Just tried the spring training ticket sale--got through at 10:02, didn't try very hard either. One new thing--instead of the Tessie piano to let you know you've gotten out of the waiting room, it's a crack-of-bat-and-fans-cheering sound.

Next week's the real deal. For Sox Pax anyway. And April/May/maybeSept. Don't know if you saw this--it's the schedule by tiers.

Mike Napoli has decided to stay in Boston, "leaving money on the table" according to Gordon Edes. Which means that age-old opinion--that literally no person would ever accept less money to do anything ever--continues to be proven false.

Carlos Beltran, the great postseason player, has decided to skip October in 2014 by signing with the Yankees. Did anyone tell the Yanks that this man can't pitch? I saw a Fox Sports article that began, "The Yankees will be fine without Cano and Granderson." This implies they were fine with them, and implies their offense has improved. Pinstriped glasses, I guess.

Funny, after the Cano thing, I left the FAN with Benigno saying "don't talk about Granderson possibly going to the Mets" because he didn't want to be teased only to be disappointed. I came inside, blogged about Cano, then got back in the car 15 minutes later to hear Francesa saying how the Mets did the right thing. It had already happened: The Mets got the Grandy Adult Male Human. Another thing to make Yankee fans cringe. Perfect.

Now back to the wild world of Mike Francesa:

He seems to be living in a world where Cano is laughingly better than Pedroia*, Ellsbury is injury prone**, and Gardner is as good as Ellsbury. Steaming dump Evan Roberts is the same way about the first two, but I'm pretty sure even he knows Gardner is the baseball equivalent of himself: one who is not nearly as good as his colleagues.

Footnotes to come in a later post! Or make your own!

Was just in the car, had the FAN on, and heard the glorious news: Cano to sign with Mariners. They even brought in Heyman who confirmed it. Got home, fired up the ol' computing machine, and there's nothing about it, as all the news sources are still showing the earlier news about the Mariner talks hitting a snag.

Now I see over on Mariners.com, we have this. So I guess it's official. Rich, genius Yankees unable to sign the top free agent who they already had. The only thing better than this will be if Robbie decides to hustle next year!

Sox get righty reliever Edward Mujica.

You know where I always look: walks and Ks. Remember how Koji had 100+ Ks and fewer than 10 walks last year? Mujica had a similar ratio. And he was a solid closer until he fell apart in September. Should be good. I think.

So much to say about the soulless dick, but I'll get to that later. Meanwhile, I never got to say a proper goodbye to Salty. We had so much fun with this guy, and he "grew up" with us in a parallel fashion to the way my mom's dog who bears his name has. It's too bad he had such a lousy time in the playoffs. But fans will remember the big role he played in the 2013 championship.

I went back and found the first picture I took of him in a Red Sox uniform, from September 19th, 2010:

That's Salty alongside Tim Wakefield.

He also snuck into this shot from four days later (find him!):


And ten days later, on Mike Lowell day, he suddenly was looking more like the Salty we know and love today:


The next year, he was decked out in all-white for a throwback game against the Cubs:


July 14th, 2011, was the day my mom got her Saltalamacchia. It was also the day I took this pic of human Salty throwing with Jason Varitek:


Salty in the rain on Tim Wakefield Day, May 15th, 2012.


On Mothers' Day, 2012, we saw a Salty Dong:

And here he is on the following Mothers' Day, 2013:


Back to June of '12, here's a nice close-up of the man they rarely call Jarrod on deck:


Paying tribute to Johnny Pesky in the 2012 home finale:


With Larry David (in crowd, second from left, front row) in September '12:


And here he his, with full beard and full Kevin DuBrow hair, the way I'll always remember him, after a playoff win on our way to a world title:


Best of luck, Salty! You'll be proverbially missed.

"Er war superstar
Er war populär
Er war so exaltiert
Because er hatte flair"

[Finally, who could forget this?]

I hope Ellsbury does puts one of those full-page thank-yous in the paper. My ass isn't going to wipe itself.

[Update 2:53 p.m.: Okay, I think the link I clicked in that e-mail was for the RSN-specific registration, which still doesn't work. But I got another e-mail in a different inbox, and it's for the regular registration. So here's that working link. Good luck but remember, you don't have to be a winner to buy tickets that day.]

Saturday, December 14th will be Xmas at Fenway. Got the e-mail a few hours ago. When I tried to register, though, it said "invalid campaign." (Here's the link, keep trying it I guess.)

They also say they'll reveal the Sox Pax one day at a time. One is already up, the Coast to Coast Pack. Does this mean I have to critique the names one day at a time, or should I just do it once all 12 have been revealed?

Get ready to copy and paste, people. Looks like the Red Sox have signed catcher A.J. Pierzynski.

It's funny, because I remember during our WS victory celebration, AJ was one of the studio guys, and he said something about "next year," implying whatever team he's on will be ready to dethrone the champs. Now, supposedly, he'll be trying to lead us to a repeat.

Recently I sur-effin'-mised that Xmas at Fenway would be December 14th. And while the team still hasn't announced it yet (unless they did it on fucking Pinterest or some shit), commenter/-or Peter Lepak gets the credit for doing some sleuthing and finding out that some choir has announced that they'll be quiring at X@F...on December 14th.

So I guess that makes it all but official.

And since Peter was nice enough to let me know about this, I'll be kind enough to let him know that the Red Sox logo that he routinely uses on the site he writes for, Red Sox Life, was altered in 2008.

This:


No longer exists, as it has become this:


Thank you for your time.

[For part 1, click here.]
Here was my view, as Victorino bats in the first. Now I'm not sure if my fan experience was shaped by the fact that it was a World Series game, or that I was sitting in the front row at the convergence of several aisles with major walkway traffic crossing in front of me, or if it was a combination of both. I made this handy map so you see what I mean:

I was in the front-right corner of section 38, as shown by the red dot. The yellow-shaded areas represent all the people, minimum, who had to walk directly in front of me to leave and return to their seats with the arrows showing their path. And they did this all game long, but since nobody wanted to miss anything, everybody would wait till the inning breaks. Which means it's probably worse for a regular game in that spot, in terms of having a steady game-long stream of blockers. But then again, the inning breaks were way more concentrated with people, and of course it would spill into the innings since it seemed like all of section 39 left and came back after every inning. What I'm trying to say was, it was rough. But I wasn't about to complain about being at a World Series game. Except for the two guys behind me, who did that thing all game long where they think the whole section came to hear them blurt out completely unfunny and/or un-reference-able things all night. (Photo for map courtesy of this weird site which I've used for years whenever I need a picture of the bleachers that blows up HUGE to find an exact seat or something.)

Here's Beltran in right. He would figure into this game, but only kinda sorta.

This is after that play at second where they initially made a bad call. It was so obvious, even from where I sat. We all chanted "safe, safe, safe" until the umps changed their minds and got it right. Huge play in Red Sox history, as it turns out.

Because Mike Napoli proceded to hit a three-run double, which I managed to somewhat film:



That gave us a 3-0 first-inning lead and it looked like another breezy World Series. Note the one guy, amid the chaos, keeping score:


In the second, Papi hit what would have been a grand slam, but Beltran, unlike Myers and HUnter before him, made a play in right, going over the fence to rob Ortiz, as you can see here:



A true rob, right in front of me. But a run came home on the sac fly, and it was 5-0. And you could turn your sets off there, folks. Beltran would later leave the game after hitting that wall so hard on the great catch.

Up and to my left, a roof booth for Fox.

Later in the game, Papi gets his dong. 7-0 Boston.

Lester came up big for us that night. Here he tips his cap to the richer folks. According to Wikipedia, as of this writing, he pitched "7.6666666666667 !72⁄3 scoreless innings."

With the game a blowout, and it being a pretty cold night (though the body heat helped a lot, just like in Times Square on New Year's Eve), there were some people who filed out, meaning I had room to join my mom and Charlie over toward straightaway center in the front row. Above is the new view.

Jacoby right in front of us.

8-1 was the final. I had wanted to give a prediction going into that game, but I couldn't decide between 8-0 and 8-2. That's true! Witnesses: none.

Red Sox celebrate, lead series 1-0.

Too close to this board to get it all in the frame. But I got the key word.

Plesac and Reynolds emerge.

MLB Network brings their triangle through the Triangle. Which I misspelled 50% of the time when naming the file.

WS logo on other board.

And the ticket one more time, with the CF warning track below. Sox would go on to win in 6, no prob limo.

So after a tough year getting-my-ass-to-Fenway-wise, I ended up going to three playoff games, one in each round, each a classic win. Myers, Hunter, and would-have-been-Beltran had that ball bounced off his head and into the pen or something.

Tickets on sale now for Red Sox games in New York, Pittsburgh, and Anaheim. For that early-season Yanks series you have to have MasterCard. The Pirates series is mid-week in September--that's a really nice park. And we're in LA on an August weekend.

As for Fenway tickets, I'm still waiting on Xmas at Fenway news. I gotta figure they do a release on Monday about it. And I also haven't heard anything about renewing my 10-game plan. I feel like last year the early-bird pricing deadline was around December 1st. I got the e-mail about it on November 5th, 2012. Maybe since the season went a month longer, they're running a month behind or something.

There is a new STh section on the web site, but it asks you for an activation code which nobody has sent me yet. So maybe that'll be a new thing.