Hi, it's me, writing to you on Saturday night, August 2nd, as the Sox are kicking some A butt--10-2 us in the sixth. My blog was "locked" by Blogger on Thursday night thanks to their "inherently fuzzy" spam-detecting software. After proving to them that I'm an actual person, it's now unlocked. Great timing by the robots, eh? Interestingly, the only other time I've had a problem where my blog was inaccessible was during the '04 ALCS. Below is the post I wrote late Thursday night in Manhattan at Chan's apartment. The post time reflects that time, not right now. It's not like I would've had much time to write anyway, since after my NYC trip, I met up with Kim down at Rebecca's family's cabin, where we go once a year. No computers or internet there. I did get to watch much of Friday night's game at my parents' house, between the City and the Cabin, and was saddened by the Manny bashing. There's such a feeling of the organization controlling what people say and what we see and hear. But anyway, now that I'm home, I'll have much more on the whole situation. But right now I've gotta go see the new Batman movie. Here's that post from the other night....thanks for your patience. It was out of my control.

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When Damon left the Red Sox, I was sitting in my old apartment in NYC with Chan and Gumby, who was visiting. Today, Manny is kicked out, and I'm in NYC visiting Chan along with Andy, who again happens to be visiting. After Manny's comments yesterday, I knew he was gone. Today, after running around in the heat playing Frisbee (actually "Skyo") in Central Park, we went down to the Saigon Grill by Union Square, and I read the closed-captioning on their TV, which was tuned to ESPN. It said something about Manny's "tw0 mznths in Loss Angelts," and I thought, Wow, the Angels are going to be incredible. Then I found out it was the Dodgers he went to. Teammates with Nomar, managed by Torre. Crazy. We also lose Hansen and Moss--I would've liked to see what Moss could've done, and Hansen, well, we all have waited too long to see what he can do.

So now we've got 29-year old Canadian Jason Bay. Back Bay, the Bay State...we can work with that. Canadian Back Bay-con? Anyway, the guy usually hits about .280, except for the year ('06) he hit over .300 and the year ('07) he hit under .250. He's roughly a 30-dong guy, and this year he has 22. He should be able to pack an Esasky-type punch, but I'd rather have Manny. Can you believe Papi and Manny are separated? That'd be like seeing Johnny Damon in a Yankee uniform....

So I'm just kind of in a state of calm shock right now. We'll see how I feel when the games start up again this weekend. It was great to see that the Yanks got killed tonight.

At one point today we stopped into Paragon. It has a nice little Red Sox section. I love it: New York City's three favorite teams--Yanks, Mets, and Red Sox--each with their own section. They actually had some cool shirts. In fact, I've seen worse Red Sox selections in some Boston-area stores. I also heard a "go Sox" and saw plenty of other Sox gear in Manhattan as usual. The Yankee-wear was slim today, too, making it feel pretty even. Oh, and I finally tried Shake Shack. I'd tried to go several times, but for different reasons never ended up getting there. Tonight, the line was over a hundred people long, easily. Gumby went to the front and asked someone how long she waited. She told him an hour and a half. So we thought about going to the "B-line," on which you can get anything...but shakes. Or burgers, hot dogs, and fries. But you could get a concrete there. Since those actually sounded better than shakes, we made a B-line for the line which bore its name. It was four people long. The "Shack Attack" concrete was amazing.

And I forgot to mention yesterday that Gumby brought me rocks from Iraq and Afghanistan. How cool is that? I should get a bumper sticker that reads, "Support Our Troops, Especially the Ones Who Smuggle Me Shit."