ESPN today: "Red Sox fans aren't the only ones happy the Yankees lost. Also happy? The Red Sox themselves."

Whatever station I was watching last night: "Sox fans are happy the Yankees lost, but the Sox themselves aren't!"

I guess it depends who you ask. There are positives and negatives about playing both the Yanks and Indians.

A few spots left in the contest. If I don't fill up the second nine, there will just be few innings with only one contestant instead of two. But you've still got time to sign up. It's free. [Update: all spots now filled, do not enter.]

Being in Boston for the first time in my life, I'm getting to see the Boston local news, and it's so funny how the Red Sox are the top story every night. It should be called the "Nightly Red Sox News--and other stuff."

Funny moment on one of these news broadcasts the other night. It was some roving reporter trying to see if people around town "knew their Sox" or whatever. So she goes to the first person with the first question. That question was "who led the team in runs batted in this season?" But the reporter showed how much she knew about baseball in general by phrasing it, "who led the team in RUNS BATTED....in this season?" Terrible job! And to think, they edited the piece so that that was the first question we saw. That was even worse than when Dick Stockton, during the ALDS, said "watch for Frank! ... TV coming in November." (The show, as the whole world knows now, is called Frank TV.) I totally don't blame Stockton for messing up that promo, I just think it's funny when people emphasize the wrong word, or phrase things wrong, especially when you can tell they notice themselves doing it, but try to be smooth and just go with it.

Since there are still a few days before the ALCS starts, it's a good time for a pre-season quiz! (Quiz Season starts when the baseball season ends here at ARSFFPT.) Here we go. Since baseball started playing a 162-game schedule (1962--although the A.L. switched over in '61), this has only happened one time, and it was in 1992. What is it? Clue: it involves the whole league, not just one team.

Bonus stuff: Okay, at the playoff game last Friday, down by the foul pole, I spotted a dude in a Whalers jersey. We Connecticut people, even those of us who have never had the slightest interest in hockey, are still proud of the one major league sports team we've ever had. The Hartford Whalers. When I go to Fenway, I almost always see (exactly one) Whalers jersey. I even saw two dudes who came to the game together, both wearing a different Whale sweater, during one late-season game in the bleachers. Anyway, I had a great view of this guy on Friday, and I tried to get a pic, as he looked like quite a character, but I couldn't get a good one of him facing me. Fast-forward to yesterday, and I come across I blog I hadn't known about yet called My Corner of Red Sox Nation, and the woman who writes it (also a CT-person) was at the same game, and was sitting right behind Whalers guy! So I went back to my shots from that night, and I found one of the Whalers guy (he's in the front row with a Sox helmet on, and the jersey is white, but you can see the little green whale on the sleeve), which, of course, has this blogger person in it as well. (As you know, one of my hobbies is finding people I know in pictures, especially when the pic was taken without my knowledge of them being in that spot.) Click the pic to enlarge.