Edgar, seriously, dude, come on.

Actually, I wasn't totally pissed abou that, because I had this strange calm over me, like I knew we'd win anyway. But, still. My dad had been trying to tell me some of the good things Edgar's been doing. Like his baserunning and his singles and doubles. And then he goes and nearly blows the game.

It did make me prediction come true, though. Essentially. I said Tito would take out Clement in the ninth, he'd get a big ovation, and we'd watch, like, eight Orioles get on base in a row and win by one instead of three. Close. My other correct prediction was that Manny would be trying to take the ball the other way on his at bat where he untied the game, and he did. Nice job, Manny. And your dropped ball was a catch, despite what Remy said.

Bedard looks like Lilly, my dad noticed tonight.

Where was Drinkwater, aka Kapstein, aka J.K., aka Rowlings, tonight. Didn't show at any point. May be a first. Maybe he has Labor Day vaca plans.

From last night: Wasn't Green Day hilarious, with their gloves and uniforms on?

We're only four back of the White Sox for home field advantage through the World Series. So Monday's noon make-up game is actually kind of key.

[Note: Title of post refers to a kid from my neighborhood named Bedard who was taunted relentlessly for looking like a bird...by the Hungry Hungry Hippos kids.]

Y'ever get the feeling that if the hurricane had hit Beverly Hills, everything would've been fixed by now?

I made some alternate logos for our friends, the Orioles. The "Shit Birds" one is in honor of Pat, who calls them that consistently.

The good news from tonight is that my "month of stuff happening the way it should" continues for the yanks, with Leiter getting tagged for 6 runs in the first, an inning he didn't make it out of. It's now 12-0 Athletics in the 8th. Payton and Hatteburg have been super-dope homeboys from the Oaktown, and they're known as such, and their homers have been a beat, uhh, the yanks can't touch tonight.

Bellhorn now has the double-flap helmet for the yanks. And he looks like a damn fool. The Red Sox double-flap looked normal on him somehow. Maybe it's just that arachnid, the one that guards the gates of Hades, on the front that makes it look so wrong. And his hair may be shorter in back. Maybe he's doing an installment plan. "Make me a robot in three short weeks" or something. 0-6 with 0 walks as a yank.

Funny, I thought I wouldn't have to see old pal Eric Byrnes this weekend, since he's no longer with Oakland. Little did I know he got traded again, and is now on the Orioles. So not only do I get to see him (on NESN instead of Yes), but instead of being done with him for the year, I'll see him all month long, since the Sox and yanks will be playing Balty numerous times. In fact, I just checked it. I'll see Byrnes's face literally eleven days in a row in late September. Newman! At least he's out of the playoffs.

In our game, well, I guess you can't expect a win when you've got a guy making his first ever start. Overall, he didn't do too bad. Gave us some innings. And at 6-3, it seemed like Stankonia just tried to get everybody work, disguised as "playing the percentages." Even Foulke got in for the first time in almost two months. I liked how Harville, despite walking the first guy he faced, threw the guy out at second on the sacrifice attempt. He said, "I'm not letting a guy get to second fuckin' base. Not on my watch!" Kind of. I liked that.

I was kind of pissed at Edgar in the ninth. Just take a few pitches there. Let the crowd get into it. Make Ryan think about how Ortiz will be the tying run if he puts you on. It would've been fun to see that match-up. Instead, Edgar swung at the first pitch, blooping out weakly to end the game. In the bizzarro NL, that may get you into the Hall, but here in the real world, we do what we can to get Papi up there. I still wanna love the guy, but, I don't know, it seems his numbers when I'm watching are about .050 with 1 HR, and when he's in the field, there have been numerous balls up the middle that he's nowhere near because he's playing in some National League position I don't know about. Like, in foul territory or something. I even made a little plastic gumball-machine into a temple that I planned to pray to when Edgar's up. And when I tried it for it the first time, I looked back at the screen, and I'd forgotten that Johnny was out that day, and someone else was at bat. That just fit so perfectly. Like, even when I'm trying to help him out, he's standing harmlessly in the on-deck circle. He did work a walk to start off the next inning, and I've kept the temple in its special spot, but have slacked on praying to it. Maybe I'll start that again soon.

TJ by RemDawg tonight, calling a fan in the stands a "yankee fan," when the guy was clearly wearing a yankee hater hat. I figured by now, everyone, especially people who go to every game at Fenway, double-checks when they see what appears to be a yankee hat.

Tek looked like Willie "Mays" Hayes on the "whoops" double. I thought that meant that everything would go our way tonight, but it wan't to be.

And Nixon popped out on the 100th pitch. A swing! And contact!

Finally, I was reading on somebody's blog about how popular and larger-than-life Remy now is. And with Piniella in town last weekend, and Remy talking about the '78 playoff game tonight, well, it all just ties in to something I've said before, but will say again:

As most slightly older Sox fans know, in that one-game playoff, 27 years ago, with the Red Sox down a run in the bottom of the ninth and a man on first, Jerry Remy hit a fly ball to right field. Lou Piniella lost the ball in the sun. It bounced in front of him, and was about to go past him to the wall, when that sloppy beyotch used his 20th-century yankee magical powers (read: blind-ass luck) to reach out at the last second, barely grasping the ball with his glove. Had the ball gotten by him, at the very least, the tying run would have scored. In that case, Rice and Yaz would have each had a shot at delivering the winning run. Remy himself might very well have circled the bases and scored on the play, though, winning the game and sending the Sox into the ALCS.

As one reporter, and I can't think of who it was, said, Had the ball gotten by Piniella, not only would history have been altered, but Jerry Remy would've become the third-most popular player in Red Sox history, after Williams and Yaz. While Bucky Dent would've been so forgotten that he might not even exist right now. "Erased...from existence!" --Doc Brown

I think it's really interesting how, all these years later, Remy's really climbed that popularity ladder, the one he should have rightfully been near the top of anyway.

This story is why whenever Looooooou is whining and complaining when we're beating his Rays, even when he's right, I just smile real wide and say "Them's the breaks, ass-wipe."

Happy Anniversary, Mom and Dad. (Sorry to bring up the Piniella play on your special day.)

These kids in my neighborhood used to play Hungry Hungry Hippos using live ants instead of marbles.

But it wasn't enough for them to have the ants simply be "eaten" by the plastic hippo heads. That would only entail them getting pulled into a hole and falling an inch into a hippo-free safety zone. Then they could go on living, not even really knowing they were swallowed by a fake hippo.

Instead, the kids would fill the base with liquid soap. This way, the ants could experience a more realistic death. Go into hippo's mouth, fall down hole, sink into warm goo for eternity.

Maybe these kids' personal hell will be: Trapped on a giant Hungry Hungry Hippos board with live beasts chomping away at them from four sides. But you really can avoid them by just getting to a spot they can't reach. Then again, what if you filled the entire board with people. There'd be all kinds of pushing and shoving. Mass hysteria. Wow, I should make a movie about this.

Thanks to NU550 for reminding me of HHH.

'nardo goes tonight against John Maine, who hopefully can't get there from here. My school, Nebraska, also goes up against Maine this weekend, on the iron of grid. Weird. I wonder if this is the first time the Huskers have played against a New England school.

What I like about Olerud is that he's been playing long enough so that he knows when the team only needs, say, a fly ball to the outfield to score the tying run. He came through in that situation tonight, and as a bonus, the ball went over the wall for his second dong of the night, and a 6-4 lead. Just the fact that he hit a fly ball is the most important thing to me.

7/7/7 in our last three games. Johnpot.

Another comeback, and a sweep of the mighty, mighty DR.

And guess which two yankee pitchers were integral in the yanks' loss tonight...Embree and Mendoza! God, that was sweet. Jeter is crying tonight. (And planning his Carribbean vacation for October 2nd.)

3 1/2 up. 4 in the loss. O-birds coming in. yanks to Oakland.

Update on something I forgot to mention in the first place: Turns out he was scattering his mother's ashes. So, anyway, I was at a cockfight and--oh, right, uh, so this guy ran on the field at Safeco last night, and Kay said he had a sign and a can of some kind. Cameras showed remnants of what looked like sand in the outfield. Thanks to Devin at Mariners blog Lookout Landing for the info. I hope he's not the Dirt Dog of Seattle.

This article, "The Tragedy of '04" by Scott Stossel, is the type I know I should ignore. But it makes for good blog fodder, so here goes.

The article, written by a Red Sox fan, talks about how the team finally ending their drought is a bad thing.

Before I address the actual content of it, let me say that what immediately pisses me off is the fact that Stossel has taken a much-talked about notion and presented it as if he was the first to think of it.

For a long time prior to last season, people, mainly yankee fans and media-types, have said that the Red Sox winning the World Series would be "the worst thing to happen to Boston." Or that it would turn the Sox into "just another team."

Only to have Stossel, a Red Sox fan, come along and rehash all the same garbage, telling everyone that those theories actually are, in his mind, correct. (I guess he's a busy man, since it took ten months for him to get this article out.)

It's not like he hadn't heard these theories before last October. In his article from August 2004, he gives all the old cliches about how Sox fans are united by losing, they expect the team to lose, it's the losing that makes them lovable, bla bla bla. (Although I do admit we all used to drag that stuff up every once in a while.) So why write this new article in a way that suggests no one's ever come up with these ideas until now, or, worse, that they're real at all?

What he's done compares to a lottery-winner writing an article about what they ended up buying with the money--you don't need to win to write it.

And that's what gets me. If you did write a piece on what you'd do if you won the lottery, you'd hopefully write about the good things you'd want to experience, instead of saying that you plan on being loved only for your money, feeling like your soul got poorer while your bank got richer, and dying alone, more depressed than you ever were before the win.

People did write negative things like this, only the average Joe represented Sox fans everywhere, while the jackpot was seeing the team win the World Series. Instead of ignoring it, Stossel brings it right back. "Yes! It was all true! We hate this!"

He claims to be a true Red Sox fan. He says the Red Sox are embedded in his soul. I don't know. I read an article that refers to the 2004 World Series as the "2005 World Series," and says that the Sox won seven straight games after Game 3 of the '04 ALCS, and I feel like I'm reading material by someone who doesn't pay much attention to the Red Sox until October, if you know what I mean. (Also, does the Boston Globe have editors? I seriously wonder about this.)

Thinking maybe those were just a couple of random typos, I read that previous article of his, and noticed he said that Aaron Boone's home run went to the "left field bleachers" at yankee Stadium. Which, of course, is almost impossible, considering they're about 500 feet from home plate.

Terrible job.

Now, on to the substance of the article. I write about this stuff all the time, so you may know my opinion already: I'm happy the Red Sox won the World Series. Surprise!

So happy that my whole body tingles when I write and subsequently comprehend that sentence. Like the head of hair atop the guy in the Head & Shoulders commercial. By the way, I use Head & Shoulders and I've never felt that tingle. What am I doing wrong? Anyway, even if I did feel that, it would be nothing compared to this: (Hold on while I write this sentence.) The Red Sox, in real life, came back from down three games to zero to beat the yankees in the ALCS, before going on to sweep the World Series. Ahhh.

I know what the guy means. As I said above, I heard it all described so many times before they actually won. But the pre-2004 Red Sox weren't about losing. Well, they were, sometimes. A lot of times. A lot of really important times. But didn't we have fun? When you were little, rooting for the Red Sox, and I mean really little, did you know about the history of baseball? Did you care whether or not they'd won before? Or did you just love the team unconditionally, because that's how you were raised?

And when you learned the history, which for some of us was when we were very young, did you want the Sox to win any more or less?

Life is about tragedy, and not always getting the proverbial girl. I used to talk about this all the time. I once said on this blog that Red Sox fans are always the ones who get splashed by the car, while the yankee fans make it across the road unscathed. Well, it was something like that. And yes, the whole point of Charlie Brown missing the football is that he always misses it. But you know what? Good things do happen in life. Every once in a while--a long, long while--the sun shines right on you. Or you get every green light on your way to work. Or you find a four-leaf clover, only to get hit in the shin with a line drive against Lions later that day in your Little League game...oh, whoops. But, see? That's what I'm talking about! We didn't bond over the tragedy, we bonded over whatever the Red Sox did, just like we do now.

Jeez, you want tragedy? Just wait. Something bad will happen again. But while you're wishing for the pain of yesteryear, I'll be dancing down the streets of Manhattan with a fucking World Champion Red Sox T-shirt on!

But feel free to walk around Fenway Park with a sign that says "26-6" if it makes you feel better, and lets you hold on to your glory days. While you're at it, slap on a yankee hat, because if you can't enjoy being a Red Sox fan now, there's really no point in being one at all.

And if you're really concerned about how this changes Red Sox fans, and you just can't handle it, well, look at it this way: Aren't you at least glad that we changed yankee fans? Isn't that how your theory works? If you consider 2004 to be the worst thing to happen to us, wouldn't that mean that it was the best thing to happen to them? See how ridiculous that sounds?

Cherish this. If you can't do that for yourself, do it so that yankee fans don't get the satisfaction of seeing us depressed or intimidated by them in any way, in the one year of our lives where we've been allowed to be on top.

Don't worry about the past, or about how the Red Sox relate to religion, or how we're just another team, or any of that crap. Just keep supporting your team. They deserve it. In fact, maybe you'd think differently if you went into the Red Sox locker room and told all the guys who got us that championship that you kind of wished they'd lost, and saw the looks on their faces.

Stossel asks "What now?" Well, a few million Red Sox fans have decided to pack Fenway to root for the Red Sox, to the point where every game has sold out, despite the highest ticket prices in baseball. As well as travelling the country to see them. I almost feel like he hasn't paid attention this year, or wrote the article in November or something. Again, terrible job. But he did write a book about the Peace Corps, and I'm sure he didn't mean to piss me off. So he's got that goin' for him.

The run totals for the Devil, yes, the Devil Rays in their last three games: 6/6/6.

All against the Sox. Tonight, it was another blown lead by the Satanic ones. This time it was by Miss January of the '04 Red Sox calendar, Casey Fossum. (On the one I had, anyway.)

If this "Millar being good and hitting home runs" thing continues, for whatever reason, it certainly adds a new dimension to our lineup. New, yet old.

Wake did great except for the one bad stretch, and did a great job keeping us in it the rest of the way. Why'd he even leave the game anyway? Now that I think about it, I didn't see any of the D-Rays' runs except the one in the ninth, due to mlb.tv's buffering issues. But other than that, it wasn't too bad tonight. The only thing that got me was the Hell No Network telling me, on the yankees' pre-game show, that our game was a final, when, on my computer screen, the Sox were still an out away from winning. Oh well. I knew we were going to win anyway.

Ramiro Mendoza to go back to the yanks, per Kay. So that'll make three yankees with Red Sox World Series rings.

Kay, earlier tonight: "Nice play by A-Rod, puttin' on a clinic at third!" He said this before A-Rod threw to first. The throw was off line, and the guy was safe. I love gigantic Kay mistakes like that. Like the time he announced an out on a pop-up that was still in the air, and then the yankee fielder dropped it. And it looks like we're stuck with Dave Justice for this entire road trip. I feel like he's more annoying than Kay, if you can believe that. There's this feeling I get from Kay, like he just can't work with Justice, because he's either so far off with his comments, or just talks about something endlessly.

The 19-year old didn't do half bad for the M's tonight, but unfortunately Randy was on for a change, so we stay 2 1/2 games up. With 31 to play.

Lampy looked more like a little monkey with a lampshade tonight:Which fits the Pixies theme of this post.

Also, I take back what I said before. Kay is way more annoying.

Red Sox Logos In Nature, Volume 3. This one isn't found in nature, exactly. More like the kitchen floor:



And for everyone's amusement, here are your "Dogs of A Red Sox Fan In Pinstripe Territory," Jhonny's Dgo and Lampy:



On the yanks-M's game right now, Lampy's a little misshapen, but if that dude moves his leg, or puts a bag down on the ground, who knows what kind of creature we might see tonight. In a lampshade collar.

This just in: yanks donate one million dollars to hurricane relief. Look, George, there's just nothing you can do to make us forget about your past hurricane-related insensitivity. Terrible job.

Shilling was shitty again tonight. But, again, it was only for a little while. Like Chan says, he needs to get his shittiness out of the way now. And even though Chan fancies himself a yankee fan, he's right. And the bullpen did well tonight.

It was good to see us comeback when we should have. By the bottom of the ninth, you knew we'd pull it out. Thanks to mlb.tv, the game ended for me right during the Damon fly out to right. The last thing I saw was Ortiz just starting to hold up at third. After a short scramble to try to get the feed back, I just ran over to the radio, which picks up 1080 Hartford fairly well sometimes. As I ran over there, the phone rang, which means that someone I know is calling me to tell me the good news that I don't know about yet, because my feed is way behind real time, or, in this case, not working at all.

Right before I picked up the phone, I heard a real-time Castiglione saying the final score, seemingly well after the final play took place. It was my mom on the line, and she got to describe the game-winning hit to me, as I sulked about missing the end of an awesome win. She told me there was lots of hugging. Again, I blame Steinbrenner, for making me miss the end of this game. Maybe I should just get the Extra Innings plan. I don't know if you can at this point in the season.

On the wrong side of the tracks, the Bellhornified yanks lost, with Chacon finally getting his ass whooped. And Bells was a Horny 0 for 4. His hair didn't get that much shorter. He and Giambi are trying to fool Big Brother by keeping their hair long in the front, and just pushing it back. Maybe George finally is starting to realize that it's not Johnny Unitas haircuts that win you championships, and has loosened up his rules a little. But I'd bet he hasn't.

I think today is the day that everything started to go the way it should go. yankees: playing crappily, no pitching, lose. Red Sox: coming back, beating who they should beat. I think, actually, this trend starts September 1st, and goes right up through the first weekend of October, when we play a meaningless series with the yanks, where we, the fans, get a last chance to say good-bye to those bastards until next season. But toinight was a good preview of the final Fenway-centric month.

After the media told me yesterday that the lead in the AL East "seems to get smaller every day," like, as if I was scared, or feeling pressure, or something, the lead's right back up to 3 in the loss column, and they're the ones on the west coast for the week. I still say we're gold.

Sterling's quote of the weekend (well, besides calling Saturday the greatest yankee comeback of "this or any other year"), was, essentially this:

"Matsui swings, fly ball to center, deep, a-way back, and it's caught on the warning track...so Matsui continues to excel."

Huh?

And also, let's talk about yankee-sometimes-TV-color-man Dave Justice. This guy's not nearly as good at announcing as he was at being worshipped by my friend Trevor, who was the world's only Atlanta Braves fan before 1991. Trevor once said, though, that he'd be a fan of whatever team Justice was on. I lost touch with him in '95, but I like to imagine that when Justice went to the yanks, he drew the line at that point.

But back to Justice. I usually make fun of yankee announcers for their homer-ism, and for making every single play made by a yankee seem positive. But Justice, he just doesn't know when to shut up. He talks to you like you're in kindergarten. And he just won't lighten up, know matter how hard Kay tries to set him up. Monday night, when Hargrove was doing his finger-pointing at his pitcher on the mound, Kay said, "Anytime someone, your manager, teacher, whoever, pounds your chest with his finger, it isn't good." It was Kay's attempt at humor. Justice just didn't pick up on that. Or anything else, really, as his response to this was "Hargrove's upset." Like he thought we were all wondering how Hargrove felt at that moment. He's just really bad. He definitely attended the McCarver school of broadcasting. He's got that whole "explain everything every time, because there are people in the audience who don't know anything about baseball" thing going.

But these are just two little drops of water in the ocean of yankee announcing bullcrap. More on that as time goes by.

I'm watching the yankee game right now. Last inning, I noticed what I thought was a dog with a lampshade thing on his head, in the crowd, behind home plate. Look below, and you can see the little doggie, right behind Posada's head:



I sat there, waiting for the dog to turn to the side, so I could see the full shade. But then, within the circle, I saw someone's shoe move across what I then realized was actually just a circle on or right behind the screen. Possibly even one of those directional microphones. But ever since then, I've just been thinking of it a a dog. Because whatever is inside that circle sure looks like a dog face to me.

Here's one last tribute to the dog that wasn't:



Also, as I write this sentence, Giambi is making the last.....

....wait for it.....

out. 2 1/2 up on Bellhorn, Embree, and company.

Bell-whore.

So Bellhorn's a yankee. Now, I'm not quite putting "dead to me" status on the guy. Hell, even Rich Gedman played with the yanks one spring training, and he's still a cult hero of mine. But, still, whenever I see Mark Bellhorn from now on, I'll see the words "Terrible Job" floating over his head along with those postseason home runs.

What's with him saying that he'll "do whatever the yanks need"? Why couldn't he do whatever WE needed, like, for him to get his sorry ass a sublet in Pawtucket until we could bring him back up for the stretch run?

This is one of the reasons I'll never forgive A-Rod. The way he suddenly was gung-ho about switching positions to play for the yanks. He never told us he'd be interested in doing that, so we could have kept the All-Star shortstop we had at the time. But that all worked out for the good side, and so will this.

I just don't see why Bells would want to have short hair, be boring, play for a loser, etc.

And Brian Cashman, don't even think for a second you're scaring us with your total bullshit, contrived moves. Mark Bellhorn is not Babe Ruth. Not even the drunkest of yankee fans will see my hat today and say "Now WE got Bellstone, bitch! How you like me now?"

But still, once they realize Cano is the rookie that he is, they'll go with Bells, who'll get some key strikeouts right around the time the Red Sox are clinching the division. See, it was a trick. I said the yanks should get Mark, then Cashman, knowing how right I usually am, borrowed Steinbrenner's tapes of my apartment, heard me say that, and jumped all over him. Good luck with that, Cash! Whiff!

I feel like I'm in the Twilight Zone. Every day, some team finds a way to lose to the yanks. And I almost trash the apartment. Tonight it was a wild pitch, a guy somehow being thrown out by a mile at first on a double play, despite that it was a slow grounder, and that Jeter double clutched on the throw, and a guy throwing sliders until he gave up a home run (Steinbrenner's been using that bribing method since Game 4 of the '96 World Series). And the thing about the sliders isn't just one of my crazy theories. The manager actually came out to the mound and slammed his index pitcher into the pitcher's chest repeatedly, while telling the dude to throw fastballs instead of sliders, and then reamed out the catcher between innings. Watch for that pitcher to sign with the yanks in the near future. Also, look for him on the beach outside his mansion in the Hamptons next summer. He and Mark Wohlers will probably be neighbors.

So, here's the Twilight Zone part. I went to just about every Red Sox blog I could find, and no one mentioned Saturday's complete choke by the Royals against the yanks. I mean, people said things like, "the yanks came back to win," and "the yanks scored five in the ninth," and "the yanks are breathing down our necks." But no one talked about how the Royals pulled one of the worst regular season chokes of all time. Maybe it was because the Sox blew a six-run lead the same day. But just imagine if the Sox had been up four, with one out in the ninth, botched an easy, potential game-ending double play ball, still got the second out with the lead, but still ended up losing the game. That's what the Royals did against the yanks.

I got an email from Reb in which she said that her anger about that game could have burned down a house. That I could relate to. But she didn't blog about it. So mine seemed to be the only blog to mention this travesty.

I think it's because the Boston-area people are totally focused on the Sox, and see all their problems. While I sit here, fuming over these yanks, just kind of assuming the Sox will win, and seeing the yanks play like shit, but reading about them on other blogs as if they're some juggernaut that's tearing up the league. I've always been positive about the Red Sox. Granted, I'd do the "here we go again" thing when they'd start losing in past seasons. But I always think I can will them to victory. After it worked last year for the first time, I think I've become even more positive about them. And after watching what happened to the yanks last year, I'm also that much more confident about them losing.

So this year, I look at everything and say, "The Red Sox will win. We've got a great lineup, I trust that our rotation will be fine for postseason series', and everything else, aka the bullpen, will iron itself out." And, "The yankees will lose. They are not a good team. Their good pitchers don't win, and they're sneaking by with crappy ones, who can't possibly keep it up the rest of the way, let alone in the playoffs. Their lineup is good, but with holes, and they're never going to move a runner over. And their bullpen would beat even ours in a give-up-home-run hitting contest."

The fact that we're ahead of them helps our cause, too, and shows that through all these bullpen woes and squanders, we've played two games better than the yanks overall. And better than every other team in all of baseball, save the ChiSox and Cardnillies.

The home games, the late summer nights, the whole month ahead looks positive to me.

If there are any of you out there who are fearing the yankees, all I have to say is that this is our century, not theirs. I never believed in a curse in any kind of supernatural way. But what was very real about "The Curse" was the fact that we as fans always knew that as good as things looked, there was a very good chance that things could go horribly awry. I know yankee fans have erased 2004 from their memories, but now I'm getting the feeling that Sox fans are falling into the same old pre-yankee-choke trap. This is a different world, a world where only a few teams can possibly win anyway. A world where even if we do blow a lead to the yanks, and they end up having a better year than us, well, at least we know we have won the World Series, very recently, and can do it again soon, without having that whole "86 years and counting" thing on our backs.

Which doesn't mean I would ever take a season lightly, or say "So what, we won last year." I'm just saying, we all spent our lives getting all the practice we'll ever need to deal with losing. If we took all that abuse for going 86 years without winning, I think we'd be able to handle one or two.

I remember reading a post on Finy's blog where she talked about yankee fans coming up to her, "warning" her that the yanks were starting their comeback. Ooooh! The chokin' yanks are coming! You gotta stand tall and tell 'em what's up. Isn't this what we've been waiting all our lives for? To be able to see a yankee fan on the street and laugh at THEM, because it's their team who will almost win but still lose? If only for this one year?? (You know, so we don't turn into them.) You don't have to be arrogant, but be confident and proud of your World Champs, still led by Theo, and still featuring some of the best players in baseball, many with recently acquired rings.

I guess what it comes down to is that the Red Sox are just going to have to beat the yankees themselves. Again. Because no one else seems to want to.

Moving on, I'm hearing rumors of Trachsel to the Sox, which could be good. And as soon as we DeeFah'd Bellhorn, I told someone, I'm guessing Chan, that the yanks would be smart to snatch him up, and now I see stories where this might come true tomorrow. Of course, with a headline, by someone who forgot about last season's down 3-0 comeback to the yanks, that says "Curse of the Bellhorn?" Do these papers have editors? Anyway, Chan was all, "Nahh" when I said that. But who knows if it will happen.

In Canada-related Sox blogger news: Within the last few days, Allan, who used to live in New England before moving to NYC, moved to Ontario. And Andrew, who used to live in NYC before moving to Ontario, is moving to New England.

So, check out their blogs from their new perspectives.

Allan, aka Joy of Sox.

Andrew, aka 12-Eight.

Also, I've learned recently that Biloxi is pronounced "Buh-LUCKS-ee." And I haven't seen "Katrina" and "waves" in the news this much since '85.

You're looking at my entire photo gallery from my trip to Fenway on Saturday. That's the spot in the car where I left the camera. After I parked at around 4:30, I sat and listened to the end of the yankee game. When it ended, I got out of the car, steaming, and ran over to the park, only to discover that my camera was not in my pocket. I guess I could've run back to the car at that point, but then I would've missed batting practice anyway, and the only shots I would have would be from during the game, from far, far away. So, for pictures from the day, and the entire weekend, possibly including one of me and Sam, head over to Blue Cats And What Not.

Highlights from Saturday: "Detroit Rock City" by Kiss played in the "Visiting Team Tribute" spot. Also, the Sox jumping out to a 6-0 lead. End highlights section.

But I did get to see two people I know. Pat & I were walking up the grandstand, between 16 and 17, when I noticed a familiar face. It was my sister's friend Andy, who used to hang out at my house back when I was in high school. I had no idea he'd be there, and the odds of us running into each other were pretty remote. Was good to see him and his sis.

In the ninth, I was standing at the back of the grandstand on the third base side. The crowd had thinned considerably, allowing me to spot an orange hat down by the dugout. I walked down, saw some blue in the pony tail that stuck out from the hat, and knew I was looking at Sam from Blue Cats. So I sat in one of the many empty seats around her and chatted with her for a few outs. She didn't get to meet Pat because he had bailed just before this, becoming one of the lucky ones who didn't have to witness the bonus Tiger rally, and Remlinger's farewell appearance. Sam is the, let's see, seventh Red Sox blogger I've met in person. Wow, I can't believe I just wrote that sentence. Anyway, she was really cool, finding time to talk to me between keeping score and snapping pictures.

It's always fun going to Fenway, but being there on the worst baseball day of the season was rough. Funny how I'd just talked about "the biggest Royals-related travesty" since '81, and then the Royals go and top it within days. Let me give you the reaction to Saturdays yankee "comeback" from the point of view of a mythical yankee fan:

"'Sup sluts. yankee boy here. Whats up with our pinsrtipers? Why cant they pul off one goddammed legitamite win? Like, in my lfie? Seriously, I don't even know what it is I'm supposed to be enjyoing about this team. All they do is cheat to win, or just slip by, thanks to embarasingly crappie play by some gutless minerleague squad. John Stirling called the game the graytest comeback of this or any other yaer. Right after admiting sevral times that if the Royals picher had made a decent fifty foot throw, the game wood have been over, 7-3 Royals. They didn't "come back" as much as Royals "went away." All my felloe yankee fans are bosting about this team, when I feel I need to wear a bag over my head in shame. Also, am I the only one who hasn't erased last season form my memory? That was real, right? Anyway, terible job, yanks. Learn from the world champagne Red Sox how to win forreal. Even thogh there fags. Well, I've gotta go to my penile enlargment operation now, so stay strong. 1918 forever!"

After Saturday, I was more pissed off about the yanks than I was about the Sox, since I knew the Sox would bounce back, but the Royals had missed their one chance to get a win. Two outs away, up by four. Je-sus.

Now we've got the red hot Rays, while the yanks go to Seattle. I think we can start building the lead up again.

About the AOD/Dead Boys/Flipper show on Friday: This dude did a nice job describing it, and has a few pics. It was a very cool show, with a bunch of bands from back in the day coming together to try to save CBGB's, as is the norm all this month. It's always cool to see my friend Bruce's band, AOD, since they technically broke up almost 20 years ago. My old band, The Pac-Men, got to open for them at another one of their reunions in Jersey, back in '01, during the World Series, in fact. They were the fastest and the funniest, back in the early 80s, and still are. Flipper hadn't played in quite a while. The main singer dude walked with a cane, and weird things attached to his back, like he had a heart problem or something. But they were really psyched to be there, and it was cool to hear some of their classic tunes. You may know Flipper from various pictures of Kurt Cobain, where he's wearing one of their T-shirts. I actually left the show after two Dead Boys songs. They were cool, but it was late, and if you stay inside CBGB's for more than four hours, well, let's just say I didn't want to find out what happens. Peter & The Test Tube Babies also played. It's always weird to see British guys with beerguts and wifebeaters. And Furious George opened, and were pretty good, too. They played a song that went "I wear a white hat/I wear a red shirt/They all think I'm stupid/One day I'll kill them/I am Gilligan".

Also, NY Times, page B2, today, Metro Diary. A very short story, that I told in a different form on this blog once, is in.