A Red Sox State of Maine

Seems Like Old Times....

....dinner dates and flowers
Just like old times, staying up for hours
Making dreams come true, doing things we used to do
Seems like old times being here with you

My brother ran up and down the street last night screaming, "BEAT LA!" (he's, um, 35 years old.)

Celts and Lakers in the championship round. Last year at this time, with the Celtics coming up snake eyes in the draft, and King Kobe pissing and moaning about wanting to get out of town, who'd've thought we'd be standing here at the same place we've stood ten times before?

Now, the Lakers aren't on par with the Yankees in my dossier of hated teams, but only because I don't follow basketball as closely. Right now, led by their narcissistic, whiny shooting guard and their overrated "thanks Michael and Shaq" head coach, they are more hateable than ever. I would like nothing better than for the Celts to take this series-and the O'Brien trophy-but they are going to have to play oceans better than they have up to this point. Last night was a good start to that.

Still, there's a clear difference between cheering for a team that has won nothing recently and cheering for one that has a few championships under it's belt. You get spoiled in that respect, and it does make you a bit obnoxious to otehr fanbases, no doubt. Unlike the Patriots, when I was (and still am, to an extent) monumentally pissed off after the loss, if the Celtics don't win I'll still be able to say it was a great season and thank the team for giving us such a great ride.

But, of course, it will be a lot better if they do win.

GO GREEN!!! For real, this time...

Happy Birthday Manny!

What better birthday present to yourself than #500?

"I try to be myself...I can't worry about what other people say. I control my own life. I can't let anybody upset me, throw me off course. I have to keep my energies focused on what I do, because there are going to be a lot of obstacles and you have to keep going."-Manny Ramirez 

Better Times Ahead?

If Tim Wakefield went postal in the clubhouse last night, there's not a jury in the world that would convict him-anybody who watched that game would easily conclude it was justifiable homicide. Talk about suckitude. It's impossible to suck more than these guys have lately unless you work for the Emperor's Club....and given recent history, there's no guarantee that a four-game visit to Fenway MidAtlantic will help cure what ails them, either. Dayum. These guys need some inspiration and fast. May I suggest Ray Allen as a role model?

(Oh, and when did I get so deep into the looking glass? The Rays are still in first place? As the Cat said to Alice, we're all mad here...)

Well, at least I get to take in some real baseball today, as I prepare for my first Sea Dogs game this year. Weather is supposed to be beautiful. Can't go cheer on the home team in a crabby mood, so I'm willing myself not to be disgusted all day.

Beckett on the mound on Friday. That alone portends hope in a disheartened fanbase. C'mon, guys, snap out of it!

GO SOX!!!  

Sighing in Seattle

Big win, followed by a ballbreaking loss. Dice marginally effective and leaves hurt, Timlin pitching like crap-again-and, 1/3 of the way through the season, it's not looking like a 2007-like turnaround is in the cards for him.  Well, retirement would just give him more time to hunt animals with crossbows so he could watch them slowly bleed to death, so he's got that going for him. But really, this game was not on Timlin-it's on the pathetic offense that couldn't muster anything, save a Manny homer, against a pretender like Miguel Batista. Even perennial cheerleader Jerry Remy seemed frustrated by this loss, complaining, "This is a guy they should beat." 

Speaking of Manny, it's nice to see him getting his swing back. I expect a barrage of homers and extra base hits coming up in the next few days, and hey, if he hits #500 in Camden Yards, that's ok-it's mostly Sox fans there anyway. Go for it, Manny!

I don't think the All-Star runup is going quite the way the Yankee brass envisioned-first, the Red Sox win the World Series (saying that never gets old, does it?), meaning that Terry Francona will be managing the game in the home dugout. That in and of itself would be satisfaction enough, but wait, there's more! David Ortiz, the Yankees' worst nightmare, is participating in a home run derby event where a fan can win a prize if he oe she calls Ortiz's shot, ala Babe Ruth-and the Yankees are having a cow. Evidently they don't want the big man in the Sox uni imitating their legend in their own field-too damned bad (although one fan did come up with one reasonable alternative to it: “Let fans run the bases and see if Johnny Damon can throw him out. He can even use both arms if he wants to.” I'm just picking myself off the floor from rolling on it laughing after reading that one...) C'mon, Yanks. You've humiliated yourself this season on a few fronts already, from creating a brawl in a spring training game, to the frantic search for a cursed jersey in the new stadium, to the revelation that you didn't find the cursed scorecard, to giving up two four-run leads last night, to the public and seething resentment of the Red Sox expressed by Mr. Hanky...but it looks like you all aren't quite ready yet to break that trend.

Finally, the news yesterday that not one, two, three or four but five Red Sox players are leading the All-Star voting- Varitek, Youk, Pedroia, Manny, and, of course, Big Papi, who is also leading in total votes (Captain Cupcake is second). I voted yesterday myself.

The prospects for stopping the bleeding tonight are not great, considering it's Erik Bedard on the mound. he's been only so-so this year, but he's always pitched well against the Sox. And which Timmy will show up to play tonight?   

Quickies

Manny-looking good. I feel a long ball coming on any day now.

Papelbon-not looking so good, and I don't want to hear any apologist sputters about how only one ball was hit hard off him. Bloops come around to score same as shots to the gap do. Good thing he had a four-run cushion. Shape up, Paps.

Colon-looking very good. My guess is that Buchholz will be nursing that finger a little while longer. Trying hard not to get my hopes up too high, though.

Varitek-looking good, surprisingly, considering he is not often the guy on fire when the rest of the team has been slumping. Got robbed by Ichiro, who has probably been wasted in right field all these years.

Celtics-after last night, I'm tempted to say, "you guys suck." 31% field goal shooting? Brick after brick from the free throw line? 11-for-38 from the trio? KG...it's really time to step up here. You can't count on 41 point performances from Pierce every night.

All for now. Garden awaits!

Road Kill

The Red Sox are currently 0-3 on the current road trip, 0-7 in their last seven road games, 1-8 in their last nine, and 10-17 on the road overall. This is abysmal and must be addressed and rectified ASAP. What good is a 7-0 homestand if it's going to be bracketed by a four-game losing streak and then a three-game losing streak? What good is scoring 90,000 runs at home if you struggle to score three on the road, two of which were a gift from Joe Blanton and his temporary loss of the strike zone? It makes no sense.

Really nice sequel to that no-hitter, Jon. Sheesh. Please don't toy with me. Either you're good, or you suck. I can deal with one or the other but not both. (why do you build me up, butter cup baby, just to let me down? And mess me around...) Good karma though to your dad, who we just learned is being treated for lymphoma. Man, that's a lot on one family's plate.

Craig Hansen is not yet ready for primetime. Boy, good bullpen help is hard to find.

Julio Lugo is on pace for something like 60 errors this season. I miss Alex Gonzalez. Nine million doesn't buy what it used to.

In better news, the Spurs took it to the Lakers last night. I, like every red-blooded American sports fan outside of Hollywood, hate the Lakers, and would like nothing better than to see them go down in a ball of flames before the championship finals-even if it is at the hands of the Spurs. Let's hope for equally good news for the C's tonight, who will hopefully go up 3-1 on the Pistons at the Palace tonight.

Bartolo Colon makes his second start at Kryptonite-er, Safeco-Field. Good thoughts and karma going out...let's wake up here, bats.

West Coast Woes

Yeesh. I guess it's a good thing I'm sleeping through most of these west coast games. Throw a no-hitter and then almost get no-hit yourself? That would be embarrassing. There are a couple of times within my memory that the Red Sox were no hit, the last by Chris Bosio-in Seattle, go figure, when the Kingdome was a hitter's paradise-in April of 1993. I listened to that game on the radio, actually. Thanks to Papi for not making us repeat the experience as it really stunk. And while I'm usually not one to wax positive about anything in a loss-they all suck equally in my book-it was nice to see Beckett back to form after a couple of lousy outings in a row. He's got to tighten up on the long ball, though-he's close to the league leader in that category again.  

While we're on the subject of the A's, I may as well take the opportunity to let you all know that I still remain relatively unimpressed with Billy Beane and his "moneyball" approach to the game, or at least with it's naked ability to field a championship caliber team. Before you all come at me with, hey, Bill James is on the Red Sox payroll, I know that. I didn't say it has no place in the game-clearly, it has revolutionized it in a lot of ways. I just think a) it's value is overstated, primarily in that a lot of what it tells you is stuff you can see with your own eyes (players hit differently from one park to the next, or that you'd rather have the speedy baserunner on the basepaths and the slugger at the plate than vice versa, duh), and a lot more of it is just abstractions with no context and b) in a results-driven world, how many championships has Oakland won with this approach, even when they had "the big three" at their best? (Barry Zito, btw, finally won his first game.) As far as I can tell, the golden calf of moneyball is on base percentage-in other words, the more outs that a player avoids, the better the chance of scoring runs. Duh. So it's success depends heavily on a lot of players getting on base by any means possible. All that is well and good, and probably works great during the regular season when you're playing in a league that seems genetically incapable of producing more than 15 or 20 really good pitchers at a time. The problem comes at playoff time, if you make it that far-many of those 15 or 20 pitchers are concentrated in playoff teams, and all of a sudden you aren't getting base runners at the rate you did during the regular season because you're facing a lot better pitching. Now that's true of the team that relies on the home run, too, but the home run is a lot more efficient way to score, and doesn't rely on the three guys ahead of you getting on base. I'm aware of Theo Epstein's devotion to this approach, but I'm also aware that without Manny Ramirez the Red Sox are probably going on their 91st year without a championship banner. Manny alone wasn't going to win it for them, but Manny complemented by Bill Muellar was. Look at LA last year. Baserunning and OBP was their game, which got completely shut down when they ran into the Beckett/Schilling buzzsaw. And what won both final games for the Sox in that series? Homers by the Duquette guy. I rest my case. I'm not really hostile to the approach-it's actually quite fascinating-but I'm just very skeptical of the long term, real world predictive ability of such an abstract numbers system when so much in baseball relies on the human factor and the one-to-one nature of the game.   

A big relief for all of us in Celtic land last night- a road win! Really, I don't know why we're surprised, considering the Celts were the best road team in the league this season-what we should be expressing surprise over is that it took them this long, not that they actually won. And talk about a moneyball approach-the bench guys scored as much as our own big three (Ray Allen seems to have gotten his groove back these last couple of games), and I'm becoming the world's #1 P.J. Brown fan. Nice going guys, getting back the home court advantage. But you know what's been the most entertaining part of this series so far? Listening to commentators and pundits talk about two elite teams coached by guys named Doc and Flip. Sounds like a Disney movie.

A game I can actually watch today, starting at 4pm, the last one for a while as all the Seattle games are 10pm starts. I'd like to not be swept, guys. Let's get it together for Jon L.    

(Fan photo from Boston.com)

Walking Man

Mr. Matsuzaka, meet Mr. Home Plate. Mr. Home Plate, meet Mr. Matsuzaka. I know you must have made an acquaintance before, it's just been so long I can't remember when it must have been. Now sit down, I want you to become the best of friends.

I know I probably shouldn't fret too much about Matsuzaka's walk totals, even as they head toward strastospheric ranges. No one is hitting squat off him, and he strikes out a lot of guys, so he's (usually) getting out of the jams he gets himself into. His ERA is still under 3.00. But it's still problematic for a couple of reasons-it tells me a) he doesn't have much confidence that he can just blow a fastball by someone when he needs to (thus the endless and needless corner-nibbling), and b) he's toast after six innings, thus too often leaving the game in the hands of the still suspect middle relief. I mean, it took two grand slams yesterday to undo the damage wrought by Craig Hansen and David Aardsma. The Sox scored 11 runs and it was still a save situation in the ninth.

Overall, though, great homestand, if a somewhat odd one in how it unfolded-the two guys making league minimum spin absolute beauties, the ex-Cy Young winner picked off the scrap heap turning in a decent spot start, the should-have-been Cy Young winner turning in his second bad performance in a row but bailed out by offense, and they go 7-0. The bats-all but Manny's-have been on fire. The Sox are first in:

Runs Scored
Hits
Doubles
Total Bases
RBI
Team Batting Average
On Base %
Slugging %
OPS

Youk and Pedroia are in the top three in hits, and even Manny, despite his recent power drought, is in the top 10 in home runs and RBI. They also have the best winning percentage in MLB.

But all that will be tested starting tonight, when they start a long road trip out in Oakland. I'm generally in bed by 11p at the latest, so I'll have to be relying on "Breakfast With the Sox" and afternoon replays to get my fix the next few days. I hate these effin' west coast swings, not the least because the Sox usually don't do well on them, and tonight they go back up against Rich Harden. But they also face the absolutely pathetic Mariners on this trip (just continuing their swoon of last season, I guess-they're 18-31 so far. Yikes.), so maybe that will help...although histotically they haven't done that great at Safeco, either.

In the meantime, the Celtics are going to have to learn to play a different game, now that their 100% home winning advantage is gone. It had to happen eventually, and since they were the best road team in the league during the season you know they are capable of winning in Detroit. They are just going to have to bring more game than they have been up to now. Ray Allen, I'm going to punch you if you don't start stepping up here.

No evening baseball for at least a week, which sucks.

Maz Responds

Got this in my inbox today, in response to an email I sent to Tony Masserotti last week in response to that nasty column he wrote after the Herald apologized for the false videotaping story. Here's what he said:

Lisa -

Thanks for the e-mail. As you can imagine, I've received many on this
particular topic and, given the nature and subject of the column, I am
trying to respond to as many e-mails as possible.

Please understand that this was in no way meant to be an indictment of all
fans. Rather, it was an indictment of those who blindly accept anything and
everything in the names of protecting the teams whom they support. The fans
have never bothered me; the FANATACISM has. I believe in questioning things
fully when there is a need, partly because it is my job, partly because it
is my nature. (Imagine how my wife feels.) Had we all taken that approach
with major league baseball years ago, maybe the steroids problem would not
have ballooned into the enormous issue it became.

That said, the Herald made an enormous mistake with regard to the
videotaping story. You and every other New England sports fan (and I'm
including all of them here) have a right to be angry about it. Spygate was an emotional story, and those kinds of stories can bring out the emotions in all of us. I think we'll all be happy when it's over, assuming that it is not over already.

Personally, I enjoy what I do. One of the great things about working in
Boston is the passion of the fans here - good and bad. As such, I've always
felt that fans had the right to yell back when they felt the desire. We all
need to be reined in sometimes.

Thanks.

- Tony Massarotti

Clearly, he's had a chance to sleep on what he said, and sounds a bit more like the Masserotti we're used to. Here's what I sent him back. 

Tony-

Thank you for taking the time to respond. I imagine your inbox has been
running over lately, so I appreciate your taking the time to talk to me.

I think most of us were willing to take our lumps when Spygate first
broke-we all know Belichick committed a serious breach and nobody really
complained about the penalty when it was handed out, despite some grumblings
of "everybody does it" that you would expect.  The problem is NOT in the
"fully questioning" aspect of the media coverage but in the appallingly
ugly, personal tone the coverage immediately took on, and from people with
no moral authority to do so. It's been a media feeding frenzy the likes of
which I don't ever remember seeing before in sports coverage, and only
rarely in politics. You all may not like Belichick-and that was clear from
your article-but he didn't deserve to be hung out to dry the way he was, and
by the likes of morons like Mark Schlereth and Gregg Easterbrook. Please
don't tell me the treatment would have been the same had Tony Dungy been
implicated, or Mike Holmgren. I'll never believe that.

It's over now-Roger Godell has firmly shut the door in Arlen Specter's
face-but it won't ever really be over, and that's what's too bad.

I don't expect a reply this time; I just wanted the last word.

The Curse Continues

Per my friend Keith...listen and laugh.