The reason I hate Johnny Manziel is that he's a big Jeter fan and even wears #2 (like any scat-muncher would) because of the calm-eyed god. Yet he shows up in Red Sox camp wearing a #2 Red Sox jersey! I understand there's some kind of marketing connection there, but still, what sense does it make to wear your idol's jersey number on said idol's rival team's jersey? What a phony. I hate him the same and/or more now.

Also, you'd think the media would mention his well-known Jeter idolizing when reporting the guy wearing a Red Sox jersey.

Hello and welcome again. Testing, testing...9...4...1...8...27...6...14...

Sox-Twins today, then Saturday we're finally on TV, at 8 pm on MLB Network, taped from 1:05 that afternoon. Then Sunday we're on live on NESN and MLBN, 1:05 against the Orioles.

Did you see where the new Boston mayor might put an end to the Red Sox' reign over their player parking situation outside Fenway Park?

It's funny how the reason they're able to use Van Ness Street is because Tom Yawkey worked out a deal 70 years ago...but there's no record of it! The way it is now, Van Ness is closed to cars before and during games, with pedestrian use limited to just the far sidewalk in that area. Players come in with their gigantic vehicles, and some guy fits them into a postage-stamp-sized area like puzzle pieces, with even more left out on the sidewalk along the street. In fact, if you're making your first trip to Fenway this year, I recommend getting there super early and watching this process. (You'll really be watching it peripherally, as your main concern will be seeing your favorite players in their street clothes.) Just look for the small crowd with cameras and pens by Gate D.

Of course, with this new mayor, you may have missed your chance. But I'm guessing the Red Sox write them a big fat check and keep things just the way they've always been. Then again, if it's really a fire hazard (it looks like a fire hazard) they may be forced to come up with a new plan.

In my review of a book published in 1980 about Fenway Park, there is mention of the car-parking puzzle. I have some pics relating to it. Click here. (Click there even if you don't care about the parking, because it's a great book full of awesome stuff.)

The first Hit By Batted Ball of the spring! Lavarnway hit on the bases by a JBJ line drive... Sox beat BC and Northeastern, 5-2 and 5-2.

Guy-from-town-right-next-to-my-hometown Matt Barnes supposedly pitched well for Boston.

Yanks lose to Pirates for second straight day. I'll take 'em whenever I can get 'em. Top story of the game, and in all of baseball on ESPN.com: Jeter goes 0 for 2.

I have this childhood memory. It's night time. My parents are downstairs in the family room watching the Miss America pageant. I'm in the living room with the radio, probably in that spot after going around the house trying to get the best reception from WTIC-1080. I'm giving them updates on the Red Sox game. Dwight Evans hits a home run, and Joe Castiglione (maybe Ken Coleman--my all-time favorite voice--but in my head I hear Joe) calls it: "and it's out to sea!" I let my parents know about the dong complete with description. If I had to guess the opponent, I'd say it was the Brewers.

Tonight (unless I've done this before and blogged about it, but I don't think so) it hits me that I can look up the Miss America pageant dates, and then cross-check the Red Sox games played on those dates, and whichever one has a Dewey dong is my game.

I figure it was '83 at the earliest (Castiglione's first year), and by '89 I would have been starting high school so that's way too late. I start with '83 and then move to '84. No Evans blasts, and they're both Saturday afternoon games anyway. Then I get to '85. September 14th, the day of that year's pageant. A night game, in Milwaukee. I immediately see that Evans led off and went 2 for 6 with 2 runs and 2 ribbies. Looks like dong city to me. Sure enough, there it is, a two-run homer in the 11th inning, the difference in a 10-8 win. I also believe Castig would have had that call, as I think the play-by-play duties went Coleman 1-4, Castig 5-7, Coleman 8-9 and maybe even 10, then back to Joe....

So that has to be my game, but I have to verify the times. Going to the Milwaukee Journal, I see Miss America aired that night at 9 central. The Sox-Brewers game (not on TV in Milwaukee) started at 7:30. The game went 3 hours and 19 minutes, meaning the dong was hit around 10:30. So that's 11:30 eastern, an hour and a half into the two-hour Miss America broadcast.

It makes sense. It was a Saturday night, I'd just started fifth grade, and though I still had a "bedtime" at that age, it was clearly a "special" night, with mom and dad watching a yearly event that started late, so I was left to screw around upstairs, glued to an extra-inning game with the Sox 20 games out of first. I also see that both Golden Girls and 227 had their series premieres that night, and I absolutely would have watched those. I remember the build-up to 227 that summer, with a rap song made just for the commercial: "227 is a comedy, about Marla Gibbs and her family...."

So the night of September 14th, 1985, probably went something like this:

8:00-10:00: Jere watches Gimme A Break, Facts of Life, Golden Girls, and 227.
10:00: Mom and dad take over the downstairs TV, Jere goes to the radio for some wild and wooly Red Sox-Brewers action.
11:30: Evans goes "out to sea" in the top of the 11th. Jere updates parents who are watching Miss America. Parents most likely tell Jere to get to bed at that point, Jere surely listens to the bottom of the 11th before turning in. (Note: Billy Jo Robidoux played in this game as a Brewer, and as I type this, our new-ish kitten, Billy Jo Strummer Robidoux, is sleeping on my lap. It was also the debut game for Bill Wegman, who shares a name with the dog photographer.)

Ladies and gentlemen, here she is, Miss America 1985 (crowned on 9/14/85), Miss Mississippi, Susan Akin:

What a catch today by ol' pal Josh Reddick. It's my favorite kind, the kind where you climb a wall to rob a dong. In his case, he did the climbing without even looking at the ball. Then he finds it, throws the glove up, and there's your catch of all Februaries. Rumor has it he robbed the same hitter of another homer in the same game.



A note on the video quality: So I guess this is like super-duper HD-rific style or whatever. And it's really clear and un-Internetty, but there's something off about it. To me it has a "this is a fake video because baseball doesn't look like that" look. But maybe I just need to get used to it. ? I know I have one reader who is probably pretty pissed about this too. Maybe I shouldn't get him started....

And yeah, post title done on purpose.

Of course, their clean-up a hitter was a dude named Canzler.

The Red Sox will start actual games on Thursday (exclamation point) with the traditional college doubleheader.

The man behind some of my all-time favorite movies has died at 69. In all the talk of a possible Ghostbusters 3 in recent years, I don't remember hearing that he was sick. I'm reading now that he even lost the ability to walk and had to re-learn a few years ago.

I was able to meet Mr. Ramis once in 2004, and while he made my day by meeting me, I made his day when I asked him to sign my National Lampoon Gold Turkey album. You should have seen the look on his face when he saw that record! It was made in '75, the year I was born, so he hadn't seen that bit of his own past in quite some time.



Looking back at old blog entries, I see that I actually saw him in person twice that year. From 8/20/2004:

Chan and I were driving back from the city, where I lived the dream of seeing Ghostbusters outside in Washington Square Park at dusk. It's one of my all time favorites, and Harold Ramis was there to introduce the movie. I guess the guy who puts on these events is friends with Ramis, and that's how he gets him to come. Ramis rules. GB rules. F the yanks.

And from the month before, I made mention of the autograph, though I terribly didn't get into the Gold Turkey story:

I went to New York Wednesday to see a screening of Groundhog Day, with special guest, Harold Ramis, whose autograph I got.

Note: This was the year before I moved TO New York City. Which I later left. So this was the pre-NYC me "going to New York." From Danbury.

The new slogans are trickling in! I'll keep this post as the current list through 2014 and will notify you whenever a new one is added. Slogans that are new for this year (five as of this writing) are in bold and get new commentary. For teams without a new slogan, refer back to last year's list for my commentary on the old one.)

American League:

Baltimore: "Together We Play." (See last year.)

Boston: No slogan. But that '13 Champs logo is looking as good as ever. (Note: I instinctively went to write "California" as the AL's third team alphabetically. Excuse me while I remove the home run balls from the screen in left.)

Chicago: "Passion. Pride. Tradition." This was their "side of website" slogan two years ago. Now the hashtaggy shittiness has been removed from the top with this taking its place. If I haven't said it before, this slogan just seems like a hybrid of every one the Yankees have ever used.

Cleveland: No slogan. (I don't think they've had one since "Are you in the Tribe?" which left after 2011.)

Detroit: "Who's Your Tiger?" (See last year.)

Kansas City: "Be Royal." Well, I can't say that I hate it. Pretty basic, but not offensive. How should I be royal, though? Will fans be wearing crowns to the game? What if the team's in last place?

Houston: "It's a Whole New Ballgame." (See last year.)

Los Angeles: "Angels Baseball." (I'd say see last year but I never really talked about this non-slogan. And I won't start now.)

Minnesota: "This is Twins Territory." (See last year--this one's been going in some form since at least 2008 when I first started doing these posts.)

New York: "Our History. Your Tradition." Has the usual transparent pomposity, but let's delve into this fan-team separation strategy. So the history belongs to them. We didn't do shit there. But the tradition is somehow ours and, presumably, not theirs. How do you figure? Isn't "Yankee tradition" something that would belong to the team itself? They want to claim the history as having nothing to do with the people who witnessed it, yet they're happy to say that the tradition is someone else's. While all the other teams seem to be including their fans, making them feel like part of the team, the Yankees are saying, "Call it whatever the hell you want but we're over here doing the actual stuff, and you're over there giving us lots of your money (as you've always done!)." There has to be a deeper meaning to this that I'm missing. Anybody?

Oakland: "Green Collar Baseball." (See last year.)

Seattle: "The Stars are Aligned." Oooooh! Cool! The Mariner marketing folks are clearly back at work after a recent hiatus! This one is a sentence, one that's telling you how it is. It doesn't bother with any blatant baseball puns, but it's letting you know to expect good things. It has already been decided, Seattle and surrounding vicinity. I almost feel like they thought really hard about going with "The Stars are Aligned, Motherfuckers," but finally decided America just wasn't ready for that yet. But your kids are gonna love it. The "stars" also seem to refer to King Felix and Cano, as they're pictured below the slogan. But the team logo, the compass rose, kind of looks like a star too. (I also just noticed that when it appears between Seattle and Mariners, as on the top of their site, the west-pointing arm of the compass looks like a nod to the old Mariners trident, facing "the past" aka "left." Coincidence?) (Also note that last year's slogan, "True to the Blue," remains in hashtag form.)

Tampa Bay: No slogan.

Texas: No slogan. (But I just noticed they, like many, use an "area" in some capacity, calling their social media fan-type club "Rangers Republic."

Toronto: No slogan.


National League:

Atlanta: "Always Brave." (See last year.) [3/6/2014: Slogan is gone, maybe a new one is in the making....]

Arizona: No slogan.

Chicago: "Committed." (See last year.)

Cincinnati: "This is Reds Country." See last year.

Colorado: No slogan.

Los Angeles: "Live. Breathe. Blue." Wow, the Dodgers can't sit still, always giving us something new and usually blue. Almost like they're desperately trying to find that one that sticks. This one's a little odd, because while they seem to be implying that you should "live and breathe" Dodger baseball, aka "Blue," it leaves out some key words. And you can't go "Verb. Verb. Noun." I'm thinking, "Okay, they want me to live. Check. They want me to breathe. Doin' it. They want me to...blue?" It reminds me of Beavis and Butt-Head going "testes, testes, one, two...three?" Or it feels like "I lived, I breathed, I blew." Back to the drawing board, Dodgers.

Miami: No slogan.

Milwaukee: No slogan.

New York: No slogan. (Last year's is gone and they've got a new design over there, maybe something new is in the works.)

Philadelphia: No slogan. (What's up with these guys? Lately they've had a championship banner of some kind up there so maybe that's why they stay slogan-free. I don't think there's been one since I started this in '08, but I feel like they used to have some "red"-related slogan. Like "red means go" or something. Anyone remember it?)

Pittsburgh: "Pride. Passion. Pittsburgh Pirates." (See last year.)

San Diego: No slogan.

San Francisco: "All Together. Stronger Together." And on the side: "Giant Together." This is their third (fourth, and fifth) version of a "together" theme in the last few years. They're firmly in the "together with the fans" camp, unlike the Yanks with their "we use chemical weapons against our own people" stance. The "Giant Together" is okay I guess, but what's with this "All" and "Stronger" thing? Couldn't hey just go with "All" and "Strong"? Or are they saying the team's better with the fans on board? I don't know, there's just too much going on here. I just know I'm part of the team, I'll ignore the specifics.

St. Louis: No slogan.

Washington: No slogan.


For other past years' slogans, just search "slogan" at the top of this blog and they all will come up.

Also note: I only include slogans that are on the banner/sidebar of teams' official web sites. If you know any that a team has, like on their TV or radio ads or billboards or wherever, feel free to put them in the comments section.