First, I forgot to post this last night--a pic from before Thursday's game of David Ortiz at his locker. Look whose locker is next to his. His son's! I know D'Angelo and other kids hang out on the field with their dads in the summer, but their own lockers? Weird. But awesome! I wonder if this isn't just a prank on somebody--because little D'Angelo seems to have some adult products on a very high shelf. Who knows, maybe he really does get a locker; I noticed another one that was just labeled "Boston Red Sox," so maybe they've got plenty of extras. They must, for when the rosters expand. Maybe D'Angelo gets "sent down" when the Paw-kids join the squad.

As for tonight, we got 9 hits...and one damn run! In the first, after Don made an incorrect comparison between Rasmus and Carl Everett (Rasmus stands in the box with his feet on the inner line--Everett with his foot on the back line--terrible job, Don), the Jays tried to score from third on a grounder. We had the guy. Shoppach blocks the plate, makes the tag. Ump waits to see ball. Sees it. Makes the call, as all of Red Sox Nation has begun to celebrate.... Safe! The guy's hand never hit the plate. The ump had no reason to delay the call unless he was waiting to see the ball. But he must have changed his mind at some point, and made the wrong call. The Jays would add another run, and two more in the second for a quick lead that we'd never touch.

I only missed a little of the game, but the Joy of Sox folks said how Don and Jerry were again mocking the "live" blimp shots with no blimp overhead. I'd wondered how they would handle the shots now that the kitty's out of the carry-all. I guess with laughter. I love that now that they know, they're not trying to fake like they don't.

Odd ending to tonight's game. We were being shut out in the 9th. There was a near double play ball that would have ended the game. But the guy was safe, and we scored our first run of the game. 6-1 Jays. However, NESN couldn't grasp this concept. The score box made the runners disappear. The 0 did do the little explodey thing, but it didn't change to a 1, it just stayed at zero. It was almost as if two guys were arguing over what happened, each refusing to turn his key at the same time as the other. The play wasn't that close, you could tell right away he was safe, but even Don acted like he was ready to make the game-ending call. Knowing they'd fucked up, they took the box down. As the second pitch came in to the next batter, they got the box back up and running.... But it still said 6-0! As the third pitch was about to be thrown, they unceremoniously turned the 0 into a 1. Okay, we're all on board. 6 to 1. Three pitches later, the game ends, and Don says "and the Blue Jays have shut out the Red Sox, for just the fifth time this season the Red Sox are blanked..." before finally correcting himself. What the hell was going on over there? Why was this run the source of such confusion? While bitching about this on Joy of Sox, one of the other threaders over there, Amy, said she just got a text alert from WEEI. She was kind enough to forward it to me:

WEEI FLASH: Red Sox lose to the Blue Jays 6-0. Visit [web site] for
more. Text STOP SCORE to OPTOUT anytime.

What the hell is going on?? She said they later corrected it. I guess people want so much to do things right away, they end up leaping the Luger. In fact, the people at JoS who watch the games on mlb.tv see a lot of between-innings stuff while NESN is showing commercials, and they say that Don and Remy actually film the closing remarks before the outcome of the game has been decided. Gee, I wonder where they learned recording something ahead of time and passing it off like it's live later? (They also pre-record the intro--the CLOCK behind them is the dead giveaway, though that doesn't really bother me.) Why don't we just play all 162 games in one marathon month in January in the Florida Keys and then show all the games in convenient 2-hour format all year long. They could give the final score before the game so we wouldn't even have to watch!