Nice ceremony today at Fenway, I wonder if the Shaughnessey/EEI/every fuckin' media moron brigade will mock the team for "too many ceremonies" now. (I also love how the anti-Sweet Caroline junta probably feels like shit right about now. Neil Diamond is in the house, I assume he'll be singing it. If that skinny shit Pete Abe has any "resilience" at all he'll continue to talk about how stupid and meaningless it is and how he hates freedom.)

Notes:

Tom Werner said this might be the first time the team has worn "Boston" on the home whites, and that some crack research team is looking into it. Uh....I don't know how long it takes them, but it took me about 4 seconds to go to Dressed to the Nines and see that they clearly did used to do that. Also, I knew anyway!

Gammons continued the "New England hates the Red Sox" bullshit today too. He talked about how this current group is uniting with the fans and it's restoring the region's love for the team, which is more unpopular than its been in 15 years. Red Sox fans who loved their team even after 86 years of not winning, suddenly said To hell with it, and stopped loving them? Because they had a bad year? (In which the team was very much alive a lot later in the season than the "year-long disaster" junta seems to remember.) Are people just completely out of their fucking minds? I mean do you remember growing up, becoming a fan of the team, and saying, "I love this team always...unless they have a bad year after like 15 awesome ones in a row which include two championships, something that hasn't happened in decades"? The answer to that is "No, I'm not an asshole."

Okay, I took too long writing that so I can't get into Remy and Don being clueless about a few things, I gotta go to work. 1-0 KC in the 5th. I'll be Castiglioning it for the next 45 minutes....

Now that's a T-shirt....

I am so glad they got the guy alive! That is huge. After last night, I thought he'd kill himself, coward that he is. But once I found out he was alive and wounded, I changed my mind--I knew there was a chance of getting him alive. Because if you're purposely staying alive despite injuries, you obviously have a desire to live. I only wish there was a rule where if you do a crime and you get captured, you have to tell us everything. The guy's like 12 years old, though, I'm sure he'll cave.

Another thing I hope is that the guy has an epiphany while doctors are working on him tonight. He's the type of person who can put a bomb down in front of a little kid and then run away and let the bomb kill the kid. His "enemy" is completely innocent and his "fighting" is completely cowardly. And now that he's the enemy, I hope he sees how some people, though they have every right to let him die, will actually work hard to save their enemy. It's a little late for the guy to be learning lessons, but he has a long locked-up life ahead of him, and it would be nice if maybe in a few decades he could learn to speak out against the very thing that put him behind bars.

Here ya go....

Pic I took this week of a nun playing soccer. Her and another nun then started climbing on a rock wall in the sea. If there's enough demand, I'll show that picture too.

If you're still up.... go to this live feed... grenades going off in Watertown and shit.... people shooting at cops...or...something.... http://livewire.wcvb.com/Event/117th_Running_of_Boston_Marathon

Was waiting for the Yanks game to end before I posted--in the 12th, the D-Backs hit a tie-breaking grand dong! So the Red Sox are now 2.5 up in the east.

11-4 WIN! Two straight road sweeps! Tonight Lester continued our streak of starters giving up 3 or fewer runs. This streak has lasted the whole season so far. That 3-run 7th was some feel-good shit again, as we turned a 3-2 game in a 6-2 game. And I don't mean "feel-good" in a "because there were bombs in the city" way, as I'm one of the few sports fans who realizes that sports has nothing to do with that stuff. Sure, the Red Sox winning helps me feel good after bad real-life stuff happens, but what if I were a lifelong Bostonian who always rooted for the Indians? Would the team from my town beating my favorite team tonight after my city was terrorized make me feel better or worse? The answer is worse. I mean, after 9/11, to me personally, the Chicago paper (or whoever) should have said "We are all Red Sox," because I, a Red Sox fan, am from the New York area. See what I mean? It just seems like everybody thinks the country is made up of only cities, all with sports teams, and every citizen of each city roots for that city's team. It's so much more complicated than that. My hometown and current city are in states with no sports teams, my favorite city is New York, and I'm a lifelong Red Sox fan. What town/city needs to be bombed for everyone to talk about how resilient I am? Which ones being bombed require me to suddenly sing the song of another sports team, or others to sympathize with mine? What if people in West, Texas die? And in the end, does any of this sports stuff matter to families of victims, especially those who don't give one shit about sports?

Okay, that was just a little of what's been spinning around in my head the last few days. Where was I.... oh, so that Mike Carp is kicking some ass, huh? And I love how Nava has really made a name for himself. He's a real boy, no longer made of wood. And Castiglione totally called the Salty Dong tonight! A few pitches before, he said Salty would love to blast one here, or something similar. Then he hit a rocket to break the 1-1 tie.

Now we go home for a long homestand, and Papi should be back. And I'm sure people will get "choked up" over the national anthem, another thing I don't understand. People have said things like "we're all Americans" after this bombing. Man, what a chance they missed to say "we're all human." It was an attack, possibly by Americans, on an international event, with the dead being only 2/3rds American. This isn't America against someone else. This is non-assholes vs. assholes. Is there a country with no assholes? Can we please play that country's national anthem? Now that would make sense.

P.S. If you disagree, remember that we're on the same page. ASSHOLES went and killed innocent people, and almost killed my girlfriend, and they should be caught and should pay for their crime, and it pisses us the fuck off. It's just the further reactions we disagree on...or that you feel I'm thinking too hard about....

Should have been a blowout, but the fact that it turned into a hard-fought win can only be good for the ol' confidentiality claws.

We squandered first & second/no outs, loaded/no outs, and loaded/one out, in the first four innings. Fortunately we had scored three runs in the first before an out was made off Masterson. So we had a lead but I was getting pissed. We finally added a couple of single-run innings, but then they closed it to 5-3. But our bullpen held 'em down and we won 6-3. Some key strikeouts led to much living-room celebrating at my house. A feel-good win for the first-place Red Sox, our fifth in a row, and we're 10 and 4.

I hate how two different FAN hosts have noted how the Yanks are in good shape because there's no one solid team in the division. I guess their eyes are shut pretty tight. I also heard one of those two guys talk about how the Yanks have a great 'pen, and that's their advantage over the rest of the division. Fine, guy.

This is the second game this year where at least the first five batters reached base. That's pretty uncommon in general, let alone twice in a few weeks.

One of the big differences in NESN broadcasts this year is how the score box is only on the screen for the center field pitch cam. Good move. Now it can't block plays happening in the field.

Classic Don/Remy tonight when Jerry accused Don of stealing the mustard from the cafeteria, a crime Remy was blamed for by ballpark staff.

I wish they'd kept the camera on Victorino on the pop-up to the stands--he reached into a cupholder, probably to eat a peanut or something. But they cut away. Maybe the Cleveland feed noticed....

Once again I went to mlb.com to look at the box score, and once again it ends in the eighth inning. This is a huge glitch and shouldn't be happening in a world where I can [insert some modern shit here] in the time it takes to [insert an activity that takes a very short amount of time here--use a slightly comical activity if possible].

So we lead the Yanks by 1.5, the O's by 3, the Jays by 4.5, and the Rays by 5.

Oh and for those of you who share my pain on the incorrect use of "walk-off," Castiglione, about the Pats' Day win, said "I hesitate to call it a walk-off since Pedroia was running so fast, heh heh..." Eye roll. I think even those of you who disagree with me on this wouldn't even agree with Joe's usage here, as the runner who scores the winning run is always running anyway.

A nice 7-run second was pretty much all we needed tonight, as we beat Tito's Tribe 7-2. That 3rd inning was a potentially costly squander. The first guy hit what looked like a double and I assumed he was on second, since at that point we had the big lead and Kim and I were "talking about our day" at that moment. So then the next guy hits what I think is a run-scoring double to make it 8-1. Instead I see the runner rounding second, and the hitter again stops at first. Two "doubles" that were actually singles--and we end up not scoring any runs. I was thinking about that in the 5th when the tying run was on deck with Doubront right about at the end of his rope. (I'm surprised NESN didn't show Bobby Valentine at home.) But he got Mr. K to pop out on a ball that Victorino should have called off Pedroia on, instead of letting us all have the April version of the sports version of a heart attack.

So with the 4-game win streak we move to 9-4, 1.5 games up in the east. This is what good pitching can do. Last year it bed-shat, simple as that.

I had Castig for the first inning or so, and I didn't hear him mention the marathon armbands. What was up with those? Were they just black rubber bands since they didn't have time to sew on real ones? And Pedroia's seemed to be duct tape. Then of course you had Doubront pulling a Bill Lee and not having it on the pitching arm. And why were they going right through the hanging sox for some players? Same with Cleveland, some had it going right through the face on the sleeve.

Tomorrow night it's old friend Justin Masterson against Aceves.

I think I know who bombed the marathon. You know how there are paranoid nutjobs who think every act of violence is fake, staged by the black president in order to take their guns away? Well I think think this was one or two of those people, in response to the Newtown shooting. The 26th mile of the marathon was dedicated to Newtown. One bomb was right around the finish line and the other was close to the 26-mile marker which bore the Newtown town seal. Whoever these crazy people were, they wanted to kill lots of innocent people so they chose a place with a big crowd, but where else are they gonna find a big crowd, that's on national TV, that's specifically related to what they think is the ultimate conspiracy, the Newtown shooting? I've even heard one of their lead nutjobs saying that even it it was some random terrorist, the media will blame "Christians and Constitution-loving patriots" anyway. They've brainwashed their followers. The irony would be if the very people who believe this shit ended up pulling off an attack to protest it, and then claimed it too was staged! I think they're just stupid enough to do that.

Anyway I'm not blaming anybody until they figure out who did it, but the "every single thing the news says is staged by the scary black man to take our guns away" faction is unfortunately bigger than people realize. And much like they claim everything is a set-up, they themselves have it set up perfectly, where they can always make it look like they're being blamed no matter what happens, and if they want, they can go out and kill people...and say it was a set-up by the people they're so afraid of. (Here's a good article debunking the nutjobs' theory that this and all bombings happen right when bomb drills do, so that if the bombs don't work the government can claim it was "just a drill.")

The green marker below shows where my girlfriend was at 2:50 p.m. today. The red one shows where a bomb went off at that moment, killing people.

4:53: Knowing nothing about the news yet, and having only heard the final score of the game, I try to call Kim, who'd been at Fenway with some friends, while the old lady I'm about to take to acupuncture is in the bathroom. It's an old-school phone, yet after a few attempts which lead only to dead air, I get through: "You've reached Harold and Martha, you know what to do. Beep." Odd that I'd call the wrong number, I thought, but whatever, I finally got Kim's voice mail and left a message.

5:00: I've dropped off the woman, and headed out to the grocery store to get her a few things--here's my chance to flip on the radio and get the Red Sox details. The radio starts talking about how the Bruins game is postponed. Wow, wonder what that's about.... Then they say how some families of Newtown victims were at the finish line, and that's where "the injuries were." Okay, this is getting weird.

5:02: I park at the store and call Kim, now a little worried, while trying to hear exactly what happened on the radio--as far as I know it could still be a tornado or a kid with a bb gun at this point, they're not saying what the crud happened.

5:03: Still getting the dead air at Kim's phone number. Now I think back to how it was dead before, and I'm worrying. People are dying and getting injured--they say 60 people--, Kim's phone doesn't work, and she's in Boston, probably somewhere near the marathon route. Then again, maybe she's already home. I had no idea what her plans were for post-game, if she was gonna go to or avoid the marathon.

5:05: This is around when I almost lose it right there in the parking lot of the official supermarket of the Boston Red Sox in Newport, Rhode Island. I'm not thinking "cell service must be dead," I'm only thinking "Kim's phone--and maybe Kim--is dead."

5:07: Bombs. Carnage. This happened two hours ago but it's new to me, and my girlfriend is AWOL. It's like the Mooninites all over again. But then it rings! And she picks up. And she's fucking there! That's right, after the game, she headed down Boylston as her friend wanted to go to Sephora. They head up the escalator at the Prudential Center mall, and boom. She said to her friend, "I hope that's a cannon." A few seconds later, the closer bomb goes off. She says she felt it through her whole body. Now it's time to run. The police herd her and hundreds more out the back. She says the feeling of being in that "running from actual danger" crowd we've all seen on TV is the worst one you can have. She ends up on Huntington, the only casualty in her group a sprained ankle on her friend, and long story short, she has to walk all the way to her car at Lechmere where she's finally able to charge her phone, which had died from too many pics at the Red Sox game, and get the call from me.

I worried there were more bombs and that she might not make it through the tunnel on 93, but she insisted the Ts were running again and it's all over. Finally we both ended up at home in Providence where I hugged her at my normal pressure level, since I always hug at the highest amount. After watching all the craziness on TV, extra-surreal to Kim knowing she was right there, I went to G-Maps to see just how close she was. 500 feet. Think about it. If they'd decided to keep walking instead of turning right at the Pru, they'd have walked right into that second explosion. She kept saying how happy everyone was right up until that moment. The Sox had won and everyone was out, watching the runners and basically partying in the roped-off streets, and then Boom. Stupid terrorists.

The Giants and Royals have come up with slogans since I last checked. I have added them to the list. Click there to read them.

Holy crap! I was about to publish this, then I realized I didn't re-check the Orioles. Figuring they're pretty set in their Birdland ways, though I did suggest a change when I wrote the slogan post, I clicked over, not expecting much. The first thing to load was a black O's script. "That's odd," I thought, "I wonder if this means changes are..." and there it was! A new slogan! Goodbye Birdland! And the new slogan is...

Together We Play!

Doing further searching, I see they put up a YouTube video about this on April 7th. I guess I'm seeing a trend here. Just like every other company in the world, they seem to think that making YOU involved is the most important thing. Eh, who am I kidding, they've always done that. It's just so much more annoying now with the social and the bullshit and the more bullshit. Duct tape: Hey, we're Duct Tape! Tell us and all your friends every time YOU use Duct Tape! Anyway, that's all I got. I've now added the O's thing to the list along with the other two.

The Red Sox Chicagoed the Rays today, 5-0, as HH took a no-hitter into the eighth. So key to come back with two wins (both on national TV) after the two tough losses to the O's. So we're 7-4, still alone in first place. We've also won this rain-shortened series with the Rays, with tomorrow's game at 11 a.m., Dempster against whoever.

Remember that play where the grounder hit off Drew and rolled toward second base, and Pedroia picked it up and threw the guy out at first? Maybe it's just me, but I think Pedroia had a shot at the lead runner, by getting to the bag and then stretching out and picking up the rolling ball all in one motion. I'm not saying he did the wrong thing, since he got an out and saved the no-hitter, but, come on, make it fun! He could have even flopped down, landing with his glove right on the ball, his body fully stretched out, toe on the bag. Oh well.

What very, very, very, very, very important word is missing from the headline of this article?

Pretty sweet ending to today's game. Why'd that guy throw to first? I mean I know he didn't have a chance at getting the out at the plate, but what's throwing to first gonna do? Is there a chance he actually didn't know how many outs there were? Did anyone ask him? Can you check? Thanks.

Gotta love our Runs Allowed, 32, lowest in the A.L. Don't gotta love Hanrahan, who bed-shat yet again today. Fortunately Ue came to the rescue. Hopefully Hammer isn't bankrupt and finds his way again. Please Hammer, start hurting them.

Lester's ERA is 1.42.

After our game, I had the Yanks on in the car, and Sterling was going on and on about how great the Yanks are and how they're gonna be better than a lot of people thought and that he's serious about that and how Vernon Wells can still be a great hitter...and then he goes, "we've played 6, it's Baltimore 5, and the Yankees 3." All that and they weren't even winning the game! The Gods would go on to lose, falling a game behind us.

Speaking of delusions, there was a hilarious call to Franc. on the FAN a few days ago. Yankee fan calls up and says how the team is gonna be so fun and scrappy this year, with players like Wells and Hafner. Mike pointed out that this year's team has the highest payroll in the history of baseball, and that there's nothing scrappy about homer-or-nothing guys Vernon Wells and Travis Hafner.