A Red Sox Fan From Pinstripe Territory

A Note

2012-01-26T21:17:00.002-05:00

Sad to hear about Robert Hegyes, who played Epstein on Welcome Back, Kotter, dying today at age 60.

Younger readers, if you exist, please watch the old episodes of that show if you can.

Dougie Takes Down Thundering Herd

2012-01-25T23:38:00.001-05:00

Looks like Mirabelli might make more than Varitek this year....

Not Again

2012-01-23T23:24:00.002-05:00

The damn Pats and the damn Giants have to go and make the damn Super Bowl in the same year again. Warning: several strained, rambling posts about it possibly ahead.

Geddy Movin' On Up

2012-01-21T22:08:00.002-05:00

As you know, this is your source for all the latest in Rich Gedman news. He's moved up, from short-season A ball to high A, as he'll be the hitting coach for the Salem Red Sox in 2012. Moving up, but moving out of the area, unfortunately. But hey, it's all part of the plan of seeing Geddy back at Fenway as a coach one day.

Scutaro: gone. He was one of the few September bright spots. But apparently our solution to a shitty end of the season is to let the exact wrong people go. I will continue to assume they've got a plan, though. It's nowhere near April yet.

Happy New Year

2012-01-19T12:54:00.000-05:00

The first Red Sox tickets have arrived!

Gray envelope, as usual.

White envelope inside gray envelope, as usual, with little window on outside containing "receipt" ticket, as usual. And glue from gray envelope sticking to white envelope, as usual. This problem has been going on for years now. You'd think a friend or relative of someone who works there would have gotten tickets through the mail by now, and pointed this out to them.

No pocket schedule included! NOT as usual! (Though I did get the big 2012 magnet schedule during the last homestand last season. It's round this year.)

As they told us, the tickets are more 1912-y than usual. I appreciate the older, bare-bones, mostly-text look, but I don't like how I kind of can't tell the games apart. I'm used to having the opponent's colorful logo on there, so you at least know immediately if you've grabbed tix for the wrong game out of your stash. I also don't like how all the tickets are the same, as opposed to seeing which player or photo you'll get, and trying to "collect them all." But these are not problems that will affect me, so that's good. Unless I bring the wrong ticket to a game since they all look exactly the same.

Speaking of tickets, the "Road Trip" starts tomorrow. They've removed that much-maligned "only allowed to go to your state's specific game" policy, so that's good. It says once you get your voucher you can get four tickets (presumably to any game except the "special" ones). Here's the info--check it to see which former or current Sock will be in your state. It's also been confirmed that 1/28 is the big ticket sale (as I totally told you months ago). The only ones being left out are Yanks and Opening Day (and Monster Seats, etc.), which will be lottery-only as usual.

Wert, Yu've Got Company

2012-01-19T02:12:00.002-05:00

On Valentine's Day, 1819, Christopher Sholes was born in Danville, Pennsylvania. Almost 200 years later, Yu Darvish has signed a contract to play Major League Baseball. And finally Don Wert may have a friend.

Sholes invented what we now know as the universal or QWERTY keyboard for the typewriter he patented (#79,265) in 1868. Between then and now, the only person to play Major League Baseball with a last name that's spelled out on this type of keyboard is Don Wert.

WERT.

Like Sholes, Wert was born in Pennsylvania--in Strasburg, a short drive from Danville. Incredibly, the towns are exactly 79,265 Roman double-paces apart!
And so it was that on May 11th, 1963, Don Wert made his major league debut, becoming the only true keyboard baseballer, and connecting him with Sholes for eternity.

Three years ago, I started looking for possible names that could contend with WERT. Of course, a person with a keyboard-spelled name would have to not only exist, but be a ballplayer, and make it to the majors. After a few failed attempts, I typed YU (with ease, thanks Christopher Sholes!) into the ol' Internet Findin' Machine, and discovered that it was indeed a name, but more importantly the name of an already well-known pitcher in Japan. (I wrote a post about it at the time.) That pitcher was Yu Darvish.

YU.

In the three years since that post, it became more and more apparent that Darvish was headed for the bigs. And now, 49 years after Wert set the standard, Yu is officially a Texas Ranger, and should make his debut a few months from now.

But will Yu join Don in history once he throws his first pitch in the U.S.? Darvish (which came from Darvishsefad) is the family name, but in Japan, that is listed first. Ichiro is not the family name, but Suzuki has it on the back of his jersey. But I think that's because he's known only as Ichiro, like Cher or Jackee. Yu Darvish does have "Darvish" on his back when he plays, but still, Yu is his "last name," albeit not the family name, in Japan. (I went through this in the 2009 post, but now we're mere months from someone having to make the official decision!)
Even if you don't think Yu Darvish belongs in Don Wert's exclusive club, he at least gets into the "first name spelled on keyboard" group, along with Ty Taubenheim and Ty Wigginton. (The only MLB Ty's with the full first name "Ty.")

Also note: the Korean Baseball Organization has had plenty of players with the last name (or is it the first name?) Yu in recent years. It's only a matter of time before MLB is a virtual Yu-fest.

Cheap Bloops Save Lives

2012-01-18T00:38:00.000-05:00

I like to joke about how Yankees fans/announcers occasionally act like the on-field successes of Derek Jeter have an impact on world events.

But every once in a while, someone actually crosses into that territory.

In a piece that mentions Adolf Hitler, Muhammed Ali, Jackie Robinson, and the Civil Rights Movement, Wallace Matthews writes that Dr. Martin Luther King's "I Have a Dream" speech "could well have been" about then-unborn Derek Jeter.

But the most appalling part of the article is when Matthews claims that not even Red Sox or Mets fans can hate Derek Jeter.

I suppose that's why we boo him every single time his name is announced.

This goes along with Michael Kay's theory that "boos on the road are the same as cheers at home." Classic "the Yankees win no matter what" behavior. This is a team that plays their victory song even after they lose, remember. What causes this mentality? Are people just so afraid of failure or disaster or being wrong that they'll come up with any excuse to make it seem like nothing bad ever happens? What kind of a life is that? If you love Derek Jeter a whole lot, no matter hard it is to believe that anyone could not love him, you still have to admit that I don't love him. Go ahead and ignore all the negatives about Jeter and tell us all how great you think he is, but don't speak for the rest of us.

Thanks to Allan Wood for alerting me to another masterpiece from the king of comedy, Wallace Matthews.

Hundred-Year Old Trade Rumors

2012-01-16T00:01:00.001-05:00

Providence Evening Tribune, 1/8/1912:

"Chicago, Jan. 8--A rumor is going the rounds here that Harry Lord, captain of the White Sox, and peerless third baseman of the American League, is to return to his old love this year and once more cavort around the third cushion for the Boston Red Sox.

The consideration is said to be Tris Speaker, the great Boston centre fielder."

Whatwhatwhat? Tris Speaker for who now? Terrible job by the White Sox thinking they could get young budding superstar Tris Speaker for a Lord not worshipped by many.

The Red Sox didn't take the bait. Speaker would go on to lead the league with a .464 on-base percentage for Boston in 1912, leading the team to a World Series title. (He'd end up topping that mark four times after that.) Tris also was part of the 1915 championship team, before being traded* before the 1916 season. After that, he'd put up stellar numbers for 12 and a half more years, and go into the Hall of Fame in 1937. To this day, no major leaguer has more doubles than Speaker. Only four have more hits.

Harry Lord played two more full seasons in the majors, putting up average numbers.

A few weeks after the Lord-Speaker rumor, the Indians offered George Stovall to the White Sox. When Chicago found out Cleveland wanted Harry Lord in return, manager Nixey Callahan laughed and said he wouldn't trade Lord for the whole Cleveland team. (Which shows you how highly he regarded Speaker.)

Left photo: Lord. Right photo: Speaker.

*The Red Sox got Sad Sam Jones for Speaker--he would be a key pitcher on the 1918 championship team.

Play These Games

2012-01-15T13:47:00.001-05:00

You play these things yet?

'12: Year Of Giant Ships Sinking And Red Sox Championships

2012-01-14T12:01:00.003-05:00

Two nights ago I was reading about the Titanic. I was looking at newspapers from when the tragedy happened. I noticed that some initial reports had the boat sinking, but all the passengers safe, rescued or on lifeboats waiting to be picked up. The following day's papers show that those reports were far from correct.

Then the next day, yesterday, I had lunch with a friend I hadn't seen in a while, and we talked all about cruise ship viruses and vacation boating disasters.

Maybe it was the fact that it was now 2012, one hundred years after Titanic met its doom, that I had all this boat-catastrophe on my mind.

Late last night, I saw a story about a cruise ship that ran aground. Only three deaths, but still pretty crazy, as pictures showed the thing listing to the side.

This morning, I learned that it's actually 70 people probably dead, and that ship--wow. Take a look.

4/16/1990

2012-01-14T00:14:00.001-05:00

From a story about Barack Obama in "The Vindicator," 22 years ago:

Resurrecting Green Death

2012-01-12T15:11:00.000-05:00

Fenway Park's left field wall wasn't painted green until 1947. But before it became known as the Green Monster (somewhere around 1960), and after it had already been called simply "the Wall," players gave it another name:

GREEN DEATH

[...] the inviting leftfield wall, which Boston pitchers call, "green death" [...]
--The New York Times, 4/28/1956

[...] Fenway Park, with its Green Death in left field [...]
--Boston Daily Globe, 4/13/1958

[...] the left-field wall, the porch in left, Green Death, or whatever you want to call it [...]
--Boston Globe, 12/24/1967

Pitchers have long called the Fenway wall "the Green Death."
--Sports Illustrated, 7/13/1970

In the July 1965 issue of Baseball Digest, there's a long article about the wall. Joe Falls writes:

Nobody knew it [in 1912] but a monster had been created...a massive monster that would spread a "green death" to all those who would attempt to bring it to its knees.

The article focuses not on the pitchers' fear of the wall, but the hitters' problems with it. Tony C talks about how he won't mess around with swinging for the Monster, saying "no green death for me."

You never know with newspaper accounts--are they using terms people actually say? New York is "known" as "The Big Apple," as Boston is "known" as "Beantown," but you're never gonna hear any locals from either place use those terms. But "green death" has enough examples to show it was used by players, if no one else. I'd put it higher on the list than "the Green Giant" and "the Jolly Green Giant," each of which I found referenced just once. And that Baseball Digest article isn't the only one from the 60s to call it the "big green monster."

A 1961 AP article even said that "THE WALL" is "often referred to as 'the chummy left-field wall'." Which led me to look that up...and I indeed found lots of references to the wall (and the park itself) being "chummy," dating back to the 1930s and extended all the way to 1990. But that's more of an adjective than a nickname.

It should also be noted that one of Narragansett's beers has apparently been known as "green death" for quite some time. I wonder if either the wall or the beer influenced the other.

The Organ (Still) Does Not Lead The Charge

2012-01-12T01:12:00.002-05:00

"There are no electronic waterfall-and-cartoon marvels that light up like a Christmas tree when a native son hits a home run. The very thought would make a Fenway fan shudder. The scoreboard [...] is operated manually by a crew recessed in a sort of forecastle behind the left-field wall. Human hands lift metal numbers and slide them into slots. When a Red Sox rally is on, the organ does not lead the charge. A Fenway fan would be insulted if it did. Fenway Park is emphatically not a fun emporium, a gag palace frantically designed to keep patrons awake. It is a place for knowledgeable fans."

--Sports Illustrated, 9/15/1975 (I was one week old!)

More Proof Halper Was A Fraud

2012-01-11T14:26:00.002-05:00

More from the Prime Minister on that "Mt. Rushmore of uniform fraud," the 1985 Sporting News cover photo.

Sun, Baby, Owl

2012-01-10T13:30:00.001-05:00

Kim and I saw a couple of crazy sunsets recently--Friday and Saturday.

These first few are from a lake near our house in Providence Friday night.

Also, ducks and stuff.

And shortly after that, I spotted a doll in a tree...

On to Saturday...

This was one of those sunsets where you can really see the red rubber ball, and you can kinda look right at it despite what parents/teachers always say. (Though I do have a theory that staring at the sun gives people super powers, but they're trying to prevent us from becoming a world of superpeople as they know we'd just destroy ourselves in a day.)

This shot and the one below it are seconds apart.

It's always fun to watch the sun disappear. I think it took less than a minute from the moment it touched the horizon to the moment it fully disappeared. The "do it again, daddy" commercial is actually pretty accurate. These shots are from Colt State Park in Bristol.

Looking north up the bay you can see the tops of the "Family Guy buildings" of Providence, about 10 miles away. (In front of those: Rhode Island Country Club in Barrington--thanks, Google Maps.)

Then we saw an owl, and I desperately tried to get a picture of it in the dark. (Yes it was dark when I took this. I left the whatever open for whatever seconds, using the car as a tripod.)

This is just a normal shot--you can barely make out the owl. Look for its eye.

From Bristol we stomped over to Warren to eat at an Asian restaurant. The moon was out by then, and I made a Warren Moon joke but Kim didn't get the reference. Also, it was, like, not cold at all on either of these days. We're still waiting for winter in the northeast.

The Annual "It's Gonna Be A Long Offseason" Post

2012-01-08T01:12:00.003-05:00

Was watching Wall Street, and in one of the FDR Drive shots I thought a certain spot looked familiar:

Here's a closer look:

No, it's not "I don't care at all about this," it's that building the funny Mets-related ad I took a picture of a few months ago is now on!

Sec: 36; Row: Fun!; Seat: And Excitement!

2012-01-06T15:39:00.001-05:00

After a year off from the Section 36 scavenger hunt, I think I'll be participating again. Try it. See if you can beat this former champion.

Couldn't Get This Other Thing Done....

2012-01-05T00:14:00.002-05:00

...so here's a picture of Amazing Larry and Danzig waltzing instead:

Putting Spinners On Things

2012-01-04T00:01:00.001-05:00

Two things:

1. I wrote to the Paw Sox today asking if they knew the other team in the Futures Would-Be Doubleheader. They answers promptly and succinctly: "It will be Lowell." Okay, then. I guess I have to believe that, even though Lowell and the Red Sox have yet to mention it, and Lowell is hyping a 38-game season ticket plan which includes a game that day in Lowell. So I guess it's Pawtucket vs. Buffalo, and Lowell vs. Hudson Valley. (If the person who answers the general e-mail for the Paw Sox knows what they're talking about.)

2. On New Year's Eve, we were tuned to a channel that played Cee Lo Green's live rendition of "Imagine," about two minutes before midnight in Times Square. I'm fairly down with CLG and have had that "Fuck You" song stuck in my head for about a year and a half. Compared to today's pop star alternatives, I was glad that he was the one singing that song. I'm not a Beatles guy, but I love what Lennon stood for, and I love the lyrics to "Imagine." (He did things in his personal life I wouldn't do, like doing drugs and cheating on his wife but I'm not talking about that stuff.) As the pop-culture news should have told you by now, though, Cee Lo decided he was going to pull a Ronald Reagan and take someone else's art and alter it to make it mean the exact opposite of what it says. John Lennon imagined no religion. Cee Lo Green imagines ALL religions. Which one need not imagine, because they're already there, necessitating some to imagine them not being there. Man, was I pissed. And just at that happy happy joy joy moment when the ball's a-dropping and The Twilight Zone's a-playing, too.

Instead of writing a profanity-laced tirade to you my readers...I wrote one to some friends. And now this is the level-headed me telling you about it. I know Cee had good intentions here. I know he meant that we should love everybody regardless of faith and I agree with him (though I include "or lack of faith" and I would even if I was religious). And if he wants to write a song that says that, he should go and do it. But this is someone else's song, and whether anybody likes it or not, its writer is talking about how he feels we would all be better off without borders, materialism, war, and, religion. If you have a problem with that, or are somehow confused about the meaning of a very straightforward lyric, you might want to sing a different song!

I'm not saying he shouldn't be allowed to do what he did. I'm saying I'm pissed at him.

I'm not saying we should judge people based on which religion they practice. I'm saying "Imagine" is not about that at all.

The Nod: Celts From Even Higher Than Usual

2012-01-03T02:04:00.000-05:00

For some reason, the Celtics sold their $150 promenade level tickets to this game (and this coming Wednesday's) for 40 bucks. When you click "price range" at Inglorious TicketBasterd, they're listed at the regular price, but find them on the seating map and you'll see they're 31 plus fees....

I think this level is usually for groups. There's one row, and you get padded chairs. (Oddly, they're just a mishmash of office-type chairs, some with armrests, some with wheels in different colors. Eventually my dad and I went to an empty area, picked out our favorite chairs, and put them next to each other. See video above for that view.)

The first thing you see when you get out of the elevator on level nine is this Yaz drawing. Unfortunately, there isn't much stuff like this up there, aside from a row of old Bruins pictures. Mostly it's just blank walls behind you.

View from the corner. The seats are kinda scary, as you're just hanging over the balcony. But that does mean you're closer to the court (albeit a little higher up), especially from the side-court angle.

At mid-court.

We took a walk all the way around the top ring, and came across this organ room. All the music is pumped in now so they don't seem to be using these keyboards.

This other room of craziness.

I figured these three guys were famous since people kept getting pics taken with them. Thanks to the Kid/Play haircut, I was able to figure out later that that one guy is Underwood of the Patriots. There may or may not be other Patriots in this picture.

Did this guy get this from the discounted wrong colors/wrong number bin or am I missing something?

Fans looking on from our special level of awesomeness.

Fans looking...well, whatever.

Bass with the two-handed jam.

The Wizards with a tribute to their old ammunition-advocating uniforms.

Hey, who's that up in the promenade?

It's Fenway Park PA guy Cole Bean! Weird. (I have to assume he was there to give tips to the Celts' PA guy. Or maybe get some tips.)

That's all. The Celtics won but didn't cover.

Close, But No Million

2012-01-01T16:34:00.002-05:00

Remember how I gave the WS contest winners a chance at a million dollars in a state lottery raffle thing? Well, the drawing was last night. The ticket did not win the million dollar prize. But it was very close on one of the 5 $10,000 prizes--within 150 out of 120,000! There's a second chance drawing which I have entered the ticket into. That whole deal will be over by early February, at which point I will post a picture of the ticket to prove you all actually had a chance at a million bucks.

Maybe I'll do a Super Bowl contest or something. Stay tuned.

2012: Futures Altered?

2012-01-01T13:41:00.001-05:00

Here's the latest on my borderline-obsessive speculation about Futures at Fenway 2012:

Red Sox schedule currently doesn't have any notation of the game(s) at all.

Paw Sox schedule still shows them playing at Fenway against Buffalo on August 18th.

Portland is already selling tickets to their home game that day, so they're out.

Greenville is on the road that weekend.

Salem has a home game scheduled that day and this release about their schedule doesn't mention a game at Fenway.

Lowell has a home game scheduled that day, and their season ticket plans imply you'll get 38 home games, and that August 18th game is apparently one of them.

So I don't see any other option for that second game, which lends revived, clear-watered credence to my original theory that they're only having one game this year--the Paw Sox-Bisons one. That's what the Red Sox schedule initially showed, before switching to the cryptic "Red Sox vs. Red Sox," and then removing it entirely.

However, Red Sox, if you're reading this, might I suggest again that you have an OLD-TIMERS game as the second game that day. Future Meets Past at 100-year old Fenway Park in 2012! Do it! (Bill Lee could play in both games!)

Sun Settin' On 'Eleven

2011-12-31T18:00:00.001-05:00

Pic I took of sun setting into Long Island Sound during X-mas in X-nnecticut this year.

Have a fun, safe NYE. Due to a family sickness, Kim and I will be staying in. But if you think I'm gonna complain about getting to watch 48 hours of Twilight Zone episodes, you don't know me at all (or never read this blog around New Year's or July 4th).

20 effin' 12. All our lives we've looked at that Fenway Park 1912 sign, and now that's actually gonna be 100 years old. I also remember saying in 1985 how the impossibly futuristic year of 2000 was actually only 15 years away. But at age 10 I knew that was an eternity. A life-and-a-half. Now we've gone way past that even. AND STILL NO SILVER SUITS.

Inspectah On-Deck: Back In America

2011-12-31T00:47:00.001-05:00

European Vacation (1985) has a great credit-roll, featuring the song "Back in America." To me, it's not about patriotism, it's about '80s Americana. And I love it. I've seen this thing so many times, and finally I thought to figure out the date of the baseball game shown. Not the bird's-eye shot of Yankee Stadium, but the shot of Dave Winfield arguing with the ump right after it. Here's the frame:

The movie came out in July '85. Winfield's first season with the Yanks was 1981. So this picture has to be from between '81 and mid-'85 (more likely '84 would be the latest, and you can eliminate '81, as they wore an armband on the left sleeve that whole season). It's Yankee Stadium, and it's a night game against the Orioles.

The umpire is #24. Al Clark. Later he got a mustache and got fatter, but in the early 80s you can see he had no 'stache and even had sideburns sometimes. (1980) (1984) (says 1990 but is really '81-'82) So that's him.

Clark is the home plate umpire (ball bag on hip, mask in left hand). Obviously the Yanks were batting, and Winfield is pissed at a call. He's got dirt all over him, so he was most likely called out sliding into home, probably to end the inning. He could be arguing a called third strike and has already thrown the helmet away, but it seems like there hasn't even been an attempt to brush the dirt off yet, so I think he was on the bases. (If that's his hand and not a batting glove below that wristband, he definitely was on the bases, but it's hard to tell.)

But let's get to the point. We need an O's-at-Yanks game from '82 to '84 in which Al Clark was the home plate umpire. There were none. But wait! I still checked all the games he umpired at any base for these games. Those would be the June '82 and June '84 series. There's only one game where Winfield is thrown out at home. June 19th, 1982. Twice! One's in the first inning, and the game started at 8:30, so there would still be daylight. This picture is clearly full-on nighttime. So that leaves the 7th inning, when he was thrown out at home, center to third to first to catcher, to end the inning. So this has to be the play. None of his called strikeouts in the Clark-umped games would have been in darkness.

Now about that thing where I said Clark never umped home plate in any of these games. Yes, the June 19th, 1982 game--which I believe is the correct one--shows him at first, with Jim Evans at the plate, Ted Hendry at second, and Jim McKean at third. But look at the next day's game. Same crew, of course, except for Evans; the second base umpire is listed as "none." Now I don't know what happened to Jim Evans. But I do know that it's possible that the reason he wasn't able to ump on June 20th came about during the June 19th game. Took a foul ball off the skull or something, left the game, and also sat out the next day. So Clark moved behind the plate in the 19th game, and they finished that one with three umps. That would explain why Clark didn't get the message that Mr. Steinbrenner would like all Yankees called safe at the plate.

I can't think of any other way to explain this, since Al Clark is never shown as having umped behind the plate in any Yanks-O's Bronx games between '82 and '84. Or '85 anytime before the movie's release date. The only other team with a white-paneled hat was the Jays, but that uni would be baby blue and, come on, it's pretty clearly the O's, right? Benny Ayala back there I think. I'm still trying to figure out if that's a Yankee coach running out or what. Seems too fat to be a player, but it could be one of them already taking the field for the next inning, unless the coach is going out to argue with a different ump--"you only got three umps out here, I want a second opinion!" The manager was Stick Michael and he doesn't look very stickish.

As for using newspaper reports to confirm, I got nothin'. The game went 16 innings so it was hardly reported at all. Even the papers that had the brief story didn't even have a box score. I read nothing about Evans missing games, or getting injured and leaving a game, or about Winfield arguing with any umpire. So we're stuck with this for now. Nettles singles to center, Winfield tries to go first to third, throw is late, but they throw over to first behind Nettles, who gets back, and Winfield bolts for home, with umpires scurrying everywhere. Ayala guns down Winfield, who slides head-first into home and is tagged by Dempsey, at which point Dave gets up in Clark's face, as Ayala starts heading in, and a fat Yankee coach goes for a mid-inning jog, as blonde Ted Hendry looks on. Seventh inning, June 19th, 1982.

"It's Beautiful"

2011-12-30T10:30:00.001-05:00

I think it's a great thing Mets knuckleballer R.A. Dickey is doing. He'll be updating his progress climbing Kilimanjaro on the New York Times Bats blog. His post from Thursday is here. (And here's his introductory entry from early this month.) He's doing it to raise awareness about human trafficking. The goal is to open a health center for girls in Mumbai who have been forced into brothels.

Meanwhile, the Mets have continued their unfortunate recent tradition of consistently making the wrong decision, saying they're pissed about this because he might get injured. Of course you're concerned when your players do potentially dangerous things. But when the press asks you about it, you just say "We did inform him about the possible ramifications as advised by our legal team, but we support the cause and wish R.A. the best with this endeavor that clearly means a lot to him. We look forward to seeing him climbing the mound again come spring." See what I did with the mound thing there?

I have to point this out: In his recent blog entry linked above, look how they've captioned the accompanying picture:

Come on! Did the captioner skim or what? Thinking the impressive part about climbing a mountain is the plane ride to get there reminds me of the mermaid in Splash thinking her gift was the box it came in.

My Lastish At Bat

2011-12-29T19:18:00.002-05:00

Just to prove I'm an equal-opportunity out-caller: I was watching the Ken Burns' Baseball marathon the other day, and Bill Lee was talking wistfully about his final at bat in a Red Sox uniform, before the designated hitter rule took the lumber pitchers' hands after the '72 season. He described a triple to right field. Al Kaline (who he said had bird crap on his shoulders, as he was already a statue by then) couldn't catch the deep liner and Lee would have had an inside-the-park home run, had he been able to pick up the short third base coach in time. By the time he picked him out of the crowd, he had put up the stop sign. Bill ended up with that triple as his final performance as an American League hitter, September 23, 1972.

Great story. One problem: He had three more at bats after that.

He pitched in relief four days later, getting the win and going one for three at the plate with a single. He scored on Aparicio's triple, so his last run scored for Boston came on a three-bagger. But his last A.L. at bat was a groundout to the pitcher (on which the second baseman covered first, so at least he can say something odd happened) on September 27, 1972.

He appeared on the mound two more times that season, including October 3, when the Tigers clinched the division with a 3-1 win over the Red Sox in Detroit. Lee was due up third in the ninth, but was pinch-hit for. Ben Oglivie made the last out in Lee's place. That put Boston 1.5 games behind with one game left. (1972, as some younger people might not know, is an underrated heartbreak season for the Red Sox, as a strike allowed them to actually finish the season a half-game out of first place.)

Epilogue: Look, people, I'm impressed that these guys remember so much stuff, and I understand they're going to get some things slightly wrong. It's just funny that they always tell it like fact, seemingly without realizing that the details of their particular occupation are all documented. You could tell me that the last cracker you tested at the cracker-testing facility job you had in 1984 was octagonal, and I'd pretty much have to settle for that. But if you played MLB, just know your story can be checked out.

[Photo by me, Cooperstown, NY, June 2011]

Packin' And Unpackin'

2011-12-29T00:02:00.000-05:00

The Red Sox recently gave a contract to Jesse Carlson--and now we've continued the WKRP theme by trading Josh Reddick for A's pitcher Andrew Bailey. (Both these guys have Connecticut ties--does anybody know what town Bailey lives in? I can't find anything other than "Connecticut" anywhere.)

So I guess we've got our closer. I hope it works out. I still say the loss of Papelbon is gonna really make people realize they took him for granted. The perfect guy for a critical role--exactly the thing you should be spending money on, regardless of the price, especially when you're a team who actually has money. All the risks we've spent big money on, and we don't spend it on a sure thing in a key position. Makes no sense. The loss of Tito will have a similar effect--we'll be calling him Grancona upon realizing we took him for granted--but at least that should mainly be off-field stuff, which you can ignore by simply not reading/watching the news.

Funny how Bard fans won't be complaining about him becoming a starter and a different closer coming in. They all (except for my buddy Tom) only know what they've seen in the past 2 weeks of baseball, and they are proving that by the fact that they haven't said word one since September about how he should be the closer as they'd been planning all along. They should have been fighting for the guy! Instead he has a bad month and it's "hmmm, I wonder who are closer's gonna be...." Anyway it would be pretty effing sweet if Bard can become a solid starter.

I liked that Reddick, too bad he had to go. (You know, since we have so many right fielders.) (And don't take that as me thinking the Red Sox aren't doing anything this off-season--I was just going to say, every single year people say in December what an oddly quiet off-season it's been, and they've done it again this year. Do they know the off-season is nowhere near over??)

Okay so here are a few shots of Reddick I never put on the blog:

From a game against the Padres.

From Wake's 200th win game.

From May against the White Sox, his first game of 2011.

My video of his hit that beat the Yanks last year here.

Another One

2011-12-28T16:44:00.001-05:00

See what you can do with this one:

Merry F'n Xmas

2011-12-28T11:30:00.001-05:00

Did you know Hideki Okajima was born on Christmas Day?

Did you know he's a New York Yankee?

I believe their organization has now had three Hidekis.

Midnight On December 28th

2011-12-28T00:06:00.003-05:00

San Diego: 54 degrees

Corpus Christi, TX: 53 degrees

Durango, Mexico: 51 degrees

Atlanta: 42 degrees

Tallahassee, FL: 42 degrees

Temp in Providence right now: 57 degrees

Win!

1990s Film Alphabet

2011-12-27T17:08:00.002-05:00

Made this thing in response to an 80s one I saw on another site. Figured I'd post it here too. See if you can figure these out.
I hate how sometimes I intend to do funny drawings but then I end up trying to hard, so instead of "funny" it ends up looking "bad." But, whatever. Hopefully it's...bad enough to be funny?

I'll Just Leave This Here

2011-12-27T01:13:00.003-05:00

You know what I do sometimes? I start researching some old thing and five hours later I find I have gathered way too much info and need a whole new chunk of time to actually compress it all into a post. So until I get to that, here's a picture of Bud Selig from 1973 I found along the way:

Update

2011-12-26T14:02:00.002-05:00

Update to previous post: I sent an e-mail to the ticket office, and within twenty minutes they sent me the list of my games. So great job by them there--though as far as I can tell, as of now, anyone who doesn't contact them won't know what their games are.

So if you are a 10-game plan holder, write them at seasontickets@redsox.com.

As for the games, it worked out pretty good. Thanks to this year's slightly weird schedule, I end up with 2 April, 2 May, 2 June, 1 July, 1 August, and 2 September, instead of 3 April and 3 September and 1 of each of the others. Also, since my plan is one weekend day and two weekdays, you always hope for it to be 4-3-3 in favor of the weekend day, and it is. The usual 2 Yanks games and 1 Interleague game are there, so except for the gaffe of leaving us to gather this info on our own, everything's the same or better than usual.

[Insert some cheesy line about being excited for baseball, e.g. "see you at the ballpark!"]

The Forgotten Man Plan

2011-12-26T00:01:00.001-05:00

Finally got my snail mail 10th Man Plan renewal form on Saturday. It came with a letter from Ben saying a bunch of stuff about how we season ticket holders are so important and how they're all ready for a new start over there at Fenway and all that stuff. The importance of the contents of this envelope is that it's where we can see the details of our plan, most importantly, the ten games they're giving us according to our version of this plan (each one has games on specific days of the week). Neither the games nor any mention of this severely wait-listed plan appear anywhere on redsox.com. It does have an area where we can renew our plan online, but this area has yet to list the actual games for 2012.

So I was happy to get my official envelope....

Until I discovered that it didn't contain the list of games, either!

What's going on here? I feel like we, the supposed 10th man, have been forgotten. As I write this, there's a stocking hanging 15 feet to my right. It's a Red Sox 2004 World Champions one. 10th Man Plan holders got this as a gift seven years ago. It was actually given to us because the DVD they had planned on sending us was delayed (probably due to us winning it all, causing the season's highlight reel to be altered dramatically). So back then we'd get a gift, and if the gift was late, we'd get another gift to tide us over! We also paid the season ticket (discounted) price for our seats. And the plans were listed right there on the web site. These traditions quickly stopped.

And now, they give us two options for paying for our plans, yet there's this major oversight of not telling us which games we're buying! My girlfriend joked that once I renew, they'll send me my tickets with the seat location and price on them, but with no date or opponent listed. I guess we'll just have to show up every day and hope for the best....

I'm not one of these people who constantly criticizes the ownership and claims they only care about money. I stand behind those guys because they've done everything I could have asked for and more. And I am grateful for the perks I do get as season ticket holder. But when crappy stuff happens, I have to mention it. I would rather know the dates and opponents than get a form letter thanking me. If this is an issue of "they just haven't finalized the plans yet," well, they should have let us know that, and definitely shouldn't have sent out the renewal forms yet. I think it's just a (terrible) mistake, which hopefully gets fixed on Monday once they get flooded with phone calls. (They should also extend the deadline so people have more time to decide before they have to pay.) And I hope you don't think I'm nitpicking--it's kind of an important detail they're leaving out here. Would you drop hundreds of dollars on a box you didn't know the contents of?

For those who don't care about season ticket stuff--dick jokes are on the way!

My Gift To You

2011-12-25T00:55:00.002-05:00

Three words: Domingo Beisbol Academy. Search it. Watch the videos.

Edited to add--also, this guy:

Inspectah On-Deck: Random Fenway Pic Decoded

2011-12-24T11:24:00.002-05:00

I noticed this picture as the background of a Red Sox blog called RSN Alberta:
So I put the baby up for adoption and got right to work. I had to know the date, the inning, the pitch.

It's always easy when you have the scoreboards to work with. The problem is figuring out what they say if they're small and blurry.

First thing I did was figure out that Kent Hrbek was the hitter. You can even see his face and blurry name on the CF board. Mo Vaughn is also pretty clearly at first, and the pitcher immediately struck me as being John Dopson, #40, though I wasn't convinced yet. But Vaughn/Hrbek narrowed this right down to a Twins game between '91 and '94.

The scoreboards tell us it's the top of the 1st with one out and one on--looks like Puckett on first.

I started going through all the games Hrbek played at Fenway in those years, and I got stuck for a little while. I was thinking he had to be batting third based on this situation. So when I wasn't sure which game this was after going through all of them, I just looked to see which of those games he batted third in. And he didn't bat third in any of them.

Then I noticed a telltale sign. Look at the linescore on the Monster scoreboard. Look at the 10th inning. There are runs up on the board. Little-cared-about fact of Fenway: Between games of a doubleheader, they will post the score of game 1 in the 10th inning slots and leave it up there into game 2. (See fourth pic down in this post from this past season.) So this was the second game of a doubleheader. Checked the Hrbek list again, and found he only played in one of these between '91 and '94. July 24th, 1992.

So now all I had to do was confirm the other blurry stuff, already being 99% sure of the answer. All the out-of-town games match up. Crowd of 34,000+ already in their seats in top of first makes sense. Newspaper said game 2 was an 8:15 start, scoreboard clock says 8:19. Hrbek's .282 BA and 11 homers are correct for that time. Dopson was indeed the pitcher, and Hrbek batted with one on and one out, and Puckett on first, in the top of the first. But the score was 1-0 Twins, as Puckett's hit knocked in a run, which explains why Hrbek was batting fourth, not third. So if it was 1-0, why do the scoreboards in the picture show 0-0? (This is why I couldn't figure out the game before I noticed the tenth-inning doubleheader secret.)

The answer is that it takes those guys who run the manual scoreboard a while to get those numbers into place. This is the first pitch of the Hrbek at bat since the count is 0-0, so the run has just scored. They have to switch the 1 to a 2 in the hit column, then slide a 1 into the first inning and into the total column. Why they haven't got the 1 up on the electronic boards on the third base side and in center yet, I don't know. But I bet they're about to change....

Epilogue

Hrbek would take the upcoming pitch for a ball. On a 1-1 pitch, he would foul out. The Paw Sox' hitting coach in 2011, Chili Davis, doubled home Puckett to put the Twins up 2-0. The Sox would tie it with two of their own in the bottom of the first. Each team would score twice in the 7th, and we went to the bottom of the 9th tied at 4. With one out, Bruno singled home Plantier, and Boston salvaged a split (after getting one-hit by Scott Erickson in game 1). The fans there that day got to see one of only four wins by Red Sox pitchers whose last name starts with I. (All were by Daryl Irvine, the only I-Sock ever until Jose Iglesias debuted in 2011--my pics from the end of the Irvine Dynasty are here, and terribly, I didn't realize this until right now. In fact, this Thanksgiving, I actually brought out the now-incorrect "only one Red Sox player has had a last name starting with I" trivia!) If the Yanks had lost later that night, we would have been tied for fourth. Freakin' Mariners. Oh well, we were 12 games out anyway. The Red Sox would go on to finish last. David Lee Roth went on to become America's favorite game show host.

Quickie Shea Detective Action

2011-12-23T17:58:00.000-05:00

The background of Mets.com shows two crowds, one old, one new. Because of the way my brain works, I decided I wanted to know when the older crowd shot was from. (The black and white one on the left below.)

My first thought was that it had to be from an important day, since it's a packed house and, before digital cameras appeared, you usually needed a reason to take a picture. Maybe it was the first game ever or an early Opening Day at Shea, or a 1969/1973 World Series game. Those later ones seemed a little too late, though, because it doesn't look like those two people you see close-up have witnessed anything like Woodstock or LSD trips. They're more like extras in It's a Wonderful Life, so I figured this was probably from the earliest days of Shea Stadium.

I searched for images of Shea's grand opening, and the dynamite immediately boomed. From the Daily News (photo #3 here), here's Opening Day at Shea, 1964:

At first I thought, Damn, I found a similar pic but it's from left field instead of right field! But then--I spotted them: the little boy with his grandma/pa from Little Odessa. Same picture, reversed. A closer inspection* tells me this is the correct version, and the one Mets.com background is using the backwards one. (Understandable when you realize they had to have it match up with the right side--but not understandable when you realize they could have easily gotten a shot of the OTHER side of Citi Field. Then again, maybe they were just taking that "mirror image" thing to heart.)

This page on the site about the history of Shea uses the pic too (not reversed). So you can see it in its original form in the middle of the page, with its mirrored version looming over it from the top and left of the window. (If you don't see the background you need to widen your browser window.)

*Mets mascot on pennant matches this guy, and the shadows are correct. Also, the person scoring has pen in right hand which gives us 90% certainty if we were unsure.

Bobby V. The Truth (Retro Edition!)

2011-12-23T00:13:00.000-05:00

I was looking through some old Bobby Valentine articles, and came across this one from 1999, which says

Valentine recalled being credited with a double when he hit a popup down the right-field line that bounced off the back of the first baseman's head.

He was talking about Candlestick Park. So I went and, skeptically, looked for the play. Sixty seconds later I had discovered that Bobby Valentine never hit a double in Candlestick Park in his entire career. Never reached on an error there either. There were a few singles to right, but no game stories from the time talked about this head-ball double. (I also checked home games against the Giants with no luck--but the whole point of his story was the wackiness of Candlestick Park.) So I think we know who really has the head injury here.

(I will admit that there's a chance the writer of the article could have gotten the quote wrong, but come on.)

******

Yesterday I forgot to include a link--the one of Bob McClure and Jim Gantner playing a dice-rolling baseball game in the 80s. The picture is below and it's from this page. The game in question, upon further reading, is actually Pursue the Pennant with a new name. I spent hours playing that game (though by then I was already a veteran of Strat-o-Matic, Statis Pro, Championship Baseball, and several games I made myself).

Some Pictures Of Things

2011-12-22T01:29:00.004-05:00

Couldn't get any of the $10 seats for the Celts this year, so we settled for the only home exhibition game, which was tonight.

Rondo with the ball. (I'm glad I don't follow the Celts or I'd be pissed about Rondo being the latest athlete the Boston media decided to convince fans isn't that good and should be traded when he's actually the heart and soul of the team. Really pissed.)

That new-ish Lucky dunkin' off the trampoline.

Guy gets some serious air.

Between the legs. Anyway, we got to see the starters play some solid minutes, except for Pierce. Celts won.

New at the Boston Garden--the latest Bruins flag. (You're focused on the black one in front of it, aren't you? The answer is: I don't know. Why the apostrophe is so low.)

And now for some pics from NYC this past weekend, aka the annual Xmas Shopping With Chan Trip Which Is Partly Just An Excuse To Go To The City.

From the dying breed of painted-on-side-of-building signs. This one's from York Ave. You can tell it was painted before the other building was built. Something about the "best launderers in the world." (That doesn't really help us, Michael.)

Blurry woman carrying the sun in the subway.

Somebody call the lube room, stat!

I put the lube room pic before the tree pic? Yeah. The tree's the same every year. I really don't need to see it, let alone photograph it, let alone post it on the Internet. But since there's been no snow, I thought maybe going there would put me in that elusive Xmas and/or non-denominational late-year holiday mood. Didn't really work. I still say "the holidays" should fall at the END of winter.

Sitting in dead traffic on the way out of the city, I noticed some words missing from this place. Anybody who's been going to Yankee Stadium(s) all their life from the north knows this stanky little motel beside the Deegan used to be called the "STADIUM MOTOR LODGE." Then at some point in the 90s it became "STADIUM FAMILY CENTER." Because adding "family" to your name instantly removes all roaches and whores from the property. Well, now one of three things has happened:

1. Someone has stolen two thirds of the sign.
2. The place is finally falling apart to the point where the letters are falling off.
3. They're revamping yet again! But where do you go from "family center"? Ooh, maybe they're reverting back to "motor lodge" for a more authentic South Bronx feel.

[Okay, I just looked it up. It's not a motel at all anymore. According to a community website:

"Two hundred men, to be exact, were placed in our community at the Stadium Family Center (renamed Basic Stadium Men's Center) and none of our elected officials or Community Board #4 members informed the community. We went on to discover, sexual predators were housed there. This was done near 2 (two) Elementary Schools = PS 126 and PS 11."

Wow. What a life that building has led.]

Oh, and supposedly Bob McClure is the new Red Sox pitching coach. This is a dude I grew up looking at on pieces of cardboard--yet I never made the connection that he has the same last name as Troy McClure. Also, scroll 2/3rds of the way down this page and see a picture of McClure back in the day, playing some dice-rolling baseball game on the field at County Stadium, home of the Indians (in Major League only).

For The Fan Who Has Everything

2011-12-21T12:01:00.000-05:00

What it looks like when you buy one million dollars worth of baseball tickets online. (Click to enlarge.)

The Lost Game

2011-12-20T14:00:00.005-05:00

Took some photos at the last Fenway game of 2011. At the time I only posted one since it was all so depressing. So, finally, here are the rest of them.

Vlad and Papi.

Papi.

Two different really big Rick Burleson fans? On the field? They have to be part of his family, right?

City at night.

Sunset.

Looks like I was still obsessing over Don's yearly dipshit claim that the foul pole and the foul line are misaligned. Here it is from up near where he sits, showing it all lined up.

Here's the whole Red Sox team on the field for the anthem. Didn't one of the shit-stirring asshole piece of shit media members say something about how they're all in the clubhouse at this point, burning your old family photos?

They did that thing where players throw out balls to the fans.

I think this "Irish Mickey Ward" was the inspiration for that "nawt you, nawt you, and nawt YOU!" movie that was all critically acclaimed and stuff.

Josh Beckett, who posted his lowest career ERA and highest career ERA+ in 2011--but who the media has told you is horrible and should definitely be traded.

The irreplaceable guy who they just let go without a second thought.

Pap also appears in this shot, the final one I took at a Red Sox game in 2011. (I did shoot some video of a dick getting ejected from the stands after that, but this is the last still photo.) I'll never forget being up at the top of the grandstand that night, actually thinking there was no possible way we could lose that game. The lead just felt bigger than it was. Both teams seemed to have just let this one go into the W column for Boston. How wrong I was. And little did I know the worst was yet to come. But that's okay, WEEI has solved our problems by subsequently firing the best manager, best general manager, and best closer we've ever had.

STH Q

2011-12-19T17:29:00.002-05:00

Season Ticket Holders: Has anybody gotten anything in the mail about tickets? I got an e-mail saying the order form and stuff will be "hitting mailboxes this week." That was the beginning of last week and I'm still waiting. I see where I can renew my 10-game plan on the site, but that's not showing what games I have. That's what I want to know. I'm gonna renew anyway, but I'd like to know what the damn games are. (Also would have been nice to know this before this first batch of tix went on sale--I thought they fixed that problem last year. Guess not. I know it doesn't matter for full-season people or weekenders since they know what games they're getting already. But we 10-Gamers seem to get the shaft a lot.)

Nuf Ced

2011-12-16T12:58:00.002-05:00

This artwork is from a newspaper ad from exactly 100 years ago tomorrow. I was intrigued by the "Nuf Ced," of course. I knew that McGreevey said this a lot, hence the nickname. So I figured it was a common saying back then. But a news search from back then turned up hardly anything. Of course, it could be that everybody said it, but nobody wrote it like that in news articles. Or it could be that it was a regional Boston thing. But the odd thing is, this is from a Pittsburgh newspaper. (You can see William Pitt riding shotgun with Santa.) You'd think Pittsburgh people would hate this phrase, as Nuf Ced and the Royal Rooters notoriously mocked their players in the 1903 World Series, singing "why do you hit so badly?" to the tune of "Tessie" at Honus Wagner.

Nevertheless, Pickering's Furniture used the term twice in this ad, once on the sled and once on a reindeer. Go figure.

Schedule Stuff

2011-12-15T22:13:00.005-05:00

Barring rainouts, and if I counted right, and assuming all games are sold out, the 750th consecutive sell-out at Fenway will be Friday night, June 22, against the former Boston Braves.

The Futures day now shows "Red Sox vs. Red Sox." The Paw Sox schedule still has them playing the Buffalo Bisons at Fenway that day. And as I said in my other post about this, three other affiliates are home that day, but none of their schedules show a Fenway game. If you're thinking it actually is two teams called the Red Sox playing each other (to still have two affiliates appearing but only one game), it would have to be the Salem Red Sox vs. the Pawtucket Red Sox. But that would mean both of these teams rescheduling their already-scheduled games against other teams. I think they just messed up. Or they mean to say "we'll have two Red Sox affiliates here that day" and this is the bizarre way they've chosen to say it, instead of showing just the Paw Sox-Bisons game as they had it before. Who knows.

Looks like it's still January 28th for the big ticket sale. And we'll see if the "Red Sox Road Trip" is as lame as it was last year, when you suddenly could only use the voucher they give to buy tix for your state's "day" at Fenway. That should be announced the second week of January.

Amy Labor*

2011-12-15T01:38:00.001-05:00

A month ago I did a whole post about the amount of Interleague games that would be necessary in the upcoming odd-numbered-leagues era. In response to people (like that one fat dude I don't like) assuming teams would have to play 30 Interleague games instead of the 18 they play now, I said

while [the number] doesn't HAVE to go down, it doesn't have to go up, either.

Well, I win, mutha-humpers. This article about the new labor agreement says

a new schedule format starting in 2013, when there will be six five-team divisions, with no more than 20 interleague games per team

We'll see if my full prediction about when IL games are played comes true when they announce the full schedule format for '13 and beyond.

Now let's talk about the other stuff in the new agreement:

Players won't be able to get tattoos of corporate logos. They say they're doing this so that nobody gets any ideas of selling body space. While I'm strongly against people selling their bodies to anyone (especially corporations), I'm also strongly for people being able to do what they want to their own skin. And what if a player gets Lyme disease? "That's the Target logo, my friend. You're banned!"

Teams from the same division will be able to meet in the playoffs pre-ALCS/NLCS. I like this. Don't know why they ever did it the other way. But this could be misleading, since there will be two wild cards. If they're from the same division, there's no way around them playing each other in the wild card round. Maybe after that the seeding reverts to what it is now, making it so you still can't meet a divisional rival in the divisional round.

No more quick uniform number changes. If you suddenly want to change your number, or switch with a teammate, you're gonna have to wait. Must get the request in by July, and you won't get your new number until the following season. So the teams want to make sure their concessions stands don't get stuck with a bunch of unsellable outdated jerseys. Kind of depressing to see what motivates these teams. "Hey, let's make money by selling player jerseys! Wait, what if the player changes his number? I know, we'll not allow them to do it!" So the big new free agent is slumping and decides he wants a new number. Oh well, more important to make money than to make the players happy.

Players may be able to wear microphones during the game. Prepare yourself for a Fox game with no announcers, just Derek Jeter chewing noises for three and half hours. He's sending signals to the second baseman that mere mortals can't decipher. You can't teach that.

More replay, maybe. Yes, please.

Longer All-Star Break, with All-Star Game on either Tuesday or Wednesday. I think they're just lookin' for more rest wherever they can get it. Wusses!

Everybody gets their own room in spring training! I'm thinking maybe some of this stuff should just stay private, if for no other reason than to not bore us.

No more arguing scorers' decisions. Good call. Just put out a hit on them the following offseason. You can afford it.

No more betting on any sports with illegal bookies or breaking the law, and a possible suspension for assaulting the media or throwing shit at fans. Okay, mom.

No nicknames written on equipment that might offend fans. Billy Ripken, beware....

*You have almost no chance of getting this reference. I went to high school with a girl named Amy Laber (with an E). She actually resurfaced in my life about five years after graduation when we both worked in the music department at Borders in Danbury. It was weird, because we ran in different circles in high school, and I was slightly intimidated by her at the time, but suddenly there we were as equals, forced into the same clique by default...and we worked really well together. Nice girl. Amy, if you just Googled your name, hope your enjoying your summer. (Just randomly picking a season as she could find this at any point from now on.)

Melancon And The Infinite Sadness Of Life Without Papelbon

2011-12-14T12:54:00.004-05:00

Jed Lowrie has been traded. The Red Sox sent him and KyWhy--Kyle Weiland--to those future American Leaguers, the Astros, for pitcher Mark Melancon.

Part of me wants to be pissed that we are trading guys away in a fruitless search for finding the next Papelbon, ending up with a mess of wannabes while Pap steamrolls to the Hall of Fame.

But the thing about Lowrie--he may have reached the point where he's done all he can. And we know about his injuries. So when I think about it from the perspective that we're really not losing too much (though I'm not saying Lowrie's definitely done by any means), well, it's just another bullpen arm we're getting and that's a good thing.

And if you look at Melancon's 2011, you see a really awesome thing: He didn't give up a run in September, as the Astros' closer. Hardly any hits, either. You also may remember him from the 2009-2010 Yanks, where he pitched alongside Aceves in their future-Sox 'pen.

Louie: It Worked

2011-12-14T10:38:00.002-05:00

The Louis CK $5 experiment worked. His little speech about it describes something like the way the world should work. Keep the filthy hands of corporations out of art. I'm glad this happened at all--it's a huge bonus that the person who did it is someone I'm a huge fan of.

Bob Costas Like You've Never Seen Him Before

2011-12-14T00:01:00.000-05:00

From the Conan show.

Moving on, Shoppach is back. Did I ever tell you about the time my mom took a picture of his first major league hit at Yankee Stadium?

We also resigned Albers. We non-tendered Rich Hill, who did a fine job before his big injury. But he could resign with us anyway. They say he won't be ready to pitch until late in the season. I hope we get him back. Him and Albers both seem like righteous gentlefolk.

Dirty Ballplayer, Bad Prognosticator

2011-12-13T12:34:00.001-05:00

In a piece picked up by more than one newspaper in December 1911, Ty Cobb predicted his Tigers would win the American League crown in 1912. We all know how that turned out. His prediction of the final order of teams was: Detroit, Philly, Boston, Chicago, Cleveland, NY, Washington, St. Louis. Despite Ty's .409 average in 1912, the Tigers would finish in 6th place at 69-84, 36.5 games behind the world champion Boston Red Sox. He was right in saying the Yanks would blow goats in '12, but they actually came in last, 55 games out. Washington was a surprise, finishing second, a game ahead of the defending champion Athletics, and way ahead of Ty's predicted seventh-place finish (though he did say they "ought to make a better showing").

Cobb thought Del Gainer would return to form after a wrist injury cut his great '11 season short, but he would struggle at the plate in '12 and play in only 52 games.

About the Red Sox, Cobb said they "loom as a formidable flag contender," and noted "accidents" hurt them the year before.

There's an interesting note at the beginning of the story about Cobb "not dabbling in things vaudevillian this winter" and "not seeking publicity in the manner of a few other players whose names had best not be mentioned here." This is referring to a few Red Sox players who were performing as a barber shop quartet that off-season.

See the full article about Ty Cobb's 1912predictions here (go to page 12).

Louie Live

2011-12-12T13:23:00.002-05:00

Louie CK is doing an AskMeAnything on reddit right now. Link is here. If you don't know how to "read" reddit, well, I'm throwing you right in there, and am trusting you'll figure it out.

Louie, on his "least favorite memory":

Probably pissing my pants at school, everyone pointing at the giant stain in the front of my pants and laughing. I mean EVERYONE. Jimmy Carter, Liza Minelli, Butros Butros Gali, the pope before he was pope AND the kids he fucked. they all laughed at me. then I had to walk home in the cold with pissed on pants and legs and I had red rashes all over the front of my lower body when I got home. The bath I took, though? mmmmm. that was good. I pissed in there too.

Throw It Back

2011-12-12T01:01:00.001-05:00

Here's what we know about this season's throwback jerseys:

1936 uniforms will be worn vs. the A's on Wednesday, May 2nd (in honor of getting Jimmie Foxx from the A's prior to the 1936 season)

1912 uniforms will be worn for the pre-game ceremony on Friday, April 20th vs. the Yanks, the 100th anniversary of the first official game at Fenway Park

They say there will be four throwback games. I don't know if April 20th counts (or if the pre-game only account I read in some newspaper report is accurate). But I want to figure out the other 2 or 3 dates. Or at least what year's unis they'll use.

I'm assuming they'll only be using home uniforms. And the home jersey has been more or less the same since 1933, with the exception of the 70s pajamas. So I gotta figure (and I'm praying to all that is BillLee) that they finally break these out again. I was wondering about that one weekday game (besides April 20th) with the weird time, 4:05--the Mariners game on May 15th. I thought, Okay, Mariners started in '77, maybe we played them at 4:05 on May 15th in their first year. I looked it up. Close. We did play them on that date in their first season. And it was at 4:30 eastern time. Could that actually be why they made that game a late afternoon game? As I said before, it's a getaway day, but neither team is going very far afterwards, both play night games the next day, and most importantly, I've never seen the Sox go halfway for a getaway day--it's either a night game, or an early afternoon game. Why a slight head start for this particular game and only this game? I'm hoping it's their excuse to wear the '72-'78 pullovers and red hats. But why celebrate the Mariners' first season? To go along with the Foxx reasoning, is there a star player we got from the Mariners in 1977? Or some other late 70s year? I don't think so. But with not many clues at all to work with, it's not too crazy a theory.

And wait a minute, why did they specifically choose to use 1936 uniforms (Foxx aside)? It's the same fucking uniform we wear now! Except for a stripe around the sleeve. And the different B on the hat. 1935 (the calendar year in which we actually made the Foxx trade anyway!) is the way to go here--the "Red Sox" is different, with no blue outline. And the A's wore the same unis in '35 and '36, so it's not like they're just choosing that year to get a cooler A's uni. [Oddly, the press release says "For some games during the season, the Red Sox and the visiting team will wear throwback uniforms. Already on the schedule is May 2, when the A's will wear 1936 uniforms." They only say the A's will wear '36 uniforms. This could just be an issue with the language of the press release and what they mean is both teams will wear the '36 ones.]

As for the other possible games, they could just go with other years in the post-'33 era and essentially look just as they do now, but I gotta figure they try to make it more interesting than that. They did the blank jerseys last year, so let's eliminate those years. Some unique options are 1902 (the big "B A"), 1908 (the red sock), 1931 ("RED SOX"--different from today's font--with pinstripes), and several seasons (like 1930) with pinstripes and no lettering. All pre-'33 hats were different from today's. We already did 1908, and also 1902, I think. So those could be out but they are the two nuttiest. If they're doing this by "the first year of superstars we used to have," well...I don't really see anything matching that in any of these years, so....

I don't know. Maybe they'll just go with 1903 in honor of winning the first World Series. But against which team? We don't play the Pirates this year. If they do it by opponent, they could wear any of those older years when we play the Nationals, and have them wear Senators unis--or have the Twins wear Senators unis. We could break out the 1914s for a Braves game to honor the one WS they won in Boston, which was played at Fenway Park. Okay, fine, I'll go with those.

My final predictions:

4/20 vs Yanks: 1912 (pre-game only)
5/2 vs A's: 1935 (after they realize they should choose it over 1936)
5/15 vs M's: 1977
6/23 vs Braves: 1914
8/5 vs Twins or 6/9 vs Nats: 1931

Septa

2011-12-11T10:09:00.003-05:00

Got through right at 10:00 just now and got my September tickets. Literally as my order was confirmed, my inbox rang as the team's "additional tickets now on sale" e-mail arrived.

Minor glitch: when I got to the "enter your mlb.com name/password" screen, it didn't recognize me. Tried to do the "open new account" thing with a different e-mail address, but it just wasn't letting me through. I quickly went to another tab and tried again with my name/password, and it worked fine. Had to settle for tix two rows farther back. Maybe with my first try I was the first person on the Internet to get through and they weren't quite ready for me.... Who knows.

Oh and that credit card from yesterday? I later updated it so I'd be all set for today. But it still came up with the old expiration date. So I knew I again couldn't use the current version as it would give the "that card number already exists" message. And again, I had to use the emergency credit card.

The Great Unnecessarily Secretive Fenway Yard Sale

2011-12-11T00:11:00.002-05:00

Got my tix online in the morning, then got in the car and drove to Boston. Got my Anna's and went over to Lansdowne Street around noon. At the entrance to the Yard Sale, I was told I needed my winning e-mail to get in, which, of course, I didn't have since I didn't win. So I asked the guy if they planned on opening it to the public. He said, "they haven't yet...." When I asked "they haven't yet," he said, "well, there was some talk, but I don't know if they'll do it."

So I walked around the park for a while, continually checking the tweets from the team, since that's how they announced it last year. I eventually moved my car to Yawkey Way where I could get wifi--and I saw Darnell McDonald. Did the quickest grab/turn on/snap of all time, and got two mildly crappy shots of him getting into his waiting car:
Then after buying something at Twins, I asked another Fenway employee, "Are they gonna open up the Yard Sale to everybody?" He took a look at me, almost like he was determining my TravisBicklish jacket was a thread to "the brand," and said, "no." I did the standard clarification query, and he again said one word, "nope."

As we know, Fenway employees often tell you the exact opposite of the truth, so I wasn't about to give up. Fifteen minutes after being told No, the tweet appeared: Yard Sale now open to the public, come on down! I rushed in.

The jersey boxes were still there. Lots of recent ones, home, road, and red, plus a bunch of spring training ones. Then there were just a handful of 90s ones. Bill Fischer, John Dopson, Danny Darwin, Steve Ellsworth, etc. Some with the black armband. I really wanted one of those, but, at 65-75 bucks each, I knew I'd only be getting one. Also thought about a Manny Delcarmen one. But finally opted for a red Dana Levangie one:

Always liked that old bullpen catcher of ours, so I went with him. Even though there's no year tag, and nothing unique like the armband. But Dana was such a big and underrated part of two championships, and I saw so much of him in the early 2000s, I figured I'd rather have part of his history than a cooler-looking part of somebody's I don't care about as much.

They also had bats (not many left), signed balls, and other assorted junk in the Absolut Clubhouse. Out in the VOMITORIUM was more awesome junk. Instead of buying bricks, then filling a bag with junk, they just put low, low prices on the junk (media guides, etc.)--and the bricks, which were down to $5. That's right, I'm one step closer to building my own Fenway Park:
My third brick! Nice corners, fairly complete, an alphanumeric....wait, I'm critiquing a BRICK! My "joke" at the checkout line fell flat, when I asked the woman what kind of crazy person would buy a brick. She said, "you'd be surprised." Hellooo? I'M buying one. GET IT?

They also had a bunch of signs--hundreds of concession stand food item signs. And then there was the "slightly outdated technology" corner. TV monitors for five bucks, small speakers and electronic parts, etc. Out of that room I ended up with a
one-dollar sign from one of the Duck Boats from the rolling rallies: Russell Nua!
Then I took this pic of the Pru between the House of Blus and Ice Ream.
Anyway, I spent a lot of time in there, and just wished I had unlimited money. I'm just glad I got in this year after last year's fiasco. Ran into Kelly, and we talked about the damn employees and how they always seem to be trained to lie and stuff.

Remember, September tickets go on sale Sunday (today) at 10 a.m. Good luck.

Yard Sale Fun

2011-12-10T17:52:00.001-05:00

Yes it happened and this time I didn't miss it. Details to follow later.

B+

2011-12-10T10:26:00.004-05:00

Got through somewhere around 10:15. No Sox Pax had upper bleacher left* and I didn't want to pay a minimum of $200 plus fees for four games, of which I'd only care about one, so I made a lil' Sox Pack of my own through indie game tickets and got the exact games I wanted for a sweet price.

I see that as of now, 10:28, you COULD still get two together for opening day, in bad RF boxes. It always stinks when you're staring at a chance to buy opening day, but, again, I'm not made of money--when it's the Yanks or a flag-raising on Opening Day, or I can get the $12 seats, I'll do it in a heartbeat. If not, it's not a big deal for me. The game I HAVE to be at this year is the 100th anniversary one. Hopefully I get lucky with a twist o' skill when the time comes for that one.

This year's technical issue: Once I selected my games (by the way, after you select tix for one game, it will take you to the name/address info page--if you want multiple games, don't fill this out yet, just click "schedule" at the top and keep selecting for all the games you want, THEN click finish or whatever and fill out your info) and got to the credit card info area, I realized I had my old card in there as a saved card. The same card, just from before it expired. I just got the new version of the card in the mail this week. It wouldn't work when I typed my new 3-digit code for the expired version of the card. So I entered the new card in the "add new card" slot--only it gave me an error message saying "this card already exists." Well, yeah, the same number exists, because it's the new version of the same card! So basically there was NO WAY to use that card (without going back to my mlb.com account and resetting the info--not an option with the clock running out on my tickets, and even if I did do it in time, that page with my tix on it wouldn't update, I wouldn't think.). So I whipped out my OTHER credit card, filled in the info under "add new card," and thank Gedman that one worked. Case for emergency credit card!

*do they even sell the Sox Pax at the upper bleacher price? I can't remember....

Special Secret Unannounced News

2011-12-09T20:16:00.005-05:00

The T's are on the schedule! The first sign of spring...while I'm watching Frosty the Snowman.

Did some unfURLing and found out that the Big Sale, aka the summer game sale, will be January 28th at 10 a.m.*. And as for the September games, those will go on sale this Sunday at 10 a.m.* (They always go on sale later in the day on Xmas @ Fenway day, or the next day, with an announcement acting like it was because of high demand--it's like an encore: you know the band's gonna do it anyway, but they make you go through the cheering and stomping for effect.)

Now if only I could find the secret location of the Yard Sale starting time (for non-Xmas winners) info!

*This is just what their ticketing system is showing now; don't blame me if they change dates/times.

All Times In

2011-12-09T12:02:00.002-05:00

Here are your weekday afternoon home games for 2012:

Fri. 4/13 vs. TB (Home Opener): 2:05
Mon. 4/16 vs. TB (Patriots' Day): 11:05 a.m.
Fri. 4/20 vs. NYY (100th anniversary of Fenway Park): 3:05 (to roughly match start time of 1912 game)
Tue. 5/15 vs. Sea: 4:05
Mon. 5/28 vs. Det (Memorial Day): 1:35
Wed. 6/27 vs. Tor: 1:35
Wed. 8/8 vs. Tex: 1:35
Mon. 8/27 vs. KC: 1:35

Mother's Day is a home game, Father's Day is away.

Weekday night games will be at 7:10, Sunday afternoon games will be 1:35. Saturday non-Fox games will be 1:10 or 7:10. (I think the Fox ones are 4:05/7:15.) The Sunday night ESPN schedule isn't out yet, but (only!) two of our Sunday games have "TBD" listed meaning they could be ESPN night games.

Of the games above, the ones without a notation are just getaway days, but I'm wondering why the May 15th game only went back to 4:05. They didn't need a day game there, as neither team is travelling very far for the next night's game. Then again, they only pushed the game up by three hours. It's like a half-getaway day.

Having all the times set now is a good idea. Last year they tried to give us an early heads-up by putting either "day" or "night" on the schedule before they knew the times. Which only led to extra clutter on the already ad-ridden schedule when they forgot to remove the day/night notations for some games. One is still there! August 4th.

Hope this helps your decision making tomorrow morning. Good luck. I'm sure I'll be updating you live from the virtual whatever room, saying the same shit I say year after year after year after year after year yafre reay fater raye tafer yare.......

"FP"

2011-12-09T02:22:00.001-05:00

Old pic of Fenway Park, from the horse-pulled wagon days. I love the fact that there weren't any buildings across the street yet, so you get a wider view that you can't get today. But also, check out the far right, top floor. You can see two curtains with the "FP" logo on them. I noticed these on Mothers' Day 2010, and two pictures of them appear in my photo gallery from that day. Obviously they're not the exact same curtains, but at some point somebody decided to put that same logo on curtains in that spot. (Or they've always had curtains in this spot, always with an FP logo on them. I think these curtains are usually open--either that or I just never looked at that spot before 2010.)

(While searching my own blog for "FP," I came across another post where I suggested the Futures doubleheader should be one game of minor leaguers, and one old-timers' game. Great idea, past Me! I should have suggested this to the team now that they're doing special things for the 100th anniversary and taking ideas from fans, but it's probably too late now. Or maybe they ARE doing this and that's why the schedule is only showing ONE minor league game on August 18th. If that's true, somebody stole my idea. But it would be worth it, since we never get old-timers' games at Fenway anymore.)

Fenway 100

2011-12-08T12:01:00.001-05:00

Here's the press release describing some of the stuff the Red Sox will do for Fenway's 100th birthday this year. (It was released this morning despite the "11:13 PM" at the top.) Some notable things:

Four throwback days, including May 2 against the A's.

A 256-page coffee table book with some never-seen photos.

A "living museum" on display at Fenway.

An "open house" on April 19th, the eve of the 100th birthday, where fans can go to the dugout tunnel and clubhouse.

World's biggest toast before the game on April 20th vs. the Yanks.

They say they will announce more. As for Xmas @ Fenway--I didn't win. So I remain a lifetime 0-fer on that front. Hopefully some of you made the cut. Oh well, I'll be getting my tickets online that day and then hopefully being there when they open the doors to everybody for the Yard Sale, should they do it that way again. Oh, and if you wanna see Pujols at Fenway this year, the Angels come in for one series in late August.

Waiting By The Inbox

2011-12-08T01:00:00.000-05:00

Xmas @ Fenway winners were supposed to be contacted "on or about" Wednesday. We're now an hour into Thursday. So either I'm a loser...or they're late (in which case I could still be a loser).

That Thing

2011-12-07T14:00:00.002-05:00

Was watching a video about the new Marlins ballpark. They hyped that they'd be playing the Cubs, Phillies, and Red Sox. Since they used our old logo, maybe we'll just have to show up at their old ballpark!

As we enter year four of the new logo, we've still got plenty of holdouts. But the most prominent one is the Boston Herald. There it is, right on top of their Red Sox page.

So once again, for people who somehow missed it despite that they work for Major League Baseball and/or the Red Sox and/or media outlets who cover the Red Sox, here's the old logo (retired 2008):

and the new, that's not even that new anymore:

This Is Not A Repeat Post

2011-12-07T01:00:00.000-05:00

Remember when the Red Sox auctioned off those retro jerseys after the Cubs series in June? Yeah, when they forgot how to spell their own players' names. I posted about it at the time.

Well now they've got a new auction. And Error Mania continues! See the picture at left and follow along:

They've figured out "Gonzalez" and "Buchholz," but they're still going with "MacDonald" instead of "McDonald." And "Doubront"? They say "Dubrount." (And just like in June, when you click each name, it takes you to a page where the name is also spelled the wrong way.) So they score a 22 out of 24 this time, not bad!

Bonus errors! They forgot to change "retro jersey" to "Jackie Robinson jersey" right above the player names. Way to use the old copy and change the relevant info, only to accidentally leave some old info in. Classic mistake. And "a MLB"? I'd go with "an MLB" there, but I suppose you could argue the reader will read it as "a Major League Baseball," or, less likely, "a muhlb."

Note to people who don't care: I obviously do care, so we're just gonna have to live with each other's quirks. You're welcome to point out my mistakes just to spite me.

Words To Remember

2011-12-06T13:55:00.001-05:00

The Boston press can make or break you. No matter what you say, they're gonna write it up like they want.

--Jim Rice, February 1976

Past Meets Future

2011-12-05T11:31:00.003-05:00

Bobby: "Watch out for these guys, Tito, they just might get a big lead, get complacent, and blow the whole thing, and everyone will blame it on you, and you'll get fired."

Tito: "Yeah sure, Bobby. And who they gonna replace me with, YOU? You're on drugs."

Photo by Jere, 4/1/2011.

So my Pepitone theory hasn't gained much traction. I commented on Martone's article (he specifically had asked the public for help) but I see no response yet. Couldn't find his e-mail address to write to him personally either. This was another one of those cases where I thought I'd be handed the key to the Internet for my work, but instead almost nobody cared. Oh well, it'll even out the next time I offhandedly post a video of my cat pooping or something and it gets 10 million hits. But I'm not giving up on Pepitone yet--hopefully I at least get a response from Martone.

The Two-Tone Tale Of Tony C. And Bobby V.

2011-12-03T13:20:00.010-05:00

As most of you know by now, Bobby Valentine will be wearing Tony Conigliaro's number 25, and noted that he was Tony's "last roommate" back in 1976 when Tony was attempting a comeback. I didn't think much of this until my mom e-mailed me this morning regarding Bobby and Tony:

So now I read that Bobby V. chose #25 in honor of his old roommate,
Tony Conigliaro. Where and when did they room?

My initial search (just typing in "Tony Conigliaro" into Google News) brought me right to an article by Art Martone, who was questioning the story. Bobby said the pairing happened when he was with the Padres in 1976. Martone pointed out that Tony had already become a broadcaster by that point. I did a further news search and found nothing about Conig making any comeback attempt in 1976, and no mention of him ever having anything to do with the Padres. I searched and searched, trying to see if Tony's name appeared in any of the spring training articles. Though I did find a mention of him saying in '76 that he might try to play winter ball in '76/'77 (Bobby was still with the Padres for the start of 1977), I got nowhere.

That's when it hit me. This is an ex-athlete we're talking about. Unless your name is Dennis Eckersley, your stories from your playing days are probably going to have major errors. And this is Bobby Valentine we're talking about. Search "valentine" on this blog and you'll find several examples of him getting facts from old stories wrong from this past season on ESPN broadcasts--including one where he challenged viewers to "look it up," and was still wrong.

So I came up with a genius plan. I did a news search on "'comeback' 'Padres'" for March of 1976. And whose name popped up about a million times? That's right, shaggy 70s playboy and, as Seinfeld fans know, the designer of Central Park, JOE PEPITONE.

Okay--I didn't get too excited yet. Yes it was a guy attempting a comeback in spring training 1976 with the Padres. Could Valentine and Pepitone have been roommates? Yes. But I'll take one step further. Joe Pepitone didn't make the team. He was sent to the Hawaii Islanders. The team was known for having a trio of ex-major leaguers to start that season. One of the other ones? Bobby Valentine. Bobby wasn't called up to the bigs that year until September. He played in 120 games with Hawaii in 1976. Joe Pepitone played in 13, never to step on a baseball field after that.

So the question isn't "who was Tony C's last roommate?" but rather "whose last roommate was Booby V?" And the answer to that is Joe Pepitone.

Then I thought: Hmmmm, I'll bet francs to Fenway Franks that Joe Pepitone wore number 25.....

and boom went the dynamite:
Granted, he wore other numbers with other teams, but when he went to the Hawaii Islanders, you gonna tell me they gave anybody else number 25?

So we have Bobby Valentine, in 1976, being teammates with a well-known Italian player attempting a comeback after a few years out of baseball, who wore #25. I'd say there's a great chance that two ex-major leaguers on a minor league team (who were both playing the same position too) would be put together as roommates, and as Bobby put it, this other guy (who he thought to be Tony C) had Bobby as his "last roommate," for "a few days," which both make sense since Pepitone left the team after 13 games and never played again after that.

So to answer my mom's (and Art Martone's) question: Nowhere and never. Bobby Valentine roomed with a different guy in 1976 in Hawaii who also wore the number in question, 25. How could he confuse the two Italians who were both making comebacks in the mid-70s? You tell me:

The Future Of Futures At Fenway

2011-12-03T00:12:00.000-05:00

Futures at Fenway will be Saturday, August 18th. Pawtucket will take on the Buffalo Bisons. I don't see any evidence of a second game, though. I checked the schedules of our four other affiliates, and three of them have home games that day, but their schedules indicate they are normal non-Fenway games.

It could be they haven't decided which team they're going to pick. But I'm wondering if maybe they're just making it a single game this year. They never fill the place for those games, so maybe they figure they only need to do one game--have a packed house for one game instead of two half-full houses. They make the same money either way. Also, the big club is playing the Yanks at 4:05 that day so maybe they're all set with having a single noon game and then letting everybody go home.

Also, check out this sweet eff-up from the press release for the Frozen Fenway events:

Hey, I can't expect the Boston Red Sox to know what NESN stands for.

Did I Ever Tell You How I Played Against Bobby Valentine's Nephew?

2011-12-02T12:50:00.003-05:00

Yeah, so when I was on the baseball team in high school, there was a big buzz when we'd play Darien High in red-hot FCIAC action: "Oooh, Bobby Valentine's nephew is on this team...." And that's really where my memories end. In fact, he might have even been on varsity the whole time, while I was only a JV-er, so who knows if I ever even saw the guy. But maybe he struck me out or something. Yeah, let's go with that. No, wait, as long as I'm making shit up, let's just say I hit a home run off Bobby Valentine's nephew.

I did a news search on the kid. His HS football records still stand, but the only baseball mention I could find about him is from 1992 (between our junior and senior year), when he played for a Babe Ruth All-Star Team made up of kids from a few Fairfield County towns, none of which were mine. According to the Redding Pilot, he got a hit in the state tournament. Here's the squad:

The caption only mentions the hometown Redding and Easton kids, but one one of the kids in the pinstriped Darien jerseys would be Anthony.

Tito At The 'Sino

2011-12-01T21:29:00.003-05:00

Had to take a trip to Casino Valley today, so I figured I'd stop by and see Tito on the Stupid Show live from Mohegan Sun.

Pretty terrible set-up. They were a few feet from a bar, facing it. Therefore the crowd couldn't be more than two people deep. I guess they had this interview planned for months--it just happened to be on the day of the new manager's introductory press conference.

I listened to Bobby on the way home, and all the memories from the Mets days came flooding back--him stringing together 27 random words at a time, that kind of thing.

Then these same guys you see here interviewed Bobby on the phone, and there was a great moment, when he informed them that he didn't know who was who. Listening along at the moment Fat O realizes some people don't know who the fuck he is was priceless.

What's Happening With The Apartment?

2011-12-01T00:21:00.006-05:00

If it was any other song, I'd say "Shipping Up To Boston" would have to be retired now that Papelbon's gone. But that's a song that needs to be played at Boston sports venues. But what do you do with it? Our panel of experts, meaning just me, takes a look at the options.

1. Let the new closer use it. Ehh...no, Peg. Bard or anybody we bring in will have his own song, and even if he really likes SutB, I can't imagine he'd switch to it since it was so connected to his predecessor.

2. Let someone else use it. Again, I can't see anybody dissing Pap like that--OR taking the song out of play for every other situation.

3. Retire it. Are you even paying attention? I just said you can't do that with this song. Oh I see what you're doing--you realized you were gonna be stuck with a really short list so you threw this already-crossed out option in here to fatten it up. Makes sense.

4. Play it at random times, like maybe in the post-dong rotation. I could see them doing this, however, we've become used to this song as having a specific meaning, so I say come up with one.

5. Okay, then. Play it at a specific time. Here's my suggestion. You play it in the middle of the ninth inning. This way, it won't be played every night, only when we're tied or trailing after eight and a half. And those are the exact situations when a firing-up song should play. This fills in the late-inning rally song trilogy: Mid-7th: Take Me Out to the Ball Game, Mid-8th: Sweet Caroline, Mid-9th: Shipping Up to Boston (if applicable).

5a. Other specific time possibilities would be to put it in the victory song series, though I feel its beginning would sound odd after Dirty Water or Tessie. Then again Joy to the World feels a little out of place and isn't even played all the way through, so maybe you could replace that one. They could also go ahead and replace Sweet Caroline with it. A lot of people are sick of it--but I'm sure those people are probably sick of Shipping, too. But if they did wanna replace SC, here's their window of opportunity. Taking-the-field music? Nah. We don't use music at that time until the pitcher starts warming up, and then they go into that starter's own song anyway. Another possibility would be to have it be the "pre-top 9th" music regardless of the situation. Guaranteed to play every night, and...nah, doesn't work. What about mid-1st inning? Like, Okay, here come the bats? I don't know, I'm sticking with my mid-9th when applicable theory.

Xmas (Updated)

2011-11-30T12:43:00.007-05:00

Got the Xmas @ Fenway e-mail, and yes, it will be done by random online drawing again. Press release with all the Sox Pax and everything not out yet, but I'm sure it will be this afternoon. But the e-mail does say the Yard Sale will be happening again. I just hope they handle it much, much better this time. Remember that fiasco??

[1:34 Update: Press release is here. It claims the list of Sox Pax is "attached," but I see no link for it. That probably means the "real media" got this in their inbox with an attachment, so once again the a-holes will get to take the credit for telling you about something that's right on redsox.com, only this time they'll be the only ones to tell you since they forgot to add the attachment to the online version!]

[1:40 Update: Found the Sox Pax link on my own. This year again they have the OD, the Pats Day, and the Fri, Sat, and Sun, but then they have 2 Marlins ones (my prediction was correct in that case), and FIVE Yankee ones instead of throwing in a second NL team. I actually was wondering if they might keep the APril 20th Yanks game off the board, since it's the 100th anniversary of Fenway, and they did. That's definitely one I don't want to miss. Will have to get it in the Yanks lottery. Ooh, I see they went with "Miami Nice Pack" for one of the Marlins ones. Get it? Miami Vice? That's about as creative as they got this year.... Oh and I nailed the Fri, Sat, and Sun Packs! Exact 4 games, all three Packs.]

Hail To The Chiefs

2011-11-30T10:00:00.000-05:00

The Red Sox have had 45 managers. (Wikipedia's list shows 44--Cy Young's 1907 stint is left off of there. This list on redsox.com also leaves out Young. I don't know if there's controversy over this or if somebody just effed up....) Bobby Valentine is the second born in my home state of Connecticut, though it is uncertain whether he is of Martian descent. The other was Jack Barry, player-manager in 1917, born in my dad's hometown of Meriden. The most common birthplaces for a Sox manager are California and Illinois, with five each. More than half came from the sextet of California, Illinois, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Texas. Two were born outside the United States (one in Nova Scotia, Canada, and one in Ireland).

Here are the birthplaces of all the skips:

California (5)
Illinois (5)

New York (4)
Ohio (4)

Pennsylvania (3)
Texas (3)

Alabama (2)
Connecticut (2)
Indiana (2)
Massachusetts (2)
New Jersey (2)
Oregon (2)

Ireland
Kansas
Maine
Maryland
Missouri
Nebraska
Nova Scotia
Rhode Island
South Dakota

Sox Lose War On Drugs

2011-11-29T20:45:00.002-05:00

Well, the "Internet" is saying that Bobby Valentine has accepted the Red Sox' offer to be the team's next manager. I just hope the guy realizes he's got a lot of talent on his team, and he can pretty much sit back and let them play, as opposed to....opening his mouth and letting a bunch of drivel outta there. And trying to build a spaceship out of orange peels and an old Volkswagen or something. Don't you love how the same people who got rid of Manny Fucking Ramirez go and hire Bobby Valentine?

Fortunately we're just dealing with a manager here and not a player, so I'm not gonna worry about it too much, I have no problem with just living with whoever the hell we got, so, whatever. He's our guy now--hopefully the team plays well enough where we don't have to talk about him too much. I mean, yes, it will be fun to witness, but unlike the dumbass media, we fans just want the team to win, we don't give a fuck about what's "interesting" or what sells.

I'll definitely have to go to his restaurant this winter, though. Hopefully they Sox-ify it a little, and hopefully this will lead to some more Soxiness in Fairfield County. IN FACT, it just hit me now! This could be the key to NESN in Fairfield! If I run into Bobby, I am bringing that up, I assure you.

Cox Can't Be Oblivious To This

2011-11-29T18:20:00.002-05:00

Ads for Cox are funny enough, especially when you hear "Cox" as "cocks," but they've taken it to the next level. I made a gif out of one I just saw:

GIFSoup

(YT version with sound here.)

Oh God

2011-11-29T12:44:00.001-05:00

Pretty funny vid from Stewart about the nonsense over Obama's Thanksgiving message.

The Daily Show with Jon Stewart
Get More: Daily Show Full Episodes,Political Humor & Satire Blog,The Daily Show on Facebook

Maybe the batshits would have liked it better if he'd said this:

Sox Pax Predictions

2011-11-28T22:19:00.000-05:00

My guesses based on how they usually do it:

1. Opening Day Pack: 4/13 (OD), 4/30, 5/29, 9/26
2. Fish Pack: 4/14, 5/28, 6/19 (Marlins), 9/25
3. Hanley Pack: 4/15, 5/5, 6/20 (Marlins), 8/27

4. Iron Horse Pack: 4/20 (NYY), 4/30, 5/14, 8/24
5. Pinstripe Pack: 4/21 (NYY), 5/15, 6/25, 8/25
6. Stadium Pack: 4/22 (NYY), 5/16, 6/26, 8/26

7. TGIF Pack: 5/4, 5/25, 9/7, 9/21
8. Saturday Special Pack: 5/5, 5/26, 9/8, 9/22
9. Sunday Best Pack: 5/6, 5/27, 9/9, 9/23

10: Patriots' Day Pack: 4/16 (PD), 5/10, 5/14, 9/13
11: DC Pack: 6/10 (Nats), 8/2, 5/11, 6/6
12: Capital Pack: 6/8 (Nats), 8/1, 5/13, 6/27

I'm guessing the two NL teams will be FLA and WAS, assuming they'll feel the Braves weekend will have a big enough draw. This is also a weird year in that there are only two September weekday home games that aren't against the Yanks. And only four April/May weekday series. In other words, there aren't a lot of "throwaway games." So to keep the Sox Pax thing consistent, they're gonna have to include more games in the summer months and more weekend games unless they want to start repeating games. I have tried to give the Pax similarly bland/cheesy names to the ones they've had in the past. You're always gonna have Opening Day, then two NL packs. Then three Yanks packs. Then a Friday, a Saturday, and a Sunday pack. And finally Patriots' Day and two other NL ones. Or maybe they'll do something completely different. We'll see. This should be the week they announce them, complete with this press release but with the relevant info changed. We already know Xmas at Fenway will be December 10th. (Back before the crazy improvements, they used to have people line up and get wristbands and open up more of the park. Lately it's been through online drawing only. I wonder if they'll go back to the old way since the major improvements are done. I'm guessing since everyone's now used to the drawing, they'll just continue doing it that way.)

Yu Remember This?

2011-11-28T17:13:00.003-05:00

With all the Yu Darvish talk lately, I'd like to alert you to this post I did about him two and a half years ago. For now, though, Don Wert still holds his coveted title.

Muppetational

2011-11-28T11:10:00.002-05:00

Saw that Muppet movie last night. While one of the songs was playing, I thought, "This sounds like a Flight of the Conchords" song. Then I remembered that I heard Bret from FotC wrote the original songs for the film. With or without the Bret songs and the sweet cameos, I recommend this movie if you grew up with the Muppets.

Then I got home and found out Flight of the Conx is gonna be a movie, too!

Red Sox Get New Manager For '12

2011-11-27T12:35:00.000-05:00

August/September Outlooks Finally Reviewed

2011-11-26T00:11:00.001-05:00

I never did finish checking up on my pre-2011 predictions. It had nothing to do with how the season ended--that's proven by the fact that I forgot to do August as well as September, and after August we were in first place. So here we go:

August: I went with 17-11. The actual was 17-12. Got four series exactly right. At that point I was still running 4.5 games better than the actual record, thanks to the shitty start to April. Then I wrote: "we shall see what September brings...." Of course, it brought a bunch of shit.

September: I went with 14-12. I gave them a mediocre September just to make the final record a little more believable. 14-12 was supposed to be fine, since it would still give us 102 wins. Instead they went 7-20. I started with a win against the Yanks. Wrong. Said we'd win 2 of 3 from Texas, we actually lost 2 of 3. I said we'd lose 3 of 4 in Toronto, which we did. Instead of winning 2 of 3 in Tampa, we were swept. We split two with Toronto, as I said. Then we lost 3 of 4 against Tampa--I had us splitting. Sweep the O's in the final home series? Ha. We lose 3 of 4. I actually nailed the last two series, as we lost 2 of 3 in both NY and Balty. I thought they'd be meaningless games. I was wrong. Needless to say my playoff predictions were all irrelevant.

One note of awesomeness: My predicted record from May through August was 71-38. The actual record was 72-37. So I nailed the middle chunk of the season, and like the Red Sox themselves, I was off in April and September.

ARSFFPT Supports: Mike Olt

2011-11-23T11:38:00.002-05:00

My mom's friend has a nephew named Mike Olt who played in the Arizona Fall League this year. I thought that was cool enough, but when I looked the guy up, I saw that he was actually leading the league in homers. He ended up extending that lead by hitting a total of 13, nearly doubling the second-place guy's total. He also finished the season on top in ribbies, total bases, and slugging, and was top ten in OPS, BA, and OBP. Terribly, he was snubbed when it came to league MVP, though he did win multiple player of the week awards.

He's a Texas Rangers prospect, third baseman. Watch for him.

And Rangers, if you're thinking about trading prospects for starting pitching, the Red Sox have this amazing pitcher named John Lackey....

NY Daily News Top Story

2011-11-22T00:33:00.002-05:00

So weird. You know my thoughts on ol' Bobby. In fact I've cleverly hidden them in this screenshot.

Spring Training Sked

2011-11-21T17:00:00.002-05:00

Here's your 2012 spring training schedule. If you've been watching the April page you already knew the final game will be in DC against the Nats.

Truck Day will February 11th.

Congratulations to Jacoby Ellsbury for winning the 2011 AL MVPP--Most Valuable Position Player.

Greg Halman

2011-11-21T12:08:00.004-05:00

Almost every time I go to a game at Fenway Park, I watch for the moment when David Ortiz does his pre-game running/stretching. Because he'll almost always be out behind second base just as one of his buddies from the other team is out there. It's always a great photo op when David is laughing and hugging and clowning with his opponent pals.

When I read that Seattle Mariners' outfielder Greg Halman was stabbed to death this morning, I checked to see if any of his 44 major league games were in Boston. One was: July 22nd, 2011. As it turns out, I was there. I went through my photos from that day, and guess who Papi's special behind-second-base friend was that day?

Stroing A Wrench

2011-11-19T18:00:00.000-05:00

I remember when I first heard talk of baseball going to 15 teams in each league thinking not only that there would have to be at least one interleague series going on at any given time, but also that that would mean a lot more interleague games.

Now that it's true that the Astros will be joining the AL West in 2013, I'm thinking about this again. The first part is true. Interleague, all year long. However, I keep trying to do the math on this, and I keep coming up with the fact that the number of interleague games doesn't necessarily have to increase. Tell me if I have this right:

162 games. Essentially 54 three-game series. That's a little off, though, because you play some fours and some twos. For example, the Red Sox had 52 series last season, all of them being three games long except for 10 four-gamers and 4 two-gamers, accounting for the extra 6 games [(52 x 3) + 6 = 162].

There are 30 teams. Meaning 15 series are going on at any given time. If you make it so there's exactly one interleague series going on at any time, a team would have to play an interleague series once every 15 series. With 52 total series, that's a total of 3-4 interleague series a year for each team, making a total of roughly 9 to 12 games.

So unless I've messed something up, isn't it true that with two 15-team leagues, each team would only have to play a minimum of 9-12 games against a team from the other league for the thing to function? And if that's the case, and Bud still wants his 6 interleague series for each team, couldn't they just keep it at that many? (And to keep the number of intraleague games the same as it's been.) I'm just saying, while it doesn't HAVE to go down, it doesn't have to go up, either.

So they could do something like: A team plays its interleague games every 15 series, plus have two weekends where EVERY team plays interleague (since Bud obviously likes that). Instead of one interleague series in May and five in June, a team would have, for example, one in early April, one in mid-May, one in late June, one in early-August, and one in early-September. Those would be series where only them and their opponent are playing interleague. Then they'd also have a May and a June interleague series, at which point ALL the teams are doing so (maybe those could be the two "fake-ass rivalry" series). And there's your six series each. Only two teams would be in interleague for the opening series in April, and only two would end the season in interleague, and since there seems to be worry over pennant-race interleague, you'd know that you'd only have one September IL series maximum, with about a third of the teams not even having one.

Do I have this right or is there something I'm not thinking of?

Also, I still hate interleague!

"We're Puttin' The 'Blew' Back In Blue Jays"

2011-11-18T21:35:00.001-05:00

The Blue Jays have unveiled their new logo and uniforms and seem to think they possess some kind of mystical power that will suddenly make the team a perennial contender. Check out the video at this page. They talk about that bird like it's a living creature! I'm down with the 70s logo that they're using as inspiration, but I'm not sure it deserves such a dramatic piano score. Is that "Lick My Love Pump" I'm hearing? Anyway, good job changing the logo and getting some Canadian pride, guys. I'm just not sure it's the type of change the fans have been calling for.

The Miami (formerly Florida) Marlins' unveiling was a lot more...auto-tuney. Those guys look like they got in a fight with a box o' crayons.

[Update: The Orioles are also bringing back an old bird friend in 2012! They've also trademarked the phrase "The Ballpark That Forever Changed Baseball."]

Headed For The Bridge

2011-11-17T16:51:00.002-05:00

5 pm, Occupy Wall Street protesters are headed for the Brooklyn Bridge. Watch live below.

Watch live streaming video from occupynyc at livestream.com

Action

2011-11-17T11:15:00.002-05:00

As you know it's the worldwide day of action, and action is happening right now at Zuccotti Park. Lots of cops and lots of pushing and shoving. And it's gonna go on all day. We might be taking the Brooklyn Bridge later. Stay tuned. I'm also seeing shot of a mass of people marching through L.A. right now.

Orsillo Loyal, Heidi A Faker

2011-11-16T21:18:00.002-05:00

Heidi Watney is leaving NESN to join LA Lakers broadcasts. Don Orsillo was offered a deal with MLBN but is sticking with NESN for at least four more years.

1916 WS Video Play-By-Play

2011-11-16T00:50:00.003-05:00

I figured out the plays shown in the 1916 World Series video I wrote about earlier. (As of this writing, that site is still calling it a 1917 WS from Chicago--I have informed them it is actually Game 1, 1916 WS, Brooklyn vs. Red Sox, Braves Field. [Update: They've fixed it, though now they've got the Boston team listed as the Robins, but, hey, at least the game is right now.] Box score/play-by-play is here; NYT article from 1916 here.) Here we go:

0:04 Top of the 2nd. This is the 4-6-3 double play hit into by Brooklyn's George Cutshaw. You can see the runner slide into second, then start walking off the field toward the first-base dugout, as does the hitter after he's run through first. The home dugout at Braves Field was on the third-base side, as shown in this picture from years later. Then again, the hitter does turn back toward the right, and honestly, it doesn't look like the second baseman does anything, but I'm banking on the fact that he threw to second before the clip begins, or that it was a 6-6-3 that was reported as a 4-6-3. (But I looked at the original putouts and assists from the newspaper box score and everything matches up.) Anyway, by process of elimination, and shadow study, it has to be this play. It's also cool to see them throw the ball around the infield after the play as is done today. Look closely and you'll see the ball go from 1st to 3rd to 2nd after the play.

0:11 Bottom of the 2nd. This is the bunt single by Boston's Larry Gardner moving Lewis to second. You can see the right fielder backing up the play, catcher and third baseman going for ball as shortstop realizes no one's covering third and runs over there. "Conferences were held in and about the pitcher's box" after this play according to the New York Times, and you can see the beginnings of that too.

0:25 This is the very next play--another bunt to the same spot, a sacrifice by Everett Scott. Runners move "a sack ahead" to second and third. The Sox would leave the bases loaded after a walk.

0:31 We see the written text that describes Duffy Lewis' 3rd-inning RBI double, and then we see said double. Hoblitzell (referred to as Hoblitzel in both the film and the NYT article), who tripled, is seen scoring just as Lewis reaches first. The guy running second to third is actually the shortstop. He ends up receiving the throw.

0:40 We are taken to a new camera angle, from the other side of the ballpark. It took me a while, but I figured out that the first play we see from this new angle is the SAME double we just saw. Watch any one guy and you'll see he does the same thing in both shots. Runner scores as hitter reaches first, shortstop runs toward third and receives throw, etc.

0:52 This next play also took me a while--I finally realized that this triple (there were four in the game) had to be Hoblitzell's triple that came BEFORE the previous play. It's a triple with no one on base, and the shadows are just about in the same spot. If you go back to the beginning of the video you'll see the roof shadow start between the plate and the mound, and slowly creep toward the mound. At this point it's cutting through the outfield side of the mound. Besides, the next play shown takes place in the top of the fourth, and it has the shadow at its farthest-out point which means this play here is BEFORE that one--and the only other triple with no one on base is AFTER top 4.

1:05 Top of the 4th. This is the defensive play of the game. Cutshaw hits a shallow fly to right with the go-ahead run on third. Harry Hooper, with "a bit of sheer piracy," makes the catch and guns down Zack Wheat at the plate. A different paper (Telegraph-Herald) noted that Hooper actually slipped down and got up again quickly to throw home. This is feasible as it also says he was "just back of first base" when he caught the ball. And it described the runner sliding into home as you see in the clip.

And there's your 1916 WS video. So it is all from Game One, and goes roughly in order, with one play repeated.

As for the New York Times article, it is an incredible piece of writing, and I recommend you take the time to read the whole thing. You have to click the button on this page to see the pdf. It describes the crazy ninth inning in which the Sox nearly blew a 6-1 lead, and then goes back to the beginning to set the pre-game scene, before describing almost every inning of the game. Gems include:

Then something went wrong with the grand machine which boasts the world's title. Entering the final inning the score was 6 to 1 in favor of the Superbas' inhospitable hosts, and the game appeared to be won, in the choice Bostonese which one picks up even in a brief stay in the Hub, reposing safely on the chill surface of nature's refrigerating substance.

and

It was a typical world's series scene that greeted the eye of the late comer. Packed stands, or nearly packed, formed its setting, and its background, as envisaged from the crags and cliffs of the press box, away up, at least four laps on the journey Elijah made, was a mingled scene of switch engines just beyond the fence, the Charles River, ruffled in spots by spurting scullers or eight-oared crews, and on the nether bank a whirling succession of automobiles, whose occupants, bound and far afield, wotted little and cared less about anything so serious as a world's series ball game.

and

The Royal Rooters and their band--oh, yes, they were all there--kept warm, however, by means of parades, shouting, arm waving, and the other approved methods of expressing world's series enthusiasm.

Thanks to Allan at Joy of Sox for finding this video and the 1917 one, and whoever it was that posted them to Critical Past.

Video Of The 1916 World Series(!)

2011-11-15T17:36:00.001-05:00

I was psyched to see a post on Joy of Sox about 1917 World Series footage--Giants against White Sox at the Polo Grounds. However, when looking at one of the clips (which are on the site Critical Past), I noticed a flash of text which read:

In the third Duffy Lewis, famed for breaking up World Series' games, drives a two-base hit sending Hoblitzel [sic] home with the first run; score 1-0

And I thought, "Duffy Lewis? Wait a minute...." After doing a little research, sure enough, this footage was from one of the World Series the Red Sox played in. 1916 vs. Brooklyn. The game shown is Game One, and it's at Braves Field, as the Red Sox played their home World Series games there that season. You can see the Lewis double in question shot from right field, and then it cuts to other action shot from right field. I have to do further research to figure out what's going on in each play--it could be footage from multiple games (which means Babe Ruth could be in it if Game Two is shown).

The link to the video is here. You will notice the site claims it is from Chicago and is the 1917 World Series, but, again, that is wrong. It is the 1916 World Series in Boston. I have already sent in the correct information to them, so hopefully they update it soon. I also checked to see if any (other) footage of this World Series exists and I don't see any. So this could be huge, but either way, it's huge to me since I'd certainly never seen any before this. I just wish now they'd played that series at Fenway!

Credit goes to Joy of Sox for alerting me to the clips. Here is his original post, which highlights the 1917 WS clips. [And here's his updated post about the '16 clip.]

Bloom'd

2011-11-15T10:06:00.003-05:00

Bloomy and his pig patrol cleared out Zuccotti. But I think this is actually perfect timing--Thursday is a huge day of action so by doing it, they're just inadvertently rallying OUR side together.

Final Pumpkin Update. Maybe.

2011-11-15T09:00:00.000-05:00

Excuse the "multiple photos on desktop capture" technology here. The bottom one is from Monday. We are really starting to frighten the mail carriers now. Wednesday is yard waste day. So this should be the last update. But maybe I'll put it somewhere else without telling Kim and continue photographing it for an entire year. That would be something.

On Shittiness

2011-11-14T12:40:00.003-05:00

Doesn't everybody agree that Mariano Rivera has been the key to the Yankees' success for the past decade and a half? I was under the impression that if you have a great closer, you do everything you can to keep him. Obviously there's that point where a guy becomes a free agent, and you might not be able to afford him, or are unable to give him the years he wants. But that's a problem small-market teams face. Why are the Red Sox cheap and/or timid in this one important area? Why don't we recognize we have a solid guy in a key role and say "whatever it takes"? Every offseason should start with "Okay, closer? Already have one of the best. Keep at all costs. Next issue..."

Is the fact that we seemingly never had any intention of re-signing Papelbon because of the closer role itself? These guys always wanted a closer-by-committee situation. And on paper, it works. Even going with two guys and having the better one pitching the tougher inning (8th or 9th depending on who's hitting) seems like a smart idea. But the fact is, the way baseball works in 2012 is that you have one guy who pitches the 9th. And that role takes a certain kind of guy. I'm not talking about which guys have bigger fist pumps or weirder beards. I'm talking about the mentality of knowing every time you come in, the game is on the line. A slightly shittier pitcher might be better at pitching the ninth than another guy who's a better pure pitcher. The Red Sox are a team who uses the closer the same way everybody else does, and they had a guy who has proven he fits the role perfectly in both the "jock" and "nerd" categories. On top of that, he was an exciting, fun-lovin' guy--the exact type all these people who fall for the "chemistry" argument would probably want in their clubhouse anyway. So why is Jon Papelbon not on the Boston Red Sox right now? Especially at a time when the pitching staff needs all the help it can get. How crappy would it be if those guys all get back on track next year, but....whoops, every game is blown in the 9th because we didn't think the closer was "worth it"? (While thinking a lot of less-important roles ARE worth lots and lots of money for some reason.)

If having a great closer isn't worth spending money/years, how are we ever gonna have a closer for more than a few years? Say Bard becomes the greatest closer in the world over the next few years. Are you all gonna go through this whole thing again where you just act like he's "gone already" and assume the next 8th-inning guy will step right in? We've all seen the state of relief pitching over the last decade. One guy might seem great for half a season, but then he'll fall right back into the crap pile. How could any team who has one of the proven ones ever let him go?

It's almost like the Boston media convinced everyone from (some) fans to the team to Papelbon himself that he'd be gone after 2011. It's just like it was with Manny: Go to the games, and watch the fan reaction to the guy. You'd think he was a deity. The fans at Fenway Park were always there behind Pap, happy and proud to have him on our side, and ready to celebrate with him, literally, when the game was won. But flip on the stupid radio or read the stupid Internet, and it was as if Papelbon was a rival pitcher who "we" all couldn't stand and were waiting to get rid of. If Pap really just wanted to be out of here, how can I even blame him? I would hope that he'd have seen the way he's treated at the park and said, "this is how they really feel," but athletes have egos, and you know he was hurt by all the shit these assholes said about him (though I loved how he tried to get back at them with his "Cinco Ocho thrives on your negativity" routine).

This all goes back to my most common theme, how the stupid Boston sports media is ruining everything, and loves to drive our favorites out of town. This season WEEI has fired Tito, Theo, and Papelbon. For those of you who are happy about this, when are you gonna turn around and say, "Wait a minute..." I'd love to be doing happy tribute posts to all these guys, but instead I'm just fuming over what the media has done to our team. It's time we really start fucking with them. People are always bringing signs to Fenway--how about some anti-media ones? How about yelling at these old, white fucks when they're standing around on the warning track in pre-game looking for the next guy to crucify? How about never reading or watching them ever again? How about we start digging up dirt on them? (Hint: If you can't find anything, just make something up out of thin air and quote anonymous sources like they do.) We absolutely have no need for these people anymore anyway.

We'll see what they do about the closer role. I like Bard. I'm not gonna go judging him based on a shitty month. (Nor am I judging Pap solely on his great 2011--if you know me, you know all this is exactly what I'd be writing when Pap was finally gone, regardless of the previous season's outcome.) I just fear neither he nor anybody else we get could possibly be what Pap was for us. I'd hate to see "closer" be the new "shortstop" when we fucking had the right World Series-winning guy right there all along. We've seen plenty of times where guys come in and Fenway just turns out to not be right for them. I fear this could happen with both the manager and closer roles, but I'm not about to give up. I'm just glad Pap won't be in our own league, shoving it down our throats 10 times a year.

Non-Molestors 17, Molestors 14

2011-11-12T15:32:00.002-05:00

Good to get a win when everyone's watching. Gotta win the last two and get an MSU loss and we're in the B1G Championship Game. Which could be a rematch with these 1994 runners-up.

Shit

2011-11-12T00:26:00.001-05:00

Maybe tomorrow will be the day I write about how super pissed I am we don't have Jon Papelbon anymore. We'll see.

I Stand Corrected Re: Ferg

2011-11-11T10:33:00.003-05:00

For years I unfairly dismissed Craig Ferguson's show. Just assumed I wouldn't like it. Finally Chan convinced me to try it a few times. Turns out the guy is off the wall. Last night, for example, he had Larry King fill in as the voice of his robot side kick. I was on the floor. And the way he talks to guests--he just doesn't give a shit, it's great. Can't believe I've been missing out for so long. I made the mistake of thinking Conan was as "out there" as network TV allows. I was way, way, way off.

Penn State Students Hold Pro Child Rape Rally

2011-11-09T22:44:00.003-05:00

My mom said it best when she asked, Would Joe Paterno have called the police if it was his wife who got raped?

They just fired the old fart, and all these Penn State students started gathering and going nuts. A celebration? No, they're pissed! Have any of these idiot kids been following the story? I know Penn State is a huge school, so the rest of us can only hope these few thousand are the drunk morons who have no clue what the fuck is going on, and the rest of them are in their dorms quietly celebrating.

Funny thing is, ESPN has no clue these students are gathering. CNN has shown the whole thing, and the crowd is already moving somewhere else. And here's ESPN, wondering if student might gather.

Oh, and I forgot to mention this: Ticket prices at Fenway Park will be the same in 2012 as they were in 2011. I was pretty sure that's what would happen, nice to see they made the right move. And Xmas at Fenway will be Saturday, December 10th.

Fuzzy Britches

2011-11-09T09:11:00.000-05:00

It made me a little nervous to see that a letter from the department of corrections came through our mail slot yesterday. Even though I'm pretty sure the way they send you to jail isn't by mailing you a letter that says "please report to jail," and even though I've done nothing wrong that I can think of, it still freaked me out just a bit. It was a slight relief that my name wasn't on the envelope, just my street name and number, scrawled in pen. That's how I knew this thing probably went out to the whole street. Then I thought, Whoa, what if this is some announcement about a sex offender moving into my neighborhood.... Sandusky?! But then I remembered that those guys are supposed to actually go to your door. At least in the movies. So I opened it up, and, wouldn't ya know it, a neighbor of ours has applied for a job as a prison guard. And this guy from corrections is required to do a background check. Which apparently means walking around the dude's neighborhood and sliding copies of this letter into their mail slots so they can give him feedback. Of course!

Part 2: The Guy. Yeah, so the guy in question doesn't actually live on my street anymore. He moved away years ago. That's all I know. Either he's moving back, or he's using his mom's address and therefore lying on the application for some reason. Should I call up and tell them this? I don't wanna snitch on the guy, but this Penn State thing just made snitching go from uncool to cool. "Oh yeah, that guy? He'd make a great prison guard. He'd check for holes behind Rita Heyworth posters twice a week minimum. But he did lie about his address." Eh, I don't wanna do that. And the letter didn't say we had to call. I'll wait a few days and see if he actually moves back in before I make my next move. Stay tuned.

Son Of Dog

2011-11-08T16:36:00.002-05:00

The people who lived across the street from me growing up were huge Penn State fans. They had a little joke they'd tell. When their daughter was very small, they tried teaching her religion.

"Who was Jesus' mother," they asked.

"Mary," lil' Stephanie said.

"Very good. And who was Jesus' father?"

"Joe Paterno!"

Not by a long shot, kid.

By the way, I know you've been waiting for me to say it: My Huskers are gonna kick Penn State's ass this Saturday on behalf of everyone! Thanks in advance for rooting for us, world.

Skulls

2011-11-07T22:45:00.003-05:00

The stages of my 2011 Jack o'lantern.

Left: Shortly before Halloween
Center: During that October snow we had
Right: Tonight
Future: ?

And for those of you who never figured it out, it's the Misfits logo. That's what I was going for anyway. I feel like the average person probably thought it was some 6-year old's attempt at a scary face though. Also, you shoulda seen the flies on this pumpkin. Every day they'd just occupy the thing. At one point I brushed one off and it just fell to the stoop and sat there. It was alive, but it was just lazy as fuck, probably too full of pumpkin guts to even move.

Oh, and about that storm. For the record, Providence was spared. We had a slushy inch of snow that melted quickly. Meanwhile all we were hearing was horror stories from NYC, CT, Mass., and everywhere else. Wind, snow measured in feet, power out for days, Halloween postponed... the whole thing just wrapped around Rhode Island, though. Didn't even have to shovel, the sun did all the work.