Was watching a video about the new Marlins ballpark. They hyped that they'd be playing the Cubs, Phillies, and Red Sox. Since they used our old logo, maybe we'll just have to show up at their old ballpark!

As we enter year four of the new logo, we've still got plenty of holdouts. But the most prominent one is the Boston Herald. There it is, right on top of their Red Sox page.

So once again, for people who somehow missed it despite that they work for Major League Baseball and/or the Red Sox and/or media outlets who cover the Red Sox, here's the old logo (retired 2008):


and the new, that's not even that new anymore:

Remember when the Red Sox auctioned off those retro jerseys after the Cubs series in June? Yeah, when they forgot how to spell their own players' names. I posted about it at the time.

Well now they've got a new auction. And Error Mania continues! See the picture at left and follow along:

They've figured out "Gonzalez" and "Buchholz," but they're still going with "MacDonald" instead of "McDonald." And "Doubront"? They say "Dubrount." (And just like in June, when you click each name, it takes you to a page where the name is also spelled the wrong way.) So they score a 22 out of 24 this time, not bad!

Bonus errors! They forgot to change "retro jersey" to "Jackie Robinson jersey" right above the player names. Way to use the old copy and change the relevant info, only to accidentally leave some old info in. Classic mistake. And "a MLB"? I'd go with "an MLB" there, but I suppose you could argue the reader will read it as "a Major League Baseball," or, less likely, "a muhlb."

Note to people who don't care: I obviously do care, so we're just gonna have to live with each other's quirks. You're welcome to point out my mistakes just to spite me.

The Boston press can make or break you. No matter what you say, they're gonna write it up like they want.

--Jim Rice, February 1976

Bobby: "Watch out for these guys, Tito, they just might get a big lead, get complacent, and blow the whole thing, and everyone will blame it on you, and you'll get fired."

Tito: "Yeah sure, Bobby. And who they gonna replace me with, YOU? You're on drugs."

Photo by Jere, 4/1/2011.


So my Pepitone theory hasn't gained much traction. I commented on Martone's article (he specifically had asked the public for help) but I see no response yet. Couldn't find his e-mail address to write to him personally either. This was another one of those cases where I thought I'd be handed the key to the Internet for my work, but instead almost nobody cared. Oh well, it'll even out the next time I offhandedly post a video of my cat pooping or something and it gets 10 million hits. But I'm not giving up on Pepitone yet--hopefully I at least get a response from Martone.

As most of you know by now, Bobby Valentine will be wearing Tony Conigliaro's number 25, and noted that he was Tony's "last roommate" back in 1976 when Tony was attempting a comeback. I didn't think much of this until my mom e-mailed me this morning regarding Bobby and Tony:

So now I read that Bobby V. chose #25 in honor of his old roommate,
Tony Conigliaro. Where and when did they room?

My initial search (just typing in "Tony Conigliaro" into Google News) brought me right to an article by Art Martone, who was questioning the story. Bobby said the pairing happened when he was with the Padres in 1976. Martone pointed out that Tony had already become a broadcaster by that point. I did a further news search and found nothing about Conig making any comeback attempt in 1976, and no mention of him ever having anything to do with the Padres. I searched and searched, trying to see if Tony's name appeared in any of the spring training articles. Though I did find a mention of him saying in '76 that he might try to play winter ball in '76/'77 (Bobby was still with the Padres for the start of 1977), I got nowhere.

That's when it hit me. This is an ex-athlete we're talking about. Unless your name is Dennis Eckersley, your stories from your playing days are probably going to have major errors. And this is Bobby Valentine we're talking about. Search "valentine" on this blog and you'll find several examples of him getting facts from old stories wrong from this past season on ESPN broadcasts--including one where he challenged viewers to "look it up," and was still wrong.

So I came up with a genius plan. I did a news search on "'comeback' 'Padres'" for March of 1976. And whose name popped up about a million times? That's right, shaggy 70s playboy and, as Seinfeld fans know, the designer of Central Park, JOE PEPITONE.

Okay--I didn't get too excited yet. Yes it was a guy attempting a comeback in spring training 1976 with the Padres. Could Valentine and Pepitone have been roommates? Yes. But I'll take one step further. Joe Pepitone didn't make the team. He was sent to the Hawaii Islanders. The team was known for having a trio of ex-major leaguers to start that season. One of the other ones? Bobby Valentine. Bobby wasn't called up to the bigs that year until September. He played in 120 games with Hawaii in 1976. Joe Pepitone played in 13, never to step on a baseball field after that.

So the question isn't "who was Tony C's last roommate?" but rather "whose last roommate was Booby V?" And the answer to that is Joe Pepitone.

Then I thought: Hmmmm, I'll bet francs to Fenway Franks that Joe Pepitone wore number 25.....

and boom went the dynamite:
Granted, he wore other numbers with other teams, but when he went to the Hawaii Islanders, you gonna tell me they gave anybody else number 25?

So we have Bobby Valentine, in 1976, being teammates with a well-known Italian player attempting a comeback after a few years out of baseball, who wore #25. I'd say there's a great chance that two ex-major leaguers on a minor league team (who were both playing the same position too) would be put together as roommates, and as Bobby put it, this other guy (who he thought to be Tony C) had Bobby as his "last roommate," for "a few days," which both make sense since Pepitone left the team after 13 games and never played again after that.

So to answer my mom's (and Art Martone's) question: Nowhere and never. Bobby Valentine roomed with a different guy in 1976 in Hawaii who also wore the number in question, 25. How could he confuse the two Italians who were both making comebacks in the mid-70s? You tell me:

Futures at Fenway will be Saturday, August 18th. Pawtucket will take on the Buffalo Bisons. I don't see any evidence of a second game, though. I checked the schedules of our four other affiliates, and three of them have home games that day, but their schedules indicate they are normal non-Fenway games.

It could be they haven't decided which team they're going to pick. But I'm wondering if maybe they're just making it a single game this year. They never fill the place for those games, so maybe they figure they only need to do one game--have a packed house for one game instead of two half-full houses. They make the same money either way. Also, the big club is playing the Yanks at 4:05 that day so maybe they're all set with having a single noon game and then letting everybody go home.

Also, check out this sweet eff-up from the press release for the Frozen Fenway events:



Hey, I can't expect the Boston Red Sox to know what NESN stands for.

Yeah, so when I was on the baseball team in high school, there was a big buzz when we'd play Darien High in red-hot FCIAC action: "Oooh, Bobby Valentine's nephew is on this team...." And that's really where my memories end. In fact, he might have even been on varsity the whole time, while I was only a JV-er, so who knows if I ever even saw the guy. But maybe he struck me out or something. Yeah, let's go with that. No, wait, as long as I'm making shit up, let's just say I hit a home run off Bobby Valentine's nephew.

I did a news search on the kid. His HS football records still stand, but the only baseball mention I could find about him is from 1992 (between our junior and senior year), when he played for a Babe Ruth All-Star Team made up of kids from a few Fairfield County towns, none of which were mine. According to the Redding Pilot, he got a hit in the state tournament. Here's the squad:


The caption only mentions the hometown Redding and Easton kids, but one one of the kids in the pinstriped Darien jerseys would be Anthony.

Had to take a trip to Casino Valley today, so I figured I'd stop by and see Tito on the Stupid Show live from Mohegan Sun.

Pretty terrible set-up. They were a few feet from a bar, facing it. Therefore the crowd couldn't be more than two people deep. I guess they had this interview planned for months--it just happened to be on the day of the new manager's introductory press conference.

I listened to Bobby on the way home, and all the memories from the Mets days came flooding back--him stringing together 27 random words at a time, that kind of thing.

Then these same guys you see here interviewed Bobby on the phone, and there was a great moment, when he informed them that he didn't know who was who. Listening along at the moment Fat O realizes some people don't know who the fuck he is was priceless.

If it was any other song, I'd say "Shipping Up To Boston" would have to be retired now that Papelbon's gone. But that's a song that needs to be played at Boston sports venues. But what do you do with it? Our panel of experts, meaning just me, takes a look at the options.

1. Let the new closer use it. Ehh...no, Peg. Bard or anybody we bring in will have his own song, and even if he really likes SutB, I can't imagine he'd switch to it since it was so connected to his predecessor.

2. Let someone else use it. Again, I can't see anybody dissing Pap like that--OR taking the song out of play for every other situation.

3. Retire it. Are you even paying attention? I just said you can't do that with this song. Oh I see what you're doing--you realized you were gonna be stuck with a really short list so you threw this already-crossed out option in here to fatten it up. Makes sense.

4. Play it at random times, like maybe in the post-dong rotation. I could see them doing this, however, we've become used to this song as having a specific meaning, so I say come up with one.

5. Okay, then. Play it at a specific time. Here's my suggestion. You play it in the middle of the ninth inning. This way, it won't be played every night, only when we're tied or trailing after eight and a half. And those are the exact situations when a firing-up song should play. This fills in the late-inning rally song trilogy: Mid-7th: Take Me Out to the Ball Game, Mid-8th: Sweet Caroline, Mid-9th: Shipping Up to Boston (if applicable).

5a. Other specific time possibilities would be to put it in the victory song series, though I feel its beginning would sound odd after Dirty Water or Tessie. Then again Joy to the World feels a little out of place and isn't even played all the way through, so maybe you could replace that one. They could also go ahead and replace Sweet Caroline with it. A lot of people are sick of it--but I'm sure those people are probably sick of Shipping, too. But if they did wanna replace SC, here's their window of opportunity. Taking-the-field music? Nah. We don't use music at that time until the pitcher starts warming up, and then they go into that starter's own song anyway. Another possibility would be to have it be the "pre-top 9th" music regardless of the situation. Guaranteed to play every night, and...nah, doesn't work. What about mid-1st inning? Like, Okay, here come the bats? I don't know, I'm sticking with my mid-9th when applicable theory.