Kind of an odd game. Beckett looked on, but then started hitting every batter, and that was that. 10-3, not us. The Yanks were getting mad when Beckett was giving them free runs. Wanna give 'em back?!

So the Mother's Day "Walk in the Park" will be from 9 to 11 a.m. on Sunday. You'd think that since the game got changed to a night game, they would have moved the Walk closer to game time. Who's gonna arrive at 9 a.m in Boston for an 8 p.m. game? Still, I'll blame ESPN for stealing the game in the first place. Ironically, because of Fox, we DO get one day game this weekend, Saturday.

You know what kills me? When the Red Sox have tickets on sale for this weekend's games, yet NESN has an in-game spot telling fans to go to the team's "official" online scalping agency (all of whose tickets are waaaay above the price you can get directly from the team). So stupid. They're just like Ticketmasturbator, getting a cut of the money made from tickets they've already collected on once already, plus fees. It's criminal. (TM gets ALL the money twice, as they completely own their own secondary market site, while the Sox just get a cut of the (second) gate via the advertising at least, but "less criminal" is still criminal. Who knows just how connected that "local" scalper agency is to the Red Sox--I know for a fact they have access to the Sox' mailing list.)

I think Drinkwater complained. They moved the camera an inch so his face sneaks in under the graphic.

Darnell McDonald's brother Donzell has nearly a .400 OBP for this Mexican team.

The home run that wasn't. (Sorry, they make you watch an ad before it starts.)

In possibly the lamest publicity stunt ever, the Yankee-loving fuckfaces who make Bubble Wrap have sent a roll of that crap to Jeter so the poor lil' baby won't get a boo-boo. I hope to hear a lot of "popping" coming from the Fenway seats this weekend.

And, of course, I hope you'll all switch over to packing peanuts in the future.

(By the way, 15 years ago I worked in a building in Danbury that we shared with Sealed Air. I'm pretty sure those guys were all dicks.)

Well they finally put Saturday tix up...but it's gonna rain. Your call there.

My prediction for this weekend: Friday: nice win. Saturday: awesome wet win. Sunday: mother of a win.

If you had told me the Red Sox would be involved in sweeps in consecutive series against the Orioles and Angels, I would've sent you back to the time machine from whence you came. But not before failing at the little guessing game you would have surely insisted on playing.

I was quite pissed at Dice in the first, but he ended up keeping us in it. And even though we had squanders in frame 1 and 2, I felt somehow like we were winning all along. Soon 4-0 them became 7-6 us. Okay, not soon. But then the Angels started losing it, and it went to 11-6, and the sweep was just about clinched.

NE-SiNs: That pop-up that the Angels' catcher and first baseman didn't catch, despite it landing on the field. Never got a good angle on it. And going back to last night--they kinda missed Nomar's first pitch. Without the kinda. Also, NO ONE likes seeing little ads pop up as the pitch is about to come in.

Didn't you think Vik-E Mart's dong was crushed? Don and Rem acted like it was due to the wind, but that thing went over the 'pen! And I felt it was gone off the bat.

Those Angels can be real BS artists, eh? Dude clearly drops ball on purpose. Spreads arms out, even. Umps call shenanz, and Scioscia goes Networking, incredibly pretending to think the dude honestly dropped the ball. Then the guy himself starts pointing to his glove, keeping a straight face. Maybe they graduated from the Clemens Institute of Self-Convincing.

Have you heard of this new movie Trash Humpers? Look it up. (May want to NOT look it up.)

Earlier I mentioned my time at Army Baseball Camp. Tonight, I finally went through a box of attic stuff my parents gave me last weekend, and right on top were the team pics, signed by the lately late Robin Roberts. I'll have to post those, along with some other cool stuff.

Finally, you know Robert Vaughn, right? Known to my generation as "the villain from Superman III," and to the previous one as "the guy from The Man from U.N.C.L.E.," he currently does a lot of ads for law firms. He's the guy who sternly tells you that you need the lawyer in question after a funny skit shows you how the opposing ones cower at the thought of him. I've lived in different places and seen Robert representing several different lawyers. Anyway, while watching a "local" NESN ad for this Maine lawyer, I noticed Robert's face, only this time, it seemed as if they actually had Vaughn pretending to be the lawyer himself! I found the graphic of it online. Click here. That's not Joe Bornstein! (Side note: Vaughn used to live in my town. I played Little League with his son, Cassidy, and my sister once babysat for him.)

Yanks in town tomorrow night. They keep releasing good seats for Sunday night. Four together in the IFGS or down by the Pesky Pole, on the good side, etc. Take your mom!

Robin Roberts has died. (The old ballplayer, not the sportscaster/news person.)

I feel I should bring this up because I went to his baseball camp for two years in the late 1980s. Ol' Robin really only showed up on the last day to sign autographs and be in all the team pictures (Team 2 Orioles 4-eva!), but I guess I gotta hand it to anybody who puts their name on something that helps kids learn baseball. Even though in this case it was also the friggin' army! Yes, it was at West Point, and we stayed in barracks and ate in mess halls for a week. I think in most cases, parents would send their kids there for "structure" and to see if the military lifestyle is something they'd be interested in. In my case, I gotta figure my parents were thinking, Just in case you ever get talked into joining the army by some parking lot recruiter or guidance counselor, here's a chance to see how shitty it is--but we'll lure you in with the baseball angle. I look forward to their comments on this--because really, why not any other baseball camp? Why specifically "Army Baseball Camp"?

Memories of the camp:

That Aerosmith song "The Other Side" being big at the time.

The four of us (me, Pat, Mike L., and Michael Patrizio, who was a Mets fan and proudly wore the "Boston Red Sox 1986 World Champs" shirt his dad got for him somehow) doing our impression of what we'd do if we were to throw the final strike of a World Series. Of course Patrizio did the Jesse Orosco glove throw, which still pisses me off to this day.

Playing "Stayin' Alive" in our room and driving Patrizio to the brink because of it. (As 13-year olds in '89, we re-discovered disco before its first "comeback," which started with that "did you hear disco is making a comeback??" infomercial.) We also sang along and replaced the song title with "'79" because it was our favorite year at the time, soon to be replaced by '80, which still holds the title today.

A kid on drawing an "X" on the infield and saying "don't step there." When asked why, he casually replied, "you'll fall through."

Meeting a kid from our neighboring town of Danbury, Mike Moore. Years later, in a high-school era summer league, my Ridgefield New Age of Video squad played a Danbury team, and Mike Moore was on the mound! I led off, and despite the catcher informing his third baseman that the ball was coming to him via the K, I singled. Moore did not allow another hit all game. (I think I also may have been thrown out stealing after the single, but that could have been a different game--what do want it was 20 years ago...)

Hitting a pop-up and thinking for a second it might be a home run (despite knowing I didn't have nearly that kind of power) because I didn't see where it went).

Getting a below-perfect score in the sliding drill and being pissed. I still feel my slide is adequate if not exemplary.

Not taking a shower the whole week.

Walking long, long, long, long, distances. (I don't think they actually made us march.)

Coming up with an idea that you fall asleep at age 4, have a ten-year dream, then wake up again. We named this "your tenure." (It was '89, we were about to turn 14, we loved '79, see where we were going with this?)

A punishment called "the chair" where you'd have to lean against a wall for a long time in a sitting position. Fortunately I avoided this fate.

That All-Star Game being on TV--the one where CBS threw it to "Rescue-911" during the rain delay! (That was 1990; the two years we went were '89 and '90.)

I guess I'll cut it off there. Red Sox go for the 4-game sweep tonight...

9:25: The Nomar thing was great. Couldn't make it there in person but was just glad to see it on TV. I knew Daubach would somehow be involved. Good to see Trot, too. And the 5-6 seat idea was a good one. I'm glad they had him in the booth for an interview. I heart Nomar. As for this game, we go bottom 8 right now. Terrible job by Don't Bogar It, Dude sending Scutaro. One of those plays where you're watching it live and you know there's only one call there, but the coach makes the opposite one. I'm usually a "just send him and see what happens" type of guy, and I was shocked and 'palled they were sending him. We are outhitting them like 10-2, but only lead 2-1. Must hold on to this.... updates below.

9:30: The Exec continues to piss me off with his regular bag-overrunning. On the near triple play, he fell off first, almost letting them complete the rare-ass feat. Then he did his "trot through second" on an inning-ending force play. What if the guy drops the ball? You're a squatting mallard. The weird thing is, the guy hustles! Yet does that crap--and as I'm writing about him, he hits a massive insurance dong!!! Nice job, Ade. Just stop your odd baserunning and we're all set. "These people wanna like you!" --Phil Hartman. As Sinatra. 3-1 us.

9:38: 9th. Papel. Bon. 3. 1. Us.

9:42: Abreu. Walky McGee. Didn't like that hittable pitch on 0-2, but we get him out on a crazy stab by Hall in left. Now Torii grounds out. One out away. When it gets to one strike away, I never get to write "everybody up" because I'm busy standing up.

9:46: Another 1-2-3 for Pap. We win first 3 games of Angels series. Gold. Lackey with the W. Bard of Savon with the H. Pap with the Ess.

Has a major league baseball team ever started a game with a lineup that's in alphabetical order from 1 to 9? I know managers have done things like pick names out of a hat to make the lineup, but I wonder if anyone's done an alphabetical one. It would be cooler, of course, if it happened randomly. Anybody know?

[Also, you can get EIGHT seats across in the bleachers right now for the Sunday night Yanks-Sox game on redsox.com.]

9:39: Okay, so during the top of the 8th, I joined Kim in watching a movie, while keeping the game up on the laptop. When Abreu came up, loaded, 1 out, tie game, I had to have a double play. I had a prophecy of a DP, but on GameDay, you can't tell exactly what happened, and my prophecy had it being a crazy DP, leaving me wondering just what happened. So GameDay showed me "in play, out(s)," and sure enough, it was a DP! At that point, Kim said she was done with the movie, so I flipped to the game to see the replay of the (kinda) amazing double play! And the movie we'd been watching? Mothman Prophecies!

So now we're up, bottom 8, and Papi is up, loaded, no outs....

double effing play to the drawn-in infield. 4-2-3. Anything else, Papi!!!!! Goddamn it.

Beltre up. Still in that spot where a single scores two and we get three outs and it's over... 3-0 on the Executive, Beltre. Ball four.

9:46: I'm doing the updates at the bottom so it reads like a normal post. Hermida up. Loaded. Come on, Hermes Engravedigger. 2-0! 2-2 now. Lowell with a helmet on.... Three-run double!!!!!!!!!!!!! The Mida Maid! Was a lazy fly ball! Don seemed to think it was gold all the way, but it was such a catchable ball. Is that that asshole who dogged in on the final play of the crazy game we played against them last season? Anyway, it's now 4-1 and we're three outs away.

9:51: Pitching change. Did you know Maine Powerball is... okay, I'll shut up about that.

9:52: Where's Kapstein tonight? Lowell pinch-hitting...half-dong! Gapper and it's 5-1.

9:55: Pedroia walks after a single, loaded again.

10:00: We go to 9 as J-VE Lopez strikes out. Now I'll make an ass out of u and me and say that my next update will be in a few minutes after a 1-2-3 ninth. Pap in.

10:06: Done. Win. World Series.

It happened just as I thought it would. When we saw the new NESN score bar during a recent road game, I knew Kapstein was back in full force, while Drinkwater would be screwed. Last night, we watched as poor Drinky the Kid was covered by graphics over on the left, while Jeremy had the spotlight to himself, in the middle, with no obstructions. "Den" was visible in plenty of replays, but on the main angle, you can only see his shirt. I wonder if the Kap'n pushed for this--he does work for the team after all. "I've been obscured for too long...I want the spotlight again, but this time I don't wanna share it with Glass Joe!" (you were supposed to use a really deep voice there)

Nice dongfest for us tonight. We needed to finally have a true blowout.

Lately I've been trying to live (a little) healthier. Running, not drinking as much soda, not eating out of boredom, and thinking about things I can give up on the way from vegetarian ism to vegan. Is it any coincidence that I'm also giving up the horrible Boston (and other) sports radio stations, newspapers, and web sites? Dirt Dogs is a distant memory. ESPN and SI, I haven't seen in at least a year. Recently I was getting really fed up with various people at the Globe, on EEI, and on 98.5. I was really thinking about a full-on boycott. This is always tough for me because I like to hear what people are saying so I can have a chance to rebut. But I have to realize that being able to tell a few people what I think isn't worth my mental health. So in the last few weeks, I had a few "last straw" moments on each of those outlets I mentioned, and decided to begin what won't be a diet, but a change in lifestyle.

Last Straw 1: Pete Abe had the nerve to ask why "everyone" is picking on David Ortiz. Besides the fact that no one I know in real life was picking on him, and that neither me nor the other blogs I read had (and that's documented), Gee, could it be that the people who were picking on him were influenced by Pete and the rest of the Boston sports media who drilled into their heads words like "the end of his career" before a fucking game was even played this year? So that was it for the Globe and Extra Bases. Bye-bye.

Last Straw 2: Tony Mazz on 98.5 mocking the Red Sox and Fenway for the Opening Day ceremonies, acting like the whole day was some kind of travesty, when everyone there including me had the time of their lives. But Tony is somehow offended at a perfectly fitting ceremony, despite the fact that his new job at that radio station seems to be reading "naughty" sexist scripts describing boobs while giggling like a schoolboy the whole time. This guy used to be a sportswriter. It's amazing what FM radio will do to a person. So between him and the other hosts on there, all of whom are the type to make fun of things like god forbid the Red Sox doing things their fans enjoy, I said g'day to them.

Last Straw 3: EEI. Did I need a last straw? It was really just a combination of all those horrible people--the scarily right-wingedness of the morning fuckfaces, the dumber-every-day Dale and Holley, and the Locker Room Hell of the afternoon fatass (whose voice I still can't believe isn't a Simpsons parody of a "sports guy") and his cronies.

So that was it. Just like that. I feel better already. I get the FAN in my car, so I'll still put that on if I just want to hear "talk," but mostly I listen to satellite radio in there. It came with my car and it rules. And it's made it that much easier to not flip over to the crap stations. It's great to listen to almost all music. With no commercials.

I'll check redsox.com and watch NESN before and after games, maybe check the Projo or something, but for the most part, it's just the game for me. And, of course, the true Red Sox fans who do their own blogs, a million times better than the paid people do it. But even NESN can piss me off--TC tonight said that "everyone" thought the Red Sox "wouldn't hit so well" in 2010. It's like the media has somehow brainwashed themselves.

So you'll get the same stuff here you've always gotten from me, only without any commentary on the crappy media. Who needs 'em?

I was "away" this weekend and missed Saturday and Sunday's games, aside from a few updates on Saturday. And all I can say about that is, Woohoo! Didn't look fun.

Since 1988, when I was in eighth grade, you know how many times the Red Sox have been under .500 on May 2nd? Once. Well, twice, now.

We're so used to these awesome Aprils (along with Yankee-fan* cries of an eventual "choke"). It will be interesting to see how we do coming out of a shitty start.


*fans of a team that has won fewer World Series in the last nine years than the second-class, choking Boston Red Sox, and who are still in denial about it

Happy New Month.

I hate that Kevin Romine's kid is a Yankee prospect. Here's hoping he's a player to be named later soon.

Dice is back vs. the O's tonight. Then Beckett vs. schoolyard bully Kevin Millwood on Sun. afternoon. I smell two find-a-way-to-make-it-gut-wrenching wins!