More Final Update, 10:34 PM: Check out this live cam of Bourbon Street.

Final Update, 2/7/10, 9:54 PM: What's more incredible, that we just witnessed the New Orleans Saints win the Super Bowl, or that two of the four winning squares were in those final eight empty ones that I used for me and my dad, and a third was my mom's? Dad nails the final, 31-17, with his 1-7 combo. So the four packs of '89 Fleer go to him, two go to myself, one goes to my mom, who was boycotting the game because of CBS' shitty anti-woman agenda, and one goes to Ryan M. As for my prediction for the game--I said 41-28 Saints as documented several posts ago, and it was 31-17 Saints. I give myself a B+. Was that moment when the dude intercepted Duh and ran it back all the way one of the most beautiful moments in sports history or what? It'll be a hell of a Mardis Gras this year.

End 3rd: Saints go up 13-10, Colts go up 17-13, and Saints close it to 17-16. And who has Colts 7, Saints 6? My mom!

Halftime update: Ryan wins Quarter 1 with his 0-0, as it was 10-0 Colts.

Then the Saints get two field goals, giving ME the win with my 0 and 6, at 10-6 Colts. Cerdo was in position but the Saints got the late FG. (Maybe I'll split the prize with him, heh heh.) And now the Saints get the onsides kick to start the second half! Sweeeet.....


If you entered the Super Bowl contest, you now know what numbers you're rooting for. Click to enlarge:

We got almost 25 people, so I gave each of you the two squares you chose, and two bonus squares. I did your "signatures" for the ones you chose, then just scrawled it out for your others. There were eight squares left which I divided between me and my dad.

If you entered but are still confused, find yourself on the grid (each square you have is an individual entry in the contest). If you have Colts 8, Saints 1, just root for those to be the last digit of the teams' scores at the end of each quarter. So if the Saints are up 41-28 (or down 38-21, or anything that ends with those numbers) at the end of a quarter, you win that quarter's prize.

For documentation of the numbers being drawn, watch this grainy video.

Everybody knows today is the birthday of both Ronald Reagan and Babe Ruth. Well, everyone whose mother shares that birthday does. Happy birthday, mom! Hopefully Reagan's curse will one day be lifted, too.

Or at least just Scott Fujita, #55.

Great to see any athlete come out and stand up for gay rights and equality in general.

Click here to win prizes and have funalicious fun. The taken boxes are listed at the bottom of the comments on that post. [Official deadline: Saturday at noon.] Saturday (or early Sunday) I'll do the LIVE (almost) drawing of the numbers to fill out the grid. Then I will post the grid so you'll know what you and everyone else is rooting for. Oh, and my prediction for the game: SAINTS 41, Colts 28. Why not? Oh, and the linescore for a better indication of how the game will go:

Colts ....0 7 7 14
Saints ..14 10 10 7

Note before we get going: I guess "my favorite" means "the guy who I like the most or liked the most at any time, without doing anything to make me not like him anymore."

21: Well you know who was my favorite from about '86-'96. But now he's my least favorite, so I'm happy to pick someone else. Besides Torrez and Rick Kreuger, none of the others played for the team in my lifetime, so I'll just pick the guy I like best from the rest of the list. Juan Marichal. (9 starts in '74)

22: Ed Jurak. I'll never forget Phil Rizzuto telling the WPIX audience that "they don't pronounce the J's up in New England." Hon. men.: Nick Green. And bonus note: I also was generally a Buckner fan, before and after the thing. So I'll throw him in as another HM in the 22 slot even though the two the numbers he wore are cooler numbers. Which brings up another point--the fact that some guys wore more than one number kind of messes things up, so don't worry about it. Also, coaches and managers don't count.

23: Oil Can Boyd because he was as awesome as his name. Gotta give the HM to Bruno. Okay, and Daubach, I guess.

24: Dwight Evans. No 24 could ever surpass him, though Manny came as close as you can.

25: You slightly older folks better say Tony C. here, but I have to go with Troy O'Leary, albeit the early years of Troy. Gotta put Mike Lowell second. I was also kind of obsessed with Larry Parrish when he came in during Morgan's Magic. I also liked a few other "new" guys, Don Baylor and Jack Clark.

26: Many of you would say the Chicken Man, but I had issues with while he was on the team, and much larger ones just after he left. Proud to pick Merloni over him. HM: Joe Rudi. At age 5, I sang his name to the tune of Roto Rooter, which I thought was "Ro Ro Rooter": "Joe Joe Rudi, that's his name, and the dirty stuff goes down the drain."

27: Carlton Fisk. Wish I'd gotten to see in red socks more often.

28: Jeff Stone. He was almost Dave Roberts.

29: Shea Hillenbrand. So he swung a lot, jeez. HM: Plantier, Kapler. See what I mean about the guys who wore multiple numbers? You start getting repeats. It gets weird, do a list like this and you'll see the plight of the Favorite Sox by Number List-Maker.

30: Leskanic in a landslide. But I also loved the young giant Sam Horn when he was coming up, and was at a game where he hit a grand slam, though we were leaving through Gate A at that moment, unfortunately. I'll also use this spot to note that I liked Psycho back then, though not so much in his Fox days. Even though I think 7 and 12 before I associate him with 30. Or 19.

I've written a lot at this point so I'll cut it off at 30 for now. Remember, the awesome all-time uni # list (if you don't have them all memorized) is here on the great Red Sox Diehard site.

Labels: favorite sox by uniform number

Last time I did one of these, I was promising a Providence ballpark would be next. Many suns later, here we go:

Below, you will see, roughly, maybe, essentially, where the "Messer Street Grounds" was located, from 1878 to 1887. It was home to the NL's Providence Grays, two-time league champions before they disbanded in 1885.


View Messer Street Grounds in a larger map

There are two detailed sites about the park, here (ProvidenceGrays.Org) and here (Project Ballpark), plus the Wiki page. You can learn more about the park and the team there, but my little project is all about pinpointing the park's footprint. Those sites helped me a lot. This was a tough one, though, as there was some conflicting info.

The first site said the land owned by Josiah Chapman, whose farm the park was built on, was bordered by Messer Street on the east, Willow on the north, and unknown on the west and south. I went to 1875 maps of Providence Ward 8 and 9 on this awesome site and actually saw Chapin's land notated. It even showed the location of Stephen Tourtellot's house (the yellow house on my map above), one of the only houses built on the land (which is why they were able to put a baseball field on it). That house still stands--check out the street view of it. The house shown at the Project Ballpark site above is right below the corner of Messer and Willow, and also shows a plaque which says the park in "near" there. So even though the 1875 map showed me that Chapin's land extended many more blocks south, I guess we have to assume that the northeast corner of it (by Messer and Willow) is where the ballyard sat.

As for how it was situated: I read where there was an east and west bleachers, which would imply the park faced north or south. But I also read that the area beyond center and right field was used for circuses, and that implies the park would face southeast, leaving the area to the south of the field as circusville. (Because Chapin's land ran from Willow down several blocks south.) I liked that idea, but I went with south-facing for my map. Either way you can match it to another fact, which is that the Tourtellot house was just beyond the left field fence, and would have people sitting on its roof watching games.

The Project Ballpark site also gave dimensions--I don't know how they could have known this--and I made my footprint accordingly to fit in onto the land, leaving room for the grandstand just below Willow. It's almost as if they had right field go all the way out to a far away point, and had the fence cut straight across until it got to left, where it had to go around that one house. Which would make sense if they were respecting the boundary of houseless Wood Street. (See the pink section of this old map to see the Chapin land--Messer Street runs along the bottom; north is to the right. That shows the top border--the bottom border extends way down past where this map ends, as you can see if you search the other ward 8/9 maps. I also read that his land was renamed the "West Training Ground Plat"--on some old maps you see the area to the east of Chapin's land referred to as "Training Ground Plat.")

I'm also wondering what the building is in the background of the shot on the Project Ballpark page of the team on the field is. I don't think it's around anymore, but it does prove there were buildings just behind the grandstand, which fits my theory--that would be the north side of Messer Street.

Hope you got all that. One more thing--Babe Ruth played for the Providence Grays, but that was obviously much later, and it was a different Grays, playing in a different park. The minor league Grays lasted a good long time, yet I can't figure out where Ruth played ball when he was here. Can't find the location or the name. That's for you to research, I guess.

Labels: old ballpark locations

Have I done this already? If so, oh well.

1: Bernie Carbo. Even though I was only three when he went to a different team.

2: Jerry Remy. As a kid, having a player who was a "little guy," batted lefty like you, and had the same name (kind of) as you makes him your favorite. The announcing days have only made him more of a favorite. Honorable mention: I loved Carl Everett when we got him and stuck by him through all the craziness. (But if it's true he doesn't like gay people or whatever, well, I can't say I like him anymore.)

3: Pokey Reese. Come on. Honorable mention: Rick Miller was another guy I liked as a kid based on his cool name, his number, and, I don't know, something about the way he looked on his baseball card.

4: Carney Lansford. Another cool name/cool look to me as a kid type. It was a shame when he got traded--it seemed in '82 like he'd be a Red Socker for years.

5: Nomar! I still wear his player tee. Honorable mention: Spike Owen. We had a cat named Spike when Owen came over in that key mid-1986 deal with the Mariners.

6: Johnny Pesky. Hon. men.: Tony Pena. Loved him at the time, what with that "one leg out" style.

7: Trot Nixon. HM: Easler and Esasky. And Phil Plantier. The Hit Man, Vertigo, and the "No Maas" Croucher.

8: Yaz, no other options there.

9: No offense to Smead Jolley, I'm goin' with The Kid.

10: In a move more obvious than going with Yaz and Ted, it's Rich Gedman.

11: Gonna go out on a limb here and say Tim Naehring. The "problem" with these lists is that it's hard to go against guys that helped us finally win the World Series. So you have to limit your '04 guys to the ones you truly loved regardless of that whole deal. So a guy like Bill Mueller, while I totally loved him, kind of gets the shaft here.

12: Ellis Burks. I was sure he'd be an MVP for us. At least he finally got his ring, much later.

13: John Valentin. Kim would kill me if I didn't go with him. Here's an interesting stat: Only ten men have worn 13 for the Red Sox in my lifetime. And only 10 have worn it in my parents' lifetimes. (And only 11 in history.)

14: Hall of Famer Jim Rice.

15: Bad number until recently. I'll take Millar over Pedroia in a squeaker.

16: Kevin Romine. I didn't love him, but I liked him. More than the other 16s anyway. I guess. (Not more than Rick Miller, but I only knew him as 3, and I want to have a different guy for each number.)

17: Marty Barrett. I also liked "Sabes" a lot when he was here.

18: Glen Hoffman. I used to want to be like him, shortstop-wise.

19: Fred Lynn, who I called Fred Lynnstone at age three. Hon. men.: Gabe! and Brian Rose, who Kim makes fun of me for having liked.

20: Youk. Hon. men.: Tony Armas, who we got for #4. And whose nickname, "Toe Knee Arm Ass," I wasn't aware of at the time--I think you had to live in the Boston area to learn it.

For the Red Sox all-time uniform number list, click here.

Labels: favorite sox by uniform number

Don't forget your booties cuz it's cold outside!

Still a lot of squares open in the Super Bowl contest. Win fabulous prizes here. Six days till the game so get in there. Who knows, maybe the big winner will also get some "tickets" to a "sporting event."

This week you'll also see the return of both the Smiths of Baseball (we're into the B's, woohoo!) and the "old ballpark locations" series....

So that's your cousin!

Oh and don't use a "Neti Pot" unless you want to barf in the sink.

Have you noticed Baseball-Reference has ads now? I would hope this means they're no longer charging people to "sponsor" pages over there.

I guess they're pretty desperate for cash if they're accepting vibrator ads!

Frank Welch is the only player in MLB history to do what?