This was the scene at Doubleday Field in Cooperstown, New York today:

Cold, too. So the annual Hall of Fame Classic was not played. But my dad and I got to use our tickets to go to the museum. A few players who were supposed to be in the game answered some questions. As you know, I've become a huge fan of Dmitri Young after seeing him play the last two years, looking like a completely different man than the one we knew a few years ago. Here he is talking about losing all that weight:



Got to listen to the Red Sox on the way home. Nice comeback win. The other game we listened to after that, I shall not speak of.

Sox beat Cleveland 8-1 at wet Fenway. Lackey (Big Lack as Castig calls him) was what he isn't, or wasn't what he is, tonight, going 7 strong and exhibiting an almost Pedro-esque recoil at the end of his delivery. Or maybe he always does that but it just looks better when he's actually pitching well.

We beat my beloved old pal Burn-Bat Masterson. Carp's 3-run dong gave us an early lead. The Carp-athian had been Hit-tite-less in his previous 21 at bats. The game was still close at stretch time*, but a two-run single by Ellsbury turned 4-1 into 6-1, and you could turn your sets off there, folks. Pedroia also singled in two later in the frame. On the Ellsbury single, Swisher got a glove on the ball, ensuring that two runs would score. Don/Remy didn't mention that for some reason.

The Yanks won, but they probably lost Granderson again with a broken finger. So we're still 1 game back. No team in the A.L. has a better record over its/their last ten games than the Red Sox.


*I think I've mentioned this before, but no one ever thinks to stand at the 7th-inning stretch until the PA person says to. Every game I go to, the top of the 7th ends, I stand up, and wait as every single person in my section sits there. Then they get the memo, and the "feels like an asshole" baton is passed from me to them.

A misleading picture on the front page of redsox.com:

It was 4-3 Cleveland when I left to see Hangover 3. Got home (forgot to record game), saw we lost 12-3! What the F? Oh well, at least I only missed bad stuff. We dropped to 1 game back of the idle Yanks. And Hangover 3 was good. I went in knowing you can't top 2, but they still did a good job of coming close.

This was another game that I count as a close-type impressive win, though the scoreboard shows a 4-run win. Even though the last two losses were just the type you deal with since you're doing well overall, it's still good to avoid the sweep. We went 6-3 on the road trip and we're back to within a half game of first, since the Yanx lost.

Play of the game: Uehara, whacking an unsuspecting Victorino in the shoulder with a high five.

Honorable mention: Napoli cat-kissing Beyeler, which I believe is how you high-five someone when their hands are full.

Now Tito's Tribe comes in for four. They're in their second rain delay right now, so maybe they'll be a little effed up tomorrow night. Their record is right around where ours is.

Useless stat of the day: Only the Red Sox, Cardinals, and A's haven't yet played an interleague series in 2013.

Actually, here's an even more useless one: The other day, the Red Sox had a comeback win, and the media made a big deal of it being their first win in 13 tries this season when trailing after 8 innings. As if this were the equivalent of going 1-12 in your first 13 games period! If you're behind after 8, you're gonna lose almost every time. Even if you're down by only a run every time, you're still gonna lose most of those games. The all-time worst winning percentage by a team in games when winning after 8 was still above .800. It was absolutely no big deal that the Red Sox lost their first 12 when losing after 8. Especially considering sometimes they were down by 6 or 7 runs. Taking until your 13th try to win one of those is just life going by at the pace it's supposed to go by. For comparison, the world champion Cardinals last year went 4-58 in games when they trailed after 8. That's an .065 winning percentage. The Red Sox, after that first win, with their 1-12 record, had an .077 winning percentage! So instead of the headline being "Red Sox end totally shitty winless streak," it could have been "comeback kids now have better record than last year's world champions when trailing after 8." In fact, it took me a while but I found a late-season stat from last year saying the winning percentage for the entire American League when down after 8 was .053! So maybe the other day, assuming the percentage is near that level now, these people should have been saying "Red Sox dominating league in games where they trail after 8."

More comparison: The Phillies took 43 tries last year to get a win when losing after 8. The Yanks took 59. At least let it get to this level before you mention it. But if you must mention it, give the humans a reference point!

The stat is also pretty dumb in itself. Why not make it "trailing going into last at bat"? If you're tied after 8 and give up 6 in the top of the ninth and lose, that doesn't make you "worse" at coming back than if you're down 1 after 8 and nobody scores in the ninth. Yet only the second example counts in the stat as it is.

I told you it was a big day on the Jere calendar. Did you figure it out? (Don't answer, I can't actually hear you.) It's the unveiling of the Bryant Park NYC summer film festival lineup!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

And of course, I will live-blog myself reacting to seeing each title. (It would also be good if I actually went this year. I reeeeally plan on it this year. I think I've missed the last two seasons!) Here we go:

June 17: Tootsie! Woohoo! I saw this in the theater in 1982 at the young age of 6-ish. I've been a fan ever since. D-Hoff is great, but everybody forgets Bill Murray was in this movie. His most underrated role, I think. This is right around the corner, though. Hmmm...would be cool to see the FIRST one of the season, with the bonus of it being a movie I love. I'll get back to you.

June 24: Invasion of the Body Snatchers. Wow! Two solid choices to start out. And I'm sensing less of a hoity-toity and more of a "let's just have some fun" vibe so far. We'll see if it continues. Whoa (not "woah"), I just realized this is the 1956 one. Pretty sure I've only seen the '78 remake with Hollis Hurlbut. So that would be cool to see the original.

July 1: Frenzy. Nice, Hitchcock, and a Hitchcock film I've never seen. Can't go wrong there.

July 8: Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory. NICE! The real one, not the recent remake. Wow, Bryant Park is 4 for 4 so far. All of these are options! Could it stay this good? Let's find out.... At this rate we might as well pencil in Ghostbusters....

July 15: Hush...Hush, Sweet Charlotte. Uh...I don't know this one. An old Bette Davis flick. I'll have to do some research.

July 22: The African Queen. My mom is constantly talking about this movie. I think. Actually I think she got me to see it finally. Would be good to see again. Wait, wasn't the actual boat in Branford or something? Or was that Amistad? Or was Key West involved somehow? My mom needs to answer these questions. And I'm taking her to Sox-Yanks that weekend in Boston, maybe we could make it a multi-city trip and see this movie.

July 29: A Foreign Affair. Okay, can't win 'em all. No problem, no problem. (My profuse apologies to huge fans of this movie. I know nothing about it. Feel free to convince me. Actually, don't, because I've got plans that Monday. Really, really big plans. More on that later. Maybe.)

August 5: Norma Rae. Based on the description, I guess this was the movie that led to Sally Field saying "you like me!" But that doesn't help me much. Let's move on.

August 12: The Women. Okay, let's wrap this thing up, I'm getting bored. Gimme something good to close on! Can't be many more left!

August 19: E.T. Gotta admit, never was a big fan. I saw it in the theater (I remember my mom and sister crying), and I remember all the hubbub when it came out on VHS, something about a 5-year wait which led me to mistakenly believe that ALL movies took 5 years to make it to "Brown's Video." (The first video store we ever went to. Mill Plain Rd., Danbury. No. not Ultimate Video, that was a little farther down by 7-Eleven, before it moved to Brookfield. They were the ones who sold the tin-foil hats. But they were cool. The daughter, Deb, was nice too. Wow, that seems simultaneously like forever ago and five minutes ago.

And I see that's the last one. So, to recap, VERY strong start, then a Youkilis-ish second half. But I might even go for some E.T. action despite what I said, since it's got the finale thing and the familiarity thing goin' for it. And the near-guaranteed warmth that June 17th doesn't give me. Maybe taking all things into consideration, Wonka on July 8th may be the perfect storm. Yeah, I think so. Think of the crowd cheering as each piece-of-shit kid gets killed!

Overall, fine job, Bryant Park. Honestly, it's all about the experience, not the movie itself. If you've never done it, do it this year. But remember these are Monday nights so you may need to take two days off if you live far away.

Next up, at some point, the release of the Providence outdoor movie lineup...

Why does the A.L. West have to be such an asshat?



Har har. So I searched my own blog for the word "asshat" to see if I have indeed done this already, and it only turned up one post. From 2006. I clicked the comments and saw this from someone called Zebster:

"Great job, Jere. There's four of us that've started a Sox blog and would love to have you check us out and perhaps add us to your
blogroll.
I'm adding yours right now.
Keep the faith!
http://bosox-tavern.blogspot.com"

Hmmm. I have no recollection of this. And terribly I don't think I ever checked it out or added it to my blogroll. Maybe back then comments would come in without a notification e-mail and I missed it. Anyway, I figured chances were good it was one of the millions of blogs that lasted a day or two and then disappeared, but I went to that url and...boom went the proverbial dynamite. "Zebster" and his pals at Bosox Tavern are still blogging today! (They took three or four years off at one point but seem to be back in the swing.)

Zebster is also "A liberal independent" and "A believer in kindness, courtesy, respect and fairness and above all else, truth." Now there's some stuff I can get behind!

I feel really bad, though. This guy commented here, added my blog to his 'roll, asked for a link in return, seemed to be my kinda bloke, and I apparently completely ignored it. Again, I hope I just "missed it," because I wouldn't purposely do that to somebody. So, Zebster, my heartfelt apologies. Seven years later, thanks, and welcome to my blogroll.

(And Matty, no, I didn't go see the Adolescents. I feel like I never saw that comment, either.)

(And, bonus, today is a BIG day on the Jere Calendar. More on that later-ish!)

First, the good news: Yanks lose on a homer in the bottom of the tenth. I caught the dong-followed-by-celebration on MLBN.

The Red Sox didn't get a hit through 6 and a third. NESN, at the end of the game, put up their three storylines of the game, and the top one was "Red Sox Almost No-Hit." That would be like preparing your new year's resolutions on September 14th. Or claiming the 2013 baseball season is "almost" over on August 5th. I could maybe see calling it that if we only ended up with one hit, but this was a game in which we scored a run on four hits. Great job by that pitcher, but he himself would tell you that he didn't even almost pitch a no-hitter tonight.

After Ortiz broke up the so-called near no-hitter, we loaded the bases, but Middlebrooks struck out on a pitch at his eyes that would have been ball four. Drew K'd to end the inning. So we didn't score, but it was only 2-0 as Doubront had a pretty good game himself.

In the eighth it looked like we might pull this one out. With two on and one out, their shortstop made an error, making it 2-1 and putting the tying run at third. But Papi grounded into a DP and there's your inning. I tried to feel better by telling myself that we were already in a better position because of the E, but myself didn't listen. The Honky Hose got the run back after two were out in the bottom half (we were using with the lesser "we're not winning or tied right now" relievers, in a theory used by all that I'll never understand), and we went down uno-due-tre in the pouring rain in the ninth. 3-1 Chicago, finality.

So we remain 1.5 back. O's and Devs are 4 out each. Jays are too far back to pinpoint their distance from the pack. But with an 18-27 record, they're one win away from NESN calling them almost a .500 team!

So I took the fan survey that the Red Sox e-mailed me the link to. And it was quite interesting to say the least-to-near-least. (I recently heard on the radio some stunod talking about "the survey" and how "Chad Finn had it," so, as someone who ignores the Boston sports media, for all I know this is the top story on all the fake-drama sites and shitty call-in shows. If so, I don't know, it's your call what to do from here.)

Here's one page worth of questions, divided into three files. (To the right of each one was the five choices, from "Strongly agree" to strongly disagree."


I took a little psychology in college. So I'm pretty sure some of these answers don't matter. Like, when they ask you if the most important thing about a baseball game is the food, I don't think they're saying, "hmm, let's see if we need to scrap the actual baseball and turn this place into a restaurant." I think they're using that question to weed out the people they rightfully don't give a shit about. The survey is lightly peppered with questions that seem like the stuff they're really trying to figure out if we want or not.

Or maybe I've got it all wrong. Either way, I'm curious about a few topics they bring up. Like the price of tickets changing based on opponent, time of year, etc. Lots of other teams do this. I said "strongly disagree" on these. But, if they meant keeping the prices the same but lowering the April/Astros type games, maybe that would be good. (As opposed to keeping the bad games the same and raising the good ones.)

It was cool that they gave us a chance to rip the media, by strongly disagreeing with things like "I think the media is fair in the way they cover the Red Sox" and "I'm the type of asshole who thinks radio callers know what the fuck they're talking about."

They also seem concerned about their image as owners. Which I'm sure everybody's bashing, but I wouldn't know because I don't follow this crap on the radio as I said.

And they seem worried that we're not seeing enough replays.

Anyway they cover a lot, I think if you've bought tickets this year you should get the e-mail. You can try this link but I'm not sure if anyone's allowed to fill this thing out. When I click it now it tells me I've already completed the survey. So, hopefully it works for you. But be prepared for a half-hour of question-answering.

"Looks like the Orioles aren't gonna have that same 1-run game record they had in 2012." --Tom Caron, after the Orioles lose by 2

O's have lost 6 straight after blowing one at home to the Yanks. It doesn't matter that a couple of old shitheads are hitting well. It's because their pitching has been good that they're in first place. So when the pitching stops being good, AND the old fucks revert to what they really are, the drop-off will begin.

We went down 5-0 early and couldn't quite make it all the way back, so our 5-game win streak is over, and we're 1.5 back.

If you need cheering up, try this show out.

Red Sox beat Twins in rainy Minnesota 5-1. Fine job by Lackey. We're now a half game out of first. The O's got swept by the Rays so they're both 4 out, and the Jays are 10 behind. Monday night we play in Chicago against the White Sox at 8:10. It's Lester against D. Axelrod, who, as any good Jaws fan knows, owes me a favor.

Here's a video I made about that play today where Don and Jerry (and Ortiz) were clueless:



Other N3SN fun:

Middlebrooks hit a rocket dong. You could tell from the sound of ball hitting bat it was a shot. The outfielders almost immediately turned and looked up at the wall. But the cameraman opted to continue to show the fielders, cutting the shot off below the top of the wall. So we missed it when the ball cleared the fence for a dong. These guys need to go to a class or something. Once both fielders looked up, there was so much time to raise the camera.

When Parmelee got hit in the cup by Ciriaco's throw, it was weird that after Don said it hit him, and after we saw the guy writhing in pain on the ground, Jerry sees the replay and says, "you're right, Don, it did hit him." Also odd how they didn't act like Ciriaco's throw was abnormal in any way. They acted like it was slightly off, when it must have slipped out of his hand because it was nowhere near first base. And then on the shot of the runner, which was in slow motion, granted, you could tell he was doing the "head down and jog" since it was a hard-hit, tailor-made DP ball, yet Jerry's comment was "you can see he's going as hard as he can."

On that ball that the ump said hit the Twins batter but clearly didn't: Don noted that it was ball four anyway, so the guy goes to first either way. But the HUGE thing they didn't mention was that the the ump saying it was a hit-by-pitch affected the Twins, because the runner on second therefore wasn't allowed to advance, which he easily would have if it had been called correctly. Don did later say "so it's first and second," with the accent on the "second" (implying "rather than third as it could have been"), but that doesn't help the casual fan, or even the normal fan who was getting a drink or something, or just didn't think of it. The point is, that's something the announcer, or color man, has to bring up. It ended up not costing the Twins in the end though.

During the rain delay, we had to go to Cambridge to meet some friends for dinner. By the time we got there, the three-hour rain delay was still going on. It was 3-1 us in the 7th before, and I didn't find out until hours later that we won 5-1, though I wasn't too worried. Pedroia's dong gave us the insurance. It's worth watching for the way it all went down, and to see how many people are still in the stands after such a long delay. And to hear some kid go, "that was not a home run!" even though it very clearly was.

Last year I had my suspicions that Futures at Fenway would go from a doubleheader to a single game. This year, that happened. The game will be Saturday, July 27th (while the Red Sox are in Baltimore, meaning they lose a chunk of the potential audience). The teams are Portland and Harrisburg (AA affiliate of the Washington Nationals).

It's funny, on that survey I filled out (which I'll have to do a post about because it was weird, wild stuff), they asked if post-game concerts would light a fire under my ass when thinking about purchasing Red Sox tickets. And now for the Futures game, they've replaced the second game with a post-game concert. It's something called Kidz Bop Kids.

And now, predictably, here's my "mistake report" on the Futures page:

Okay, you've got about 10 lines of text here. Gotta score a 100% on this, people. But no. We've got the line "there will be post-game autograph session with Sea Dogs players." There will be session! Ha. And then when they mention Kidz Bop Kids, they spell the second "Kids" with a Z instead of an S. How in the world would I know this is wrong? Because the e-mail I got with the link in it spelled it differently. So I did some research (on a really nice day, mind you) and found it's supposed to be Kidz Bop Kids. ("Kidz Bop" is the "thing" and the Kidz Bop "kids" are the ones performing. It took me a while to figure that out. Anyway, even if you have kids, I recommend not subjecting them to this concert as it sounds horrible.)

I'll give 'em a break* on capitalizing "affiliate" in one spot but not in another. Same with saying "First pitch" but "Gates Open." And choosing to hyphenate only between "one" and "day" in the "one-day only" phrase instead of going with "one-day-only" which would make more sense as the whole phrase is describing "presale." And putting the home team on the top/left.

*But not enough of a break to actually keep it to myself. Maybe I should just get used to this new world. But still, I know these giant companies spend countless hours on this stuff, figuring out what they want to do based on focus groups and all this crap. So it makes it even more mind-boggling to ever see a mistake. They get to that final step, they've gone over every detail, they type up the final copy, everyone agrees on it...and then they just let it go live to millions of people without double-checking it? And then either nobody notices the entire time it's up on the web, or for some reason the thing can't be changed when someone does notice? Why do they go so hard all the way and then boot it on the final, most crucial step?

Was I dreaming or did I just see J Mascis, Kim Gordon, Carrie Brownstein, and Steve Jones on SNL? It's kinda cool that when the current "people in charge of stuff" think "all-stars" they think Dinosaur Jr., Sonic Youth, Sleater-Kinney, and the Sex Pistols. Or maybe Fred Armisen just asked if he could have some friends on and they said Sure.

And here I am thinking that the "young" generation is finally taking over...before realizing that those four bands started in 1984, 1981, 1975, and 1994. It gets late early around here, I guess.

As for the Red Sox game, it went from "sweet, we're gonna blow 'em out" to "they've stranded a lot of runners but we've got the lead" to "we're pulling away, time to turn it off and go do something else knowing we've won" to "oh jesus h. christ how is this a two-run game and how is it still only the fifth???" to "woohoo, we finally actually pulled far enough ahead and it's late enough in the game to feel like it's a definite win" to "we win 12-5 and if you missed it damn you for not having to go through what I did!"

12-5 was your final. Papi hit two dongs. Everybody had at least one hit except Ciriaco. Nava also donged. The play of the game was when Pedroia made an over-the-shoulder catch in short right and whirled and fired home to easily get the tagging runner to end the inning, as Lavarnway was bowled over but hung on to the ball and got right up. This was in a bases loaded, one out situation with us only ahead by 2 in the 6th and things looking bleak. But right after that play we put up four quick runs turning a 7-5 game into an 11-5 game.

So we stay 1 back of New Y., and we're now 2.5 up on Baltim.

Sunday at 2:10 we go for the sweep of Minneso.