That's gotta be rough for a Brewers fan. Go down 5-0, come back to lead 6-5, but then lose 7-6. Ugly second game with seven errors. Fans chanting "We want Gagne." Too bad Wake couldn't get the win. Nice job by Timlin to close it out with Pap unavailable. And I think Michael Leggett was at one of these games, so I'm glad he got a W.

So we win twice in a day. Awesome. Manny sat out game two, so he's still at 498. I'll be there tomorrow, rooting for two Manny dongs, as will Mighty Quinn, whose predicted day is 5/18. You can be there, too. Get four bleacher seats together and see the Sox on a Sunday afternoon. Or four together in the loge if you're rich. Ticket-hike dot com? No! The freakin' ticket office! Try it.

Between games we picked up some Vietnamese food from a place in Harvard Square. (Not too much VF in Boston--terrible!) On our way in, a guy came rushing up to us with a clipboard asking if we could do him a favor. He said he needed us to sign a petition, telling us to "just ignore what's on top of the page, the guy that runs this is a crazy right-winger--but this is for a church!" We read the top line: "I support George W. Bush and the Iraq War." So of course we just went, "Sorry!" (extra loud) and walked away. Isn't that weird? It seemed like a psychological experiment. Because why would a petition say that? What would the purpose be? And the fact that they went to a place where almost nobody would want to sign makes it seem even more fake. I think they were trying to see if people would sign anything. There were ten lines on the page, and they had four sigs, but they could've been fake to make it seem more real. Whatever. Real or fake, what a waste of our time. I'm fine with them wasting their own time, but leave us alone....we've got enough clipboard people to deal with in life.

At the funeral today, Kim and I are driving in the procession, and guess which song comes on the radio? November Rain! (Sorry if your generation doesn't get it.)

Got to listen to the Mets beat the Yanks in the car on the way back up here.

And now Papi has gone dong and we lead the Brewers 4-0 in the 3rd. If Manny gets 499 in this game, I just may head over to the park for game two and see what I can do. If not, I've got my ticket for tomorrow already....

Sox-Brewers, Mets-Yanks, and Jere and Kim's softball game rained out...

The Fox 3:55 game means the make-up game on Saturday will be at 8:35 PM.

The Rays won so we're 1.5 back.

Amazing Larry sez: Bring a raincoat! Brewers at Sox, Dice-K vs. (chuckle) Suppan, 7:05. Return of Gabe!

Here's a story about Giambi sharing his gold thong with other players. April Fools!! Oh, no, wait, it's real.

(Here's a side note for ya: Nearly every time I read a Yankees story on the Daily News' website, the top "related story" on the sidebar is "Derek Jeter injured in Yankee win." And every time I say, What's this, Jeter's hurt? But it always turns out to be the same old story from early April. It happens in the story linked above, too. In fact, click on any of the other related articles and the Jeter injury story is one of that article's top related articles, too! Check it out. What's up with that?)

Great stat: Yanks in games started by pitchers other than Wang: 13-20. Pretty much what we expected. Their rotation besides Wang is two senior citizens and two infants, so actually 13-20 ain't too shabby.

I was looking up my mom's memoir online to see if there were any new reviews. I found this audio clip from a site called Hold This Thought (if you can't get audio, it's written out there, too). I think it's cool that the passage that person chose is about a young me!

Then there's this review, which is really good. (The cover is the British one, which is nowhere near as cool as the American version...)

This page has comments that seem to be directed at my mom. Mom--you seeing these? The bread-deliverer's granddaughter is psyched he's in the book!

And this page has a lot of reader reviews. Almost all are great. But the rare negative ones make me wonder what I'm gonna do when our new book gets one. Her memoir wasn't written by me and still I hear someone say "read The Glass Castle instead," and I'm like, "you can take your glass castle and shove it up your pompous ass!" (No offense to whoever wrote The Glass Castle.)

Girls of Tender Age, by Mary-Ann Tirone Smith. Check it out.

UPDATE: So I went and started to order tix to other games, even the same game but different sections, stopping short of placing the order, and the $7 fee IS there! But I tried pavilion SRO again, and there was no fee! I can't figure this one out. There's also a new thing where you can have th ticket go to your phone, and then at the park they scan the image on your phone's screen....weird.

-----

Well I'll start with my usual message, which is that you can believe the people on craigslist who say things like, "35 dollars for a standing room ticket--look around, you ain't gonna get better than that!" Or you can go to redsox.com and buy the damn ticket for face value! 20 bucks! Plenty of SRO and everything else available for the upcoming homestand. If those sell, more will be released. (Also note that even if it was "the best price out there," that doesn't make it right for you to STILL sell the thing for nearly twice face value.)

But here's the good news. Since I can't go on Friday or Saturday, my next chance to see Manny's 500th dong live is Sunday. I bought one of the pavilion standing room tickets--love that view--and I noticed something that surprised me in a pleasant or otherwise anti-bad fashion:

$25 ticket, plus, "Total Convenience Fee for 1 seat $4.25," equals, "Price for 1 seat $29.25."

Okay, that's normal. But then:

"Subtotal: $29.25
Order Processing: $0.00
Total: $29.25"

A ZERO-dollar order processing fee! You know what it usually is? Seven bucks! In other words, if you buy the cheapest ticket, 12-dollar upper bleacher, the 4.25 fee plus the 7.00 fee means you're almost paying double face value. But if the $7 fee is gone, that changes everything! I just got Iron Maiden tickets and stupid Ticketmaster-bater charges about 17 dollars in fees per ticket. So 4.25 ain't bad. (And, of course, with the ticket-scalping agencies, you pay even more ridiculous fees...on tickets priced way above face value anyway.)

I don't know if this is permanent or if they just forgot or what's going on, but if this is the new thing, it's a big deal, at least the way I see it. Way to realize you don't "need" 7 extra dollars every time somebody places an order, Red Sox!

I've also been wondering if the Sox went against the S****ub deal because they don't want to get sued by someone claiming, "Hey, you told me to go to this other place to buy tickets and I paid WAY more than face value and then I found out you were selling them for face! Also, the back of the ticket says it's illegal to resell them for more than 3% of the face value..." Maybe that's why they went the "sponsorship only" route with A** Tickets.

I still don't know why anybody goes to those agencies. Unless, of course, your home team is so shitty that people sell on there for below face. But even then, you could just go to craigslist and avoid the fees.

The Rays beat the Yanks 5-2, as Ian "Sure to be awesome because we say so, oh, also, so are all the other pitchers we didn't trade for Santana, just so you know. Fear us." Kennedy was shelled again. The Yanks fall into last place. The Rays, meanwhile, are now a game ahead of us for first.

Okay, people, and Matty, I'm always ripping the media-types, so it's about time I talk about some of the people I like. I apologize if I don't do this enough.

Okay, we know how I feel about sports radio, and despite that I always say I'll never listen to it again, I always go back. I remember Ryan saying that Dale & Holley were pretty good, and I have to say, after hearing them a bunch over the last few months, it really is a pretty good show. The other shows I still just have no interest in, but those two do a good job.

Actually, there's another guy on that station, Mike Mutnansky, who does a weekend show. He's really smart and is there to talk about sports, not do poopy-doody sound effects and stuff. And he seems to have a Connecticut connection, and talks like one of us Connecti...cutians? That guy's goin' places.

I hope I've mentioned this before, but I consider Jeff Goldberg of the Hartford Courant somewhat of a "friend of the family" (even though I've never met him) because I guess his mother, Carole, used to interview my mom for the Courant back when Jeff and I were in short-pants. Or something. So we were very excited when he got the gig as the Red Sox guy at the Courant. And he's done a great job!

And then you've got the other non-fools like Rob Bradford who does a great job with his blog, and I never had anything against Gordon Edes either. There are plenty of others that I like not just in Boston or New York (Bob Raissman, the ultimate Yankee broadcaster-hater, if I'm not), but national as well. Unfortunately, the bad outnumber the good. So, anti-terrible job, non-bad media-types!

You know what my favorite play in baseball is? It's when somebody fields a ball, but can't get into position to throw it fast enough, so he/she flips it to another fielder nearby who then makes the throw.

A good example is from the 80s, when some Phillies pitcher fielded a slow roller on the third base side. All his momentum was going away from first base when he got the ball, so he flipped it to the third baseman, Mike Schmidt, who gunned the runner out at first. 1-5-3 on the putout.

It could also happen if a fielder makes a diving play and flips the ball to someone nearby who's standing up, and then that person makes the throw.

So...

Yeah. If I've said some other play is my favorite in the past, forget that one. I'm goin' with Jerk Store.

video credit: Sox & Dawgs. I ended up continuing to be lazy and not uploading it myself. Somehow I knew "uncut" video is where we'd see this stick. It's like em ell bee doesn't know there are other places to put video or something. I can just see their little minions heading back to base: "I scoured YouTube, sir. Got 'em all!"

MLB fast and furious takin' down all the uploaded vids of Manny's catch.

Here's the vid on the MLB site. This should work. Again, though, you get the crappy Thorne version.

NESN's got Manny's post-game interview up, but not the play.

[video used to be here--taken down by MLB]

This is the Orioles' feed with Gary Thorne. They don't even mention the high five. NESN had it in slo-mo and zoomed and everything. The game's on now on replay--maybe I could snag it, but I'm kinda lazy.

video credit: somebody called MuahMan

Okay, here's [nothing, vid also taken down]--it's the NESN feed, but A. it's one of those "film the TV set shots" and B. they cut it off before the zooming, slo-mo, reactions, Remy and Don talking about it, etc. Am I gonna have to do this myself, people?

A win would have at least salvaged a .500 road trip. But no. We lose 6-3, blowing 3-0 leads in each of our last three games.

We go to the weekend in the Manny contest. pweezil needs two on Friday. Jack needs two by Saturday. Mighty Quinn needs two by Sunday.

After LoPEZ dispensed of the first two O's in the 7th, Dustin couldn't come up with a grounder to his left. Then Mills brings in Hansen (the consensus seems to be that he is now good, almost as if A. everyone forgot the past or B. he's done anything at all to prove he's now good. I still have hope for him, but he still needs to get, you know, there.). Anyway, he gives up two more baserunners, and then Oki comes in and gives up a grand dong to Jay "can suck my butt" Payton. 6-3 them. We go to the eighth.

Now we're in the fifth. Tek just hit a dong to make it 2-0 us.

In the fourth, Manny made a great catch running toward the wall. He then climbed the wall, high-fived a fan, came back down, and threw into the infield where the runner was doubled off first. I love this man. If you're at work--go home and watch this immediately. Hilarious. Great shots of the rest of the team watching the replay in the dugout and cracking up.

Wicked first two innings for Lester, and we're up 1-0 after 2.

Buchholz to 15-day DL with "broken nail." Come on. So Van Every will come up to help out in the outfield since Coco's nauseous and Drew tried to scratch his right elbow with his right hand.

We lose a terrible one to Balty, but the Yanks lost in walk-off fashion to the Rays, who move into first ahead of us....

I'll be announcing tonight's game on YouCastr at 7 PM. Follow this link to get to the broadcast. My internet connection hasn't cut out once today so it should be smooth proverbial sailing tonight. But always know that if you hear nothing, a team of workers, meaning me, is working on the problem and the 'cast should be up again shortly.

Even though hardly anyone ever does this, I'll put it out there again: If you want to talk to me live on the air during the game between innings or on the "post-game," AIM me at Two2067 or Skype me at Gedman10. There's also a comment board on YouCastr where you can ask me questions or tell me to eff off or whatever. And I also usually follow the Joy of Sox game thread, too, so feel free to join that party.


[Of course, as I was about to post this, my connection cut out. So I tricked the jinx gods--we got the jinx out of the way now, so later we should be....ah well, you get the point. Shhhh.]

Tito's mother-in-law died, so he will miss the Baltimore series.

Also, my Auntie Margaret died this morning at age 90. She will be missed.

Here's a recent story about Dan Doyle from the Boston Globe. This is the man who's publishing the book my mom and I have co-written, which will be out this summer. He has a book of his own out, about sports parenting. Check out this article, or, if nothing else, go to page two and read the very end of it--the section titled "An Act of Forgiveness."

In my lifetime, the orange juice container hasn't changed much. First there was the classic carton, where you'd have to fold back the flaps and then push up and out. Then they made the carton plastic and bigger. Then they took the original carton and added a circular hole in the middle of one side of the top, and put a cap on it. Those last two styles have been what we're stuck with. Until now. Finally a fourth idea has been uncovered. The same plasti-carton, only with a flip-top.

So they got that goin' for 'em.

OJ > crappy coffee

Red Sox lose three out of four in Minny. With the Rays beating the Yanks tonight, they're only a half-game behind us for first place on May 12th. DeWayne Staats is psyched.

So Manny's got 498. Two dongs in Balty tomorrow night, tim wins the contest. Two by the next night, and Sosock wins. After that, Thursday off, and we'll talk about the weekend if necessary.

I want to announce a game soon. I'll probably do tomorrow or the next night, but I don't know yet.

Pettitte was drubbed tonight: 5 ER on 8 H in 4 IP. Yanks trail second-place Rays 6-0 in the sixth.

Double-H was worse. Seven runs. We trail 7-3 in the somethingth.

Here's a video I made a while back: It's the radio call of the play in which Tavarez dove at a runner on second from the mound when time had been called. (The video is just some shots I took of Trup and Joe in and near Fenway.) It was rare to hear Trup/Joe have those kinds of laugh-attacks.

Manny is II away from D!

He just hit dong number 498 to give the Sox a 3-0 lead in Minny in the first.

Tavarez has been DFA'd. I took a lot of pics of this guy as he would always be out in right field during BP. My favorite one is here.

In other news, the folks at Mike's Hard Lemonade have a new commercial out which implies that people who consume soy products are "soft." I hope their company goes bankrupt AND a dirty bomb lands on it just as everyone's clearing out their desks, and they all are left unrecognizable and suffer long slow deaths and have to drink their meals out of super-hard-and-extreme awesome-straws. How's that for soft, motherfuckers?

It amazes me how reactionary people can be when it comes to their defending champion, first place team. People are calling sports shows talking about how Lugo is a liability, and how we should just replace him with Lowrie and then and only then will everything be okay.

Lugo frustrates me. Largetime. I believe my quote from last season involved "leaving him at the hotel when the team flies to the next city." But come on, people, if he has a great couple of days and starts to settle in to his '08 season, nobody will say shit anymore.

I think this thinking comes from the fact that people look for the negative amongst all the positives. Every team wants to be perfect, but A. that can't happen and B. you don't need to be perfect to win the World Series. You don't need an All-Star at every position. You don't look at a team with eight All-Stars that's won the last five World Series and complain about the ninth player.

I look at our team like this: We've got great starting pitching. We've got a great closer. We've got a great line-up. Yes, there are issues with this team but we're built to win as we are. I'm all for arguments about how to make the team better and I know Theo & Co are always trying to do just that. But I don't think we should just look at a few weeks and judge everything based on that. If we did that, David Ortiz would've been let go in April, and Dustin Pedroia would be a star in some other city.

I also wonder about the whole "championships causing complacency" theory. For me, that's not it all. Because in 2004, all season, I just sat back knowing that our team was good enough to win, and that the Yanks could be beat. In other words, I was complacent to a degree without ever having seen my team win a World Series. It's more like confidence, I think. Only now is it truly justified, but I still had it in '04. The minute after Aaron Boone hit that home run, I knew we were winning the next year.

So, of course, get mad and talk about the on-field execution of players who cost us games at the time. It's fun and it's part of being a fan. But I hope, with this team and what it has done lately, and where it is now, people can at least calm down by the next morning.

[bottom note: Abe Alvarez was released from the PawSox. Too bad that career never took off. I was at Fenway for that first start of his in '04....]

In Morgan Burkhart's major league career, he played in the same starting lineup with four players currently playing in the Red Sox organization. Manny, Tek, Wake, and who?

Drew, the play's right in front of you. Stay at second.

Terribly I'd never read Joe Castiglione's book until now. Here's a great quote from it, considering it came out right before the 2004 season:

"I think 2004 will be the year of the Red Sox."

He follows that up with a sentence that begins, "A-Rod can't pitch...."

I like how Joe's thinking was in line with many of the rest of us. How many times did we all say "A-Rod can't pitch"? And years later, it's still true.

Red Sox at Twins, national Sunday night game....

Dongs: Youk, Crisp, Lowell, and Lowrie's first-ever. Sox beat Twins 5-2. Dice, win, Oki, hold, Pap, save. I was psyched to cinco-ocho right back in there. His bad luck streak continued with a dome-doomed pop-up, but he still got the job done. I liked seeing us come right back to win the game after a walk-off loss for the second time in a row.

So we're a game back of Arizona for the best record in baseball. The Space Coaster cruises on....

Manny 500 update: Novy needs three dongs from Manny on Sunday night. If that doesn't happen we've got Nick on Monday, truth on Tuesday as the Sox move to Baltimore, and Tim on Wednesday. Then it's an off-day, and then we're back home. Full list of predicted dates here.

And I want to clarify something for people who might be Googling "Papelbon Joba celebration" or whatever. We non-fools know the main difference between Pap's intense celebrations and Joba's intense celebrations is that when you see Pap doing it, it's because he just won the game. When Joba does it, it's in reaction to getting the last out of the eighth inning. So even if you think both reactions are silly or over-the-top or whatever, the mere fact that only Pap has actually won the game makes Joba's crap ten times sillier. (Okay, that's an arbitrary number but you get the picture.) What kills me is when people try to compare the two as if they're in the same situation. Especially when it happens on national TV. Today, the Yanks were on Fox, and Dick Stockton just threw it in as an afterthought. After discussing the Joba situation, he said, "of course, we've seen Jonathan Papelbon with a similar reaction after wins." Had he emphasized "wins" it would have been okay. But he emphasized Pap's name, implying we're comparing Pap winning a game with Joba winning a game. Which is wrong. Joba is *almost* winning a game. But hey, for the Yankees in 2008, *almost* winning a game, especially in the early months of the season, is about the best thing you can do. And I go to bed every night with a big smile on my face because of it.

The next time a Yankee fan tells you to "act like you've been there before," remind them of their favorite player who acts like he's just saved the world when he gets three outs in the eighth inning. In May.