Found this great shot of Gedman on ebay. In this picture, Rich is on deck. The pitcher he's about to face was born in the same city as what pitcher who was once a teammate of Geddy?

Shortstop update: It appears Marco Scutaro will be our new shortstop for '10.

His career Fenway stats: 100 at bats, 29 hits. Eight of 'em doubles, one dong. On base 32.1 percent of the time.

So what does this mean for Lowrie? If we've got Marco for the next two seasons, and this young kid coming up after that, Jed's gotta do something. I guess he'll just start fighting for the job in March and we'll take it from there.

Did a little more 'search on the Steiner Boys. The new version of Tom Palomino, Sam Enriquez, led me to Resolute Digital. This is the company that does this SEO shit for Steiner and other companies.

One of the blogs on their site (besides Sam's) talks about the rules of spamming. In it, they say talk about their "policy" based on the FTC rules:

Whenever a representative of Resolute Digital posts a comment on a blog, Twitter, Facebook, or other forum for user generated content, the representative will acknowledge that he or she works for the agency or client. Anonymous posting is not permitted.

Example: [...] Rather than post a comment like, “I’ve found a great new iPhone app, iPlay ‘n Learn&trade, which really helps small children learn to create alphabet characters,” we should write, “My client, Parents’ Magazine, has a great new iPhone app, iPlay ‘n Learn&trade, that uses the unique features of the phone to train small children to draw alphabet characters.”

So you see the guidelines Tom was using with his "my client, Steiner Sports" comments.

And I was going to end the post by just pointing out that they are doing it the legal way, slimy as it is to fool people the way they do. It's like they thought, "Okay, we've been given the new rules, so here's what we can do to get around them. Bombs away!"

BUT! Then I noticed that Resolute-ster Sam Enriquez is breaking the rules (the laws) that are so clearly defined for him! Check out the type of thing he's been writing on Yankee blogs:

I never thought the Yankees would take the series once again, I will have to sell my Yankees Memorabilia and make a fortune.

No mention of the client name. Just a blatant attempt to fool people into clicking the link and buying crap. (And with none of the insight Tom Palomino brought to the table! Wow, who'd have thought I'd be defending that shapeshifter?)

So now we've got Resolute doing Steiner's dirty work, annoying bloggers and fooling readers, and breaking the law in the process. From there we've got Steiner's people seemingly bidding on their own crap. Gettin' shadier and shadier....


[Here's my original post on this. And here's the second one you may have missed from Thanksgiving weekend.]

Check out the following sentence from the registration form for Xmas at Fenway (this appears in the special form for RSN members too):

In addition to having a guaranteed opportunity to purchase tickets, those in attendance will be visited by a variety of guests -- Red Sox players and coaches, Wally the Green Monster, and even Santa and Mrs. Clause.

Clause!

If you're gonna do a Christmas thing, the one name you have to know how to spell is freakin' Santa Claus.

Anyway, I'm glad they're doing the Yard Sale again. More non-Steiner junk for me! (If I'm selected...) After a few more years of this, I'll be building my own Fenway out of its old bricks.

Of all the contests this team has done, the one thing I've never won is Xmas at Fenway. However, people seem to think if you don't get selected, you don't get tickets. But you do. By getting them online at the same time. I prefer it that way anyway. I'd rather win the Yard Sale drawing.

My friends and I have been talking a lot about these "box breaks" you see on GooTube. In other words, a dude or dudes breaking open boxes or packs of baseball cards while recording it. I might actually do some "serious" ones at some point, but in the meantime, check out this jokey one I did:



Ha, I just watched it back--and Danzig meows in the final second!

New Paw Sox mgr.: "my day" player Torey Lovullo.

Read Michael Moore's open letter to the prez here.

As you know by now, an "anonymous e-mail tipster" has written in to a gossip site saying Derek "Tax Chete Jete" Jeter is about to be named SI's Sportsman of the Year. I guess anything's possible, but this can't be serious. And I won't believe it unless I see it.

SI put up a column a month ago asking fans to tell them their Sportsman of the Year. Out of over 400 comments between November 2nd and an hour ago, do you know how many people chose Clappy TopStep? Four! I understand two of them was card tricks. And by card tricks I mean votes as part of a multi-player selection--one said Jeter/Rivera, one said Jeter, Rivera, Posada, and the fourth member of the "core," who if I recall correctly was on the Astros for a big chunk of the decade, Andy "God Made Me Do It...Twice" Pettitte.

The point is: nobody's even thinking of Jeter for this honor. Don't you have to do something noteworthy to be given that title? Oh wait, he doesn't have to do anything to get on TV any time any one of his teammates hits a home run...

Update 1: SI also had 29 writers name their own Sportsman and none of them went with Jeter. (That could just mean they were all told he was gonna win and to choose someone else, though.)

Update 2: I guess they are thinking about making him win. I just saw an ad on the SI site where he appears to be one of four "finalists." So shitty. What a joke that guy is. (By the way, I've long since boycotted SI's site but I'm breaking it to research this post, obviously. Their whole site seems to be dedicated to "hot chicks" instead of sports, and they just generally stink.)

Update 3: It's official. They gave it to him. Possibly the biggest joke in sports history. But in the end, it's just a completely made-up award. (Which is actually perfect for Derek Jeter.)

Fairfield County, Connecticut, November 1988.

A band from Boston is in a studio in Stamford, putting the finishing touches on what would prove to be its quintessential album.

A few miles away in Norwalk, hardcore kids are bouncing off the walls at some of the final shows at a club that had by then grown out of a Stamford basement.

And in the woods to the north, a middle-schooler (whose family had moved from Stamford just before his birth) sat in his room in a split-level house, most likely playing with baseball cards.

At age 13, I had no knowledge of any music other than what was played on MTV or the pop radio stations. I vaguely remember a girl writing "Sex Pistols" and "Echo & the Bunnymen" on a school bus window, and thinking, "Whatever that is, I'm afraid of it. Where's my Huey Lewis tape?" It would be years before I discovered punk and indie rock; that there was a band called the Pixies or a club called The Anthrax.

This weekend I went to "retrospectives," essentially, of both of them.

Friday we were visiting friends in New Haven, and one of them mentioned something about The Anthrax going on that night at Cafe Nine. Since I'd known about the upcoming book about the legendary club (with trailer!) thanks to this blog, I knew exactly what she was talking about and we headed over. I've been to Cafe Nine a few times, but I've never seen it like this. So packed you pretty much walked in and stayed in the spot you found yourself in. It was so hot, and the show band was taking forever to start, so we just watched a few songs and took off. So if you want an actual review, I'm guessing One Base on an Overthrow will have plenty of that [update: here it is. Since he took pix from pretty much the exact spot I was standing, you get the feel of what it looked like from my perspective. But I'm not in the pix because he got there right around when I left]. I was just psyched to see a lot of friends I hadn't seen in a while. People older than me who'd actually been to The Anthrax, and people younger who, like me, only wished they had.

Then last night, Kim, Kara, Smoochy, and saw the Pixies perform their 1988 album mentioned above, Doolittle, at Boston's Wang Theatre. Again I was playing the role of "guy who wasn't actually there back when it was really happening but who has since come to appreciate it." Granted, I had become a fan a few years after the record came out, but the three people I was with, and most of the crowd judging from its age, lived it in their late-80s college-y worlds. Again we played "look for people we know," and I scored three points. First I saw this dude from Danbury whose name I totally forgot. Then when we got to our seats, about five rows in front of us was Kelly from Sitting Still, who I also seem to run into at every single Red Sox game. Couldn't get her attention so I didn't get to talk to her either. I also knew looong-time reader and fellow blogger and Providence-ian-ite Ryan M. would be there, but I didn't see him....until he tapped on my shoulder from THE SEAT BEHIND ME. Amazing. Despite actually having passed each other on the streets of Providence more than once but not saying anything to each other as we weren't quite sure we had the right guy, we'd never met in real life. So it was good to officially tear down that wall.

But anyway....the Pixies (all four original members--the only ones who've ever been in the band) played and it was really cool. I'd seen them on their first reunion in '04 in NYC, (and I'd seen the bass player's band, the Breeders, open for Nirvana in Omaha in '93 and on Lollapalooza '94 on some airport runway in Rhode Island (one of the few times I ever came here in my life before moving here last year)), but my memories of that show are fading, so it was good too hear all the classics again. Especially in that manner that a lot of old groups are doing now, playing an album beginning to end. The hometown crowd was very into it--as into a concert as you can be when forced to sit in assigned seats, anyway.

They started with three B-sides from the Doolittle era, before going through the whole album. For some reason I figured that would be it. But fortunately they came back out and did a bunch of non-Doolittle tunes (Isla de Encanta, Nimrod's Son, Where is my Mind?, U-Mass, Into the White). So we got our SIXTY freakin' dollars worth. (I wish I could've combined the two nights and seen the Pixies play Cafe Nine for five bucks.)

Oh and the dude next to us totally had weed. God, what an awful smell. I've always accepted it as part of a concert experience, but this time I really wanted to tell the guy to take it to the Phish show or something. Plus, when you think of the Wang Theatre, you don't think of mary jane, usually. Fortunately they had massive amounts of smoke blowing from the stage during the encore, and that kind of drowned out Cheech's "aura." Oh and the band had a video screen behind them which had a few cool things, like scenes from the movie Debaser is based on, and later some pre-filmed shots of the band members just mugging for the camera, which you could tell even they felt awkward about.

Fin.

[Bonus update: I found the post in which I mentioned the '04 Pixies show in my early days of blogging. The "Anthony" I went with was one of the "Connecticut friends" we were visiting this past Friday that we went to that New Haven show with.]