You know my rule on Wakefield: Never take him out. (Except after eight for Papelbon.) They had to make me suffer through that eighth, though. But Donnely did a nice job, and then the insurance run was key. And it was almost like the ball Coco caught made Pap realize he better get his ass back in Pap Gear. We're 6.5 up on every other team in the division.

Current batting averages of the 2006 Red Sox middle infielders:

Loretta: .356
AGonzalez: .319
Cora: .345

At least we kept one! Still early, though, and don't get me wrong, I like the team how it is. I'm just saying, maybe next year, just think about keeping some guys, letting them get comfortable with where they are. Especially the awesome ones.

Yankees score 11 runs, get 16 hits, but lose by four. Every Mariner reached base at least twice. "No Dice"-Kei Igawa gave up eight runs in four innings. Colter Bean came in and pitched zero innings, giving up four more runs. Yanks had a five-run lead, too. Monday they plan to start a guy named Matt DeSalvo--assuming Big Stein hasn't packed up all the equipment and called it a season by then. They're 12-15 now and in last place despite winning their previous three games. Everybody's smilin'. Sunshine day. Everybody's laughin'. Sunshine day. Everybody seems so happy today. Cuz it's an emmer effin' sunshine day.

This was the make-up date of that first Thursday game that got rained out. Here's the front of Fenway reflected in a refuse receptacle. I'm the person on the left in front of the middle gate. Click these new-boot goofers to enlarge.

The M squad was doing some wacky circle game in BP. Papi observes. Low-Ell Pineiro observes something else.

David Ortiz. I like the dad pointing out Papi to the kid at left.

Ichiro.

LugNut greets the enemy. Manny and Papi also here.

Just discovered the digital zoom on my camera. (TJ, me!) This was taken from above the third base dugout, and as you can see, they're clearly in the triangle.

Was a nice night, until about halfway through the game when I started to shiver at a constant rate.

Ichiro on third base in the first inning.

Battle of dudes who hail from Japan.

You don't see this every day. In fact, has there ever been a five run, one hit, first inning before? How 'bout it, Elias?

Papi on second from my section 26, row 1, seat 1 position. The oblivious-to-those-around-him doof-wad in front of me may have annoyed me for much of the game, but it made it easier knowing he paid $85 and I paid $45.

Dice in the wind.

I rarely have an angle on the Sox' dugout. But I would on this proverbial night.

Wily Mo was four for four.

Confusion as Wily Mo and "Dust, Indiana to Pedro, Iowa" both cross the plate, but both are not allowed to score as the ball hopped over the wall for a GRD.

Papi at the plate.

Manny new-boot goofs his way to left field.

Youk almost makes the catch leaning into the dugout.

Dice with Ichiro on first.

Manny.

You can see how stiff the wind was. Manny's first HR looked way out. I was surprised it barely cleared the wall. And I don't know how he go that second one out. Several balls were knocked down. I had a great angle on this. You could really see the flight of balls hit toward the Monster change drastically and then get caught. Dust, IN - Pedro, IA. Were you still trying to figure that one out? Too bad the towns don't actually exist. I was just new-boot goofin'.

I'll leave this caption to you, the reader. More on this game below.

I was at the game last night. Fun. Did you notice that at one point the scoreboard was exactly symmetrical? After five, we had:



I just thought it was cool that the non-zeros were in places that made the whole thing symmetrical, but then I realized that since they were 5s and 2s, if you digitize it, you get:



Wrap your head around that one, Mnookin!

Now, about Manny's eighth inning homer, pictured in all its chaos here:



Did Manny think it was the ninth inning? The celebrating going around the bases had "game-winning homer" all over it. Then he got to the dugout and did the patented* Red Sox helmet flip and jumped into the non-existent pile. I really thought maybe he was thinking the game was over, and that the rest of the team was messing with him by not coming out onto the field to meet him at home plate. But he had to have known by the fact that the Mariners weren't walking off. Maybe he was just letting us all know "this long, long game is over NOW. This is essentially the game-winning homer." (That's some confidence in J.C. Romero, Manny...)

The Ortiz mid-play hug was awesome. What a great reaction by the crowd. Not often does a home player getting tagged out in a rundown end in an explosion of joyous applause.

And what is Dice's deal? He's like Oprah. "I'm fat, I'm skinny, I'm fat..." Only with him it's "really awesome" and "totally shaky." Yet in the end, he's always there, and we always pull it out. And he's the richest woman in the world.

More pics from last night to come.


*yes, that's ours, as is Sweet Caroline. Imagine someone else doing one of your team's traditions and then hearing their fans say, Oh, anyone can do this... Oh, and George, once again, all the Mientkiewiczesezeses in the world aren't gonna win you that 2004 World Series. That's ours, too! Give it up, man.

Did I call that whole strength and conditioning thing or what? Yanks fired the dude yesterday.

We needed to make up for last night, and we did. Anti-terrible job, guys. Five game lead in the AILC.

The coward who relentlessly heckled Coco from the bleachers a few weeks ago can shove his words up his drunken ass. Way to judge a guy's season after two weeks, dude. But he wasn't alone. It seems like the entire media looked at 15 games' worth of stats, and acted like they were the final results for the year. Terrible job, irrelevant media.

I'm at Fenway tomorrow night for Dice, and I'll have some special stuff for you afterwards, I hope.

Am I the only one calling Mike Lowell "Low-Ell Pineiro"?

UniWatch is a fun blog. The dude linked my Lugo/Varitek post today. Nice. Personally, I think my best uniform related post is this one, but, hey, I'll take the publicity.

I'm not the "here's what I'm listening to right now" type of blogger, as you know, but every time I listen to Sleater-Kinney, I'm reminded of how totally kick-ass they were. So, right now, you get to learn that I'm listening to All Hands on the Bad One. Kick-ass, I tell you. Kick-ass.

From an April Daily News article:

...the Yankees entered into a 10-year strategic partnership with 24 Hour Fitness, a California-based fitness center company. According to the press release, one of 24 Hour Fitness' duties was the installation of a "state of the art fitness facility" at Yankee Stadium, but players have been less than impressed with the initial results.

"They've done a phenomenal job making the weight room nice," the player said. "Aesthetically it looks great, but functionally, there's nothing in there. You walk in there and there's four of the same machine and a bunch of empty space. What do you expect us to do in there?"

Cashman claims this new money-first operation isn't responsible for all the Yanks' injuries this season, but he's probably full of shit. After watching Pap blow the save and the Sox lose, and being totally pissed about it, I heard that Team Dunbar had a combined no-hitter. I immediately knew Hughes was injured--why else would you take a guy out of a no-hitter? I checked the 'net, and it turns out I was right. Pulled hammy for Hughes. Maybe they threw him into that weight room real quick once he got called up and it effed him up. [Update: Hughes out 4-6 weeks according to ESPN. For all the Yankee fans who laughed when Lester was diagnosed with cancer--justice is, let's say, 2% done.]

At least the no-hitter was broken up, as was the shutout, as was Jeter's hitting streak. So, in a way, things could've been much worse tonight. [Update, 5/4/07: I'm watching SportsCenter last night, and they're talking about Jeter's current 20-game hit streak. I swear those Rangers announcers were talking about Jeter's "last chance" that night, and he walked. I thought, Streak over. I guess I misheard. Myyyyy mistake.]

While watching Jeter's last at bat on the Rangers' network on mlb.tv, the announcers were talking about the Jeter phenomenon, spurred on by the fact that there were some "Jeterettes" at the Texas park. (Yes, they used that term, which I believe I coined in the late-90s, for little girls who only come to the park to scream for Jeter.) Anyway, they've got it all wrong. They were saying how all the extra stuff he does, like hosting SNL, wouldn't be there if he wasn't a good ballplayer. Absolutely wrong. It wouldn't be there if he didn't play in New York.

[Update: The Broseph is back! I guess his comedy troupe is called Pen is Heavy. Keep your eye out for that name in the coming years.]

Here's the slo-mo version of a short snippet of Dice-K's first pitch at Fenway, shot by me. (Forgot to cut the audio, myyyy mistake. Makes for a cool horror movie effect, though.)

It was flashbulb mania. Just watch the stands. You have to remember, this clip in real time is less than a second long. There were that many flashes in that time alone. I've made some of the cooler frames into stills below. I give you The Constellations of Dice-K:

The two-headed dragon.

The lazy fox.

The Journey 8-track.

The twist-tie.

Note: These constellations were named under the premise that constellations never look anything like what their name implies.

Also note: This is technically post # 2004 for me. But Blogger counts unpublished "drafts" in that number. Every once in a while I'll start writing something and just not finish and forget about it. I went back and counted 57 of these. So, 57 posts from now will be the "real" 2,004th post of RSF/PT. I'll have to do something special if I remember. Anyway, while going back through the old posts, I noticed this comment from Wednesday, September 01, 2004 at 8:29:00 AM, from, of course, "Anonymous," from the day after I boasted about the Yanks' 22-0 loss:

"Enjoy your moment, there's still a month left to play, and as a Sox fan, you know what happens to your poor team at the end of every year, choking and Red Sox go hand in hand..."

Reason number one trillion why I'll never stop appreciating that season.

This was the second game of my 10-game plan. I've had these seats out in the bleachers since they started selling the plan in 2004. It's interesting to watch how the people around you change. Or stay the same in the case of the ten wacky, twenty-/thirtysomething dudes who occupy seats a few rows in front of me. The dude directly in front of me must not have re-upped this season, as we now get randoms in that spot. But two different couples who have been coming since '04 showed up this season with babies. Above, Tavarez stands there. See him eating chicken on the field in the post below this one.

Wily Mo watches a BP ball go by. So, anyway, I go to plenty of non-10-game plan games as well, but these guarantee me two Yankee games, an interleague game, and a chance at playoff tickets every year. At this game, I was there with my girlfriend, who got to see her boy Vernon Wells. The centerfield bleacher people always interact with Wells thoughout the game.

The Mighty Oak.

'jima tosses a ball to a fan. The ball is in front of the Giant Glass sign. The fan is above the D in the DHL sign.

Tavarez talks to another friend.

Dice and Wily Mo.

I thought the warning track looked different in the left field corner. Like it used to be a gradual curve, not a 90-degree angle. I went over there and checked it out. I think this proves I'm right.

Looking down the left field side wall.

A Blue Jay tosses a ball up to a fan in the Monster seats.

The portion of the Fisk Pole that's on the Monster.

Another sunset at Fenway. Crappy game, though. The "letdown" game after the sweep of the Yanks.

I'm up here at my new home, a few miles from Fenway. I've always had this theory that Steinbrenner has been doing everything he can to keep me from seeing my team. Now I'm finally in a place where I can just flip on NESN, on regular TV, and watch the game, for the first time in my life. But ol' George still has a few tricks up his sleeve. In each one of the last three games, there have been some kind of technical difficulties with NESN. And they happen to have been Yankee games. Coincidence? No, that was Big Stein, messing with the wires. But I think he's about to give up. You just have to accept it at some point, George. After all, don't I deserve to just watch my favorite team, normally, like any other fan?

I'll have to change the "in" to "from" in my blog's banner soon. That's the official new title: A Red Sox Fan From Pinstripe Territory. Of course, plenty of you never knew the name in the first place. You people can keep calling it "Let's Go Sox," although that's just the crappy url I chose for it three years ago, as letsgoredsox was taken, and I thought putting the entire blog name in the url would be too long. And I'm glad I didn't do that, as the original title, "A Red Sox Fan In Yankee Territory," was quickly changed by me, due to a problem with then-forced-upon-me ads which kept pushing Yankee-related products.

Going back to Thursday, I just want to let everyone know that according to the Yes, aka Hell No, Network, Philip Hughes is the next Roger Clemens. To the point where I'm watching the game, and they put up Clemens' career stats. To show what Hughes, pitching in his first game, will no doubt become. So, just so you're all aware. It's been decided. He's the best. Ever. Of course, his one performance--which gave him an ERA over 8--got him a standing O from the Yankee Stadium crowd. I guess that's considered good when your team is shitting the bed otherwise.

I also use the term "crowd" loosely, as Yankee Stadium has been showing a lot of blue lately. (Wow, that had a nice, unintended double meaning.) It still amazes me that the ones who do show up will just leave in the seventh inning. But it's so refreshing. To think, Yankee fans saying to themselves, "We're down by two. To the Boston Red Sox. With three innings left. With the highest payroll and best lineup in baseball. I'm going home." Maybe they are the "most knowledgeable fans in baseball": They know when their team is gonna lose! God, this is sweet.

We finish the month with a 16-8 record, and A-Rod "carried" them to a 9-14 mark. George has just released a statement. Talk about a wuss-out. Fire some people, George!

Funny moment from yesterday that flew under the radar: Manny gets caught in a rundown. Remy says how in his day (and in mine, too) a rundown was called a "pickle." Orsillo notes, "And pickles don't last very long..."

Funny how I was making fun of "No Dice" Kei Igawa for getting scratched due to shittiness, then his replacement, either Ratso or Rizzo, I forget which, gets drilled right away by a line drive, and Plain Kei comes in and does a fine job. Their one win over us this year. In every other game of the six, they had a lead, and we won.

One of my games that got rained out will be made up Thursday, and it looks like Dice will pitch that day. So I will have seen all three of his home starts. Look for pics from that game here. And some from last Monday's game, I swear! I've been busy moving, but I will get those up, including one of Tavarez eating fast food on the Fenway field.