Once again the Rays went down by a bunch, teased us by making it close, but lost. So the O's had to win in Oakland to stay a game back, which they did. No quit in those feathered friends. Balty goes to Seattle this week (they face Felix in game 3 Wednesday) and the Yanks get Toronto at home.

In other news, the Red Sox were in a scoreless game for 7 innings until Lester finally gave up a few. 5-0 loss to the Jays, and now we go to Tampa for four. The Rays are 5 out in the east. The Red Sox, in case you were wondering, officially will not be in the playoffs in 2012. But there's obviously a lot left to root for this baseball season.

A few things:

A two-bounce ground rule double! Today Ryan Lavarnway hit a high fly to shallow right. The right fielder lost the ball in the sun. It landed pretty far from where he stood, bounced once on the AstroTurf, and then bounced again before going over the low wall in foul territory for a ground-rule double. I don't remember ever seeing a batted ball go into the crowd on more than one bounce before. I was at the JoS board, and Allan also said he's never seen this. So you'd think the announcers, one of whom is a former player, would note that the audience has just witnessed an extremely rare occurrence. Nope. Of course not. Anyway, you really do need a perfect storm for this to happen. You have to have a low wall and probably artificial turf to start. Then you need a high fly ball that for some reason lands harmlessly and bounces twice before a fielder can get to it. We saw that today. But the casual fan watching NESN had no idea anything out of the ordinary happened.

What's up with Remy "spoiling" Don's promos lately? Is he trying to announce his way out of Boston? Don sometimes laughs but I gotta figure he's kinda pissed about it. Even weirder than just saying "[x promo] is about to be read by Don" is the fact that he's revealing when NESN chooses to do these spots, i.e. "after the next foul ball" or "after a routine out." At one point Saturday they ended up talking about the network's definition of a "routine out," which Don said was one that didn't "require" a replay. They started joking about it, as Remy mockingly acted like the next routine grounder to the pitcher DID require a replay. But in doing this, they inadvertently illustrated why their telecasts have become so shitty. Remy did a tongue-in-cheek analysis of the replay of Buchholz fielding a grounder and flipping to first. His point was to jokingly defend even the most routine play, saying you can analyze anything. But guess what? That actually is why we're watching! And why they pay these guys. Remy's imitation of analysis was exactly what we'd like to hear out of him after every play! Fans tuning in for a baseball game, surprise, would like to know that when the pitcher comes off the mound to his left side, it makes it easier for him to field a grounder hit to that side, instead of learning for the hundredth time that legendary rock band Heart will be playing at the casino, or that if we ever need medical assistance at Fenway Park we should visit the Beth Israel Deaconess medical center located behind section 12. Yet the only time we get to hear it is when they're dismissing it as the meaningless bullshit you'd hear if they weren't forced to do 88 promos per game. (Of course, I like to think that Remy really does believe that actually talking about the game would be better than a million promos, and that's why he's been doing this routine lately....)

Finally, a team besides the Red Sox with a new logo gets the shaft. They showed a shot of Salty in the dugout today, and behind him was a notebook. The Red Sox had made it up (this year since it said 2012 on it) and used the Jays' logo--but grabbed the old one. The "JAYS" script that they canned before this season. So it's good to see we're not the only ones.

Cano pulled a Cano today, but escaped embarrassment because...the runner pulled a Cano too! Grounder to Cano, he does his nonchalant schtick, and on the transfer from glove to hand, the ball goes flying. Far away. He runs to get it, picks it up and fires to first, and still gets the guy. But we can see that the guy grabbed his hamstring after crossing first. However, the replay showed that while he did hurt himself on the swing, he still saw Cano get the ball the first time, and went into a near-crawl, only to look up again a few steps later, realize the ball was on the ground, and start speeding up again, too late. Fucking TBS announcers say nothing. Cano completely skates. (That batter did leave the game right after, too, so it was a real injury, but even with that, and even if he also had a goddamn Joba on his back, he could have easily beaten the play had he not assumed it was over. And wouldn't you think the manager would notify the entire team to run everything out especially on balls hit to Cano?)

Remember I tried to figure out all the pics in the background of redsox.com? I noticed today there have been some changes (no, not to the mysterious Yankee catcher). Kevin Youkilis had been replaced with a Johnny Pesky picture. Josh Beckett has been replaced with one of Tek and a Ted Williams shot. See the new version here, which is also a link to a story about the 2004 team and the All-Fenway team being honored in the final two home games this season.