out of the field, so it will be toatally flat. Funny how the article says they found old bottles under the field.

The New York Daily News seems to think the Red Sox have traded Doug ______ to the Mets for a single A first baseman named Ian Bladesofsteel or something. See article here.

They say the deal will be announced today. And 'steel is the fourth rated prospect in the Mets organization.

I would have asked for more from the Mets since everybody knows they need a first baseman. But, of course, I trust Theo, and I'm sure this, like all his other moves, will somehow end up with us getting ten great players for absolutely nothing.

[Edit from later this same day: "Doug Gone" was not an attempt at a play on the phrase "dog gone." Had I noticed how close it was to that, I'd have thought of a new title. But it was really early (a rare pre-work post) and I had to run, which I'm glad I did, since the half foot of snow doubled my drive time. Terrible job, Ma Nature.]

I was flipping through the few channels I get tonight, and saw Larry Lucchino behind a podium. Turns out the Connecticut Network (CT's Public Affairs Network) was showing the Middlesex Chamber Meeting, which featured Larry. (Middlesex is one of CT's eight lovely counties, and one of two with the word sex in it's name.)

So Larry, the practiced speaker that he is, talked, without stopping to breathe, about the usual stuff, like the ownership group's goals for the team and the park. Here's some stuff I jotted down:

At a meeting with Bush and some owners in '02, Georgie said to Larry, "You just hired a 28-year-old GM, he better be good." Larry replied, "Hey, he went to Yale."
The so-called Prez: "Strike two..."

He insists that soon people will be asking to have people from the Sox do appearances with the second trophy.

He couldn't stress that enough. He said the organization has an internal motto for 2005: "Any group of schlemeels can win once."

To find the spelling of that word, I googled "Laverne Shirley lyrics." (An alternate spelling is "sclemeel.")

When asked about "the ball" (yes, unoriginal people were allowed in), he said they've changed the name of it to the "final out ball" and are talking to Doug's agent about a temporary solution to the problem.

For the Q & A, Larry gave out gifts. The better the question, the better the gift. One kid said he was skipping school and asked Larry if he could sign his absense note.

When talking about the events of July 24th, Larry used the phrase "...Varitek decided his catcher's mitt should meet A-Rod's chin." He noted it was in defense of Bronson. But still, it's so great how he can just laughingly make fun of Slap-Rod getting his ass kicked.

It's definitely good to hear Red Sox management continue to talk about how Connecticut is a part of RSN. Seriously, before these guys bought the team, I never heard of, say, Haywood Sullivan doing anything in Connecticut. I see Larry every time I turn around, and both me and my mom have had the chance to speak directly to him on separate occasions. Then again, they did buy the team in the modern internet world, where we hear about every minor event. But still...I feel they really are serious about my state, even though NESN still truly shouldn't be called NESN until ALL of New England is allowed to se it.

In 1987, Minnesota Twins fans waved white snot-rags called "Homer Hankies," helping their team to a World Series victory. (This worked again in '91, though not so well the last few postseasons.)

In 1988, everybody wanted to cash in on the concept of "wavin' stuff."

While at Fenway Park that year, at least on one of the days I was there (could've been day one of Morgan's Magic, a doubleheader, I know I was there that day), a dude could be seen on Yawkey Way selling what was nothing more than a red sock on a stick.

"Get your Sawx Suppawtas here! It worked in Minnesota, now cheer on the Sawx with Sawx Suppawtas!"

No one was buying.

So that's your answer to the Sox Supporters quiz. If anyone can ever vouch for this, besides Pat, who was there that day, well, that'd be funny.

This brings back another memory of mine from those awkward years (they're not awkward now?) when I was around twelve years old. I was big on ordering Red Sox stuff from catalogs I'd get in the mail then. (I'm not now?) One of the things I bought was a pair of Red Sox boxer shorts. This was way before the boxer shorts revolution, mind you. Hey, Boxer Revolution. Anyway, I got the shorts, and I thought they were just that, shorts. With the Red Sox logo splashed all over them. So I'd wear them everywhere, as if they were shorts. I didn't know what boxer shorts were. I was still in tighty whiteys, I definitely didn't know there was any other kind of underwear. I'll never forget hearing a guy outside Fenway saying, "Check it out, Red Sawx bawxaz!" Little did I know he was making fun of my sheltered ass. It wasn't until this total dick named Tom asked me at school one day, "Why are you wearing underwear?" that I realized that I was doing exactly that. That kid was a little too into Van Hagar, though, so what gave him the right to say anything to anybody?

Then, of course, years later, all I'd see were people wearing boxer shorts around. Just another trend started by yours truly, Fred Garvin.

I read that former Sox pitcher Rich Garces, the 2nd most famous "Rich G." in Red Sox history, has been kidnapped. I really hope El Guapo is safely returned. That guy was awesome. I've got some great video of him at Camden Yards in April of '02, which I will put up on this site should I ever start putting pictures up on here.

In other sad news, Johnny Carson died today at age 79. When I first started staying up late, I used to see the old, pre-'Leno-crap-a-thon' Tonight Show. And while it was kind of boring to a kid who was pretty much waiting til 12:30 to see Dave Letterman drop watermelons off the roof, I still appreciated Johnny's sense of humor, and later grew to enjoy a lot of the classic episodes. My favorite moment off the top of my head was:

Old lady brings in potato chips shaped like animals and whatnot. While she's looking the other way, Johnny takes a bite out of a potato chip from a separate basket of normal chips. Lady hears loud crunching and almost has a heart attack thinking Johnny's just destroyed one of her delicate treasures. Johnny innocently reveals the basket.

Here's something else to cheer you up after all this sad news. My friend Mike, real yankee fan, went to Boston College. Through him, I met my friend Jen, who comes from Guilford, CT, home of Goose Lane, which you know if you ever drive on 95 out past New Haven. So I used to hang out with them up at BC on spring breaks and stuff. (This is the mid-nineties.) So up at BC, they have this hotline you can call when there's bad weather, to find out if there are any delays or cancellations. (617-552-INFO) When you call it, you first hear a fairly normal sounding man give the necessary info. Then there's a pause. Then, you hear what sounds, honest to god, like a leprechaun, say, "To heah the message again, press staaa." (star) He says it like it's a secret, like, well, the way a leprechaun would whisper to you where to find the gold. It's hilarious. I'd pretty much forgotten about this, as I never had to call the number since I didn't go to school there, but Jen reminded me of it tonight, and I was surprised to hear her tell me that the leprechaun is still there, giving that same message. Now that I think about it, she's been out of there for a decade, why was she calling it? Probably because she's obsessed with that leprechaun, and rightfully so. I suggest you call it. That number again is 617-552-INFO. It's a toll call, but it only takes ten seconds. It's really funny.