Me and Pedro Down By the Ballpark

Pats/Colts more important than ever

2008-10-31T07:36:00.001-07:00

There has been a surfeit of stories this week about how Sunday’s Pats/Colts game has lost its luster. Maybe it has, but that only means this week’s game is more important than it has been in years. In the past, both teams could afford to lose to one another, knowing that they’d likely face each other again in the playoffs. This year, the teams are scrapping just to get to the playoffs, and have lost more games than they did last year, including postseason games. This game will be less shiny, but more important.

Look, each game in the NFL is a snapshot in time. Just because a team beats another in the regular season doesn’t mean they’ll beat them in the playoffs. Ask the 2002 Rams, or last year’s Patriots, how that turned out. The Pats/Colts epic games were fun, but they were just a prelude to a possible playoff game. That’s great and all, but when the teams are struggling to survive, there’s more on the line, and when there’s more on the line, it makes for more compelling football. Last year’s game was big because the Colts represented the biggest potential obstacle to the Pats’ undefeated season… but that was a vanity thing. If they had lost that game and only that game (and it looked like they were going to lose that game), they still would have had the number one overall seed in the playoffs.

This year, the Pats are tied for first in the AFC East. For someone who grew up in the Bill Parcells and Pete Carroll eras, this is a familiar spot. Every play is important. Every play represents the difference between having a chance to win it all and staying home in January. So let the national media complain that they’re subjected to a lackluster game. This is football at its best.

The Fightin' Phils

2008-10-30T16:57:00.000-07:00

In mid-September, I attended a wedding in Philadelphia. I was the best man, and the wedding party was a hodgepodge of East Coast and Chicago baseball allegiances. There was a White Sox fan, a Yankees fan, a Cubs fan, a Red Sox fan (myself) and the groom himself, who is a Phillies fan. The minister was also from Chicago. He was a Cubs fan. In God We Trust, I guess.

Mike got married, and it was the best day of his life. Hands down. Hands down. I had a pretty good time as well. The wedding was at an arboretum on a picture-perfect late fall day, and afterward we retired to some Philly bars still dressed in our wedding threads. We had some beers, watched some football, caught up, talked to single people. And the next day, we spread back out across the country, eager to root against each other for the next six weeks.

Well, Mike won. In a stupefying but welcome recent first, the Yankees were the only team among the bunch that didn’t make the playoffs – Hallelujah! Going into the first round, the White Sox looked like the most vulnerable, playing against the upstart Rays, while the Phillies were right back where they were last year — at home, in the first round, favored. Last year, it didn’t go so well, as they lost to the Rockies in three games largely spurred by Colorado’s second baseman, Kaz Matsui, a punchline in Mets territory who sat out a good percentage of this season with an anal fissure. Go ahead and read that previous sentence again. Soak it in. It is fantastic.

This year, the Phillies were the bullies, beating the Milwaukee Brewers in three games. They won their first two games at home en route to sweeping every home game they played this postseason; if you want to win a World Series, kids, this is a good way to do it. The White Sox would win a home game as well, but it was merely one to stave off elimination against the Rays, who would finish them off the following day. The Red Sox started out west, beating the Angels twice in Anaheim and nabbing game four at Fenway to move on. The only team NOT to win at home was the Cubs.

Offfff course.

The Cubs have really turned into the Red Sox; a team that’s an occasionally ferocious competitor that finds a way to lose in the most heartbreaking way possible. You got the sense this year that if the Cubs had actually won a postseason game, they might have found their stride and romped to an overexposed championship. It didn’t happen. They got pummeled at home and quieted by the Los Angeles Dodgers of Los Angeles, led by Manny Ramirez, whose quest to get back to the World Series fell just short. When his former team followed suit, it set the stage for one of the more bizarre World Series in recent memory: the young, eager team from city trying to round out its professional championship trifecta, against a team that had been around forever, won it all only once, and played in a city with four professional teams, none of whom had won a title since 1983 (Each of the others had failed once in the meantime).

During this time, I didn’t really hear from Mike. I don’t actually hear from Mike that often; he’s a pretty quiet guy. He’s the flip side to the stereotypical Philadelphian, who he’s fairly familiar with in the person of his father. Passionate about everything, ready to get mad at a moment’s notice, but fundamentally just upset about it all — that’s him. Mike just gets exasperated, and to tell you the truth, I would too. If Boston fans always thought they were superior, and the results didn’t show up on the field, Philly fans thought they weren’t superior, and the results did show up on the field. It wasn’t accurate, but Boston fans were wrong too (We weren’t superior). So when the Phillies won the title last night, and the only thing I heard from Mike was OH MY GOD, I knew something had snapped into place, the “It’s just sports, but it feels damn good to win” logic jump that usually comes far after a title win. Philly fans have known it’s just sports for years, which is why it killed them when they couldn’t win. It doesn’t mean anything. It’s just sports. Win the game. It never happened. Now the Phillies are champions, Philly stands intact and life can go on. Whereas Boston fans changed for the worse after the titles, I expect Philly fans to change for the better. I expect less relief than a profound sense of pride, but a dignified pride. I also expect the Eagles to win the Super Bowl, so we’ll see if it gets tested in early February.

But let’s let them have their moment.

One last thing about the wedding: the morning of, we went to eat breakfast in Philly’s Center City Market. There’s a Pennsylvania Dutch Country restaurant/counter where, basically, the Amish cooked us food. It was great, but others went off in search of cheesesteaks. It was 9:30 in the morning, but they wouldn’t be deterred. They came back sans cheesesteak, but they had made a discovery. “Mitch Williams is over there,” they said.

Mitch Williams threw the last pitch of the 1993 World Series. Joe Carter hit it for a championship-winning home run. Since then, the heat-throwing, hard-living lefty had actually made a pretty good life and name for himself in Philadelphia, becoming a talk-show host and hawking a line of Mitch Williams Wild Thing salsa. We went over and met him, told him Mike was getting married, got pictures with him and everything. He even signed a jar of salsa. Little did we know then, or did we know, that his days as a top Philly sports celebrity were drawing to a close. Everyone loves a character, but what everyone really loves is a winner. In 10 years, you won’t be able to walk a block in that town without hearing about Chase Utley, Ryan Howard, and Brad Lidge, and Williams will be an increasingly small footnote — that’s how these things work. Ask Drew Bledsoe. Everyone loves a winner. The Phillies are just that.

Controlled Substances, Wes Welker and Eggs

2008-10-27T12:35:00.000-07:00

(Now that we're in straight-up football season, some football talk. Story time!)

I went to last year’s Patriots Week 17 game against the, ugh, Giants, and rather than wait in a 90-minute line to catch the bus back to the Port Authority, I hung out with a group of people I kind of knew and waited for the line to subside (It never did; we would take a ride back to their hotel and take a cab from there). This was unpleasant because there was a man there, who I had met earlier that evening, who was from Rhode Island and had bet a substantial amount of money on the Giants beating the point spread, which did not happen. He was wearing a blood-red Patriots sweatshirt, and was the object of many “congratulations”-spewing Pats fans on the way back to their cars. One would think this was all fine and dandy, because the Patriots had just completed the first 16-0 regular season in league history. Only dude was under the influence of, let’s just say, a controlled substance that can make you hyper and angry, and since he was hyper and angry fellow to begin with, he was extremely upset about having lost the I believe TWO THOUSAND DOLLARS he had bet on the game’s outcome. If you didn’t think the bus line was really all that bad, the fact that I was hanging out with this guy should convince you otherwise.

So basically here’s what happened.

Guy passing by: “Yeah man! Patriots!”
Crazy guy: “I’ll f*cking kill you. Keep walking.”
Guy passing by: Really, really confused, does as he’s told.
(Repeat at least four times)

This was right after the game, and I had briefly lost contact with the person I actually knew among this group, who was my sole link to crazy guy, and it was just the two of us. I was scared to be around the guy because I was wearing a Patriots jersey, but I was acting appropriately somber given that there was a [redacted]-up dude in my vicinity who had lost $2,000. I know when to tread lightly. We made small talk. Like, really small. Then I had to pee. So I got, I believe the technical term is, the f*ck out of there.

About 200 feet away from the car was the road that creates the periphery of the parking lot; just beyond that were hella bushes that serve as a big pre- and post-game potty. This would serve me just fine. I was on my way back to the car when I someone yelled in my direction, “Hey Welkuh (the local pronunciation of the name on the back of my shirt), do you like eggs” and whizzzz…

… an egg went flying about 10 feet past my head.

This is probably the time I should have kept walking, but I was on the phone at the time and decided to describe the scene to my bemused friend. And talk a little trash. Given what I was returning to, I believe there is an expression to describe my circumstances involving a hard place and a rock, so I decided to stay where I was. I said to my would-be assailants, grouped about 30 feet away, “If you keep throwing them like Eli, sure, you won’t hit me.”

Did I mention I’m not smart?

Emboldened by my comment, one of them, who had to be at least 45 years old, walked straight up to me, stopping five feet away. He raised his arm and catapulted it forward, and while I attempted to dodge the chicken embryo, its casing broke against my shirt and its yellow goo caked all over my gloves and clothes. He said to me, shrugging, “I had to,” as if I was supposed to feel bad for him, even as someone closer to my age (I AM THIRTY), came over and said to me, “I’m sorry about him, man.” Which I felt good about until one of them threw a full, open beer can at me as I finally walked away. It hit a school bus full of children.

When I got back to the car, my friend was there, but I was careful to hide any evidence of the attack, because, and I mean this quite literally, red sweatshirt guy would have murdered someone if he found out. He wanted to murder someone anyway, and this would have been a good excuse. Thankfully it was pretty dark and didn’t come up until we were on our way out of the stadium, and, being in the car, we were able to convince him that we really preferred getting out of there to vehicular manslaughter.

I think I need to get new friends.

The Mighty Rays

2008-10-20T10:36:00.000-07:00

Depending on who you ask, it is either completely surprising or completely unsurprising that the Tampa Bay Rays stand on the brink of a World Series victory, having (finally!) dispatched the defending champion Boston Red Sox. Mystique and Aura have left Fenway for the dome-enclosed charm of The Trop — quite possibly the worst venue in American professional sports today. Let that not, if we can help it, detract from the greatness and beauty of this year’s Rays club. Having never really been a factor in any previous Major League season, the team was on the verge of becoming the biggest headache for statheads in the history of the game before this season: a team chock-full of young stars that somehow couldn’t win. It was like adding 10+10+10+10+10+10+10+10+10 and getting 65 over and over. You knew it had to change eventually, but I would guess even the most stubborn number crunchers took one look at the Tampa Twentysomethings and still said, when the compass pointed north of 90 wins, “I’ll believe it when I see it.” The Rays hadn’t just suffered through 12 consecutive losing seasons since entering the league in 1998, they had suffered through 12 horrible losing seasons. They finished out of last place exactly once, in the Red Sox’ miracle season of 2004. The then-“Devil Rays” won 70 games, and finished fourth. The Blue Jays looked up from below.

Now the Might Rays storm into the World Series, completing an odd, almost tragic superfecta: each of the four most recently-instituted expansion teams in Major League Baseball have reached the Fall Classic. The Florida Marlins won the whole shebang twice; the Diamondbacks claimed victory in 2001. The Colorado Rockies won 23 out of their final 24 games before being swept out of the title hunt by Boston. Cubs fans, Brewers fans and Pirates fans aren’t likely to see the joy in this little coincidence. It’s been 63 years since they played a World Series game at Wrigley. For that you can thank James Loney and Manny Ramirez.

It was Loney’s Game 1 grand slam that, for all intents and purposes, put the Cubs/Dodgers series out of reach: with their superior starting pitching and the superlative Manny Ramirez leading the way, the Dodgers sucked all the momentum from the North Siders and cruised into the National League Championship Series against the Phillies. Ramirez was the headline attraction of these playoffs. After he was traded by the Red Sox in late July due to a long-simmering feud with the team over a 2009 player option, Ramirez channeled his inner Barry Bonds, hitting an astonishing .396 for the remainder in the regular season (and over .500 in the playoffs), and inducing more than a few eye-rolls in the Fens. His replacement in Boston, Jason Bay, adequately filled Ramirez’s spot in the Sox’ lineup — not a Hurcelean task, but maybe a Mannychean one. Bay is not the hitter that Ramirez is, but Bay’s tall stroke has old-school power when he squares the ball up. The baseball world was ready for Red Sox/Dodgers the way it was for Red Sox/Cubs in 2003 or the NFL was for Patriots/Packers last year; instead, the two best teams in the game are those that play in a stadium unfit for anything but college kids and one whose fanbase is best known for throwing snowballs at Santa Claus during a football game.

•

The Rays didn’t pound their way into the Series, even if they spent the better part of games two through five sending forget-me-nots over the outfield walls in St. Petersburg and Boston. The Rays’ 15 homers in the frame set the record for a League Championship series, but it was a slicing, defensive line-drive by Evan Longoria that tied game seven at one apiece after Dustin Pedroia’s first-run homer for Boston. Longoria, a rookie who stands six-foot-three and a terrifying presence in the batter’s box, was already one of the great stories of the postseason for his tape-measure home runs, but this time he used his massive frame to deflect a ball just down the first-base line with a runner on second base. He was hopelessly late on the ball, but, like the best hitters, if you’re not hitting the ball out of the yard it doesn’t matter much where you hit it, and the important thing is to get the bat on the ball. He sliced one to right, and the game was tied. The Rays’ starter, the brilliant but mercurial Matt Garza, was able to relax a bit, and continued to dominate the Red Sox hitters. When the Rays took the lead on a single by Rocco Baldelli it was bedlam inside the dome, and curtains for the Red Sox. Willie Aybar would add a seventh-inning homer, and the Red Sox would load the bases in the eighth inning, but once Tampa regained the lead they looked like a team poised to make it to baseball’s ultimate stage. The canards about postseason experience die hard, but last night, in Tampa, the Rays did their best to kill off any old storylines. The Red Sox had come back from 3 games down to the Yankees and two games down to the Indians in their previous playoff runs; this year, the clock struck midnight on them, but Tampa’s Cinderella story continues.

•

The Rays will meet the Philadelphia Phillies, who breezed through the National League playoffs after winning the NL East’s war of attrition in familiar, ugly style. For the second straight season, the New York Mets blew a substantial division lead only to find themselves even with Philadelphia on the season’s final Friday; trailing by one game on Saturday; and even again on Sunday thanks to a brilliant pitching performance. Last year it was John Maine; this year it was the Minnesota and Venezuela important Johan Santana, who scrawled on the Mets’ lineup card “Let’s play like men today” and promptly threw a complete game, 11-strikeout shutout. Unfortunately, he was merely a spectator on the season’s final day, when the Mets were eliminated from playoff competition and the Brewers snuck past them to earn a wild card berth. As Queens sank into its annual winter depression, the Phillies were determined not to be swept out of the playoffs in the minimum number of games possible, as they were by last year’s supernova Rockies, but they were playing a Brewers club that had waited 26 years between playoff appearances and had the best pitcher on the planet scheduled to start game two in CC Sabathia. Sabathia, acquired from Cleveland earlier in the season and almost certain to land in the Bronx in 2009, spent his three months on Milwaukee racking up an 11-2 record with a 1.65 ERA and almost single-handedly restored dignity to the Milwaukee baseball franchise.

Sabathia couldn’t start in game one, though, and that job for Philadelphia fell to 24-year-old Cole Hamels, like Sabathia a tall, left-handed pitcher with occasionally dominating tendencies. Where Sabathia is hefty and unkempt in his two-sizes-too-big uniform, Hamels looks like the cardboard cutout of a pitcher. His cap is pulled tight over his had, brim unbent in the slightest, and when he delivers the ball it’s almost as if he’s reaching over to place it in Carlos Ruiz’s glove. Sabathia, on the other hand, rocks and fires, putting his obvious body mass to work and finishing each pitch with a theatrical flourish of his left arm above is head. Hamels’ delivery is all business: smoother, more consistent, ending downward in a fielding position. It was also more effective in this series. He pitched a masterpiece in game one and watched as Sabathia gave up a second-inning grand slam to the Hawaiian Shane Victorino in game two. This is the second straight year Sabathia has been roughed up in the playoffs after a brilliant regular season, possibly the result of the large number of innings he threw just getting there (His NLDS start was his fourth consecutive appearance on three days’ rest). Note to Hank: caveat emptor.

Against the Dodgers, the Phillies were faced with roughly the same quandary the Anaheim Angels were faced with in the 2002 World Series: How do you stop, with apologies to Albert Pujols (then and now), the game’s reigning best hitter at the peak of his abilities? The answer is to stop everybody else. Manny, long accused of making a mockery of the game, continued to do so with his bat, going an incomprehensible 8 for 15 with two home runs and seven walks over the course of the series, only to see his team fall, four games to one. His 28 postseason home runs are most all time, and his 74 postseason RBI are second to Bernie Williams, but it is those records — and the thought of his next $100 million contract — that will have to carry Ramirez through the long winter. Like his old friends in Boston, he couldn’t make it to the very end. In fact, it was Derek Lowe, Boston’s winning pitcher in each of 2004’s series-clinching victories, that took losses in games one and four for L.A., a team with a distinctly East Coast feel featuring Joe Torre behind the bench and Nomar Garciaparra sitting atop it. Even the Dodgers’ owner hails from Boston, but there will be no clam chowder nor wheatgrass in this year’s World Series. This one’s for all the cheesesteaks.

•

If there is one postseason story that should not be buried by Longoria’s superlative skills or BJ Upton’s mammoth playoff home run outburst (seven at latest count, one off the playoff record), it is that of Baldelli. Baldelli joined Tampa Bay in 2003 and put up good numbers through several losing seasons before struggling through something bigger: he was losing energy. After several trips to the disabled list and consultations with doctors, it was discovered that he has a severe metabolic condition that restricts his ability to engage in athletic activities for long periods of time. He’s still a good player, but a part-time one. For someone who grew up in Rhode Island (as a Red Sox fan) and was compared to Joe DiMaggio in his early days for his all-around abilities, it looked as if Baldelli’s career would be spent, for its valor, in the service of avoiding futility. Baldelli started only two games of the series, including the last one, but his go-ahead single in the sixth inning was the game’s decisive blow. At merely 27 years old, he is the heart of this both improbably and all-too-predictably good Rays team. Philadelphia’s center is probably their incredibly 26-year-old second baseman, Chase Utley, but their most recognizable player is their slugging first baseman Ryan Howard. Howard led the league in home runs for two out of the last three years, but his efficiency in producing them has dropped dramatically in that time. He strikes out in the most prodigious numbers in major league history, leading many observers to curse his approach, but there’s something magnetic about the man that is old-school baseball at its finest and delightfully simple to understand — he hits the ball a long way. Homerless through the NLCS, it would be vintage Howard to turn on the faucet when it’s needed the most (He won the 2006 NL MVP on the basis of a sizzling September, and may repeat the feat this year). The question is whether any of it will be enough to cool off the Rays. There may not be enough juice in Howard’s bat and Hamels’ arm to extinguish the thrilling young team by the bay.

They have to win

2008-10-19T15:55:00.001-07:00

They have to win

El caballito

2008-10-03T09:17:00.001-07:00

The Slanch Report (via Deadspin) has a post this morning about Dustin Pedroia, whom TBS announced Chip Carey calls "el caballito" as if that was his Widely Accepted Nickname. Which it isn't. It was the first time Slanch had heard this particular name, but I heard it once before, back in May, also during a TBS game, and I remembered it because it's, I don't know, ridiculous and awesome? But I didn't hear it again until last night, when Carey apparently said, "How many times have we heard about 'el caballito' this summer?" which led Slanch to guess that David Ortiz might be just messing with Chip for everyone's benefit, a lá Darryl on The Office. I love the idea of this, and Chip would be the perfect target, so let's hope Big Papi is onto something here. But we're onto something here, too, off the baseball topic, on The Office...

Sabbatical

2008-09-23T11:46:00.000-07:00

I (Bryan) have temporarily moved blog operations over here, but if this was the end, this blog was fun for the good times.

UPDATE: On second thought, about 5 minutes later, I might keep this as my sports outlet, keep the new one as a literary jackoff blog, and run them all through my eponymous site. I like it. Once everything was out my system, it felt better.

Reprinted for your enjoyment

2008-09-17T06:43:00.001-07:00

2006's Lebowski Tennis:

BAG: nor did I say Webber was in the top 60. I just wanted to discuss him. Ply likes to argue, this much is clear.

Ply: Louis, you can read this if you won't respond: Miller averaged 18.2 ppg for 18 seasons; for the same reason I'm not ready to punch C-Webb's ticket after 11 with 23 and 10, I am ready to punch Miller's ticket now... Ben, Ply loves to argue. It all derives from a simple equation: Bryan + coffee = Ply.

BAG: I understood what Louis meant.

Ply: This aggression will not stand, Ben.

BAG: The bums will always lose, Ply.

That's just, like, your opinion, man.

128 comments:

Ben said...: At least I'm housebroken.; 4:09 PM
Bryan said...: Why is everything such a travesty with you?; 4:25 PM
Ben said...: You're not wrong Ply. You're just an asshole.; 4:31 PM
Bryan said...: I don't like your jerk-off name, I don't like your jerk-off face, I don't like your jerk-off behavior and I don't like you, jerk-off.; 4:40 PM
Ben said...: Fuck it, Dude, let's go bowling.; 5:33 PM
Bryan said...: I don't roll on Shabbos.; 11:02 AM
Ben said...: Fucking fascist!; 1:48 PM
Bryan said...: Say what you want about the tenets of national socialism. At least it's an ethos.; 1:50 PM
Ben said...: What's this day of rest shit? What's this bullshit? I don't fuckin' care! It don't matter to Jesus.; 2:01 PM
Bryan said...: Look man... new shit has come to light... and you're not privy to all the new shit, man. Has it ever occurred to you that there are larger forces at work here, man?; 2:10 PM
Ben said...: Shut the fuck up, Donny.; 2:30 PM
Bryan said...: How about I take the money you have on you, and we call it even?; 2:33 PM
Ben said...: Did you ever hear of "The Seattle Seven"?; 2:45 PM
Bryan said...: Do you speak English sir? Parle usted Ingles?; 4:23 PM
Ben said...: Obviously you're not a golfer.; 4:45 PM
Bryan said...: That must be exhausting.; 4:54 PM
Ben said...: You mean coitus?; 4:56 PM
Bryan said...: I dig your style, Dude. But do you have to use so many curse words?; 5:04 PM
Ben said...: I fuck you in the ass, I fuck you in the ass, I fuck you, I fuck you, I fuck you...; 5:18 PM
Bryan said...: People forget that the brain is the biggest erogenous zone.; 5:44 PM
Ben said...: Well, I still jerk off manually.; 5:47 PM
Bryan said...: Get out of my fucking cab.; 6:22 PM
Ben said...: Brandt can't watch, though, or he has to pay a hundred.; 7:12 PM
Bryan said...: With one hundred thousand dollars you could buy any number of rugs that don't have sentimental value to me.; 8:48 PM
Ben said...: I'm just gonna find a cash machine.; 8:51 PM
Bryan said...: I was wondering if you could pay me in cash. My only concern - and I have to check with my accountant - is that this might bump me into a higher tax bracket.; 10:11 PM
Bryan said...: If you already have the check made out, that's cool.; 10:14 PM
Ben said...: It's down there somewhere, let me have another look.; 10:48 PM
Bryan said...: Do you, like, have any promising leads?; 11:01 PM
Ben said...: This is a complicated case, Maude. A lot of ins, a lot of outs, a lot of what-have-yous, a lot of strands to keep in my head, man.; 11:10 PM
Bryan said...: For your information, the Supreme Court has roundly rejected prior restraint.; 11:11 PM
Ben said...: That had not occurred to us, Dude.; 11:17 PM
Bryan said...: We're not the only morons here.; 10:30 AM
Ben said...: Were you listening to The Dude's story, Donny?; 11:52 AM
Bryan said...: Yeah, but I wasn't over. Mark it 8, dude.; 12:00 PM
Ben said...: Could you please keep your voices down--this is a family restaurant.; 12:08 PM
Bryan said...: Vagina.; 12:33 PM
Ben said...: OVER THE LINE!; 12:46 PM
Bryan said...: What did you think this was about, sex?; 1:12 PM
Ben said...: You ready to be fucked, man? I see you rolled your way into the semis. Dios mio, man. Liam and me, we're gonna fuck you up.; 1:48 PM
Bryan said...: Who's the nihilist now?; 2:40 PM
Ben said...: Don't be fatuous, Jeffrey.; 2:49 PM
Bryan said...: What are you, a fucking park ranger?; 4:23 PM
Ben said...: Does the Pope shit in the woods?; 4:26 PM
Bryan said...: I am the walrus?; 4:35 PM
Ben said...: No, he's a sex offender. With a record. He served 6 months in Chino for exposing himself to an eight year old.; 4:37 PM
Bryan said...: My "wife" is not the issue here.; 4:41 PM
Ben said...: So what are you saying? When you get divorced you turn in your library card? You get a new license? You stop being Jewish?; 4:44 PM
Bryan said...: It's like Lenin said.; 4:48 PM
Ben said...: Racially he's pretty cool?; 4:48 PM
Bryan said...: Oh no, he has health problems.; 5:00 PM
Ben said...: You mean... beyond pacifism?; 5:30 PM
Bryan said...: He treats objects like women.; 6:08 PM
Ben said...: When he moved to Hollywood he had to go door to door to tell everyone he was a pederast.; 6:17 PM
Bryan said...: Some burgers, some beers, a few laughs...; 6:18 PM
Ben said...: Lord. You can imagine where it goes from here.; 6:40 PM
Bryan said...: (ahem) You didn't go to college.; 6:44 PM
Ben said...: What in God's holy name are you blathering about?; 7:00 PM
Bryan said...: V.I. Lenin! Vladimir Ilyich Ulianov!; 7:23 PM
Ben said...: I don't see any connection to Vietnam, Walter.; 7:29 PM
Bryan said...: Wu peed on my rug.; 7:56 PM
Ben said...: Ah hahahahaha! Wonderful woman. We're all very fond of her. Very free-spirited.; 8:10 PM
Bryan said...: Stay the fuck away from my fucking lady friend, man!; 8:12 PM
Ben said...: She's got to feed the monkey, I mean uh... hasn't that ever occurred to you? Sir?; 8:23 PM
Bryan said...: My thinking on this matter was so uptight!; 12:33 AM
Ben said...: Dude, are you fucking this up?; 12:59 AM
sojo said...: I'll suck you cock for $1000; 7:26 AM
Bryan said...: Far out, man.; 10:33 AM
Ben said...: Where's the fucking money, shithead?; 2:24 PM
Bryan said...: From the looks of it, he already spent it.; 2:30 PM
Ben said...: What's in the fuckin' carrier?; 2:35 PM
Bryan said...: Knox Harrington, the video artist.; 2:44 PM
Ben said...: No, Donny, these men are nihilists.; 2:53 PM
Bryan said...: You don't know shit, Lebowski.; 3:10 PM
Ben said...: Let me explain something to you. Um, I am not "Mr. Lebowski". You're Mr. Lebowski. I'm the Dude. So that's what you call me. You know, that or, uh, His Dudeness, or uh, Duder, or El Duderino if you're not into the whole brevity thing.; 3:21 PM
Bryan said...: Dude, today's already the 10th.; 3:29 PM
Ben said...: I'm sorry your stepmother is a nympho.; 3:39 PM
Bryan said...: She just came over to use the shower.; 3:44 PM
Ben said...: Mmm, sure. That and a pair of testicles.; 4:04 PM
Bryan said...: I got a rash, man.; 4:11 PM
Ben said...: Oh, Jesus, what's that smell, man?; 4:30 PM
Bryan said...: My "rod," or... "Johnson."; 4:32 PM
Ben said...: Walter, they're calling the cops, put the piece away.; 4:42 PM
Bryan said...: You didn't think I was rolling out of here naked, did you?; 4:46 PM
Ben said...: What... like an Irish monk?; 4:56 PM
Bryan said...: I'm a brother shamus, like you!; 6:13 PM
Ben said...: Okay sir, you're a Lebowski, I'm a Lebowski, that's terrific, I'm very busy so what can I do for you?; 6:44 PM
Bryan said...: I finally got my venue for my performance, I was wondering if you would come by.; 7:31 PM
Ben said...: The Beaver Picture?; 8:42 PM
Bryan said...: "The Port Huron Statement." I was the author of the original, not the compromised second draft.; 9:59 PM
Ben said...: Your revolution is over, Mr. Lebowski. Condolences. The bums lost.; 10:24 PM
Bryan said...: I'm staying. I'm finishing my coffee. Enjoying my coffee.; 11:34 PM
Ben said...: Jesus, you mix a hell of a Caucasian, Jackie.; 11:52 PM
Bryan said...: You got any of that good sasparilla?; 11:29 AM
Ben said...: Hey, nice marmot!; 1:43 PM
Bryan said...: It has fucking papers. You can't board it on an airplane, it sheds.; 1:47 PM
Ben said...: The chinaman is not the issue here, dude.; 3:55 PM
Ben said...: Well. I guess we can close the books on that one.; 4:38 AM
Bryan said...: To tell you the truth, Brandt, I don't remember most of it.; 12:15 PM
Ben said...: Three thousand years of beautiful tradition, from Moses to Sandy Koufax...; 1:51 PM
Bryan said...: Shit yea, the achievers.; 2:07 PM
Ben said...: Jeez, Walter, I'm not talking about the guys who built the fucking railroad here.; 2:23 PM
Bryan said...: They released one album, in the mid-80s.; 3:41 PM
Ben said...: Come on, man. I had a rough night and I hate the fuckin' Eagles, man!; 4:46 PM
Bryan said...: Well, I can see somebody doesn't want to be cheered up. Donny, let's get a lane.; 5:02 PM
Ben said...: Strong men also cry... Strong men also cry.; 5:10 PM
Bryan said...: Who's in charge of scheduling?; 1:21 PM
Ben said...: The man in the black pajamas, Dude. Worthy fuckin' adversary.; 1:53 PM
Bryan said...: I'm the guy who's going to kick your phony goldbricking ass.; 3:00 PM
Ben said...: Will you come off it, Walter? You're not even fucking Jewish, man.; 3:09 PM
Bryan said...: This is about drawing a line in the sand, saying that beyond this point YOU DO NOT... and Dude, that's not the accepted nomenclature, Asian-American, plase.; 4:20 PM
Ben said...: What is that, yoga?; 4:51 PM
Bryan said...: You're killing your father, Larry.; 12:01 PM
Ben said...: Isn't that what makes a man?; 1:50 PM
Bryan said...: I'll stick that piece right up your ass and pull the trigger until it goes click.; 3:19 PM
Ben said...: Are these the Nazis, Walter?; 4:09 PM
Bryan said...: The carpet-pissers did this?; 11:06 AM
Ben said...: That was me... and six other guys.; 2:12 PM
Bryan said...: Come alone. No funny stuff.; 2:54 PM
Ben said...: I told that Kraut a fuckin' thousand times, I don't roll on shabbos!; 3:13 PM
Bryan said...: No, like I said, Wu peed on my rug.; 3:59 PM
Ben said...: The rug was in the car?; 6:59 PM
Bryan said...: It is our most modestly priced receptacle.; 10:16 PM
Ben said...: Probably a vagrant slept in the car. Or maybe just used it as a toilet and moved on.; 11:16 PM
Bryan said...: Fuck it. Life goes on, man.; 12:06 PM
Ben said...: That's right, Dude. 100% certain.; 2:14 PM
Bryan said...: Well, the Dude abides.; 2:51 PM
The Stanger said...: The Dude abides. I don't know about you, but I take comfort in that. It's good knowin' he's out there, the Dude, takin' her easy for all us sinners. Shoosh. I sure hope he makes The finals. Welp, that about does her, wraps her all up. Things seem to've worked out pretty good for the Dude'n Walter, and it was a purt good story, dontcha think? Made me laugh to beat the band. Parts, anyway. Course--I didn't like seein' Donny go. But then, happen to know that there's a little Lebowski on the way. I guess that's the way the whole durned human comedy keeps perpetuatin' it-self, down through the generations, westward the wagons, across the sands a time until-- aw, look at me, I'm ramblin' again. Wal, uh hope you folks enjoyed yourselves.; 3:42 PM

Tonight We Drink Presidente

2008-07-31T17:27:00.000-07:00

Tonight we drink Presidente. Tonight we open the beers, one by one, and roll them into our mouths, letting the heat try to pry them back out. Tonight we don’t talk about the man we are drinking, but we are thinking about him the whole time. We drink the beer of the Dominican Republic; we don’t have to say his name.

Somewhere Manny is on a plane.

Somewhere Manny is on a plane.

He is on his way to Los Angeles, to play for Joe Torre and to play with Nomar, to fire balls around Dodgers Stadium’s spacious outfield, to lose the ball in the sun and lope out grounders, to a place where he is singular and epic and beloved all at once.

We have let Manny go because there was no keeping him, now. It was, we were told, the last straw. We had given up guessing how many straws there were, but we figured there was at least one more. There he was, asking to be traded for Brett Favre and smiling and acting like the guy who his teammates liked at times and hated at others but never stopped loving. And then Theo Epstein did something strange: he actually traded him. He actually traded him.

Manny is gone, and he’s not coming back. Not ever. To paraphrase Rick Pitino, Manny Ramirez is not walking through that door. And we can’t even exhale, because if we exhaled we wouldn’t acknowledge that our team got painfully, painfully worse today. There’s no more Manny-n-Papi connection. Nothing lasts forever, but this lasted five years — an eternity in modern baseball.
Tomorrow, Manny will play left field, or maybe right field, where he is better suited, and he will bat fourth and probably get a base hit or two.

The Yankees will cheer. The Yankees will exult. The Yankees will do what they do, when they do it, because they are free of Manny’s curse. Manny made Yankee Stadium his own personal ballyard, mere miles from a house in which he grew up and which he most assuredly could not find.

We are left… here. We are left in a new place. Manny is gone, and David Ortiz will seem so alone now. Now we are a team of laser artists, seeing-eye dogs with high on base percentages and all the fundamentals. Eight years ago, we signed a punk, spacey guy from Cleveland for 8 years and $160 million, and for the first time people finally wanted to come to Boston again. That was Manny. Somwhere Manny is on a plane.

Tonight we drink Presidente.

•••

A beer eight years in the making tastes great. It tastes just like you imagined it would taste: sweet, refreshing, relaxing. It does the job. I remember where I was the Red Sox signed Manny: I was in my apartment in Chicago, and when my college roommate came home with the news, I turned on the local radio station and listened to the news update every 10 minutes just to make it feel real.

Nobody ever came to Boston. Nobody. It was shitty place to play with a shitty stadium with shitty locker rooms and shitty fans who would call you a piece of shit the first moment it looked like something was going to go wrong. They blamed you for everything, and would later treat Manny like it was their birthright to tell him how to do his job. Manny was Manny, is Manny, so he didn’t care. He cared in fits. But eight years ago, he felt about Cleveland the way he feels about Boston, and floated his way here after a winter’s worth of negotiations. Eight years, $160 million, with options to push it up to $200. The numbers were so blinding that they were an achievement in themselves. We had someone who made money and deserved it. We could get players.

Manny was the first to come to Boston voluntarily, though Pedro agreed to stay here. I don’t want to think about what happened to him, and the similarities. Look: it’s like a marriage, only the problems only arise once the deal moves past six years. Then people start to get upset. They want freedom. The front office has taken them for granted. They talk. It happens. It happens with almost every long-term free agent. It’s not their fault. We should let it be.
Manny had to go at some point, and it wasn’t going to be later than after this year. But you still felt like they weren’t going to trade him. Everyone in that dugout knows how good he is. David Ortiz knows how good he is. So does Derek Jeter. So don’t everyone. Tim Lincecum’s job just got a lot harder.

Here’s how we should honor Manny: by rooting for him. It costs us nothing. To root against him would cost us everything.

•••

My First Time

2008-07-16T10:46:00.000-07:00

I’ve been to about 20 baseball stadiums, but the last time I went to a “new” one (for me) was two years ago, when I went a Dodgers game in the immediate jetlagged haze of a return flight to the States from New Zealand.

I just read a Baseball Prospectus writer’s column where he waxes poetic about his first time in Yankee Stadium, so here’s my first impressions of the stadiums I visited as a kid:

1. Fenway Park
During the 1986 season, we were taking a vacation in Boston during the summer when I asked my dad if we could go to a Red Sox game. We lived outside Washington, DC, but I was born in Boston, so I had declared my 8-year-old self a Red Sox fan. We saw that there was a game coming up on a Saturday, and my dad my a couple calls, and we were set (how quaint). At first, I thought Clemens was pitching, but it was Schraldi. It was an afternoon game, and all I remember is being really close to the field and that it was gray and misty — cinematically so. I remember the seminal experience of coming out of the tunnel and seeing the field, and the burly players, for the first time, and walking along the innermost walkway on Fenway’s periphery to find our seats. I also remember that the Red Sox won. Or maybe they lost. I’m not sure. I don’t even care.

2. Yankee Stadium
A couple years later — important years — my father picked us up from his home in Connecticut to take us up to New York, and I suggested we see a Yankees game. It was the middle of the summer, and I remember taking the train up to the Stadium, where my youngest brother was yelled at on the train by someone asking if he had seen a black person before. We got off the train and made what seemed to be an eternal walk to a monstrous, colossal stadium, past the city parks where people were playing their own baseball. Our tickets cost $6 each and we sat waaaaaaaaaay up in the upper deck, along the third base line, and watched the Twins beat the Yankees in 10. The Yankee Stadium of then and now, to me, seem so different it’s ridiculous, but they’re both going bye-bye next year. I miss the one from my youth.

3. Baltimore’s Memorial Stadium
The first time I went to Memorial Stadium was in 1989, to see the first game of a doubleheader against the Red Sox. This one has two standout moments — one was on the bus on the way there (it was a camp field trip) that, sadly, I can’t share — the other was that just when we walked in, Nick Esasky’s 21st home run was going over the fence. I would choose not to add that Roger Clemens pitched for the Sox, which I only know because I just found the game on retrosheet.org (it’s easy to find doubleheaders, and Esasky was only on the team for one season), but there you go.

4. Exhibition Stadium, Toronto
Finally, one with mom! We were in Toronto for a vacation with our uncle and his family when I convinced her to take us to a Blue Jays game — again, I think against the Red Sox. (Many Red Sox-related coincidences like this one — them playing the Blue Jays when we were on vacation — seemed positively karmic to me as a youngster; actually, they still do). We sat in deep centerfield of the stadium, and I remember the people around us being really nice to us, which makes sense, because they were Canadian and my mom was a single woman with three brats. We actually still have pictures from this game, and I think at least one of us has a Blue Jays hat on. The unquestionable highlight of this trip, though, was being in the elevator with Jim Henson in our hotel, the four of us and him. My mom immediately knew who it was, and he knew that she knew, and she kind of looked at us with a ‘Pay attention to this man!’ look while trying to stifle a smile, unsuccessfully. So when he said, “Four, please” to us, who by this time were staring up at him, he said it in Kermit’s voice. I can still hear it.

5. New Comiskey
On a trip to Chicago, the White Sox were playing someone who was NOT the Red Sox in the first year at the new Comiskey Park. Even as a 13- or 14-year-old, I was unimpressed with the stadium, though I was damn proud of myself for having visited the stadium, being from Massachusetts and all, and I bragged to all my friends at home about it. Or at least I assume I did. I went with my Uncle Mike, which was the most fun part about it.

D'evils!

2008-07-03T07:35:00.000-07:00

A strange thing happened on my television last night. The Sox were swept by the Rays, who scored six runs in the seventh inning off a combination of an ineffective Manny Delcarmen, Craig Hansen, David Aardsma and Javier Lopez.

The strange thing was how shook the pitchers looked in the seventh for a team coming off a World Series title. Craig Hansen looked like a deer in the headlights, if the deer was bout 6’5”, weighed 250 lbs. and couldn’t find the strike zone with a map of home plate.

The Sox wasted a cycle-plus effort from The Little Pony, who finished with two doubles, a triple and a homer. During the game ESPN showed that there have, surprisingly, been a similar number of cycles and no-hitters in the history of baseball. If it seems counterintuitive, that’s because it is: if you took the number of games like Dusty’s, which is to say, those who hit for at least a single, double, triple and homer in a game, the numbers wouldn’t be close.

As I was discussing this with my roommate over some beef with string beans — which is to say, a large carton of string beans with whatever “beef” Dragon Gate was using last evening — the Red Sox started to come back off Tampa Bay closer-replacement-extraordinaire, Dan Wheeler. Soon enough it was 7-6 and Jason Varitek was up with Mike Lowell on first with one out

For those of you in “the know” — LIKE ME (and everyone else watching ESPN) — Jason Varitek is in a terrible, terrible slump. He has problems hitting the baseball, which is a problem for someone in his profession. Anyhow, despite this, Terry Francona put on the hit and run with Varitek at the plate, and JayVay responded by actually lining a shot down the right field line, just foul. On the next pitch, the hit and run was back on, and this time, Varitek responded the way everyone thought he would — he whiffed on the pitch completely, and Lowell was thrown out by about ten kajillion steps. That was strike two, and it was summarily followed by strike three.

I actually like the hit and run call in that situation, or at least I’m able to defend it on these grounds: if Varitek is having trouble hitting the ball, Francona’s trying to force him to by putting on the hit and run. Trick the guy into simply making contact and maybe you’ll trick him into a hitting streak. Okay, maybe it’s not that easy to defend. But I gave it the old college try.

Tonight, Me and Pedro will be at Yankee Stadium. A PayPal account will be set up for you to contribute to my hot dog/beer fund. Euros preferred.

Here come the Rays. Hope you were paying attention

2008-07-01T08:20:00.000-07:00

If you’ve watched ESPN over the last month, you can’t probably help but notice that the TAMPA BAY RAYS ARE PLAYING WELL. In case you didn’t get that the first time, THE TAMPA BAY RAYS ARE BASEBALL’S SURPRISE TEAM.

Is it surprising that Tampa Bay is in first place? Absolutely. But it’s not surprising that they are good because, as ESPN will tell you, THEY HAVE LOTS OF GREAT YOUNG PLAYERS.

So how far can BASEBALL’S SURPRISE TEAM go? Can they win the WORLD SERIES? Let’s talk about it.

You would think that after the Cardinals won the World Series with an 83-78 regular season record, and after last year’s Rockies surprise, that ESPN would shy away from predicting the unpredictable. CAN THE RAYS WIN THE WORLD SERIES? Of course they can, fucknuts! Can we just wait and see what happens?

In the meantime, instead of trying to project the future, how about some interesting Rays stories? Like, how the team was slowly and methodically assembled with great draft picks (and two big trades)? Sure, it’s been long chronicled here and here and plenty of other places, but I’ll admit not everyone saw the Rays era coming.

Or how about how, during their decade of futility, they had the best media relations department in the business, just one way to stave off the boredom of working for MLB’s worst franchise?

Sorry to give you story ideas, ESPN — it just seems that you don’t have any except trying to tell the future. FACT OR FICTION: TAMPA BAY WILL WIN IT ALL!

It’s a sad day when the average informed fan can be more informed than pretty much the entire staff of Baseball Tonight. It’s a sad day called “every day in the last five years.”

To the guy who sold us counterfeit tickets to the Yankees game

2008-06-27T18:18:00.001-07:00

"Hi Bryan, this is Mik. Listen, if you get this message, don't get on the train, don't check your bag, don't get in line. The tickets are counterfeit. Bogus. We're going home."

Hey dude — thanks for the tickets.

No seriously — thanks. I didn't want to see Carlos Delgado's 9 RBI game, or go to the last Mets/Yankees game in the Stadium. Why would I? I could always just walk around before the game, alone, with nowhere to go, right?

Go to the bars in front of the Stadium? The ones that have charged me up to $2 more per beer for sporting Red Sox gear? Nah, I don't think so.

Take a trip around the Stadium? Sounds great! Oh wait, there are crowds everywhere. Can't get through 'em. Do I need a ticket? Sure do? How much? $100? What a coincidence! That's what I paid!

Just go home? Love to! Except the swarms of people leaving the train are boxing me onto River Avenue. Behind me, a Yankees fan yells to anyone in orange and blue: "You got the wrong hat! This is the Stadium. You're in the wrong borough. This isn't Queens!"

And you know what, he's right, this isn't Queens. You could find Queens on a map of New York City, right? Yeah, it's right at the tip of my middle finger, there. I'm going there now and watch the Yankees lose by 10. That's a football score.

Which leaves me one question:

Want Giants tickets, asshole?

Been a bit loony since I found the site that makes these

2008-06-20T09:39:00.001-07:00

The best

2008-06-18T07:52:00.000-07:00

You might have heard this before but... now it all makes sense.

Now I get the Celtics' history, the devotion from the old-time fans, the love from the new ones, and, most importantly, I understand why the Celtics are the best team for Boston.

When you win the NBA title, you really win it. Rarely do you win it like the Celtics won last night, but there's never a doubt about who the champs are. It's not football, with its one game for all the marbles, or baseball, with its "Get a good team and cross your fingers" kismet.

It's not even hockey, where a goalie can stand on his head for two months and flip back over with the Stanley Cup.

It's basketball, where if you fill up the basket more than the other team, you win. When things are going good, you can exult on every play. And let's just say things were going amazingly, unbelievably, historically good last night.

The fans exploded. Then they exploded some more. And some more. That's when I realized why the Celtics are the best team for Boston — they validate this city in a way the other teams don't. The Celtics allow you know, in a self-satisfying way, that they're the best team in the world, to the point where you don't even need to celebrate it in front of foreigners — i.e., non New Englanders — because it's just so damned obvious. It's a phenomenon unique to NBA basketball, and it's why the Celtics have a fan base that stretches from the Back Bay to just shy of the Sierra Nevada Mountains.

Don't get me wrong, we love the Red Sox and Patriots (and Bruins) too. But you can forget about a Red Sox title on the following Opening Day, when a .212 hitter takes your number one starter deep. And our need to be validated has taken its toll with the Patriots. We have, as fans, acted like assholes to the point where being a Pats fan in mixed company is like wearing the Scarlet Letter; that the team followed suit really doesn't help. I hate to say it, but the Super Bowl loss keeps us honest.

The fact is, I'm happier with the Celtics title than I would have been with a Pats win, and I think that's a common feeling. It's not just that the other team finally won one in the midst of all this prosperity, it's that the right team won one. Often this season, I tempered my expectations, just because I had been out of following basketball for so long that I wanted to remain grounded. As the season went on, I started to believe more and more, but it wasn't until the Celtics made the Finals that I bought into the entire program. The Gatorade commercials, ESPN spots, the hype — none of it mattered any more. It was time to play REAL basketball, the type of basketball that not even a March sweep of the Texas trio can mimic.

And just like that, Paul Pierce went down in game one. He was carried off the court and into a wheelchair. Nothing — nothing — prepared me for that blow. Two minutes later, he was back on the court. His two three pointers probably ended the Lakers' season right there. The rest was just details. Those details: biggest comeback in Finals history, biggest clinching win in Finals history. Best team in the last five years. Best excuse to skip a day, walk down the Common, and enjoy life.

Now it all makes sense.

He's Certified — "Anything is Possible," the extremely rough transcript of Kevin Garnett's amazing victory speech

2008-06-18T06:56:00.000-07:00

Michelle Tafoya: League MVP, Defensive Player of the Year, now it’s time to add to your resume. NBA Champion, how does that sound?

KG: (silence, plays with hat)

Man I’m so… I’m so hype right now… Anything is possible… ANYTHING IS POSSIBLLLLLLLLLLLE!

(near tears) Oh my momma [unintelligible]

(Falls over, mobbed by random dudes)

MT: Kevin… such emotion…

KG (interrupting): I’m sorry Michelle.

MT: It’s alright! Don’t apologize.

KG (interrupting again): I just wanna… this is for everybody in 'Sota, this is for everybody in Chicago… VV!... It’s for EVERBODYYYY! South Cack! Mashwood (?)! My momma! Peanut! See everybody who I love! My momma! I made it ma! TOP OF THE WORLD! TOP OF THE WORLD!

MT: Kevin…

KG (to someone else): You have no idea…

MT: What does top of the world feel like, Kevin?

KG: (after a pause) Man I’m so… so happy right now… I’m not finna sleep for a week. Ray Allen had a great game, Paul Pierce, everybody. I can’t even take all this man, but I’m certified. I’m certified. Michelle, you look good tonight, girl.

MT (smiling): One more, Kevin. To do this… you talked about Minnesota, you talked about that, but to do this in Boston, with a franchise this storied, against a franchise like the Lakers, what does that mean to you? You’re a student of the game.

KG: You have to understand when you come here, it’s a lot of responsibility that comes with putting this great jersey on. I’m just happy that we carried out tradition. What you gonna say now? What can you say now? I MADE IT MA!

/ascends to heaven through Garden roof

Leon Powe FILLS UP THE BASKET

2008-06-09T07:13:00.001-07:00

Leon Powe was our favorite Celtics bench player all year long. Why? Because the man fills up the basket. This is hard to do in the NBA. Not for him. Last night, he filled it up. Twenty-one points in 15 minutes is some Kobe sh*t, but this isn't the MVP, this is the man from Cal. Give him the ball, and he's going to the hoop, and the ball is going through it. Simple as that.

Lakers upset about the fouls? Here's a suggestion: how about driving the freaking ball? The reffing was certainly not completely even last night, but as Phil Jackson alluded to, the discrepancy was a result of the Lakers standing around and having the ball stripped from them, whereas the Celtics, led by Leon, were getting to the rim. This is why Powe not playing in the early rounds was maddening — with the exception of Pierce, Powe and sometimes Allen, the C's are a jump-shooting team. Relying on Perkins to hit the bunnies is not a long-term strategy, but it's Powe's bread and butter. THROW IT DOWN, BIG MAN!

Now, staked to a 2-0 lead by the P&PP crew, the C's head to L.A. I've been warned, McCain-style, against going negative, so I can't write how I would be astonished if some combination of Kobe and the refs didn't push this series to 2-1 in convincing fashion, but that's why they play the games. On the plus side, Sam Cassell is "hurt" again, so we probably won't see him any more in this series. That means more Eddie Heezie. Sun Devils Stand Up.

Now with video!:

On The Sprain and ESPN's Inability To Cover Sports Like Adults

2008-06-07T07:02:00.000-07:00

I used to love SportsCenter, because it was so clever: it seemed to me like the anchors spent hours dreaming up weird and funny stuff to say on television. It was a product of the talent that they had at the time: Keith Olbermann, Dan Patrick, Charley Steiner, Craig Kilborn, Rich Eisen, Kenny Mayne, etc. These guys were funny, so the show was funny. Even straight-arrows like Jack Edwards did the show professionally.

But once these guys left, the wit they brought to the set became institutionalized. Now the jokes make themselves, the moments of pathos seem hackneyed, and the show has become devoted to the lowest common denominator in sports coverage. In this case, it's Paul Pierce's knee.

In Friday night's SportsCenter, they led off by taking five minutes to talk about whether Paul Pierce really hurt his knee or not, emphasizing his quick return to the court. They played some skeptical comments from Phil Jackson and relayed the to the Celtics, and voila!, they had a story. A friend from Boston asked me what I thought, when I had hardly thought about it at all. The reason? The Celtics had already divulged what the injury was and all of Pierce's symptoms fit with it perfectly.

Have you ever sprained something? Has anyone at ESPN? Maybe John Anderson running into a copier, or Neil Everett rupturing a vocal chord while screaming? Well, here's what happens: you hear a pop, sh*t hurts like hell, and then you figure out the extent of the injury. If it's a minor sprain, the pain will stay somewhat constant. If it's a major sprain, it'll get worse. Pierce had a minor sprain, but it was a minor one, so he was able to come back. He'll be in serious pain during game two.

Is it too much to ask for ESPN to do this simple, obvious analysis?

At this point, I'm afraid it is. People want to talk about the aesthetics of the Celtics victory rather than how they did it — shut down those little pieces of crap that are the Lakers second-tier players, play great D on Kobe, hold up a mirror to Gasol's face. They gave about three minutes to this, after the knee talk. Maybe after game two they can get renowned sprain expert Lisa Turtle to weigh in on whether Pierce is still faking it. I hear she's available.

On: Rocking the Shit

2008-06-06T08:22:00.000-07:00

Okay, so Paul Pierce rocked the shit last night. But I want to talk about this series' stoner HD potential which is, to give credit where credit is due, a Bill Simmons joint. (Get it? Joint?) Quite simply, game one was mind-blowing, and not just Pierce's performance. From the exterior shots of the Garden to the game to the freaking commercials, this was probably Bob Dope's favorite game of all time.

Let's start with the exterior shots? Have I ever wanted to be anywhere as badly as I wanted to be in Boston last night? Let's put it the BDD way: fuck and no. The Celtics are the only Boston team the city knows how to root for when it's got some prosperity going. The exact same people who were dyed-in-the-wool Celtics fans last night act like deranged Sox fans or asshole Pats fans, but we know how to root for the C's. It's just been awhile since it mattered.

The game itself was as vivid as it gets in purple hazed HD and, but for a brief 8-point Lakers lead, was comfortable throughout. Big props to the dude who talked Paul Pierce through his exercise bike routine. Pierce loved the guy; let's set him up with some speaking engagements at local schools. You can be a winner too, kids.

Finally, those commercials. That McDonald's commercial with all the fruits and such is absolutely amazing in Cheechvision, even if the food remains completely unappetizing (That's how you know it's really bad.) I hate to say it, but the commercial where the dude picks up the nudists in his SUV was pretty dope too, and that holy-shit-this-commercial-is-obnoxious-but-Christ-"California Soul"-is-a-dope-song Dockers commercial is sneaky. We'll be catching Sunday's game after a matinée of Zohan. Expect Bob to be in attendance.

Wheee! What a predicament!

2008-06-04T11:26:00.000-07:00

The NBA Finals start tomorrow night and, despite some tough talk a few days ago, I'm starting to get excited about Lakers/Celtics. I'm still not totally sold on the "Celtics mystique" after two decades of futility, but the clash of the uniform colors, and Bill Simmons' comment that, "For stoners, watching a Celts-Lakers game in HD is like staring at a 50-foot fish tank," well, the man has a point.

I'm not allowed to make a prediction, either, because loyal reader B. Gray told me, "enough of your Celtics negativity, first it was pick Detroit, they've got Stuckey, now you want to piss on this series... a little homerism, please." On top of that, Frownies linked over to my Pistons pick, and another reader viciously and repeatedly accused me of giving the Celtics the dreaded "double-reverse schmoo." Looking back on my words, it would be hard to argue the point, but I swear it wasn't intentional.

At least in this series I can claim I haven't seen the Lakers that much, but I know they're good. Good enough to beat the Celtics, but the Celtics are good enough to beat them, too. I'm not sold on the Lakers' second-tier players — Farmar, Vujacic, Radmanovic, Walton — and even Fisher and Odom are overrated, but I'm realizing more and more that it's all Kobe, and he's just that good. I'm not ready to say he's better than Jordan quite yet — let's let the man win one "on his own" first. This would be the time, and it's possible he could do it in as few as five games, but I'm not ready to say that: I've underrated the Celtics all year, and I'm not going to do it now. If Perk can stay out of foul trouble and Pierce can light it up, the Celtics can win. I'm not as sold on the idea of Ray Allen being the X-Factor, as in, "if Ray Allen scores 25 the Celtics will win," which seems to be a common idea; his defense is lazy enough that he has to score just to balance out the points he costs on the defensive end. I think Pierce is the X-factor. It doesn't get any more big-time than this for the Captain. If he wants to be next to Larry Bird in stature and not just in number, this is his time. It's almost inconceivable he's in this position, but he is. Now let's do it.

Astonishing, Bananas, Cockapoopoo

2008-06-03T08:33:00.001-07:00

I know you probably didn't watch Game 5 of the Stanley Cup Finals last night, but it was freaking incredible in every way. This was a game, and we can skip through the "Hockey's Still Around?" jokes, where the underdog Penguins took and early lead, blew it, and scored against a DOMINANT Red Wings team with 35.4 seconds left, then withstood a Mike Tyson's Punch-Out like flurry of Wings scoring chances in the first overtime, got scoring chances of their own in OT two, only to score the eventual winning goal halfway through the third overtime by a guy who had freaking called his shot.

Don't believe me? Well, part of the new hockey coverage includes a dude who's stationed in a small gap right between the two benches, so he can hear what the coaches and players are saying to each other. Late in the second overtime, the Pens' Petr Sykora tapped on the glass and told NBC dude, whose name I can't find, that he was going to score the game-winner. In the third OT, the Pens went on a four-minute power play after the Wings slashed some dude in the face, Pittsburgh brought back Sergei Gonchar — who had been hurt, seemingly for the game, in the second period, and as if that weren't enough, he was on the ice for less than one shift before Evgeni Malkin, the superstar who has been a straight goat in this series, fed Sykora for a slapshot that won the game. By this time it was like 1 in the morning, but I jumped in the air. This shit was too much.

As the OTs went on, Sidney Crosby did less and less, as the Red Wings' D got more and more physical and everyone got tired. There was a lot of talk by Eddie Olczyk about players eating pizza during the breaks to get energy, which was great. So to recap: one the best games you'll ever see in any sport, in the finals, a called shot, pizza talk. That's freaking awesome.

Note: The fact I didn't mention Pens goalie Marc-Andre Fleury in this article by name upon first publishing is probably a criminal act. Don't take it from me, take it from Don Cherry, who said his performance was the greatest goaltending he's ever seen in the playoffs.

Yes: Don Cherry said that.

How the fuck did the Patriots lose to the Giants in the Super Bowl?

2008-06-02T19:55:00.001-07:00

How the fuck did the Patriots lose to the Giants in the Super Bowl? How the fuck did the Patriots lose to the Giants in the Super Bowl? How the fuck did the Patriots lose to the Giants in the Super Bowl? How the fuck did the Patriots lose to the Giants in the Super Bowl? How the fuck did the Patriots lose to the Giants in the Super Bowl? How the fuck did the Patriots lose to the Giants in the Super Bowl? How the fuck did the Patriots lose to the Giants in the Super Bowl? How the fuck did the Patriots lose to the Giants in the Super Bowl?

I'm not sold

2008-05-31T09:54:00.000-07:00

I'm not sold on this whole Lakers/Celtics thing. Sure, I'm happy the Celtics are in the Finals, but I don't see what this Lakers/Celtics series has to do with those from two decades ago.

These teams play each other twice a year. How can that sustain a rivalry? It can't. The uniforms are the same as the Bird/Magic era, but that's all. There's no narrative here whatsoever, whereas Bird and Magic played each other for the NCAA title; came into the league at the same time; were, obviously, of different races and played in cities with different demographics; and jousted for the league title for a decade. The best you could say about Kobe and KG is they represent the new NBA. They're two of the best players to come straight out of high school and both were talked about in trade rumors in the offseason. KG actually got traded, and the New Celtics were born the second he stepped into town. That's great and all, but why pretend like the Celtics have been building toward this, when it's a product of the NBA free agency system?

Some great basketball is about to be played, and until it is, everyone is going to talk about ghosts. The ghosts of Kareem, Magic, Worthy, Bird, McHale, Parish and the rest, and how these teams are playing for the legacies of the old teams. They're not. When John Havlicek presented the Celtics with the Eastern Conference Finals trophy and told them how proud they should be to be wearing Celtics green, it was hogwash. He was ignoring the two decades worth of embarrassing teams Celtics management has put on the floor, expecting this Finals appearance to wipe the slate clean. It doesn't, but it represents a chance for everyone to turn the page on the last 20 years in Boston country. While we've been twiddling our thumbs and missing jump shots, the Lakers have won four titles and appeared in the Finals seven times. They're two titles away from the Celtics. Havlicek should have said: you're playing against those guys, and here's your chance to push them back a bit. He made it sound like we were the favorites just because of the jerseys we wear. We're not. Bill Russell may still be alive, but his Celtics teams are distant memories. The Lakers are the NBA's top franchise now, and have been for quite some time.

That's why, also, the Pau Gasol and KG trades are not quite identical. KG was traded to the Celtics because of Danny Ainge's and Kevin McHale's relationship; the Lakers flexed their muscle to get Gasol. The Celtics got lucky, whereas the Lakers put themselves in a position to succeed. Instead of seeing ourselves as the antithesis of the Lakers, we should be trying to emulate them to make our success a long-term one, instead of KG-dependent. Winning a title would go a long way toward restoring that, but competent management and coaching would go much farther. Enjoy Lakers/Celtics — we will — but reviving the rivalry is going to take more than one best-of-seven series.

Go With The 'Ston(e)s

2008-05-30T06:17:00.000-07:00

Back in 2004, our good friend Cleveland Frowns was at a bar in O'Hare Airport during the Conference Finals. The Lakers/Timberwolves game was on TV, and Frowns sidled up to the bar next to exactly the type of sloppy drunk man great stories are made of. After a bit of small talk, Frowns asked who he liked in the series.

The man, ignoring the question, snarled, "Go with the 'Ston(e)s!"

From that moment on, Frowns rode the Pistons — ahem, the Stones —
straight through the Eastern Conference and NBA Finals, advising all his associate Savvy Sirs to do the same. He was rewarded, handsomely. Something about the guy not even answering his question, and pushing him toward Detroit, was too much for Frowns to take. Forget the talking heads — Frowns reads the tea leaves of everyday life to inform his picks. Everything is connected, and if everything is connected, how could he pass on the Stones after that? (Note: we don't just like this approach, we love it and condone it in all forms, for everything.)

So here is our advice: Go with the Stones.

After watching that fourth quarter in Boston, is there anyone who thinks the Pistons will lose tonight? The Pistons work like clockwork, and the Celtics, for all their talent, play a sloppy, disjointed brand of basketball. In the war of attrition, who's going to win: the self-confident, precise team or the team that can't figure out how to score in big spots? Take the Pistons in game 6 and the Pistons in game 7, and get ready for another Detroit/L.A. final.

This is an obvious departure from my pick of last week of Celtics in five, which I stuck to after Game 2 because the Pistons had to make literally every shot to beat the C's, and, sure enough, the C's whupped them in Game 3. But Game 4 was a complete embarrassment for the Celtics, as was the end of Game 5, and you're supposed to play like this less and less as the series goes on. The Pistons are the stronger team in every subsequent game for one reason: the maturation of Rodney Stuckey.

If my refrain at the beginning of the series was, "Who's going to get to the basket for the Pistons?" the answer is Stuckey. The guy gets to the hoop better than anyone on both teams. He also hits his shots, the only miscue being a missed foul shot late in Game 5. But seriously: if that game went on one more minute, the Celtics were toast. These knock-down, drag out games come down to who can get the foul calls and get to the hoop when it's close. Billups is good at that, but Stuckey can be the difference between a good Pistons team and a great one. He also could be the reason the Celtics are going home early.

But he's no Rip Hamilton.

Quite simply, the fourth quarter of Game 5 was a masterpiece for Hamilton. He hit everything, from anywhere. He shot with confidence, a confidence that the Celtics sorely lack. Health permitting, he'll do it again tonight, and he'll lead the charge to the Game 7 win either way. It seems inevitable. By the end of Game 5 no one on the Celtics could, or even seemed to be inclined to keep up with him. It's only going to get worse for them. So, for a final time: Go with the Stones.

Paul Purse

2008-05-22T08:29:00.001-07:00

I feel the same way about Paul Pierce that Juno's father/stepfather/whatever felt about her baby daddy: "Paulie Bleeker? I didn't think the kid had it in him."

I'm not the biggest Paul Pierce fan. I like watching him score and have some level of admiration for, as I believe it was Eric Neel said, "his funky, earthbound way to the basket." I have no real idea how he succeeds in the NBA without any sort of dominant skill.

But he does. However, for years he's done it and pouted at the same time. Now, it's hard to blame him entirely, as he was given jack sh*t to work with until Kevin McHale popped in an old Celtics tape, drank half a bottle of Southern Comfort and dialed the first person in his phone (Ainge, Danny). You ready to vent? LET'S VENT!

Even by his own admission, Pierce sort of mentally checked out last year. This year has obviously been different, but there have still been times when he'll force his shot, do that crazy thing where he drives and throws his arms up and then looks like he's going to cry when he doesn't get the foul call.

(Speaking of fouls, what on earth is his foul-line foot arrangement? That's straight out of the Nick Van Exel school of weird stances. He's got one foot way in front of the other and is half crouched over. It's odd, especially for someone who lives at the line.)

In the playoffs, though, he's starting to live up to his role as "Captain." Now, I have argued in non-Internet circles that it's absurd that Pierce is the captain when Garnett is clearly the team leader. But, as has been discussed ad nauseum on the various tubes, Garnett isn't a cutthroat playoff baller. Neither is Pierce, really, but he'll have to do, and he's comfortable trying. He's been succeeding so far, but we'll see what happens when he throws up a stinker. He's not Kobe for a reason, and the reason is consistency. If Garnett or Rondo (or that other guy) can pick up the team once or twice, as they have done so far, the C's can win it all. It's truly a team effort.

All that said, I think the Celtics are going to have a surprisingly easy time with the Pistons. The problem against the Hawks and the Cavs was that both teams had one scorer who could destroy the Celtics' superlatively-good defense. The Pistons have many very good players, but they don't have a superstar scorer. The Celtics should be able to shut them down, as a unit. And despite what sounds like a column full of dogging Paul Pierce, he should really shine in this series (It's the next one that I'm potentially worried about, vs. Bowen or Kobe, when rough play and ego battles will get ratcheted up to crazy level). So I'm going to say something ridiculous like Celtics in five, having been spotted game one, leading to an ESPN about-face on tired the "can they win a road game" storyline so fast that you'll feel all whiplashed like Mike Mussina spinning to watch balls fly into the bleachers.

(That is a pretty ridiculous photo btw)

Tomfools and philosophers

2008-05-12T22:23:00.000-07:00

What does one say after dropping three of four to the seventh worst franchise in sports? There is frustration and there is fear as the Rays' mighty ~~stingers~~ beams of light advance rapidly (half a game back!). But mostly I'm just mad at Moneyball. Damn you, Moneyball! If only Terry Ryan had not become infatuated with Livan Hernandez way back in 2002, dubbing him "Greek God of 6-1 Record Despite Having Higher WHIP Than Both Sidney Ponson and Odalis Perez," none of this would have happened. Also, I think the trip to Japan is finally catching up with the Sox. Yes, bad sushi, I think it was.

Moving along, just when you thought the rivalry couldn't get any more absurd, news that a Yankee fan in California punched a Red Sox fan, injured his hand, sued the Red Sox fan and won $25K.

“I’m a musician and I depend on my hands to make a living,” said Melendez, a professional bongo player whose phone message identifies him as “The No. 1 Yankee Fan in the World.” He sued, and the jury awarded him $15,297 for medical costs and $10,000 in punitive damages last week.

Are we sure this Melendez character isn't Jason Grimsley in disguise? He's just the sort of unscrupulous tomfool to pull off a stunt like this. Bongo player? Come on, Grimsley, you can do better than that.

Speaking of steroid abusers, Craig Hansen is inspired by the following pearl of wisdom from California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger:

Strength does not come from winning. Your struggles develop your strengths. When you go through hardship and decide not to surrender, that is strength.

Funny, here I had always imagined Hansen's personal philosophy was more in line with the Jesse Ventura school.

Il Gattopardo

2008-05-12T21:34:00.000-07:00

We were the leopards, the lions. Those who take our place will be jackals, sheep. And the whole lot of us—leopards, lions, jackals and sheep—will continue to think ourselves the salt of the earth.

Tonight those words, spoken by Burt Lancaster's Prince Don Fabrizio Salina as the aristocracy erodes around him in Luchino Visconti's The Leopard, were echoed by whom?

A) Julian Tavarez to Mike Timlin as he packed his belongings and left the Metrodome in a scene very much reminiscent of the day Nomar was traded. Except this time Manny was sad.

B) Suzyn Waldman to John Sterling after the Rays scored four runs in the fourth en route to a 7-1 defeat of the Yankees.

C) Omar Vizquel to Rich Aurilla, Ray Durham and Dave Roberts(!) as they waited in line to visit with the trainer before tonight's 7-3 loss to the Astros.

D) Wily Mo Peña to Rob Mackowiak while the two shagged fly balls prior to tonight's 10-4 win over the Mets.

E) All of the above.

Craig Monroe should hit with a pink bat every game

2008-05-11T19:35:00.000-07:00

That is all.

Sunday dealings

2008-05-11T16:04:00.000-07:00

It's been a very active Sunday for the Sox. Bryan Corey has been traded to the Padres. Jed Lowrie has been sent down to Pawtucket. Manny Ramirez is out of tonight's lineup with a sore hamstring. And there's news that the Sox remain in talks with the Rockies regarding Julian Tavarez.

Happy for Bryan Corey, a 34-year-old minor league journeyman who might now be able to enjoy his first extended stay in the big leagues. Sad for Jed Lowrie, a 24-year-old rookie who deserves a spot on the 25-man roster but is better off playing every day in Pawtucket. Devastated that my prediction of Manny hitting numbers 498, 499 and 500 tonight will not come true. Optimistic that the Sox can unload Tavarez, Lugo and $2M for David Nied.

Oh wow, Juan Marichal is on Baseball Tonight. That's pretty sweet. Which is the bigger hit to Marichal's reputation, attending that cock fight in the Dominican or being seen with Kruk and Phillips?

The Rays just took three games from the Angels to improve their record to 21-16. Today they got four innings of one-hit ball from the bullpen and toasted Justin Speier for three runs in the sixth. Cliff Floyd returned to the lineup for the first since his April 9 knee surgery and collected 2 hits and 2 RBI. The Rays have the second-best home record in the American League (13-7), a solid bullpen, a rotation headed by Shields and Kazmir and a lineup that is really enjoyable to watch. I wish they weren't in the AL East so I could get behind them just a bit more.

Sunday papers

2008-05-11T12:21:00.000-07:00

Hanley Ramirez signed an extension with the Marlins. This is great news for the Marlins and for baseball. For Sox fans holding out hope for the much-rumored Julio Lugo, Brandon Moss, Kevin Cash for Hanley Ramirez trade, this is a bitter defeat. By the way, if you're wondering about the whereabouts of Anibal Sanchez, he's still rehabbing from a torn labrum, hopes to return by July.

Elsewhere in the NL East, Ryan Howard is in a slump. This is not news. There might be a point to this column on Johan Santana, but I cannot find it. Smoltz could be back by end of month and will probably become the Braves' closer. Wily Mo's outfield struggles continue in D.C. Semi-prescient sentence: “Hours before yesterday's game, Wily Mo Peña took some extra drills in the outfield with first base coach Jerry Morales.” If Wily Mo has a future, it’s at first base. Right coach, wrong area code.

As for the Sox, how about we don’t mention Hanley Ramirez and Julio Lugo in the same sentence again? It’s best for all parties. You know what else is best for all parties? Not lying. Lying is when Julio Lugo, asked if his confidence is shot, replies, “"No way. I know I'm one of the best shortstops in the league.” Did you hear Jed Lowrie his first big league home run last night? Oh, and he has zero errors on the season.

In Tampa, the second place Rays’ top pick is still a jumble and one writer think Iwamura is growing into the leadoff role. Iwamura's .309 OBP could not be reached for comment. Some Schmuck in Baltimore apologizes for giving up on Cabrera. Goose tells Joba to act like a Yankee. No comment. The Jays can’t catch a break, subject fans to Armando Benitez.

The NL Central is chock full of closer intrigue. Gagne accepts blame for being awful, asks out of closer role. Izzy’s role changes, too, and one man says his problems could make for an eventful summer in the Cards' pen. In Chicago, there is gloating that Kerry Wood is better than his division counterparts. In Houston, no closer talk, just compassion for those closing out careers. I don't know who the Pirates closer is (Jose Mesa?) but it seems they're on a five-game winning streak. In Cincy, it sounds like this chap JUST learned what on-base percentage is and he’s SO giddy about he refuses to write about anything else.

There is concern about the stress of the job taking its toll on Ozzie Guillen. Whatever would give them that impression? Fortunately there is no better stress reliever than visiting Seattle and taking three from the Mariners. Oh, and being in first place is probably good for the nerves as well. In Minnesota, the Twins must adjust to life without Pat Neshek. The Indians have pen problems of their own and concern about Hafner's diet mounts:

I’d be willing to bet that if Hafner changed his diet slightly, cutting out bad carbs, etc, he'd be mentally and physically quicker.

White foods, such as bread, rice and potatoes, make a person lethargic. Hafner looks very lethargic to me.

Meanwhile, the Tiggers have a lot of bad carbs in the starting rotation and the Royals have bad carbs at home.

Eric Byrnes is struggling in Arizona. Andruw Jones draws jeers in Los Angeles. Mark Redman gets demoted in Colorado. Emmanuel Burriss misses his pal in San Fransisco. The Padres are atrocious in San Diego.

The Angels infield injury troubles multiply as Figgins joins Iztruris and Kenrick on the DL. In Oakland, the second-place A's get healthy with Buck, Calero and Chavez on the mend. Having lost five in a row, the Mariners find themselves in last place and without a pulse. What’s wrong with this club so many thought would contend for a division title? To hear the Seattle Times’ Jerry Brewer tell it, the Mariners lack three important ingredients: “Leadership. Chemistry. Winning savvy.” Some might blame the manager. And in Texas, some think Ron Washington deserves a more substantive vote of confidence.

Happy Mother's Day!

History strikes out

2008-05-10T14:36:00.000-07:00

When I first heard that Ben Sheets set the Brewers' career strikeout record today I was a bit surprised. Sheets is twenty-nine years old, has never won more than 12 games in a season and because of arm trouble has not been able to start more than 24 games in a season since 2004. I still think of him (wrongly) as a young pitcher on the rise, so it seemed odd for him to be setting a franchise record. But then I took a look at the Brewers' all-time pitching leaders and it all became clear.

Milwaukee Brewers franchise might have the least impressive collection of pitchers of any franchise that has been around for more than two decades. At least the Expos had Cy Young Petey and the Rangers had Charlie Hough and a few good seasons from Hall of Famers Nolan Ryan and Fergie Jenkins. The Brewers' career wins mark (117) is held by a man, Jim Slaton, who had a losing record (151-158) in his sixteen year career. Slaton also leads the Brewers in innings pitched, hits, walks (760, an astounding 312 more walks than the number two man, Cal Eldred), earned runs and home runs. Slaton was an all star in 1977 when he went 10-14 with a 3.58 ERA, and in 1982 he was a valuable member of a bullpen that helped the Brewers to an AL Championship. Slaton attended Antalope Valley High School in Lancaster, California, which also produced Frank Zappa, Judy Garland and and 1995 AL ERA champ, Kevin Appier. Sheets, Slaton, Appier, Zappa, and Garland would comprise the best rotation in Brewers' history.

Unlrelated to the pitching, did you know Jeremy Burnitz is the Brewers' all-time leader in slugging percentage (.508) and Jeff Cirillo is tops in batting average (.307) and OBP (.398)? Robin Yount leads everything else.

Lamb shanked!

2008-05-10T09:45:00.000-07:00

A few thoughts on last night's 7-6 Twins' victory:

Lester only walked one!
I got home from work, turned on the game, saw that the score was 4-2 in the fourth and each side had committed an error, and I knew the Sox' error belonged to Lugo. There's comfort in that.
Boof Bonser had some bum luck. Looked like Delmon Young should have caught Lowell's two-run double.
Pedroia threw a laser to get cut down Young at home plate. If Ellsbury hits the cutoff man there, does Lugo bobble it?
Speaking of Lugo, when the Tolbert fellow game crashing down on his head at second base my eyes were elsewhere and I when looked at the screen and saw a man rolling around in pain I did not immediately recognize who it was. I felt some concern, but then, "Oh, it's only Lugo." That's not good.
Stolen base streak ends at twenty when J.D. Drew was nailed at second by Joe Mauer's picture perfect toss.
Okajima was great as always (15 pitches to retire six batters). But two innings again? If the pen doesn't shape up to the point where we can trust Delcarmen, Timlin or Hansen with a one-run lead in the seventh, Okie will be toast by Sepetember. Like last year.
The Twins' pen was superlative with runners in scoring position.
The American League has figured out Papelbon! No. There's been come wildness, but the big hits in the two blown save losses have been a broken bat bloop by Polanco and a knob job by Lamb. Something worth noting, Papelbon has zero K's in his last four appearances (4.2 innings).
What's with closers not caring about base runners? If Delmon Young isn't able to steal third.... ah forget it.

Praise and the opposite of praise

2008-05-09T07:41:00.000-07:00

Sometimes it seems like we're endlessly piling criticism on Julio Lugo and heaping praise on Kevin Youkilis. So here's this: Julio Lugo has a higher OBP, more doubles, more walks and the same number of home runs as Derek Jeter. THE Derek Jeter! Also, Julio Lugo did not have any errors last night. And then there's Youk, who operates a rather pathetic blog. Shameful. Also, he hasn't had any errors in, what, 230 consecutive games. A little excessive, don't you think? And what's with that golden glove of his? Does he think he's better than everyone else? What say we divert the monies going to the Filipino boy and put them toward the "Julio Lugo Platinum Glove Fund"? Lord knows he deserves it.

Anyway, Youk is is no doubt displeased to be moving his act to the Metrodome where he has posted .269/.321/.346, 7 hits, 0 home runs, 2 runs, 1 RBI, 1 walk in 28 plate appearance. Youk's career numbers in 59 plate appearances at Detroit's Comerica Park are very reminiscent of Julio Lugo in his prime (June '06): .327/.424/.857, 16 hits, 8 home runs, 15 runs, 17 RBI, 7 walks.

Speaking of the four game set with the Twins, here's something terrible. This atrocity might deserve a post all its own. A ten worst franchises in sports list that includes the Minnesota Twins but not the Texas Rangers, Washington Nationals or Baltimore Orioles. It is most unfortunate. He characterizes Moneyball thusly, "it's a creative way of saying, 'we're not going to pay for our stars or reward our veterans who have earned their keep,'" and then proceeds to dumbly and lazily slam the Twins for being cheap while failing to acknowledge that they have managed to stay competitive (they're currently in first place) while others working under similar financial constraints have been, well, not competitive. Why is it the Texas Rangers so often seem to avoid getting put on lists like this? They've never won a playoff series in the history of their franchise. Never! And they're located in the fifth biggest television market in the nation, so the unfortunate realities of baseball in the 21st century are not as threatening to them as they are for others.

Speaking of terrible things, here's this from the Washington Times. A list of five reasons to get over the Caps and Wizards losing. I discovered it when I was checking in on our pal Wilfredo, as I am want to do. Here it is:

1. You can now tune in to watch Wily Mo Pena hit all those home runs.
2. Under D.C. United's new deal with Volkswagen, all concession stands at RFK will sell only German beers.
3. More time to spend with your wife and kids outdoors. Ha!
4. You can go back to not caring all that much about hockey.
5. Three full months to study up on track and field, archery and handball before the Summer Olympics.

Oh mercy, that's hilarious. And quite edgy for a newspaper, don't you think? But seriously, doesn't that guy know that having fun at Wily Mo's expense is under my purview. Honestly, it's probably the worst five reasons for anything ever. It's as though the editors of the Washington Times were burning the late night oil, looking for the next big thing in online newspapering when suddenly the real hip one with his ear to the blogosphere said, "I've got it! What if we get the guy who does Marmaduke to riff on sports!" If this guy and the ten worst franchises guy joined forces Me and Pedro would be out of business faster than you can say, "Just because they're paid to write about sports does not mean you should reasonably expect them to watch sports."

Renteria Cha-Cha-Cha

2008-05-08T11:09:00.000-07:00

The second-worst part of last night's game was watching Edgar Freking Renteria trot home for the winning run after the cranially-gifted Placido Polanco hit a broken bat single over Julio Lugo Stinks' head. A lot of people across baseball — we'll call them "National League fans" — swoon at Renteria's name, calling him a great, throwback ballplayer. Let's just say we've heard it too many times, especially in light of the Titanic wreck that was his 2005 season with the Sox. Oh yes, but he does the little things. Splendid. That's exactly what we want out of our professional baseball players: for them to concentrate on the little things. Who cares about the big things, like hitting or fielding?

Now, players are entitled to off years, and Lugo's made a late career out of them (His error, of course, being the worst moment of the night). But we always figured Renteria was kind of a dick, so we were happy to read this ESPN The ~~Truck~~ Magazine article about Renteria's beef with O-Cab, the man he replaced on the Sox roster, in which Renteria sounds like a total jerk. At issue is an investment that Cabrera, the second most popular player in his native Colombia, made in the Colombian baseball league, which is run by Renteria — the most popular player. There was a falling out, and Renteria holds a hard grudge against Cabrera, who can't figure out why. You can read the entire article here, but here is the end, which sums up their frosty relationship nicely:

Cabrera says it was Edinson [Renteria]'s mismanagement of the league that caused him to walk away, and he's stunned by the personal attacks. "That's what happens when you deal with people who can't separate business issues from personal issues," Cabrera says. "My intent in what I've said publicly has been good for the league. It's promoted the league to move forward, to be recognized."
This dispute won't soon be resolved. The Tigers and White Sox have 12 more games this season — another dozen opportunities for uncomfortable moments on the field. During their first meeting of the year, when Cabrera reached second base in the fifth inning, he tried to engage Rentería in conversation, saying, "Man, it's cold out here, huh?"
Rentería, planted at shortstop, stared straight ahead. He did not say a word.

Maybe we're being too hard on Renteria, as he did ground out to Keith Foulke to end the 2004 World Series (which was nice), though he gave part of that back by pulling off the same stunt to end the 2005 series against the White Sox with Papi on deck (we don't forget these things!). Actually, between those series and the 1997 World Series, Renteria has been the last batter of three postseason series. Is that some sort of record? You'd have to figure that it is, given that the last batter is almost always going to be on the losing team, and the losing team is less often likely to repeat their performance. I mean, it gets way deeper than that, but I don't plan to go into it unless someone can think of a good candidate off the top of their head. Someone from the 01-07 Yankees or 90's/00's Braves, perhaps?

Speaking of repeat playoff performances, we remembered that Jordan's Furniture had a promotion last year where, if you bought furniture during Spring Training, that ish was free if the Sox won the World Series. This year, they've apparently upped the ante, demanding a(nother) Sox sweep. While I obviously think the odds of that are fairly excellent, not everyone agrees, though Carl Bialik of the Wall Street Journal tried to pin the exact odds down:

So I turned to several sports statisticians, whose answers for the probability of a Red Sox sweep are higher than you might think: Somewhere between 2% and 5%. They all pointed to sports books that had the Sox as among the favorites to win the American League pennant, at about one in four or five. (See, for instance, TradeSports or BetFair.) That reflects their dominant championship last year and their high level of talent. Then the probability that the Red Sox sweep the Series is equal to about 0.2 — the chance they make the World Series — multiplied by their probability of sweeping the Series. If each game is a toss-up, that’s one in 16: 1/2 multiplied four times, for the four wins needed for a sweep. That translates to one out of 80 that Boston will sweep the Series. But sports-book odds suggest that the Red Sox are likely to be better than their World Series opponent, because the odds they’ll win it all are greater than half their pennant odds. That can nudge the probability of a Sox sweep up to one in 50.

If you're looking for a duvet... this seems like easy money.

Back to the Renteria series-ending thing for a moment. I personally think the odds are less likely that Craig Counsell would have scored the winning run in two World Series Game 7s — for two different teams — than one batter ending three series. But who knows. By the way, Craig Counsell? 34 career home runs.

And now, your moment of zen:

You again?

2008-05-08T01:45:00.000-07:00

Gordon Edes writes, "An error by shortstop Julio Lugo, who lost his juggler's license when he failed to transfer a slow-hit tapper from his glove to his bare hand."

One can only assume his juggler's license had been fraudulently obtained in the first place. Perhaps he can put some of the $9,250,000 owed him in 2008 towards improving his technique.

Tito, ever the professional:
"You know what happened is he made the three in Toronto that are going to bite him for the rest [of the season] 'cause he has a lot now. I actually think lately he has played a more aggressive shortstop. He's gone in the hole a couple times. He made those errors in Toronto. That's a bad day. That's going to up his total. We stay on him all the time about being that guy that's aggressive and fearless because that's when he's a better player."

Aggressive and fearless! I know that's what I think of when I think of Julio Lugo. That and the defensive wizardry.

Is Okie better than Joba?

2008-05-07T12:31:00.000-07:00

It's 3:30 on Wednesday afternoon, which means it's time for another episode of Trapped in the Office. Today's a tough day to be here, too, because it's Absolutely Perfect outside, but between the five-game winning streak and that picture on the left, it would be hard to get too upset. Seriously, we live for things like "David Dellucci three-run bombs off Joba." They could not possible make us happier.

We live in New York, so we see the Joba Adoration Society up close, and belive me, it ain't pretty. They've got shirts, posters, everything Joba-related in this town. We love us some Okie, but we let the man do his thing. Except for their results (which, after last night's game, are remarkably similar), the men couldn't be more different. Joba's the next Clemens (ha!), bound for superstardom; Okie's the southpaw who gets batters out through smoke, mirrors, and a wild-ass motion.

I looked at their numbers from last year, through the same number of innings, and it's a tough comparison. Joba's better, but not by all that much, given that Okie gave up an ER in his final outing (putting him at 24.2 innings to Joba's 24), and how delicate Joba was used.

Joba
24 IP, 34K, 6BB, 1HR, .38 ERA

Okie
24.2 IP, 24K, 6BB, 1HR, 1.05 ERA

This year, things have turned toward Okie, as Joba's come back to Earth (though his numbers were worse than Okie even before last night's glorious HR):

Joba
13.1 IP, 15K, 5BB, 1HR 3.38 ERA
(Pre-last night: 12.1, 14, 3, o, 1.46)

Okie
14 IP, 13K, 4BB, 1HR, .64 ERA

Analyzing these numbers, it shouldn't be a surprised that the younger Joba, in limited and controlled usage last year, posted better numbers — and posted ridiculous numbers, actually — than Okajima, who was used heavily coming out of camp. But this year, you're seeing what happens to Joba as an every-day setup guy, and — ta da! — their numbers are almost identical. That's not bad for a guy (Okie) who was more or less called Dice-K's translator when he was signed by the Sox and gave up a home run on the first pitch he threw in the majors. (Perhaps Classy Freddy Dolsi, whose first ML pitch was deposited into downtown Detroit by Manny last night, will have a similar career path.) It also speaks to the Sox' ability to breed popular players that a phenomenon like Okajima isn't taking up all the headlines with every step he takes. The Yankees are desperate for a new star and have latched onto Joba, their only homegrown standout of the last decade (I'm not counting Cano) whereas the Sox have Pedroia, Ellsbury and Buchholz, with Lowrie and Masterson waiting in the wings. Okajima may not be homegrown, but he's something new and awesome; the Joba comparison above should show just how awesome he really is.

Do I expect him to fall off a bit as the year goes on? Of course. The Sox' pen, like the Yanks', features two huge arms and then some movable pieces. But I also expect Joba to give up some homers, like he did yesterday. This will be Joba's only full season in the pen, so it'll be an interesting comparison at the end of the year, but one that I think Sox fans will be happy with.

Hot dogs, scowls and drunkards

2008-05-07T07:00:00.000-07:00

Got home from work last night just in time to see Carlos Guillen's fly that Sox' 5-0 win in the books. So I've got little to say about the game aside from, How 'bout Mike Timlin and his incredible, shrinking ERA! Also, Julian Tavarez now has not pitched in twelve days. Trade rumors abound. Papelbon said in an interview yesterday that Tavarez ordered two hot dogs in the bullpen during Monday's game. Funny because two hot dogs is reportedly what the Rockies are offering for Julian's services.

Tigers, I sincerely hope you're enjoying your nap, we'll do our best not to wake you. Ah, but in Detroit some are happy that at least they're not the Indians. And in Cleveland Neville Chamberlain continues with his Indian appeasement. Meanwhile, Seattle denizens react to the impending move to Oklahoma City with a robust boycott.

Julio Lugo has accounted for 50% of the Sox' errors, 50% of the caught stealings, 85% of the scowls, 67% of the cup adjustments and 0% of the home runs.

Tomorrow the Sox face Armando Galarraga, a twenty-five-year old righty with a 1.88 ERA and 399 career home runs. He eagerly awaits interleague play so he can finally hit number 400.

Recently we've had the much-publicized story of a Yankee fans killing a Sox fan with an automobile and less recently the less-publicized tale of the Red Sox mob that battered a Yankee fan. Awfully sad days for the rivalry. And for drunkards. While it's true that the buried Ortiz jersey had a happy ending, what an astonishing circle jerk it took to arrive there. I think all involved on both sides could use some of NBA star Chris Bosh's humility. If you're in search of some pleasant news relating to the rivalry, look no further. We'll win the border war one school bus at a time! All of your children will belong to us, Connecticut!

Also:
Cora, Casey Pawtucket-bound.
Schilling's throwing session a success
Apparently MLB released some kind of Sox DVD today.

Steals, Wins and Wang

2008-05-06T16:38:00.000-07:00

We get the sense that we're constantly being attacked by our co-worker here at Me and Pedro; that's okay, because we are. The other side refuses to admit such a beef, perhaps hardened by years of enduring barking-mad baseball rants from recently Sabermetrically-indoctrinated people such as myself, which we understand (we also hate the word "Sabermetrics" and any of its variants). For instance, in our last post, Ben writes:

I've been chided in the past for my fixation with the stolen base. But look here, thirty stolen base attempts for this Sox this season and only FOUR times have they been caught. Surely that kind of efficiency makes even the most hardened stolen base skeptics excited about the team's base running.

Let me parse this paragraph for you, Fire Joe Morgan-style:

I've been chided in the past for my fixation with the stolen base.

By Bryan.

But look here, thirty stolen base attempts for this Sox this season and only FOUR times have they been caught.

"Only four times have they been caught... asshole."

Surely that kind of efficiency makes even the most hardened stolen base skeptics

— and by that, Bryan, I mean YOU, on your couch in Queens —

excited about the team's base running.

"... asshole."

While I think Ben would be surprised by the amount that I've come around to many non-sabermetrically endorsed ideas, he's right: those type of numbers would make even the most hardened stolen base skeptics cock their eyebrow in interest. Quite simply, the Sox — led by (never-shhh) Ellsbury — steal bases very well. For any Sox fan familiar with the history of the team long or short, this is astonishing. The Sox have never been a base-stealing team. In their 107-year history, a Red Sock has led the league in steals a whopping six times, or the same number as Vince Coleman in the 80s (and five less than Rickey). I couldn't find team steals stats, but they'd be about the same. The last time a Sock won the steals title was in 1973, when Tommie Harper did it. So yes, this is rare. And yes, it's a lovely change of pace, especially when they never get caught.

For those of you who don't know why I was "shhh"-ing the boy wonder Jacoby's name above, it's because he's converted his first 20 SB attempts going back to last season, seven shy of the record held by Tim Raines to start a career. I think Ben is absolutely right when he says stolen bases are not entirely about speed, and that's what makes Ellsbury's achievement so impressive. While the kid's got speed to burn, he knows what to do with it at a young age. Contrast him with someone else who's got ridiculous speed like Jose Reyes and you see how impressive this is. Reyes is a valuable base stealer, and led the league with 78 swipes last year; he also was caught 21 times, which also led the league. The best base stealer on the Mets is Carlos Beltran, who swiped 25 bags and was caught three times. In fact, Beltran has the highest stolen base percentage in major league history, if I remember correctly, with players who have 250 or more steals (whatever his rank, it's 87.8%). The Sox' best base stealer is their fastest player. That's straight fire right there.

Also straight fire right now, as Ben said, is Kevin Youkilis, who's tearing sh*t up right now. To recap as of this morning:

Ranks 9th in AL in RBI
Ranks 8th in AL in Runs
Ranks 8th in AL in Walks
Ranks 7th in AL in OBP
Ranks 8th in AL in SLG
Ranks 6th in AL in OPS

Not that there's anything wrong with it, but Youkilis is a notorious hot starter/slow finisher (Hey, the games count the same in April and September!) To wit, here are his splits as a full-time starter:

2006
Pre All-Star: .297/.406./.467
Post All-Star: .257/.347/.381

2007
Pre All-Star: .328/.419/.502
Post All-Star: .238/.356/.391

This year, he's right in line with the early-season stats at .305/.397/.517. But the pattern is there and will probably repeat itself: dude is just better early on, for whatever reason. Contrast that with another Me and Pedro favorite, Baltimore Orioles outfielder Nick Markakis, who starts slow each year but rakes when the Mercury tops 90:

2006
Pre All-Star: .268/.335/.348
Post All-Star: .311/.364/.531

2007
Pre All-Star: .279/.340/.431
Post All-Star: .325/.389/.550

This year, he's at .263/.391/.456, having cooled down after an early hot streak. So what is it that causes these streaks? Youkilis is a bigger guy than Markakis, waistwise, and you'd have to figure there's an element of Youkilis wearing down as the year goes on and Markakis playing into shape. But there's got to be more to it than that, something that makes Markakis see the ball better in July and August and Youkilis to start hitting like Craig Counsell. The mind wonders what it could be. Summer television? Maryland crab?

--

There were some points I promised to touch on today, so I'll cover them now. The first was last night's Sox/Tigers game, which is only notable for the hocus-pocus Dice-K used to walk eight batters and still pick up a "W." We've been thinking a lot about the concept of a "win" recently, as it's been all but dismissed by the statistical community, but I think it still has some value. Certainly, wins and losses alone won't tell you very much about a pitcher, except a pitcher with 20 wins is unlikely to be terrible and a pitcher with 20 losses is unlikely to be Josh Beckett. But there's something about the W, when not haphazardly applied — as in, to a closer who blows the game to see his team rally for "him" — that's has an integrity we like. We recently saw Chien-Ming (F'ing) Wang beat C.C. Sabathia in a 1-0 twin masterpiece, which is about as tough an "L" the hefty lefty could earn. That's also about as tough a win as a pitcher can get, and if someone ever deserves one, it's Wang in that situation. And all Wang does is win. He doesn't have the best numbers of all the pitchers in the league, but the guy is on the mound when the Yankees win. That may be, as stat guys may argue, a matter of circumstances — circumstances like Wang being consistently good on a high-scoring team — but we only watch baseball for the circumstances that do happen. The win-loss system, as imperfect as it is, is something we smile when we're considering.

I think I've said enough for today without getting too in-depth into Bronson Arroyo and Hideki Okajima. The former Sock is getting roughed up in Cincy, and Okie keeps on rolling through smoke and mirrors, or so it seems. We still love that Gary Sheffield said that Okajima was the toughest lefty he had ever faced. Gary Sheffield said that. Gary Sheffield is going to the Hall of Fame. And Okie owns him.

God, I love baseball.

Steals and hand outs

2008-05-06T06:58:00.000-07:00

Before the weekend's sweep gets too distance in the rear view, let's talk about the two double steals in one game! I've been chided in the past for my fixation with the stolen base. But look here, thirty stolen base attempts for this Sox this season and only FOUR times have they been caught. Surely that kind of efficiency makes even the most hardened stolen base skeptics excited about the team's base running. I also wish to praise Dustin Pedroia, who has managed four stolen bases in four attempts. It's true what they say, you don't have to be fast to be a good base stealer.

Now, moving to last evening, EIGHT walks for Daisuke! Good god. But even with the plentiful walks, he and Lester have admirable WHIPs in their past couple of starts (1.17 and 0.86 respectively). Lester has allowed five hits in his last fourteen innings, Daisuke four over twelve. If both of them could get the walks under control and go deep into games with consistency, mercy. But we've been saying this for a minute now...

And speaking about a guy who, if only he could find the plate, could be very special, there's been a lot of talk lately about how Craig Hansen could be the bridge to Okajima and Papelbon. Last night from Hansen we saw a great sixth inning and a horrible seventh. I've seen little to suggest that Hansen is ready for a big role at the major league level. But frankly Manny Delcarmen, having allowed 10 base runners over his last 2.2 innings, has been so dreadful of late that I'm growing curious about the availability of Bobby Jones. And I'm still not ready to give up on Timlin. His ERA is nearly below 12.00, you know!

Also, Kevin Youkilis:
Ranks 9th in AL in RBI
Ranks 8th in AL in Runs
Ranks 8th in AL in Walks
Ranks 7th in AL in OBP
Ranks 8th in AL in SLG
Ranks 6th in AL in OPS

In closing, I am proud to announce that through Children International Me & Pedro recently became the sponsor of a young man in the Philippines. That's right, other blogs ask for handouts, we give handouts. We eagerly await our first letter from the chap, but in the meantime, here are his vitals: ten years old, 4 feet tall, 49 pounds, resides in Quezon City. His favorite school subject is mathematics, and while he professes no love for sports, only "Drawing, playing with toys and cars," we will be mailing him a baseball very shortly. We will do our part to mold him into the best Filipino ballplayer since Benny Agbayani. Or the best mathematician since Euclid.

Books and the left side of the infield

2008-05-06T06:10:00.000-07:00

A few days ago Bryan submitted a list of his favorite sports books. We can only assume he forgot to mention Roger Kahn's The Boys of Summer. But that's nether here nor there, for today I am happy to announce the release of a new book that is sure to crack many a Top 10 list in the near future.

Ladies and gentlemen, Deep Drive: A Long Journey to Finding the Champion Within, by Mike Lowell, foreward by Josh Beckett.

We traded Hanley Ramirez and all we got was a stinkin book!*

I learned about the book thusly,

Mike Lowell couldn’t have picked a better time to break out of his season-long slump.

Today, his book, Deep Drive, authored by the Boston Herald’s Rob Bradford, hits the shelves.

Last night, Lowell gave sales a boost by falling a triple shy of the cycle, and falling a few feet short of a two-homer night in the Sox’ 6-3 victory over the Tigers."

I'll be damned if that's not one of the more most shameless plugs I've seen for a fellow Sox writers' book. Points for effectiveness though.

If only today's Worcester Telegram & Gazette story on Lugo began this way,

The projection is 44.

That’s how many errors Julio Lugo will wind up with this year if he keeps making them at the same rate he has so far this season — nine in 33 games, which is a ridiculously high amount.

It's fitting that Lugo's error total is piling up in conjunction with today's release of his book, E6: My Failed Efforts to Sabotage the 2007 Boston Red Sox, authored by Dan Sh*********.

*And a few wins last October.

Sox Sweep, Game Seven, And Queens of the Stone Age

2008-05-05T12:24:00.000-07:00

We at Me And Pedro can read the signs as well as anyone: when you write a post lamenting the fact your team can't score and they throw down 26 runs in three days, you've to be pleased. We will be judicious in applying our (invisible) touch to our favorite sports teams from now on. The Goddz, as they are, are fans of modesty, even if there was nothing modest about the 7-3 shellackings of the Rays sandwiching a 12-4 thumping of formerly unhittable Jamie Shields.

There was also nothing modest about the critical beatdown applied to the Atlanta Hawks yesterday by the Celtics. We had a sense this might happen, and we were absolutely thrilled with every second of it (except KG's unnecessary shoulder-drop), but we have fears going into the second round against LeBron and the Cavs. It's not that we're worried that the Celtics are old, because we know they are and that they can still win — we're worried that they're self-conscious about it. Basketball is a game of actions and reactions, not of deep thought, which is why the Hawks were able to sweep their home games but got absolutely bludgeoned on the road. Both teams won where they were supposed to win because they thought they could, and didn't win where they weren't supposed to win. Maybe the C's should have won in Atlanta, but there was no way the Hawks were winning in Boston. They won 12 road games all year, and this is who they beat:

Miami
Minnesota
Philly (twice)
Orlando
Washington (twice)
Seattle
G-State
Knicks (twice)
Memphis

There are some playoff teams on there, but the biggest beast is Orlando, and that happened once. More than half the games were against absolute worst teams in the league.

The Cavs also posted a losing road record, going 18-23, but they won on the road in Dallas, San Antonio and L.A. Now, the Celtics handled the Texas Trifecta a couple months ago, only to get pasted by the speed of the Hawks in the last two weeks. Maybe it was just nerves, or maybe it was a veteran team struggling to find its playoff identity. You have to figure that the "Big Three" gimmick has worn a little thin this year: shooting commercials together, sitting for group interviews, etc., but it worked for the regular season. There's one thing to have a "Big Three" across 82 games and another to know exactly whose role is what in a given situation; it's the difference between Nash, Amare and Marion (circa 2005) vs. Parker, Duncan and Ginobili. The knowledge that Duncan is the man frees the other guys up to play loose, but the Celtics, as an institution, have been loathe to give Garnett the reins in full. Pierce is still the captain, which is understandable given his seniority but otherwise absurd. He's a moody scorer who wanted out of Boston until they got him reinforcements; does that sound like a captain? Having him introduced last gives the wrong impression. It gives the impression that KG is not the pivotal man in crunch time, or at any time, when he is. Now, KG has historically been maligned for fading in the playoffs, but he seems to be taking that reputation head-on in Boston. Let's let him do it in the pilot's chair as the captain of the team (and for an MVP discussion including yours truly w/r/t Kobe, KG and LeBron, read here and in the comments). I, and I think the Celtics, would feel a lot better about it and would cruise to a victory over the Cavs. In the current situation? I'm not so sure.

When I started this, I was leaning toward Cleveland in seven, just because I can't shake the feeling that LeBron is going to win a game at the Garden. And if he's going to win one, it will be Game 1. So here's my prediction: if the Cavs win game 1, it's Cleveland in 7, if not, it's the C's in 6. And yes, I recognize that I just said that LeBron is going to win "a" game at the Garden and then implied he would win two or zero. That's because, in the words of Kevin Millar, "In Game 7, anything can happen."

Tomorrow we promise to talk about baseball, as this is supposed to be a baseball blog. We'll have thoughts on the Sox/Tigers game, the disturbing efficiency of Chien-Ming Wang, talk about what's wrong — if anything — with Bronson Arroyo and laud a Me and Pedro favorite, Hideki Okajima. We love the idea of Hideki Okajima so much it makes our head hurt.

(The following is dedicated to the Sox' twin 7-3 wins over Tampa, courtesy of some dude rocking the sh*t out of Guitar Hero. This song rocks so hard it's ridiculous, btw.)

Bill James on The Sound of Young America

2008-05-04T23:16:00.000-07:00

It's always a special moment when you discover that two of your favorite entities have joined forces. Reminds me of the time I saw Roberto Clemente on the Wheaties box. For those that aren't familiar with The Sound of Young America, it's a public radio show about things that are awesome. Thus, it is only fitting that last week host Jess Thorn spoke with the exceedingly awesome Bill James. Good stuff. Much more rewarding than the 60 Minutes pap from several weeks ago.

The Sound of Young America: Bill James

"Working with the Red Sox is the most fun thing I've ever done."
-Bill James

Sunday papers

2008-05-04T12:14:00.000-07:00

We begin with premature speculation that Brian Cashman could available to the fill the impending GM opening for the NL East leading Phils. Meanwhile, if the Mets don't get it together they could have be looking for a new manager. New York's offense has been disappointing (21st in the majors in runs) but things could now be looking up as Carlos Delgado finds his groove. Elsewhere in the East, the Marlins are hanging in the race (1/2 game back) despite rotation woes. With the Braves under .500, we reflect on Chipper Jones legacy in Atlanta. The Nats' Ryan Zimmerman is out of the lineup today, likely ending a 205 game streak. The holder of the longest active streak might surprise you.

The NL Central leading Cards are anticipating the return of Mulder. The second place Cubs are reconfiguring their pitching staff. Likewise, the 16-14 Brewers and shuffling the roster with Turnbow being sent to the minors and Gallardo likely out for a while with a torn ACL. But much more importantly, there is a movement afoot in Appleton, Wisconsin, that could change the course of Brewers history.

Turning to the duller half of of the NL Central, it turns out lying about age not uncommon for Dominican players. Who knew? Here's the story of the Astros' Wandy Rodriguez. The most interesting tidbit in this Pirates notebook is news that Sean Gibson, great-grandson of Pittsburgh baseball legend Josh Gibson, threw out the first pitch at yesterday’s game. The Pirates are the most boring team in baseball. And it’s not even close. Name five players on their roster, I dare you. No, Don Slaught isn't catching for them anymore. Is Lloyd Mclendon still their manager? Fired three years ago, you say? Remember that time he picked up the base and stormed off with it. Hilarious! Yeah, I think that was the last Pirates highlight I saw.

In Cincinnati Dusty Baker draws praise for his cagey use of the bullpen and criticism for the way he sets the batting lineup. Oh, and Bronson Arroyo should bat eighth when he starts because he, “has bat speed and a sense of adventure.” Incidentally, the Arroyo-Peña trade talks began when Theo stumbled across a Craigslist posting in the "barter" section that read, "Looking for starting pitcher with bat speed and a sense of adventure. Can offer an outfielder with bat speed and a sense of unfulfilled potential."

Arizona has been phenomenal, but the rest of the NL West, not so much. In a development that seems at least a year too late, Barry Zito's deal comes under scrutiny. The Dodgers ponder an equally curious signing, the dreadful Rockies will be without Tulowitzki till the All Start break, and the slightly less dreadful Padres can blame their woes on poor drafting.

In the AL East Jays' GM J.P. Riccardi seems to be growing desperate. Perhaps he's wishing he hadn't been so hasty in releasing the Big Hurt. With Markakis struggling in Baltimore the lineup gets a slight tweak. In New York the on about whether Joba should be inserted into the rotation. But the urgency would be lessened if Mussina can maintain his recent form. The Rays ponder who to select with the first overall pick in this year's draft.

The AL Central is a division in search of answers on offense. Minor personnel tinkering in Cleveland, lineup tinkering in Detroit and proposed coaching staff tinkering in Chicago. Raise your hand if you think Shin-Soo Choo and Ben Francisco can save the Indians? Didn’t think so. The tigers offense is sputtering and “the more you listen to Leyland, the more it becomes clear he believes one reason for the Tigers' offensive inconsistency is their lack of speed.” That doesn't sound promising. In Minnesota Carlos Gomez wants to return to the Twins lineup after being hit in the head and Ron Gardenhire will miss Ron Gardenhire bobblehead day due to attend the funeral for his brother, Mike Gardenhire. And in K.C. the pitching staff is so frustrated with the bats they have turned to self-mutilation.

Through the first month the AL West is a division of expectations exceeded (A's), expectations unmet (M's), and the ever steady Angels. We consider the reasons A’s may be for real and submit that Mariners' manager John McLaren is in over his head. After a tough 2007, Ervin Santana has returned to form for an Angels team playing well despite being without their top two starters. And in Texas, the lone bright spot in what is to be a very long season, Rangers outfielder Josh Hamilton was named AL Player of the Month.

Week in Review: Invisible Touch

2008-05-02T12:26:00.000-07:00

Since last Saturday, the Sox are 2-4 and have scored exactly four runs. That's two less than Derrick Turnbow of the Brewers gave up in two-thirds of an inning on Wednesday; unsurprisingly, the Milwaukeean was designated for assignment today. We don't have luxury with the entire Sox lineup, which, in a dramatic reversal of fortune is seeing only David Ortiz hit nowadays. They scored three runs total in the Blue Jays series and managed to win two games because Jon Lester and Dice-K managed to finally find the strike zone, possibly using ESPN's K Zone as a road map. See that box? Throw it there!

Ortiz is up to .196 now, and with another even subpar game, he'll be back over the Mendoza Line tonight. Unless it rains. Rain and cold weather have re-infiltrated the Northeast, and we ought to know because we were in what passes as a baseball stadium in Queens on Tuesday night. Holy crap, was it cold. We even left after the seventh inning because of the chill, and we were far from the only ones. The Goddz must have been looking after us, as well, because, despite an hour-long trip home, we managed to catch the final two innings of the extra-innings game. We only went because the tickets were $1 each, slashed fifty percent from their face value price. We have to say that the shame of the new Citifield will be the lack of similarly priced tickets, as the 45,000 seat stadium has a lower capacity than its home club's average 2007 attendance. We've spent probably $50 on $2 seats over the years and have enjoyed our exposure to major league baseball at the price of a subway fare or slice of pizza.

That is not to say we are without complaints. The stadium is concrete, and the ushers, especially on $2 seat days, are rapacious in enforcing the $2 seat rule (as in, they make you sit in your seats). After having a go at some seats about 30 feet in front of us that cost probably a whopping $13 more each, we were asked for our ticket stubs. Now, the friends I was with pulled out their tickets and did the whole natural kabuki theater routine, which is to pretend we're oblivious to the fact that we're in the wrong place. The usher, in on the act, played his part, eye the ticket and jabbing first at its numbers and then into the altitude at our section. I'm not a fan of this play-acting anymore, and just said "These aren't our seats" and started walking up the aisle, waving at all the empty seats right in front of me like a New York jerk who wants something for nothing. Which is exactly what I was, but who can blame me?

Also, the concession stands on the upper level at Shea are abysmal. For cold-weather games about a quarter of them are open, the only offer hot dogs, pretzels, peanuts, beer and soda and there's always a line. On Tuesday I just walked down one level and found a wide range of food products and a completely vacant Sam Adams stand that was charging $8 for a beer. Now, I've paid (against my will) even freaking dollars for a beer in Manhattan, back when I was dating a woman in banking who wanted to Be Seen out on the town, so $8 for a beer at beer at the game doesn't faze me much, especially when just 20 FREAKING FEET OVER they're charging the same thing for Bud Light. I mean, mine came in a plastic cup, but even the residual plastic shavings (mmmm... plastic shavings) couldn't put a damper on this discovery. When my buddy and I went back for round two, there was still absolutely no one waiting there. We both, out of a sense of good fortune at our discovery and sadness that our server would be getting next-to-nothing in the way of tips for her efforts on a 35-degree night (after you factor in the wind chill), gave her two dollars, and I can honestly say that's the first time I've done that at a concession stand at a baseball game or even had the slightest inclination to do so.

For a long time, I wasn't a beer guy at the game: I'd try and get liquored up beforehand or cruise on a pretzel and a hot dog. But the times, they are-a changing. I had a couple beers, an italian sausage and a hot chocolate, and together with my $1 ticket, spent about $25. That, my friends is a deal. Now think about the same operation virtually anywhere else where there's a popular baseball team, including 2009 at Citifield, and we're talking upward of $50 at least. Say what you want about Shea, but even if you're not a complete penny-pincher there's something to be said for the old building and its ancillary pleasures. The Baseball Goddz smile at such economical joys.

Speaking of economical joys, I bought six Phil Collins songs off iTunes today. Don't know what it was, I had Invisible Touch in my head and blasted the 30-second version of the song for NYGK (Not-Yet-Girlfriend K.) today. She had never heard it, and was aghast. Yes, I know what you're thinking: Invisible Touch is Genesis. Well, I don't draw much of a distinction between the two. For the record, Invisible Touch was my favorite album growing up, and despite not having listened to it in 10 years I knew every word to the first trio of songs. Here's what I bought:

Invisible Touch
Tonight, Tonight, Tonight
Land of Confusion
Sussudio
Don't Lose My Number
In The Air Tonight

Perhaps unsurprisingly, In the Air Tonight was far and away the top selling Phil Collins song. Sussudio and (Billy) Don't Lose My Number were close to each other, and I remember liking them both, but what surprised me is how much (Billy) Don't Lose My Number absolutely blows Sussudio away. Seriously, it wasn't even close. And now, since this is a baseball blog and not American Psycho, we'll bring it back to the last 365 days in baseball:

Invisible Touch - The story of Matt Holliday's phantom tag of home in the 2007 one-game playoff versus the Padres.
Tonight, Tonight, Tonight - The 21-inning Padres/Rockies game
Land of Confusion - Hitters vs. Max Scherzer
Sussudio - I have no idea what this means. Pass.
(Billy) Don't Lose My Number - Frank Thomas' Plea
In The Air Tonight - The Barry Zito story

(Okay, I looked up Sussudio... it's supposedly an imaginary girl's name, meant to "symbolize any girl," according to Wikipedia. I mean, did that make sense in the '80s? Her name is SUSSUDIO. There's an anti-drug message in here somewhere.)

Tomorrow is the Kentucky Derby, but I'll be at a wedding and won't be able to watch. Quite unbelievably, the wedding is right next to the Museum of Sex. Oh, and the good thing about missing the Kentucky Derby is that I don't care.

(And yes, in this Week in Review I reviewed the week and not our posts from the week)

Trapped in the Office: The Beginning

2008-05-01T11:09:00.000-07:00

For the next few weeks, I'm going to be trapped in the office. I have a large amount of work to do. This is my last hurrah before things get really bad, but this is not goodbye.

During this three-week long stretch, which ends for better or worse on May 21st, I'm going to set aside some time each day to write a long-ass blog post. If there's one thing the Bissinger/Leitch "Costas Now" dust-up did, it was fire me up again about blog posting. I'll admit this much: not many people read this blog. Maybe that's because the posts aren't good enough. Instead of being short and snappy, I'm going to write long-ass articles about whatever's on my mind and tie it into baseball somehow. I used to have a weekly sports column. How hard could it be?

Actually, it could be very hard. I wrote that weekly sports column for a community newspaper, but I wrote it only after writing six articles for every issue. On Wednesday afternoon, I'd string together whatever latent sports ideas were floating in my head and use my 600 words to cleverly tie it into current events, politics, whatever. My signature was a clever closing line, plucked out thin air, that tied the whole thing together. I thought the closing lines were gimmicks designed to obscure the insignificance of the columns, but looking back at them now, they're quite good. The lesson being: the more you write, the better writer you are, no matter how bad or insecure you may feel about it.

So anyhow, back to Bissinger and Leitch. There's not much argument against the notion that Bissinger crossed some imaginary line in condemning the Black Tabler-turned-Deadspinner, but there is a wide range of opinions about the character of the man impugned. Blogger/author/poet extraordinaire Joe Posnanski called Deadspin "funny and edgy and perceptive," while Jason Whitlock bemoaned that Bissinger "surrendered the moral high ground to someone who couldn't find it with a map, compass and Mother Teresa serving as a guide." Ouch. I'm solidly a part of the former school, as I find Deadspin funny and edgy and perceptive enough to interview its founder about the site. I'm also solidly against equating what goes on in the blogosphere with one's moral rectitude; even Bissinger seemed to be talking about writing, and was more offended by the language and tone of the work than the morality of the items covered. He seemed to be offended, as someone who has spent his life trying to "perfect the craft," with the morality of knowingly publishing bad writing.

As is infamous now to anyone who cares, most of them in the pro-Leitch crowd that dissected the exchange on the Internet the following day instead of watching it through half-moon eyes when it first happened, Bissinger asked Leitch if he had read any W.C. Heinz, whom he considered an artist of the highest craft. When Leitch responded that he had read The Professional, Bissinger tried to bait-and-switch and asked if Leitch had read any of Heinz' sports columns before the bluster swallowed the non-point. And let me tell you this: as someone who has read many, many sports books in his life, I'm damn glad I wasn't on that panel, because I had never heard of W.C. Heinz until this exchange, and I could not be any less ashamed of it. I've read virtually every sports book that has been recommended to me, from Ball Four to Men and Work to Moneyball, and next, I'll pick up The Professional. We learn things when we learn them. That Bissinger's gambit backfired on him is almost besides the point: the point is, as someone who has been a professional sportswriter like myself, the only credentials one needs to have are the ability to show up to work every day and write. As Leitch said, sports blogging is hard work. My column was hard work. But at least I was doing it.

I haven't been writing enough to say that I've given this blog a good-faith effort, so now's the time to try. My current inspiration is more Posnanski than Leitch, given that the latter rarely writes long posts, though when he does, as in his response to Bissinger immediately after the taping, they're mature and eloquent. I'm also inspired by my friend Cleveland Frowns' work, as he brings a passion for, well, everything into his writing that is damn infectious. So what if he doesn't know for sure that contract negotiations are bogging down C.C. Sabathia's performance this year? When you write well, you don't need to know. The words do the work for you.

And that's the final point: in an age where athletes are programmed to say absolutely nothing, we have ample room to conjecture as to what's actually driving them. It's not irresponsible journalism. It's not journalism at all: it's called being a fan. It's the same conversation we'd have at a bar, only recorded, sometimes beautifully, for all to read. When someone can tell me what exactly is wrong with that, I'll stop doing it. Now is when I start again, hopefully for good.

-

Despite having not read The Professional, I think I have a fairly good list of sports books that would compose my "Top 10" list. I'm always looking for suggestions or, better yet, free books, but this is what I've mangled up in 30 years or so. These rankings are pretty ephemeral, but they're probably close to the truth.

1. Wrecking Crew by John Albert
Surprise, surprise — it's a book you've probably never heard of. It's about Former drug addicts, aging rock stars and other formerly "unsavory" characters who come together in their 40s to form a baseball team in Los Angeles. If Bissinger was upset that sportswriters today lack Heinz' power to describe the beauty of the games, no book has better described baseball's awesome power. If the theme of redemption is at the core of one idea of the consummate American experience, that idea is intertwined with baseball; look no further than The Natural, Rick Ankiel or Josh Hamilton. Wrecking Crew takes this on at the non-professional level and is all the better for it. I don't know how it stands on repeat readings, but I loved it the first time, maybe because it's so unknown — but maybe not.

2. Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace
Does Infinite Jest count? Probably not, but there isn't a better tennis writer anywhere than Wallace, period, end of story (except his stories never end).

3. Moneyball by Michael Lewis
I also like Star Wars, Bill Simmons and Juno. In other words, I'm not afraid to like things that other people like. In the entirety of the history of baseball, there have been about four cosmic events. I see them as a) founding of the leagues, b) integration, c) free agency, d) Moneyball. Okay, the integration of smart business practices might not be consequentially tied to Moneyball, but it's certainly inextricable from it. Even the DH rule is less important than that book, and that's saying something.

I actually can't think of any more right now... that is, any that leap to my mind as being Best in Class. I have to look at my bookshelf. Maybe this will be tomorrow's post. Good ones are Bo Knows Bo, Men at Work, Eight Innings... I'm seriously blanking beyond that. I'll get back at it tomorrow after the next Sox/Blue Jays 9th inning victory. When was the last time this happened? I think it was probably the consecutive games — in '06 I think — that were won on a Papi home run one day, and a 'Tek homer the next. Exciting stuff. Tonight's Wakefield versus Burnett, so let's hope for a vintage '95 Wakefield start. Do you remember about eight years ago when the big question was whether Wakefield would ever start again? Seems like ancient history now. Actually the story of Timmy W — THAT would make a great book.

"Blocking the plate was Barajas!"

2008-04-30T19:05:00.000-07:00

Impenetrable.

But then came Manny, and with him victory.

Numbers through April:
5th in runs with 136; Cubs lead with 171.
2nd in hits with 278; Cubs lead with 279.
15th in home runs with 24; Phillies lead with 41.
6th in total bases with 416; Diamondbacks lead with 449.
13th in walks with 103; Cardinals lead with 144.
5th in OBP at .353; Cubs lead at .375.
9th in slugging at .422; Diamondbacks lead at .468.

How about the NL, leading the way in all offensive categories! Sox walks should be much higher with the lineup they've got. All in all these numbers look pretty solid considering the injuries and the absence of runs over the last five days or so.

19th in ERA at 4.32; A's lead at 3.22.
10th in hits allowed with 232; Diamondbacks lead with 206.
20th in runs allowed with 130; A's lead with 96.
21st in home runs allowed with 28; White Sox lead with 15.
3rd in strikeouts with 216; Reds lead with 224.
27th in walks allowed with 123; Twins lead with 68.

Hmmmm, third in strikeouts and tenth in hits allowed. Take care of them walks and the scoreless innings will follow. I was crunching some numbers and I feel pretty confident that if the starters continue to go seven or eight innings, allowing one or zero runs, the league rankings will probably improve. Probably.

So long, Lobel

2008-04-30T06:48:00.001-07:00

I can hear you now, "But Ben, why are you linking to a stinking column about Lobel by Sh*********?"

Can it, Greek chorus!

I grew up with Lobel. As did Bryan, to a far lesser extent. You see, Bryan had this teriffic invention called cable television in his household. My house had an antenna that occasionally blew off the roof. When Bryan complained about how bad SportsCenter anchor Larry Biel was, I just assumed Larry Biel was his algebra teacher. When he mourned the death of Tom Mees I figured Tom must be a cousin or a friend of the family. All I knew was Bob Lobel.

I used to sit through the early news report and watch twenty long minutes of Liz Walker and Jack Williams just to steal a couple of moments with Lobel and perhaps catch a snippet of highlights from the previous night's game that I was unable to watch because it had aired on NESN. Around the trade deadlines or in the thick of free agent signings, Lobel was must see TV for little me.

Lobel told me that the Pats hired Parcells, he told me that Reggie Lewis died, that Greenwell was leaving to drive race cars, Mo Vaughn won the MVP award, Clemens signed with the Jays and on and on. So you see, I depended on the man for an awful lot.

These days, with the Internets and the ESPNews and whatnot, there are very few sports fans who are at all reliant on their local sports anchors. And so it happens that Bob Lobel has been kicked to the curb by an ownership getting rid high-priced talent. Can't say I blame them. Still, I wish it weren't so. Anyway, thanks, Bob.

The bats are back!

2008-04-29T19:55:00.000-07:00

Mike Lowell returns and just like that an offensive explosion to the tune of 5 (five) hits. And we're rolling.....

What is a lineup without Mike Lowell?
What's Ronaldo if he ain't smokin' pole?
What is Youk and he ain't really clutch?
What's Andruw Jones if he ain't really Dutch?
What is Obama if he ain't schooling locals?
What's the base if it's taking from the vocals?
What's Little Dusty without his little lady?
What is the Rocket if he ain't being shady?
Not a not a not a, not a damn thing
What's Adrian Beltre without that swing?
What's Garfield without Garfield?
What's A-Rod if he ain't really healed?
What's a ballplayer if he ain't knockin boots?
What's a manager without the disputes?
What is Barry Bonds if he ain't still waiting?
What is Bob Costas if he ain't always hating?
Oooh ooh, it's like that you keep goin
Freak freak y'all cause you know that we showin
What to go what to go what to go what to go what
to go what to go what to go what to go WHAT!

But seriously, how 'bout that Jonathan Lester!

The Bell Curve

2008-04-29T07:31:00.000-07:00

I was explaining to my Not Quite Yet Girlfriend last night the recent history of Boston sports during the waning minutes of the Celtics/Hawks game, mentioning that the game on the television fit the disturbing recent pattern of Boston fans getting bit in the ass by complacency. I mentioned how good our teams had been over the past eight years, prompting her to ask,"But weren't they really bad before that?" I lied and said yes, when the truth is they were on one hand (Sox) frustrating and on the other three just recently terrible. Worse than the performance of the teams themselves was the knowledge that every year was going to be the same as the year before it. And then Drew Bledsoe got hurt.

Now, I loved Bledsoe. But when Tommy Brady took over the Patriots, our sports experience took a sharp turn upward, where it stayed through the three Patriots titles and the Sox 2004 championship. That was the top of the bell curve, which was extremely steep. Even four years ago our teams were generally beloved by the media, the only arbiter that really matters; the Patriots were seen as the "model" franchise, and the Sox were the good guys versus the Yankees. The final out against Alan Embree in the 2004 ALCS was the tipping point, and you may not know it, but things have been downhill from there. The performances haven't always indicated it, but the new ethos of Boston sports took over and started to poison the results and our reputation in the country at large. In a nation that can't agree on anything except that Dennis Kucinich is crazy and Roger Clemens is an asshole, Boston fans are loathed by anyone. Why?

We expected to win. And with "only" one more title since 2004, we're not putting our money where our mouth is. The thing is, almost nobody could. Have we lost the passion? Yes, we have. Bravado about the Patriots' skills and declaring you hate Peyton Manning isn't the same as getting pumped up for your team's game. Last year, I texted an old friend before game 7 of the Cleveland series. No response. When we beat the Rockies, I got a couple phone calls. We expected to win. No big whoop. Then the Patriots season happened, and it was, at the bitter end, God's gift to everyone Out There who hated us and the first sign the sun was setting on our decade of triumphs.

Then Kevin Garnett came along, and we thought we had another hope. The problem is we were still cocky, when the 2007-08 Celtics are still a tenuous experiment. They could still win the title, but we have to remember the games are played on the court, not in the battlefield of "who can be a bigger asshole fan." If the Celtics lose to the Hawks — still unlikely, but plausible — we'll be back near the bottom of the bell curve, hopefully in a spot that encourages us to root for our team based not on a false sense of superiority, but because of our love of the region and the game. Same thing with the Sox. That's why we started this blog, to show that Sox love has little or nothing to do with the Sox winning. We've won. Let's get over it and root like real fans, and prepare for what might happen at the bottom of the bell curve in Atlanta this weekend.

Hey Celtics

2008-04-29T06:32:00.000-07:00

Let's just go ahead and win it all now.

Good, I'm down with that too.

Ben: You know what my favorite part of last night's game was? When Tony Delk and Rodney Rogers came off the bench and nailed all of those 3's. Say what you will about the Chris Wallace era, that was a great trade!

Devil of a weekend

2008-04-27T23:40:00.001-07:00

They're excited in St. Petersburg. And why not? This was the biggest weekend in Rays' history since Rolando Arrojo defected from Cuba. Not only did they sweep the defending champs in grand style, they also assured themselves of an above-.500 record through the first month of the season for the first time in franchise history.

Fitting that Me & Pedro was silent for the better part of three days because so, too, were Boston's bats. Five runs! Three losses, each one maddening in its own way. The missed opportunities of Friday night, staying with Clay just a bit too long on Saturday, wasting Beckett's 13 strikeout effort today. Brutal. Oh and did I mention they face Roy Halladay on Tuesday? Just the medicine they need! Boo.

Five losses in a row and yet the Sox are tied for first place. This glass be half full.

Week in Review: California Love

2008-04-25T09:34:00.000-07:00

The Sox are feeling the Golden State this week with beauty queen Heidi Watney, who will replace Tina Cervasio when not skydiving, taking boxing lessons or dating me.

Woodland, CA's own Dustin Pedroia brings the laser show to Fenway to dispatch Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim.

Former Oakland star Miguel Tejada sets the stage for the first real internal Me and Pedro argument over ESPN's "gotcha" TV program.

Fairfield, CA's Joe Thurston starts on Patriots' Day after a harrowing escape.

Sox fan Conan O'Brien looks to Burbank, while the douchey forces of Fallon sign to take over his chair. Heidi said she'd rather turn off the TV than watch. So I probably shouldn't complain.

(Greatest. Beat. Ever.)

Jimmy Fallon Replacing Conan O'Brien is like David Archuleta Replacing David Ortiz

2008-04-24T08:29:00.000-07:00

Good God, is this real?

This can't be real. Jimmy Fallon? Jimmy Fallon is going to be on television five nights a week? Whatever, NBC is digging its own grave.

I'm still not convinced Leno is going anywhere, and that's good news for Conan. Make the switch the CBS, big buddy, and keep it going down Sox Fan In New York style. I guess Leno counts as a Sox fan, so then we'd have both 11:30 shows. But I'd rather not count Leno.

On the bright side, at least Fallon will give "Douchebag Yankees fans who played Red Sox fans horribly in a movie" a worse name.

(Yes, the title is an American Idol reference.)

Fact or Fiction: Justin Masterson

2008-04-23T21:32:00.000-07:00

Justin Masterson has been called up from Portland. He will start tomorrow night against the Angels. Let's get to know him with a little Fact or Fiction:

He is the first Jamaican-born member of the Red Sox.
At 6-6, Masterson is the tallest pitcher to start a game for the Sox since Derek Lowe.
Weighing in at approximately 250 pounds, Masterson is the heaviest Sox picther since El Guapo.
He is one of seven Sox on Baseball America's Top 100 Prospects list.
He likes to grill asparagus, film it, and post it on YouTube.
He is the great-great-great grandson of gunfighter/lawman/sports writer Bat Masterson.

1. True. The three other Jamaican-born major leaguers, Chili Davis, Rolando Roomes and Devon White, never suited up for the Sox.
2. False. Kyle Snyder is 6-8. And remember Jason Johnson? Yeah, he was 6-8 and
3. False. David Wells is listed at 248 lbs, but that's probably generous.
4. True. Masterson came in at No. 63; the six others are RHP Clay Buchholz (No. 4); CF Jacoby Ellsbury (No. 13); 1B Lars Anderson (No. 40); 3B Jed Lowrie (No. 73); RHP Michael Bowden (No. 94); and CF Ryan Kalish (No. 96).
5. False. This is not Justin Masterson, major league pitcher.
6. False. But Bat Masterson is the great-grandfather of Robert Ballard, the marine scientist who discovered the wreck of the Titanic in 1985.

An Ode To Little Dusty

2008-04-23T12:51:00.000-07:00

I was at at bar in Manhattan with my softball team last night when I made an offhand comment about the greatness of Little Dusty, referring to him as such. There was outrage! from a Yankees fan, who had never heard such a foolish nickname. "Little Dusty!?" he asked, incredulous, and rolled his eyes at my nod. I repeated the name throughout the (glorious) night to get the response, and yep, turns out he really hates the little bugger.

All of which means Dusty's doing something right.

Oh yeah, it's HITTING .364

Ladies and Gentlemen....

2008-04-22T21:41:00.000-07:00

I present Heidi Watney, "California beauty queen who was suddenly dumped from her last job at a FOX affiliate in Fresno," who will takeover sideline reporting duties of the departed by Tina Cervasio:

I know good journalism when I see it, and this is it. Alas, it would appear NESN took a net loss on this one. But I'm willing to be patient.

See also: skydiving, whitewater rafting, and fighter jet flying!

Why I'm Pro E:60

2008-04-22T10:20:00.001-07:00

Of all the things Me and Pedro disagrees about internally, it looks like nothing was more immediately divisive that ESPN's "outing" of Miguel Tejada as a 33-year-old. Blogging partner Be Gold described the interview as a (my words) pointless ambush, whereas I applauded.

Well, the fallout from the story is beginning, as ESPN has published a piece about what Tejada's false birth certificate means for him, mostly in the context of steroids investigations. ESPN has to walk a fine line when it comes to celebrating sports and covering them, and often it does a horrible job of letting fans know where fun begins and news ends. My blogging partner wasn't the only one who didn't like the Tejada interview; my roommate saw it and was nonplussed by it. And I understand this reaction to a point, even if it wasn't mine: "ESPN has gone out of its way to be fun and hip and non-confrontational, and now this?" is what I imagine was going through people's heads. Again, not mine: I know good journalism when I see it, and this was it. ESPN had Tejada cold, and they sat him down, presumably by invitation, and asked him about it. He didn't answer. What's the big deal?

I don't want to put too fine a point on it, but I think we've got the wrong idea about what is and is not important in baseball because of the steroids scandal. We don't mind seeing Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens attacked, because they're jerks, but the others aren't worth dealing with. So when we see Miguel Tejada get attacked by an institution that caters to MLB so relentlessly like ESPN, we get confused. At its core, ESPN should be about covering sports as news, and whatever you think of Miguel Tejada, the fact that he — or someone — doctored his birth certificate so that he could earn millions of millions of extra dollars seems like sports news to me. If the New York Times broke this story, we'd applaud them for it, only that happens behind closed doors. It's the old sausage factory saw here: you might like journalism, but you might not like how it's done. This is how it's done. Good job, ESPN.

The sweep and the standings in a nutshell

2008-04-21T22:28:00.000-07:00

If you need words, try this.
Lugo!

Blogsville is bustling!

2008-04-21T20:43:00.000-07:00

McGriff and McGwire
Joe Posnanski Interview
Nine best baseball uniforms
A history of multi-stretching
The fan fight to end all fan fights
Yep, Wang is definitely NOT an ace
Worst GM Poll: Jon Daniels vs. Bill Bavasi
Prospect Smackdown: Masterson vs. Bowden
Black Sox Pitcher Says 1918 World Series Was Fixed

BLACK SOX PITCHER SAYS 1918 WORLD SERIES WAS FIXED!!!!!!!!!

So much for the Curse of the Bambino. Kidding. But speaking of the Sultan of Swat, I leave you with a Dire Tune:

Joe Thurston Escapes From Evil Clutches of Yankees, Starts on Brady Day

2008-04-21T08:16:00.000-07:00

Ah Patriots' Day. We once went to a Patriots' Day Sox game... and the Sox lost, 18-0, to the Minnesota Twins. I think we stayed three innings. Probably not going to have a repeat of that today, as the Sox are quite good these days and I'm behind a computer screen in New York. Batting ninth today? Joseph William Thurston. He's come along way. Here's a tidbit from his Wikipedia page:

On July 29, 2005, he was sent to the New York Yankees as part of a conditional deal. He played for their Triple-A team, the Columbus Clippers and was granted free agency after the season.

There's nothing more patriotic than escaping the Yankees. USA! USA! Go Sox!

Three weeks of numbers

2008-04-21T00:20:00.000-07:00

Heading into this morning's Patriots' Day tilt with the Rangers, the Sox the sit at 13-7, tied for the most wins in the baseball with the 13-5 Arizona Diamondbacks. Having won four in a row and eight of their last nine, the Sox have made it through what was thought to be a difficult early-season schedule in pretty great shape. The offensive production has been plentiful and timely. Four games last week were won with late-inning rallies. The pitching, on the other hand, has left a lot to be desired. Here is how the Sox rank in several statistical categories:

3rd in runs (104)
1st in on-base percentage (.367)
1st in batting average (.295)
2nd in total bases (304)
6th in slugging (.446)
16th in home runs (18)
3rd in doubles (41)
10th in walks (73)
27th in runs allowed (97)
15th in hits allowed (163)
2nd in strikeouts (143)
29th in walks allowed (87)
24th in home runs allowed (20)

Beginning Tuesday, a three game set with the 12-8 Los Angeles Angels, who are second the Sox in average (.293) and lead the league in total bases (305).

The Rangers refuse to win baseball games

2008-04-20T17:10:00.000-07:00

Another day, another eighth in rally. It was an often maddening but ultimately rewarding game in which we witnessed:

Manny get ejected
The Sox strand 25 men on base
A rare Sox double steal!
Wake go 8 innings on 86 pitches
Ortiz tie the game with his speed
Wilson walk in the winning run
Lugo play the ninth in left field

The Manny ejection was inexcusable. Perhaps the pitch was a little low and outside, but you can’t get tossed in the second inning of game where your lineup is already without three regulars. But, you know, he's been pretty good lately, so we can cut him some slack. Frustration with Manny mounted when his replacement in the cleanup spot, Joe Thurston, stepped to the plate in the fifth with Lugo on third and Ellsbury on second and promptly grounded out to Michael Young to end the inning. The following inning Ellsbury popped out with the bases loaded and it seemed like it was just one of those days where no matter how many base runners the Sox got they would not score.

Then came the Rangers bullpen and the second eighth inning rally in as many games. C.J. Wilson, who entered the game a perfect five-for-five in save opportunities, gave up two runs on two hits and three walks without retiring a batter. Brutal. Credit due to Drew and Casey who had great at-bats against the lefty, both of them working a walk.

The Sox caught a break in the second when Ron Washington opted to have David Murphy sacrifice bunt. This was odd for a couple of reasons. It’s the second inning of a game you’re leading 1-0 and you give an out to Wake, who is prone to big innings and has just surrendered consecutive singles, and you’re putting two men in scoring position and leaving it up to Gerald Laird and Ben Broussard to take care of business. Laird grounds out, scoring the lone run of the inning, and Broussard strikes out. But let's not pile on Washington, he's got enough detractors as it is.

A perfect 5-0 weekend
And the Yankees grow more hilarious by the day
More on our pal Tommy Holmes

Sunday papers

2008-04-20T08:59:00.000-07:00

Updating two stories below, Frank Thomas has been released and Hideo Nomo has been designated for assignment. My first though, any team in need of a DH that might have been considering Bonds could now scoop up the Big Hurt and avoid a PR hit. On Nomo, whose career is probably over, thanks for the no-hitter, that was special.

Pedroia sits today, Lowrie at second. Ellsbury leading off, Lowrie batting second. Youth! Aaaaand, Kinsler has just lead off the game with a home run. Anyway, enjoy the Sunday papers.

Arizona lefty eyes swift return from cancer
Cards are in odd spot with their offense
Yost not sure whether ace will miss start
Wrigley overtakes The Cell as nuthouse
Lackey ready to begin rehab assignment
Lester's goal was to strike first
Mets take shots at Phil fans
Tejada was better Oriole than many thought
Central may be open for White Sox
Helms rescues Florida in 9th
A's counter perception with support of RBI program
Rockies really cookin' on road
Japan had a love-hate relationship with Royals Nomo
Big Hurt cries foul over being benched by Jays
Ex-teammate Marzano's death rocks M's clubhouse
Another growing pain in Yanks' young arms
Hampton encouraging in bullpen session
Twins' win shows value of superior glove work
Familiar formulas falling short for Pads
Recovering Lopes pays a visit to Phils
Content Upton is just trying to win
Dodgers' Andruw Jones ends homer drought
Pirates must be held accountable
Reds lose arguments, game
Indians ace tries to get groove back
Rangers' pitcher makes outfield debut (huh?)
Giants call up Burriss, Davis is out
Turnaround for Astros unlikely, not impossible
Verlander still feeling good despite slow start
For Nationals, there's something in the error

Like 60 Minutes, only terrible

2008-04-19T19:51:00.000-07:00

“A trip to the Dominican Republic uncovers Miguel Tejada’s secret and shadowy past."

Bravo, ESPN, bravo! That was very funny. Oh, wait, you’re serious? He lied about his age and we caught him! But wait, there’s more! Not only did he lie about his age, he also lied about HIS IDENTITY! In the mid-nineties Dominican doctors combined Félix Fermín's brain, José Uribe's hands, Pascual Pérez's love of banned substances, and Izzy Alcántara's nefarious nature to create Miguel Tejada. Kinda like RoboCop, but on the juice.

If I had any faith in that clown I saw ambushing Tejada on SportsCenter, I'd think maybe this feature would take the issue seriously and attempt to get to the root of why it is that Dominicans are so desperate to get a contract that they lie about their age. You know, instead of playing gotcha with elderly shortstops. But I doubt it.

Manny might get to 600 by August

2008-04-19T19:04:00.000-07:00

Joaquin Benoit? Please. It's disrespectful, having Benoit face one of the best all-time hitters with a man on in the eighth inning of a 3-3 game. Manny took his displeasure out on a pitch low and in and cranked it over everything in left. A no doubter the second he stepped in the batters box. Really, I started composing this paragraph before a single pitch was thrown.

That's three late-inning wins this week by my count. Moxie! The lifelessness of the first few weeks of the season is but a distant memory.

Of Lester's start we can say that he threw strikes and he battled. Making it into the seventh inning was great to see and although he allowed 10 hits he was able to limit the Rangers to three runs. Lester came up large in the third with two runners in scoring position when he struck out Murphy and Laird to end the inning. All in all, a step in the right direction.

We must also give some reluctant praise to Javier Lopez, who in the eighth inherited two men in scoring position and got Josh Hamilton to line out (on a screamer) to Ellsbury, ending the inning and keeping the deficit at one. He picked up the win for his one pitch of work.

Pedroia double. Ortiz single. Tie game. Manny. Game over.

Congrats to German Duran for collecting his first big league hit, a single in the second inning.

Jason Jennings kept the Boston bats very quiet in the middle innings. After an awful start to the season, and an ugly start to this game, he cruised.

Lugo extended his hitting streak to five games, but geez, he really is atrocious. He ended a budding rally in the seventh by hitting into an easy double play on the first pitch he saw.

Millwood and Wake tomorrow.

Jefferson on baseball

2008-04-19T14:23:00.001-07:00

Reading this piece in the New Yorker, I was struck by something Thomas Jefferson in response to the oft-used query, "What would the Founders do?"

In 1816, when he was seventy-three and many of his revolutionary generation had already died, he offered this answer: “This they would say themselves, were they to rise from the dead. . . . Laws and institutions must go hand in hand with the progress of the human mind.” The Founders believed that to defer without examination to what your forefathers believed was to become a slave to the tyranny of the past. Jefferson put it this way: “Some men look at constitutions with sanctimonious reverence, and deem them like the arc of the covenant, too sacred to be touched. They ascribe to the men of the preceding age a wisdom more than human.”

Naturally, my thoughts turned to the anti-Jamesian sect and their near religious fervor to protect popular baseball statistics of days gone by. Believing, it seems, that the introduction of new statistical concepts strips the game of all its history and charm, and viewing those who propagate treacherous ideas like secondary average as a threat. Bah!

I possess no more mathematical wizardry than a 40-year-old sports columnist who drives a Lincoln Town Car, eats at Applebee's three nights a week, tells his little league charges to "go up there swignin," and takes George Will's Men At Work with him wherever he goes. And yet, I appreciate progress of the human mind. I like Ideas. I can't make heads or tails of most of the numbers, but I'm trying, dammit.

Sad news, friends

2008-04-19T13:32:00.000-07:00

John Marzano, 1984 first round draft pick of the Sox and member of the Silver-medal winning U.S. team at the 1984 Olympics, has died. Marzano played in 167 games at catcher for the Sox from 1987-1992. As a member of the Seattle Mariners, Marzano fought Paul O'Neill, which earns him major brownie points here. More recently, he worked in his native Philadelphia as a baseball analyst and sports radio personality. He was 45.

Dennis is angry

2008-04-19T11:07:00.001-07:00

Blue Jay Frank Thomas is not happy about being benched in favor of Matt Stairs. And the same is apparently true of a man named Dennis, whose facial features are vaguely reminiscent of the Big Hurt.

Staying with the Blue Jays, yesterday I said David Purcey had a "decent start." I was wrong. Couldn't have been more wrong, really. It was late, I was zipping through the night's games, ignoring important statistical categories, like walks, for example. I'm sorry. Me and Pedro regrets the error.

Obligatory Wily Mo Update

2008-04-19T10:11:00.000-07:00

Wily Mo has 6 strikeouts in 18 at bats for the Washington Nationals (zero moonshots). A Wily Mo strikeout once in every three AB's is the only scientific constant that I know of in sports. The Modesto K/AB Ratio is to baseball what Planck's constant is to quantum mechanics.

Alas, the K's aren't the worst part of his game. The Nationals Report discusses:

If you go back a couple posts you will see me waxing poetic about the great defense that our team had been putting on display through the first two weeks of the season. Well the day Wily Mo Pena came back into the lineup, that all went to hell. I think he's drugging the water cooler with suck-ness. For a guy so large, WMP moves extremely well. But, all the speed in the world can't make up for taking bad routes. Also, his running stride seems very bouncy and I think it may be causing him to lose focus of ball when it's in the air. I dunno maybe I'm just imagining things.

Bouncy stride! I love it. More physics! I have a very scientific suggestion for Wily Mo that might lower his refractive errors.

Eye on the pups

2008-04-19T09:47:00.000-07:00

We've already discussed Hansen's recent success:

Hansen has pitched 9 1/3 scoreless innings in his first six appearances for the PawSox, after finishing last season with 14 2/3 scoreless innings. Overall, opposing batters are hitting .065 (2 for 31) against him this season, with most of his success coming against righthanded hitters, who have one infield hit in 24 at-bats. One Sox official said the team is impressed with the way Hansen has been asserting himself on the mound - the surgery for sleep apnea may be a factor - but they want to see him continue his early success before making any moves.

But another prospect who has taken a few steps back since becoming a professional is beginning to put it together:

In low Class A Greenville, converted reliever Daniel Bard must be getting close to a promotion. He pitched two more scoreless innings (1 BB, 2 K) and has a 0.00 ERA over 11 2/3 innings ... Don't know how long he'll stay in Greenville. Red Sox must hope he gains confidence as a reliever before sending him to Lancaster.

Bard, of course, was a college teammate of Andrew Miller at UNC. Miller has been walking a lot of dudes and allowing an assload of hits for Marlins this year.

Justin Masterson has been masterful(!) for the Sea Dogs. The 22-year-old native of Kingston, Jamaica, has struck out 13 and walked 2 in 14 innings, allowing just 2 runs. George Kottaras has five round trippers for Pawtucket. Lars Anderson, thought to be the Sox' lone power prospect, has 3 home runs and an .879 OPS for Class A Lancaster. No word yet on whether Oscar Tejada is really 18 years old.

Transcontinental ownage

2008-04-18T20:29:00.000-07:00

So I'm watching a Celtic-Rangers game from earlier in week (think Sox-Yanks with a religious element, more racism and, loads of sectarian violence) and I'm thinking about how interesting it is that a Japanese fellow named Nakamura is an Old Firm veteran. Then he goes and scores an incredible goal, and it dawns on me, Matsuzaka beat the Rangers too! Remarkable. Take a look at the goal:

Back to Dice-K. Two walks this evening. We can live with that. I'll say it now, if Dice-K averages two walks a game he wins the Cy Young. Still, 101 pitches through 5.1 innings is a bit of a concern. Less walks is a start. Now throw more strikes!

Wouldn’t you know, Papi busts out of his slump with a guy named Mendoza on the mound. A grand slam and an RBI single. Patience paid off. Eventually you knew something would happen. And boy did it ever.

Jed Lowrie is batting .429 (coulda been higher if he weren’t called out on a highly questionable third strike) and he has zero errors. Be afraid, Julio Lugo, be very afraid. Or maybe Alex Cora should be afraid. No, not likely. Baseball 101 dictates that when Cora comes back Lowrie goes down to play every day.

Conflicted on Aardsma. Throws very hard but doesn’t strike a lot of guys outs and has control issues. If Timlin can't turn things around Aardsma could become an important part of the pen. My confidence in Timlin is such that when I saw him warming in the eighth inning of a 9-3 game I took pause. But remember, Timlin was dreadful in the early going last season, posting ERAs of about 6.00 through June, before having an incredible July (14.1 innings, 0 ER, .111 AVG) and holding opponents to a .192 average post-All Star break. All hope is not lost. Not by a long shot.

Around the AL East
Today was a banner day in Rays history. They signed Longoria to a long term deal and claimed Dan Johnson off waivers. Then they went out and lost to white Sox.

Perennial disappointment Daniel Cabrera held the Yankees in check this evening. Meanwhile, Phil Hughes struggled once again (0-3, 8.82 ERA). That's what happens to 21 year olds. It just is. He'll be fine. So will Clay, for that matter.

The Blue Jays? Barajas, looking beauteous in the powder blues, played first base and socked a solo home run. But the homer and David Purcey's ~~decent~~ start were wasted when Jeremy Accardo took his third loss in relief.

The rest of them teams
Torii Hunter doubled thrice and yoinked Richie Sexson's bid for a third home run to record the final out in the Angels' 5-4 victory.

Ben Sheets looked sharp, allowing two hits over five, but was forced to leave the game with a sore triceps.

With Sabathia struggling, Cleveland's other lefty continues to shine. Cliff Lee outpitched Francisco Liriano to improve to 3-0 and lower his ERA to 0.40.

David Wright collected four hits and Johan Santana struck out ten to lead the Mets over the Phils by score of 6-4.

Derek Lowe struggled in Andruw Jones' return to Atlanta as the Braves bested the Dodgers 6-1. But the real story is Glavine, who is going to the DL for the first time in his 22-year career.

Friend of Posnanski Brian Bannister had his first sour start of the season, allowing five runs in the A's 13-2 victory.

Dan Haren blanked the Padres over seven and Connor Jackson drove in four runs in the D-Backs 9-0 win.

There are more teams. Some of them won, others of them lost.

Week in Review: High Five

2008-04-18T07:01:00.000-07:00

Manny: High Five
Javier Lopez: High Five
Royals!: High Five
Tommy Holmes: Sad High Five
Craig Hansen: High Five?
Lugo: ... nope, can't do it

And one more round of applause for Manny, who's really just out of his mind right now.

(And thanks to Funny or Die for making their videos an unwieldy size... yeesh.)

Your crew is featherweight

2008-04-17T21:37:00.000-07:00

That was a well-timed ode to Manny by Bryan. Tonight was Manny's night. By the third inning he had smacked two home runs off Mussina, passing Lou Gehrig and Fred McGriff on the all-time home run list in the process. Manny now has 495 career home runs, 55 of those have come against the Yankees. In the seventh, future hall of famer Kyle Farnsworth chucked one past Manny's ear. The Bronxfolk cheered, Manny grinned. Following the game Manny put a quarter in the clubhouse juke box and dedicated this classic piece of American songwriting to Messrs. Mussina and Farnsworth:

The anthem of the A-Rod era.

Manny was asked if he was excited to be approaching 500 career home runs. “Not really,” he said. “Because I’m going to 600.”

Also, Beckett was good. The middle relief looks dazzling when the starter goes 8, don't it? They're quite good sitting down, spitting sunflower seeds into a receptacle.

On Baseball Tonight Gammons gave creedence to something I had been thinking about just this morning. Craig Hansen and his 0.00 ERA and 0.55 WHIP in 9.1 innings at Pawtucket is likely to be up with the big club sooner rather than later. Gammons claims Hansen has rediscovered the delivery he had at St. John's. To which we can only say:

That He will guard thee by His might,
And be thy shield in every fight,
Thou champion of sacred rite,
Old St. John's! Our dear St. John's!

Gammons also added that Crisp could be headed to the Cubs, who are without Soriano and aren't getting any production from Pie. He mentioned Cubs' 22-year-old Boston native Sean Gallagher as a guy the Sox have interest in. I'll say again, we should not trade Coco Crisp.

Slow day in Blogsville
Beane v. Sabean
Perplexed Over C.C. Sabathia
Why the Tampa Bay Rays should sign Barry Bonds
Miguel Tejada needs two more birthday candles this year

Your Profanity-Free Thursday Afternoon Post

2008-04-17T11:17:00.001-07:00

There's plenty I could be doing today that's not writing for the 40 or so of you who log on, dutifully, every day, to hear what two guys you may or may not know say about the Red Sox. Hell, I run a semi-respectable business magazine (Though that's all I'll say about it lest I end up like XMas Ape). But no: I'm going to talk baseball, or at least talk something. And before I continue let me just say I appreciate it, especially our Icelandic following, which, lest you think I'm kidding:

Though I worry a bit about the Icelandic economy in light of this week's New Yorker article that indicates the subprime disaster in the U.S. might take a toll on the island nation; like most of James Surowiecki's articles, I admire the writing and reasoning even if I'm straight bankrupt, intellectually speaking, on the subject.

If all of this is supposed to be a lead-in to some Red Sox thoughts... well, I'm not sure what to make of the team yet, except they're freaking awesome, and Manny is on a tear, and I can't believe this is probably his final year as a Sox. Or at least potentially his final year. For all that's happened in the last 10 years to transform the Cursed Sox into the Model Franchise, there was nothing bigger than when the Sox signed Manny. It's hard to remember now, but absolutely no one wanted to play in Boston in the late 1990s. Say what you want about Clemens' rampant a$$holitude, the man wasn't exactly breaking news when he said players hated the Sox' management. Add to that Boston's unsavory racial history, and suddenly a lot of people are using the "Fenway's locker rooms are too small" excuse not to play here. There was a time, in 1999, when we signed Jose Offerman and Sox fans got atwitter. That was the free agent we could get, that's the type of franchise we were, and nothing was going to change that.

Then the winter of 2000/2001 came along and fundamentally changed what it meant to be a free agent in baseball. The big names were A-Rod, Manny and Mike Mussina, though Darren Dreifort got a 5-year, $55 million contract too. Everyone got paid. Mussina went off the blocks early, but A-Rod and Manny dragged on and on and on. ESPN.com had a page where it would have all the free agents and the news of the day next to their faces; I must have reloaded this page at the college newspaper office once every five minutes. It just never occurred to me that a player could want to come to Boston, and yet the Manny saga dwindled to a two-team race between Cleveland and the Sox. I just assumed he would go back to Cleveland, but he didn't. One day, at my non-cable television home, my roommate came in and told me it was a done deal. I flipped on the radio and listened to the all-news station for an hour, waiting to hear the announcement every 10 minutes: "Manny Ramirez has signed with the Red Sox for 10 years, $200 million."

The next year, Manny hit a home run in his first Fenway Park at-bat, and it was on. People hated him from the get-go, though, because he didn't look like the typical Boston ballplayer, but all he did was hit and hit and hit. Through the years, people have attacked his spaciness, his oversized uniform, his dreadlocks, his tendency to admire home runs and doubles, his defense, his baserunning, his phantom injuries, his real injuries, his late-night drinking habits with Enrique Wilson, his trade demands, everything, and the guy just goes out there and hits like he's in a time warp. He's 35 years old now, but he might as well be 25. I chuckled when I read Baseball Prospectus' preview this year, because for all their number-crunching, they flat out blew it. They wrote that it was "fundamental that he is in decline." This based off one bad season, which increasingly looks like it's going to be sandwiched between two typically hall of fame years. So it goes.

At this point, Manny will leave the Sox as the second-greatest hitter in their history, and, like the first, he was not always beloved by the press. And in truth, David Ortiz has stolen some of Manny's thunder the last few years, but here's Ortiz, faltering for the first time in five years, and Manny keeps raking. Let's realize what we have before it's gone and give Manny the appreciation he deserves. To the best Sox hitter in 50 years. Hear hear.

Keeping up with old friends

2008-04-17T10:03:00.000-07:00

Ken Rosenthal on former Greenville Drive manager, and current Brewers' RBI leader, Gabe Kapler:

The crazy thing about Kapler's return is that it could end as unexpectedly
as it started.

"I reserve the right to change my mind," Kapler says. "There are no rules
to this, absolutely no rules."

He had established a foothold with the Red Sox, laid the initial foundation for a fast-rising managerial career.

What happens next is anyone's guess, including his own.

In the past, Kapler says, he would try to plan the rest of his life in a single day. Now, he's reveling in the simple joys of playing baseball again.

"Let's not be naïve;: A lot of it has to do with the start," Kapler says. "But riding the subway to the park, thinking about the game, preparing for pitchers, watching video, putting on my socks, drinking the coffee, the whole buildup to the game ... I realize how much I love it."

Kapler and Braun, best Jewish duo in baseball history? Discuss.

Jackie Robinson Day

2008-04-16T07:34:00.000-07:00

Dodgers host Robinson Day
Robinson Rotunda unveiled
Nation should honor Robinson
Negro Leagues Museum salutes 42
Phillies, Roberts remember Jackie

A life is not important except in the impact it has on other lives.
-Jackie Robinson

Moon Over Parma

2008-04-15T12:56:00.000-07:00

No wait — that was just Manny's home run ball. Still:

Encore for Lugo

2008-04-14T21:45:00.000-07:00

Manny's tie-breaking blast? Yes, of course, it was glorious. But let us not forget the double by Lugo that got things going in the eighth. He used his speed to do it, taking advantage of the weak arm in left. Then a nice bunt by Coco to move Lugo to third. Then a deep fly to left by Pedroia to score Lugo. Tie game. The announcers are giving all the love to Manny for the game-winning two-run shot. The blog smiths will be sure to do the same. It's only natural. But here we applaud Mr. Lugo. Lopez one day and Lugo the next. If we rail against Papi, perhaps... no, we shan't. We can't. He doesn't need it anyway. With his two hits tonight the big man is batting over .100!

Borowski. Why? Are the Indians and Tigers engaged in some kind of ruinous Gooden-Stevenson-esque wager wherein the first to empl0y a real closer must relinquish a hefty sum of dollars? It's not worth it, friends. Might I suggest a synthesis of the two bets to spice things up? Each side takes an aged, bewhiskered closer: Hall of Famer Bruce Sutter to the Indians and the tragically under-medicated Jeff Reardon to the Tigers. At the conclusion of the season the team whose closer owns the best Beard Mass Index* shall be declared the winner.

*(Beard mass/Body mass)÷(Blown saves + Losses)

Tommy Holmes is dead

2008-04-14T21:38:00.000-07:00

Who is Tommy Holmes? In 1945, as a member of the Boston Braves, Holmes hit in 37 consecutive games. This modern N.L. record would stand until 1978, when Pete Rose hit in 44 consecutive games. So that's cool. But I find the following much more interesting. According to the sponsor of Holmes' baseball-reference page (and why would he lie?), Tommy was "the only player to lead his league in HR and fewest K/AB in the same season. Also the only OF to end his career with more DP's than errors." Both of those achievements seem kind of remarkable. The latter is perhaps a bit superficial, but for our amusement let's compare Holmes with some guys who have won multiple Gold Gloves:

Tommy Holmes: 37 Double plays, 33 Errors
Roberto Clemente: 42 Double plays, 140 Errors
Willie Mays: 60 Double plays, 141 Errors
Al Kaline: 29 Double plays, 73 Errors
Curt Flood: 28 Double plays, 54 Errors
Dwight Evans: 42 Double plays, 59 Errors
Ken Griffey Jr.: 42 Double plays, 84 Errors
Andruw Jones: 24 Double plays, 44 Errors
Jim Edmonds: 29 Double plays, 51 Errors

I've always thought it's sad that kids who grow up in New England these days don't really learn anything about the Boston Braves. I know virtually nothing. I really appreciated the opportunity to learn a little about the 1945 N.L. MVP runner up. Unfortunately it only came about due to the man's death. RIP.

I want to talk about the Royals

2008-04-14T21:19:00.000-07:00

Yesterday Brian Bannister tossed a complete game against the Twins. He is 3-0 with a 0.86 ERA. Today Zack Greinke tossed a complete game against the Mariners. He is 3-0 with a 0.75 ERA. Tomorrow the Royals trot out something named a John Bale. He is 0-2 with a 5.84 ERA. Just my luck that it's Bale's game I attend. The Bale-Batista matchup is certain to have me up late this evening as I consider the potential magic that is witnessing a combined twelve innings from two mediocre bullpens.

But back to Bannister and Greinke. Young Zack is reaching his potential after being felled by social anxiety disorder in the past. Good stuff. On Bannister, ah, Omar, does your Ambiorix hurt when you think about him? Is it a dull pain or is it humonburgos?

Alas, unless these gents keep the ERA's below one they might not be racking up the wins for long. Take a look at the Royals' offense: Last in the majors in runs (38), tied for the last in the majors in home runs (5!), last in the American League in total bases (143) and OBP (.309). None of this is surprising. Jose Guillen, Gil Meche turns his lonely eyes turn to you.

That R.A. Dickey throws a mean knuckler. And he mixes in some much harder stuff than Wake. The M's just called him up today along with Arthur Rhodes. I recall when Dickey was with the Rangers, Remy was fond of discussing "the thang." This Wikipedia tidbit (unsourced and perhaps apocryphal) is something I did not know:

His early success was considered to be due in large part to his wide array of pitches including: a fastball, changeup, curveball, and a special knuckle-combination pitch known simply as "the thang". There was some speculation that Dickey actually "stole" the pitch from Stoughton High School pitcher Paul Snyder, however after a brief dispute and failed lawsuit Dickey was cleared of any wrongdoing.

Incidentally, not long ago Omar Minaya was cleared of any wrongdoing after a brief dispute and failed lawsuit. It seems Jim Duquette claimed that Minaya "stole" his blueprint for building a championship ballclub.

Revenge

2008-04-14T07:11:00.000-07:00

After taking two of three from the hapless Tiggers and the beat-up Yankees respectively, the Sox head to Cleveland for a two game set. With last season's ALCS defeat still fresh in their minds the Indians are going through the "it's just another series" song and dance. But is it really even that? What's with these two-game series? I hate 'em.

Lester vs. Westbrook in Game 1 and Wake vs. Byrd in Game 2. Westbrook has been quite good in his first two starts, allowing 2 runs in the first and 3 in the second. He's coming off a complete game victory against the Angels. Mr. Byrd has been in the news recently. Good for him. Perhaps he'll celebrate by lowering his 11.05 ERA.

And and yes, there's this, one scribe in Cleveland is calling for Manny's head (or ribs): "He needs to be knocked down -- at the least." But is Jake Westbrook really gonna put fear in Manny Ramirez? Please. Paul Byrd? HaHA! No, the only things that frighten Manny are barbers and clowns. So unless the Indians plan to reincarnate Sal Maglie or trade for Julian Tavarez, all payback attempts shall prove ineffectual.

Old friends Shoppach, Marte and Breslow are on Cleveland's roster.