Got home at 10:00, and didn't even get to see the end of the game So it makes sense it was 1-0. We did hear the top of the ninth in the car, though. (Hey, since Castig became the "main" guy, hasn't he always announced the ninth? Tonight it was O'Brien. When I was little, I think Coleman got 1-4, then Castig did 5-7, and Coleman did 8-9. And lately it's been Castig, then partner, then back to Castig, through the ninth. Being able to see the games on TV these days, I don't hear a lot of radio action--does anyone know the current situation? I feel like Joe deserves to start and end the game, barring extra innings.)

Nice job by HH outdueling Grieieieiieieiieieieienke.

So weird to see Millar in a suit and tie.

There had never been two perfect games in the same season. In 2010, we've seen two this month! Halladay with the EP tonight.

And somebody finally got seriously injured in a game-winning celebration. Hasn't John Quinn been warning of this for decades? Kendry Morales fractures his leg as he landed on home plate. I'd give you a link to the mlb.com article but the url is screwed up, and even after I changed it myself to find the right page, the video on there is totally effed up. So, find it on TV or something....

My main memory of Dennis Hopper is his role as the town drunk/assistant coach in Hoosiers, which I saw in the theater in the fall of '86. "5, 4, 3, 2, 1, let her fly!" A couple of times in the 6+ years doing this blog I have used the line "runnin' the picket fence at 'em"--Hopper's character is where that comes from. AEP, Dennis. (Are Eye Pee.)

Joba was embarrassed in The Bronx today. Yanks blow a big lead and lose 13-11. Beauteous. Juicy the ball A-Rod hit of that pitcher's head? That thing went about 150 feet on the ricochet. Glad the dude's okay.

That kid in the second row. Didn't let Victor make the catch. Royals go on to break tie with grand slam. That dude should never be allowed into Fenway Park again. Should have been running the offense, boxing out the other fans, letting Victor make the catch. Terrible job. Regardless of blue boy, we sure did give up a lotta hits. And runs.

Bill Hall was the only Sox pitcher in the game to get a 1-2-3 inning.

We lose no ground on first place.

The news we knew was coming all day.

Another sad chapter in the epic Diff'rent Strokes saga.

Kyjuss say something? A lot of people make fun of these sitcoms my generation grew up with, but they were important to us. For one, it allowed those of us who grew up in the whitebread suburbs to see people who didn't look like we did. The black kids in my neighborhood were Arnold, Willis, Theo, Rudy, Raj, and Re-Run. Seriously. That was it. In the whole town, almost. Maybe these shows didn't accurately depict life as a black kid in America (come to think of it, a majority probably didn't live on Park Avenue, or in an apartment with four bedrooms and two floors), but at the very least it showed your average honky that these folks were no different than us, except they had catchphrases. Some of us didn't need to learn this through TV, but hopefully it helped with the kids whose parents had racist tendencies, whether it was completely outward or not.

We scored three runs, and only gave up four hits. That should be a win, son, but Dice-K was a little "just a bit outside"-ey, and we lose a mildly tough one, 4-3 to KC. But we get to hear Millar talkin' before and after, so we got that proverbially goin' for us.

We had a possible triple play liner, then another (which at that point could have only been 2), in that one inning, but neither happened. But we did get out of the bases-loaded jam. Too bad we're not looking back at that and saying it was the key to a W.

One of our runs was a gift anyway, as it came after the ump getting hit by a grounder. Ball hit the side of mound and hopped up, that's why. You shoulda told the cazh fans that, Remy!

Billy Hall hit a dong. Too bad NESN missed it.

That Office actor in the front row clapped really hard for a Scutaro bingle. I'd guess he's a real fan, but I could be wrong.

Okay, this is random (that is my theme, here...), but when they showed that oddly long shot of the people in the second row leaving, I decided that since it was one batter into the fourth, they must have been sharing those seats--three innings each. Why else would all three of them take all their stuff and leave at the same time? If that was you, please comment, I must know if I was right! (Even if you're someone else, can you just pretend to be them and confirm? Thanks.)

Thanks to Chan for sending me this.

I guess that Pixels thing is gonna be a movie. (Nice job on that short, but, why aren't the Tetris shapes rotating in the air? And Frogger kind of jumped over a car there. Speaking of frogs....)

A-rod's "march to 600 home runs" has a sponsor? That's un-possible.

Oh, and remember this from last June? "MLB President and COO Bob DuPuy said in a conference call he expects more clubs to follow this season and then "we'll be up to a majority of the clubs" for 2010." He's talking about the Yanks getting in-market mlb.tv. I was pissed at the time, but the good part was that at least the rest of the teams would follow. Well, it's been almost a year. As far as I can tell, no other teams have joined up, making my original theory that this was a pinstriped conspiracy look better. If anyone has any info, Lemmy know.

11-3 win. Yanks 3.5 back, us 5.5, as we jump the Jays, 6 back.

If you're going to Fenway tomorrow night, I hope you'll be giving the team a big ovation when they're announced. And a standing one when they take the field.

Huge night for The Exec--2 dongs, 6 ribbies. Papi massive dong. DMC gets in on the fun with a two-run double. Lackey not too pretty, but W.

You know how many teams in all of baseball have more wins than the Boston Red Sox have right now?

Three.

But, you know, random bloggers and countless anonymous commenters on articles have "done the math" and determined there's just "no way" the Red Sox can make the playoffs this year. Damn!

The "feels like" temperature is 102 degrees right now.

So, the goat story:

I have this friend/co-worker who is the type of person who goes everywhere, does everything, and knows everyone in Rhode Island. If I meet a new person, chances are she already knows them, and their relatives dating back to the Mayflower. If I tell her I went to some establishment, she tells me she knows the owner and was there for the groundbreaking in '72. If I'm going to an event, she'll probably be there. She's pretty cool.

Yesterday, Kim and I went to the beach after work. On the way to this beach is a little barnyard with goats, which I'd passed before. The frolicking goats reminded me of the young reindeer in Rudolph, the way they jump around and butt heads. We decided on the way back to pull over and look at the family of goats and their little ones.

As we pulled the car over, there was another car there. Two other people were also looking at, and feeding, the goats. It was my co-worker and her boyfriend.

So she wins. The ultimate Rhode Islander. She truly is everywhere. Right down to rural-road goat-watching. (And yes, she knew the goat's owners. And all their friends.)

Sox at Tampa, 7:10.

Before the game that DMC was back from hell! Darnell, already wished well by Tito, gets to hang around a little longer. And he got to come in for the ninth, too.

So, Lester 6 IP, a hit and a bunch o' walks, and that's it. MDC 123, Bradley Danielson Pike Oneley Twoson Thrike, and Pap finishes. 7 of our last 8 = win.

The Red Sox came into this tough stretch, and the media fools all said, Oh no, the Red Sox have a tough stretch.... Why couldn't any of them said, "yeah, but we're the Red Sox!"? Speaking of the fools and their shit-stirring talk, Papi continues to have never left, knocking in our runs in the 2-0 Vict.

I loved that Crawford let himself get tossed. We'll take that any day.

If a little, faceless, 8-bit Nintendo character made throws from third to first like Adrian Beltre does, you'd laugh and talk about how a player would never do that, and how such a throw couldn't possibly get to first that fast. But that's how The Exec rolls--sets himself with a complete stop and then slings it over.

Speaking of Kool-Aidrian, do Don and Remy get why it's so funny that he "appeals" on his own check swings? Don's like, "he appeals even if the home plate ump has already called a swing, haha..." Uh, guys, the funny thing is that the only thing that can come from an appeal on a check swing is a WORSE result for the batter. If the ump says ball and no swing, all a batter has to do is stand there and it's a ball--only the defense can gain something from appealing. Beltre's doing this instinctively as if to say, "ask anyone, I didn't swing." But he literally can't get a better result by doing this.

I loved that Don and Rem made fun of texting fans--America just depresses the shit outta me when I see people in that dead zone, in public, head down, oblivious. It's worse when they're taking up a good seat at a baseball game that you should have. The sad irony is that no text has ever been remotely important. Okay, .0000000000000000000000000001 percent.

But then when talking about how Yankee Stadium doesn't allow ipads, Don said, See, so you can't text there. Oy.

Hey, anyone remember an old Bud commercial that had a minor league ump going up to the bugs? "in the minors, you must have called it all a thousand times....but finally, you got the call." It was the era with the song, "you make America work and/this Bud's for you." By the way, when I was little, I always thought they were implying not that "this Bud" is for you, but that "this does bud for you." You know, like, "this remote control works for the TV" would mean that it does work for the TV. This buds for me. It does budding on my behalf. I guess I was missing the apostrophe. Hey, I was a math person. I didn't become proofreading, fault-finding stickler until later in life. That slogan wasn't only on the commercials--it was also said by Scooter on every Yankee home run: "Hey Steve Kemp, this Bud's for you!" And you thought they only recently started with the play-sponsoring ads....

Tomorow, the goat story, and the Sox go for the sweep. 6.5 back. And as of this moment, 1.5 back of an absolutely impossible, wait till next year, I only know what I saw the night before playoff spot. With like a hundred and fucking something games left.

A nice pressure-free win against the best team, record-wise on May 24th, in baseball and their dead crowd. 6-1 us. That's also our record in our last seven games.

Another great job by a starter, as half-bearded Clay goes 6 and gives up just a run. Oka shuts 'em down for 7-8, and Bard, who I'm now calling "Brad Daniels," finishes it off.

The Exec, Youk, and Papi continue their Hot Mays Hayes. And Tek is still a .300 hitter.

Tomorrow, Lester and Shields.

Tonight on Jeopardy!, Alex was reading an answer about sneakers called "Spiz'ikes." It ended with the term, "what what." And freakin' Alex must not have asked his kids about this one, as he said it in old-man Yiddish, as if his grandkid was poking him while he was napping: "Vaht? Vaht??" Coming next week, Alex learns the "my bad" phrase.

I'm not doing this to convince myself, since I haven't done too much worrying about my team this year, not only because I know they'll be fine, but out of respect for Pittsburgh Pirates fans everywhere. I'm doing it for people who had the ridiculous idea that a season can end in May. Here goes:

45 games. 24-21. Yes, our worst record after 45 games since '97. But not by much! We're basically playing about 2.5 to 4 games worse than we usually are at this point, based on the last few seasons, depending on how far back you wanna go. (Last year we were only three games better--and that had us in first place.)

We're 2.2 games behind the average record of the five current first-place teams outside our division. (Based on my patented FTHEYANKS formula.)

And finally, we're exactly 2.5 games behind the unbeatable, unstoppable, team-that's-so-far-ahead-of-us-we-couldn't- possibly-catch-up Yankees. And we're on a little roll, putting that crappy April further back in the R-view each day.

If the Rays somehow continue to play .727 ball all year long, than they deserve to win the division. But if that happens, there is absolutely no reason we can't win the wild card. But we can take a prelim. step toward a division race starting tonight.

Oh, and Mets, if you're collectively reading this random fan's blog you've never heard of: thank you.

Wake finally gets Red Sox win #176. Zero runs. Hopefully the fact that all four of the other current starters this go-round dominated will give Lackey a kick in the pants.

Good job by Youk, fouling off inside pitches by Halladay until he got one he could wail for a dong. I love that some Yankee fan commenter told me after '08 that Youk had a career year which won't be equaled. (He said it as if it were fact.) Youk surpassed it in '09 and is looking even better in '10.

Great scoop by Youk, too, to save Wake's zero. (The K by howard with a man on third right before that also was key.) Too bad Ram-squared ruined the possible combined shutout.

That stupid in-game bank ad screws us again! Drew doubles, then we have to see the "Safe at Second, Safe and Secure" logo--then cut to Beltre at plate who has already hit the ball, then cut to shot of ball after it's already gone past the shortstop! Missing a pitch is inexcusable, but it's just extra dirty when it's because of an ad. Especially when baseball games already have, what, 45 minutes of space between innings dedicated to commercials already?

A classic Little League play is when a hulking 12-year old with a mustache is barreling his way around third, and a 4-foot-1 10-year old makes a weak throw to third. By the time the third baseman as the ball, the runner has almost scored already. A similar thing happened today, when Scutaro just kept right on going from second to home. The throw from short went there just as he was rounding third, and had he tried to stop and go back, he would have been a dead duck. Instead, he scores without a throw.

Beltre! Would you just slide into second already?! He's really pissing me off with this. Slow grounder to second, and The Exec, instead of getting to the bag the fastest way--sliding--he pulls up to the bag trotting, but still runs past it! So not sliding possibly made him out, yet had he been safe, the guy would have just turned around and tagged him anyway! I don't care if it's 7-0, why are you doing everything possible to be out, instead of everything possible to be safe? (Don and Rem didn't mention it, as they were too busy talking about a Jamie Moyer interview.)

Now we go to Tampa, then home for the Royals on Mem. Day Wknd.