Ellis: "I leaned."

That's right, Ellis leaned into that pitch last night, and Remy, even while admitting this was true, found a way to make it seem better than it was. The way I saw it, Ellis started to lean into his swing. When he saw the ball coming at him, he stopped. When he realized how slow it was coming in, he then turned in such a way that the ball would hit him. Remy described this as "turning back toward the catcher, to make it seem like he was turning away from the ball." Well, of course he's gonna turn to his right. What's he gonna do, turn left so that the ball hit's the front of his back shoulder? You can call that turning away from the ball, I call it turning toward the ball. In other words, a blatant attempt to get hit. And don't think the umps don't make the "no attempt to move" call. Doug Mientcussion tried that crap a few weeks ago. As soon as he did it, I yelled "That's bullshit, get back in the box!" Sure enough, the ump made the call that he didn't attempt to move, and didn't award him first base.

How long has Tom Brady been Brad Mills' son? Did you see they showed the reaction of the dugout to Little Mills' being drafted? Tito was going nuts, fist in the air. Then some other guys looked up at the board, and also put their arms up. Pedroia then looked up at the board, looked back at everyone else, and, like a three-year old imitating a group of eight-year olds, put one arm up in the air as well, with a big smile on his face. It wasn't "I'm happy for that dude," it was "we're putting our arms up! Yay!"

I have trouble being able to tell how far fly balls are going in this Oakland park. There were balls hit by Manny and Lowell that looked like classic, no doubt, Don Baylor-style home runs off the bat. Then they showed the left fielder drifting in and catching it. On Papi's HR today, I thought, off the bat, Eh, not so much. But it went out. Funny, since back in the Bash Brothers days, Pat and I used to think the wall in Oakland was on some kind of mechanical track, to be moved in when McGwire or Canseco hit a fly ball. I swear, those balls looked like pop ups to second base, yet they'd go over the center field fence.

Sox lead 1-0 after five, despite Lugo ruining Curt's El Perfecto. Lugo's also made lots of outs in this game, and gotten zero hits. It's getting really bad. Hey, why the hell's he batting leadoff?

Look familiar? Here's a clue: "You have to go in dee back!" (I know Mighty Quinn will know it.)