After an hour with no luck in the virtual waiting room, I gave the phone a try. Surprisingly, it worked. But by that time, there were pretty much single tickets left, at least to all the weekend games. I did manage to score four upper bleacher seats to a game around my birthday.

We had to give up Marte for Coco, but, there's no looking back now. I fully support Coco and I'm totally psyched to have him. One of the first pictures I ever put on this blog was of him, from 3/26/05: Click here. You'll notice that the picture isn't there. I took it off the web and it must be gone now. It was a shot of him crashing into a wall with a huge picture of a little girl's face on it.

You can tell me that the delays with this trade were legit, but think about this:

Mildred: Morning, dear.

Harold: Good morning, did the paper come?

Mildred: Why yes, and I believe the Red Sox made some sort of trade.

Harold: Let's see here. Oh, they got that center fielder they've had their eye on.

Mildred: That's wonderful. Maybe we should go to a game this year.

Harold: Okay, let's see....ah yes, it says here that tickets go on sale this morning!

The first sign of spring arrived in the mail today. Red Sox tickets. Looks like this year we've got a shot of Trtot Nixon celebrating with fans. I got two sets of tickets today (my 10-Game Plan tix don't come until March), and they both have the Trot picture. So, maybe others have other fan-friendly pictures on them, I'll find out soon enough.

In case you can't read it, along the border of the ticket are the words "American League East Division" at the top, and "Established 1901" at the bottom. Along the sides are listed the years of the A.L. pennants and our six four-and-one-third- times-as-special-as-theirs championships. (Which are referred to as "Baseball Champions of the World.")

Cool.

Tonight I'm going to see one of my favorite comedians for the fifth (-ish) time at Caroline's. (Remember Caroline's Comedy Hour? That place.) His name is Brian Regan. I recommend him.

Chris Drury may be the most famous baseball player to come out of Trumbull, CT, a town just a few miles from where I was born and raised. But, come on, what did he ever do with his life? (Besides go on to a have a brilliant career in the NHL.)

Now a Trumbull kid has actually made the majors, and he's just joined the Boston Red Sox. Craig Breslow went to Yale and pitched for the Padres last season. His birthday is about the coolest there is, if you like the numbers 8 and 80 as much as I do: 8/8/80.

Don't let the birthplace fool you: He was born in New Haven, but that's only because there's no hospital in Trumbull. Just a mall.

Welcome aboard, Craig. Hope you don't get traded immediately, making this post obsolete.

Quiz answer:

Rabbit hit the first grand slam at Fenway Park, in 1914. Dmitri hit the most recent one, last season.

What's the connection between Rabbit Maranville and Dmitri Young?

Moving on, I feel like I want to do a media boycott right now. Theo comes back, and instead of, "Okay, let's move forward," it's nothing but "Well, can you tell us what was wrong, so we can bitch about it?"

I just have no interest in criticizing right now. Then again, I never felt like anything was wrong in the first place.

If I look at what all the writers are saying, I see how phantom trades are "imminent," and how everyone in the front office is doing the wrong thing.

If I look at reality, I see a really good team, and a front office who's biggest obstacle is having to keep stupid media people at bay, and then having to worry that they said the wrong thing, when, the whole time, they were doing the right thing. Theo's back, and soon we'll all be cheering for whatever new players we get, because they won't be scrubs.

I think I'm just going to read the news on redsox.com, and the blogs I like, and that's about it.

I was once at some dude's house in Kentucky, and on his wall I saw a framed piece of the North Carolina State basketball court. He was a Wolfpack, no, a Wolf...uh, he was One of a Pack of Wolves, and had purchased a piece of the court that Jimmy V once coached on when a new floor was installed in Raleigh.

Another time, I was at a friend's house, and was surprised to see two stadium chairs in her rec-type room. She told me they were from the old yankee Stadium.

In both cases--yes, even in the Dunbar one--I was completely jealous. I am a succer for souvenirs.

I always wished I could somehow get a piece of Fenway Park. (Wait, I have, actually. Paint chips from chairbacks and dirt from the warning track from when I took the tour. Both of which lived in my jeans for the whole 2004 season. That's what that little tiny pocket within the front pocket is for.)

But I mean a real piece of the park. When I saw a bunch of red seats lying there, ripped out, by the first base dugout, on that same tour, my first thought was to call the team and see, ya know, if they were still usin' 'em.

In fact, a friend of mine--Dunbar supporter--used to say, when we were kids, "When they tear down yankee Stadium, I want the 'Y' from the sign on the outside of the stadium." So maybe that rubbed off on me. (He has since died. I plan on writing to Steinbrenner and asking if I can get the 'Y', since they actually are going to tear it down. Maybe I could present it to his family. To which they'd probably tell me that that's awfully nice, but that they don't really have much use for a huge letter 'Y'.) Or maybe just being a child of the eighties made me want to constantly "get stuff," no matter how monetarily worthless.

But the Red Sox organization was not the friendliest back in the day. Other teams let little kids run the bases after games. At Fenway, no one was allowed on the field. Ever. So the chances of them actually giving fans any artifacts that may have broken off the old girl were slim and whitman.

You know where this is going. When I heard they were going to be selling pieces of the infield, I was overjoyed. A piece of Fenway. Available to me! Move aside, bobble-head Mr. T. and Smurfs lunchbox, we've got a new centerpiece, I thought. I even wrote on this blog that I would be buying a swath of the famous blades.

As it turned out, the price was a little too high. $150 for a square foot or so. Add that to the fact that my Manhattan apartment is not adorned with a garden, let alone a yard, and they'd lost themselves a sale. However, I just realized how cool it be to have bought a strip and planted it in Central Park. Or, better yet, wait until they're building the new Dunbar Dome, sneak in one night and christen it with a piece of Fenway sod.

But I didn't think of those ideas in time, so I didn't purchase the grass. But, I, and I guess I'm in the vast minority, was very appreciative of the sod sale. They were taking it out anyway, and Larry said, Hey, let's see if our fans would like to buy this stuff. And I give him credit for that. It would be one thing if they replaced the infield every year, selling the old at a steadily higher price year after year. But it was a one-time thing, people like memorabilia, and, as ticket sales have shown, have lots of money and enjoy spending it.

And the money went right back into the team. If you have proof otherwise, show me. I never heard anyone make fun of the Souvenir Store for selling Doug Mirabelli's cracked bats for $200. (Yeah, I thought about buying those, too.) And it goes right down to T-shirts and the Red Sox Nation Card. It's all the same. It's all stuff you can buy because you like the team. I'm surprised no one made fun of Larry for allowing shirts with player's names and numbers to be sold: Oh my god! Does he think we think we'll be asked to play if we have this shirt on? That Lucchino is Satan!

This front office, the one that gave us a championship, gets criticized as much as the players do. That's everyone's right, and I'll always be glad to be a fan of a team where it means that much to everyone. But I honestly think they've done a great job. I'm so glad Theo's back. Not just because I freakin' love Theo, but because it should get a lot of people off the backs of Lucchino, Henry, and the third guy.

And, of course, I just wish those who are pessimistic could all at least pretend to be optimistic, if only to give Dunbar fans reason to be afraid. They should be still crying in their soup over '04 and their decidedly not-better-than-us '05, but we're giving them reason to gloat about off-field crap. That's another reason Theo coming back is a great thing: For any Dunbar fans who acted like we're gonna finish last solely because Theo left.

That's just my opinion. One person's Ace Frehley is another person's Peter Criss, as Dennis Miller once said, before he turned into a right-wing boob.

So, Theo's back, and we're supposed to believe he's going to trade away one of the best prospects in baseball?

I don't know about that.

It's really February 22nd, 2006. I'm postingthis pic of the Fenway Park ticket-takers known as "the twins" so I can use it as my profile pic.

I figure this may be the only time I'll be dressed in army-wear, so I might as well post it on the interslice. This weekend I went up to Connecticut to act in my friend Brian's short film. It's basically a satire on how military-types are offended by homosexuality, but have no problem killing people. If you've ever heard Bill Hicks's "we are the military" routine, well, it's pretty much that in movie form.

Brian was in charge of wardrobe and props, as well as being the director. He found a pair of child's camouflage pants at the Salvation Army, which he cut up into strips for head- and armbands. He also bought a bunch of greenish shirts, and toy guns and army helmets. Between these get-ups and the "actors'" glasses, sideburns, and blue jeans, it was a ridiculous scene. (More like Lord of the Flies than the U.S. Army.) Which was witnessed by several families and dog-walkers who walked past us in Danbury's beautiful Tarrywile Park.

It's going to be an awesome movie. Brian's done a bunch of these, which will all be available on one DVD soon. (What "available" means, I don't know. But if anybody wants a copy, let me know, and I'll see what Brian wants to charge.)

I've been following my mom's book's sales ranking on Amazon.com. It was cool to see it go from the 600,000s to the 100,000s when it first started getting publicity. Then watching it break the 10,000 and 5,000 marks. With today's New York Times review and article, and the Boston Globe's review (which incorrectly called it a "crime novel," unbelievably, as the name is "Girls of Tender Age: A Memoir"), it has soared to new heights, currently the 337th most purchased book on all of Amazon. A good number--the one Bill Lee wanted to wear, since it spells "LEE" upside-down.

Thanks to everybody who bought the book after seeing it here. And if you haven't bought it yet, you can get it here.

As for this Coco Crisp stuff, well, we'll see if it gets finalized. I don't like giving up Marte and Mota, but we need a center fielder. I'm thinking, though, if we're giving up all that, shouldn't they be giving up Grady Sizemore instead of Crisp? We could use a Grady with more size than Little. Still, having a guy named after a breakfast cereal can't be bad. Unless it was Mueslix or something like that.


*Note: The title of this post uses a "k" in "Markus" because that's how my roommate, Markus Chan, spells his name. So, now you think it's a funny title, right?

I haven't talked about Bronson Arroyo's signing yet. Here's what he said, as you probably know:

"I agreed to this contract with strong advice from them not to sign it, simply for the reason that I want to play in this town," Arroyo said Thursday. "I love being a Red Sox. I wouldn't have signed a deal [like this] in any other place. The reason I took a discount was because I love playing here and I want to stay here my whole career."

The exact words that should have come out of Johnny Damon's stupid mouth.

I'm glad Bronson appreciates us. Proud to have him on my team. We just have to teach him that there's more to music than Creed or whatever those songs are he's playing all the time. But beggars can't be (Big League) Chew-sers; I'll take a Red Sox player who plays guitar over one who kills innocent children. Or whatever the opposite of playing guitar is.

He also said how he likes Boston more than New York. Which brings up a question I'd thought of when Johnny signed with Mr. Dunbar: Did Johnny just decide he'd rather live in New York City than Boston? Because I chose to move to New York City--but had they made me pledge my allegiance to Mr. Dunbar when I got here, I would've turned right around.

(Also, photo by me. All photos are by me, unless otherwise noted, or if it's really obvious that I didn't take it. Like the one I posted of the "time to make the donuts" guy, who died days later. RIP Fred the Baker.)