Get Scutaro on the court and he's trouble! That's right, I end up getting to use the Ice Cube reference on a triple double for Scutaro. Dice-K: beautiful. Four hits and no runs in eight innz. We win easily, 4-1. Four games back, alone in third.

The Cleveland crowds are dwindling, to the point where I didn't even see Hat Guy! Or maybe that camera angle just changed.

Tonight, Jerry Remy brought up a game in which he broke up Ken Brett's no-hitter. Here's the game, from May of 1976. A former major leaguer (other than the encyclopedic Dennis Eckersley) finally got facts about an old game right! He was on the Angels, Brett was with the White Sox, and the game was in Anaheim. And Remy broke it up with two outs in the ninth on a check-swing roller down the third base line. Brett was pissed. "If that's a hit, I'm a bleepity bleepity bleep," he said after the game. Pictured is Ken on the mound that night.


As if we weren't disgusted enough by the awkward "safe at second, safe and secure" ad that Orsillo has to read after doubles when we should be seeing a replay, I heard the same little ad for the same company after a double...on the Yankees broadcast. If a slimy corporation is gonna be a sponsor of multiple teams, they could at least come up with a different stupid gimmick for each one....

Speaking of that crap, your New England Ford Dealer is an Official Partner of the Boston Red Sox--yet they've made it to June still using the old Red Sox logo in their ads. June of the second year.
They're hardly the last holdout.

I've always said I could watch anything at Fenway Park. Open it up and let me watch the grass grow? I'm in. However, with the announcement of a soccer game to be played there this summer, I've finally found something going on at Fenway that I have absolutely zero interest in. (When someone says "zero" instead of just "no," don't you always think of Joey Buttafuoco when he said Amy Fisher had "zero credibility"? Me too!)

A lot of the news stories say that Papelbon's been placed "on the bereavement list." But look at the exact wording from the team's press release:

"on the bereavement/family medical emergency list due to a family medical issue."

So this list involves either bereavement OR (that's your slash, son) a family medical emergency. And they come right out and put it in the latter category. So, what I'm trying to say is, it's not a death in the family, it's someone who's sick. Let's hope first that it's not Parker or Gunner.

Pretty Essy Sunday baseball-wise. Our game was dick street. Robert A. Dick Street, I tellsya. Plenty of blame to go around, but I'd like to single out Lackey, who was once a good pitcher but has shown us nothing. He's our least reliable starter! He's the "god dammit" king, and it's usually his own foibz that make him say it. I trust he's not gonna be so fack street all year, though. But it's June, guy, let's go. And the Yanks won in their classic way to make it worse. At least we're still tied for third.

Sox at Swampdragons, 7:05.

As in 3.5 back. We're gettin' there.

Right now we have the same record after 57 games that we had last year. And the year before.

Nice easy win by us last night. Lester vs. Guthrie tonight. Heard the beginning on the radio last night, and O'Brien started the game, with Castig intro-ing him. What's going on there? I need a regular radio listener to tell me why Castig neither starts nor finishes games anymore, when those have traditionally been spots for the main guy--the "voice of the Red Sox."

4.5 back, and our FTY number is still hovering around zero--meaning we're right around the same record as the average non-AL East first place team. So....

I guess I have sciatica. It hurts to sit down. I'm squirming all day. People probably think I have hemorrhoids. Hey, I just thought of something. If you have hemorrhoids and you're squirming all day, just say you have sciatica.

Red Sox at Orioles. HH & Tillman. After what happened last time down there, I expect nothing less than a sweep. The good kind.

Nutty game--A's score runs in five different innings. In each of those innings, Red Sox score, too. We also score in two other innings. But we still lose 9-8. That game was 'diculously frustrating just checking in, must have been ten times worse for people who got to watch it....

On to Balty for the weekend.

FTY: 0.1
FTY2: 0.9

Sox go for the sweep at 1:35.

Armando Galarraga's odyssey tonight was ruined on its final leg by none other than James Joyce. I head about the ElPer when it was in the 7th, and switched over to MLBNet to watch between pitches of the Red Sox game. The dude got through the eighth, and the ninth inning started with a deep fly to left center. Austin Jackson made a Willie Mays catch, and he was two outs away. An out later, a grounder between first and second. Dangerous, because who goes for the ball, and is the pitcher covering? Of course he was, as the first baseman makes the play, sets, and throws....out...perfect ga---no. Ump starts to make out call, then says safe. One freakin' out away, and the guy takes it away from the pitcher. Replay shows he was out. Meanwhile Kim had just come downstairs from watching one of those human-reunites-with-wild-animal videos and was all teary-eyed, and there I am welling up over the Tiger on my screen! I was really thinking there was gonna be a fist fight, and there almost was. Don't you love it--umps will call a strike on any 3-0 pitch, rulebook be more damned than usual, but close play as final out of perfect game that's in favor of the defense anyway?? Sorry, safe. The only thing I can think of is that Joyce was watching foot, listening for ball, heard ball before foot, looked up--and saw that move the pitcher made when he opened the glove, letting the ball come out for a split second before clenching it again. This came after the guy was already OUT. This kills me. Especially as someone who has wanted robot umps for years. You know how much this affected me? Look, I put it above the Red Sox in this post!

Here's what I think should happen. You can't get the perfect game back. But the official scorer can do whatever the hell he wants. Change that last play to an error on either guy--neither would mind--and at least get the guy a no-hitter. I saw Jeremy Hermida look a ball right into his glove tonight, only to have it doink off of it, and that wasn't called an error. So that last play of the Detroit game can be called an error.

Dice again with "one bad inning." Great job by us to come out swingin' after that bad top 1. And by Dice for keeping us in it after the 1st. The Papi blast on the 3-2 pitch with two outs was huge. The 'pen is kicking ass again and we win 6-4. Back in third place, still 5 out of first.

Eck just now describing a dong into the Monster Seats: "He puts this ball in the net." Love it! I think of it that way myself sometimes, too.

Two more notes on the shoulda-been-perfecto:

After Galarraga got through the eighth, TC on NESN said they were "headed to the ninth" in Detroit at 1-0. He was wrong, the bottom of the eighth wasn't over. At that point, I was like, Please, Detroit, score more runs. They did, making it a TJ by TC. I don't hate TC or anything, I just think it's funny when people are sure of stuff and tell it to the world, only to be proven the opposite of right. Also, the guy on MLBNet, as they went to the ninth for real, said that the pitcher would be facing the 7-8-9 hitters for Cleveland. Well, guy, if he wasn't, it wouldn't be a perfect game....

I was about to make my usual triple-double Ice Cube reference, but Victor went and got his fourth double! Ah well, it was still a good day. Loved the 8th inning mega tack-on to take some pressure off, and get Pap sitting down again. We win 9-4. Lackey needs to get his crap together, we can't be bailin' him out every time. Though he did a nice job getting out of the BLJ. And we did have some bad D behind him.

Gio Gonzalez started for them, and then Ross came in wearing #66. I think they should switch. GG should be 66.

Irony: When you hit a deep fly ball and watch it thinking it's dong, and then it bounces away and you get a triple--so had you ran you would have had the home run you thought you had. Happened to Bill Hall tonight, but the replay didn't show just how long he watched/dogged. I'll give him the BOTD and figure it was only for that first half-second.

Don/Rem didn't make enough out of the fact that a fly ball almost went IN that camera hole in the left field scoreboard.

Okay, I've tweaked the naming on my stats.

FTHEYANKS now equals the number of games a team is behind the average first place team NOT including the leader in the team's own division. This will be shortened to FTY.

FTHEYANKS2HELL now equals the number of games a team is behind the average first place team, including all 6 division leaders. This will be shortened to FTY2.

The Red Sox' FTY is a mere 0.7. So if you put us in a random non-AL East division 100 or 1,000 or a million times, we'd be an average of less than a game out of first place.

Our FTY2 is 1.4. So include the AL East and we're still less than a game and a half out.

Unfortunately, but, down the line, fortunately, we're in a division with a team that started out playing much better than anyone else in baseball, though they are finally coming down to earth.

Swingin' A's @ SOX, 7:10 E-daylight.

Happy New Month, everybody.

Congratulations, Boston sports media. You did such a great job of convincing baseball fans, including many Red Sox fans, that David Ortiz' career had ended, that he's not even in the top three in the all-star voting for DH. Vlad Guerrero is first, understandably. But second is Hideki Matsui, and third is Ken Griffey, Jr. Go ahead and look up their numbers. In fact, feel free to combine the two and then compare those numbers to Papi's. Ortiz is fifth. The guy in fourth has been released by his team.

It's all based on perception, and the media can control what people think. And they don't give a crap. I as at Fenway recently and after an Ortiz homer, I heard someone ask "what's wrong with Papi" before asking if that was his first home run.

If people like that hadn't been brainwashed, Papi would be in second place with Red Sox fans' votes alone. Instead it's those people who see the ballot and say, "Well Papi's career's over--is he even on the team anymore?--so I can't pick him....hmmm...that Ken Griffey's a class act...but let me grab another ballot so I can give Pat Burell some love too...nobody told me his career is over even thought he's been fucking released!..." Come on, people, pay a god damn ttention. Lots of time left in this vote.

The Athletics come to town this week. You know what that means. Bad news for the Athletics!

Hey, am I the only one who watches that Hoarders show and roots for the hoarders? I'd like to see a show where those high-and-mighty family members of the hoarders have us come to their house and dissect their problems! The hoarder could confront them: "Too many boxes? You've been pokin' your secretary for ten years! And shall we talk about that 'creative' tax return?"