A Red Sox Fan From Pinstripe Territory

Darnell Kicking Ass On The Pop-A-Shot

2012-02-23T22:47:00.000-05:00

Seeing Red Sox players shooting baskets on N3SN every night has been fun. Tonight, Pedroia was on fire. After knocking others (Youk) for using the backboard, he quickly realized that was the way to go, and announced mid-round with a shit-eating grin that he would indeed be going glass. He set the record for pre-money ball total, then missed the money ball (which doubles your whole score) and rightfully claimed that it was a lighter ball. He proceeded to make two non-counting shots with the same ball before assisting his 2-year old son in dunking it into the garbage can.

But then Darnell McDonald stepped up and, despite claiming basketball wasn't his sport, went on an amazing run, beating Dustin's pre-money ball record AND hitting the money ball, making him unbeatable in this contest. See video above of Darnell's amazing performance.

I love this stuff, and I loved watching both these guys' interviews, since they're so natural when they talk, just goofin' around and not speaking in cliches (though some always sneak through). However, leave it to N3SN to miss some of the action. On every single shooter, they've purposely missed 3-4 shots to do a close-up of the guy's face while he's shooting! You can tell me that I'm nitpicking and that this doesn't matter and they know it doesn't which is why they purposely made the call to miss some shots to go with close-ups. Maybe that's true, but I'm just saying, What's the point of showing a live basketball contest if you're not going to show us whether the ball goes in or not? I swear they messed up Salty's score the other night because they went to the tape to get the official count, and at least one make (I think--it sounded like it went in) wasn't shown. Just fitting that they would miss stuff as that's come to be their tradition in baseball games during the season....

Memorial Stadium Site, Baltimore, Maryland, USA, North America

2012-02-22T22:42:00.002-05:00

On the Maryland portion of my Florida trip, I went with Brian and Jen to the site of the old Memorial Stadium. They've put an artificial turf field on the spot, with home plate right where the old one was.

I always liked how you could see trees beyond the outfield fence on TV. The trees that were right behind the outfield wall are gone, but you can still see the ones that line the street that borders the site. Unfortunately, the field is fenced in, and we decided not to hop it. But I still got to stand right on the grounds, on the spot that would have been the area around the plate. So I got that goin' for me. Thanks to Brian for taking the pics.

Syrious

2012-02-22T14:24:00.002-05:00

Maybe you've heard about the reporter Marie Colvin being killed in Syria already. I just found out. Last night, I was watching the brutal scenes from Syria while Colvin talked live with Anderson Cooper. I remember him telling her to "stay safe" as he ended their talk. And now she's dead. Their whole point was to let people know how serious the situation is over there. This drives that home even more.

The writer of this article was also tuned in last night.

Spring Is Coming

2012-02-21T17:15:00.001-05:00

From the Providence newspaper, just about 100 years ago.

A Few From Florida

2012-02-20T23:19:00.008-05:00

Drove to the Florida Keys recently. I hate flying and I love driving, so for long trips Kim flies and I drive and we meet each other at the destination. So now you can mutter under your breath how crazy I am. I'll wait. Okay, so on my way down, I needed gas right around Rye, NY, and since I've never been to Playland despite hearing commercials for it for three decades, I figured I'd go over and check it out. Mainly because of...you know what I'm gonna say, right? If you don't recognize the above shot, let me jog your memory:

In the movie, it's called "Sea Point Park," but it was really filmed at Rye Playland. Okay, let's skip ahead to Florida.

This weird blimp-looking thing is supposedly watching the southern waters, looking for boats attempting to come in from Cuba.

Sign near Ernest Hemingway's house in Key West.

Hemingway's pool.

A couple of cats at the Hemingway house. There are over 40 of them.

The Sunset Celebration begins.

We didn't realize the sunset was celebrated nightly and kind of stumbled upon this. (Even though I'd been to Key West before.)

The whole dock becomes filled with people, all just watching the natural ball drop.

We ended up getting a higher view on the picnic tables of an abandoned restaurant.

The money shot.

As the top of the sun disappears into the ocean, everybody cheers. Then the mass exodus begins, as people head off to see...

...large men dressed as women. Here, Kim puts a buck in the bra-strap of this linebacker.

We also stumbled across the Red Sox bar right on the main strip there. It's the "Southernmost Red Sox Nation" as they say there.

My birthday is 9/8. And my initials are JPS. I'll never find a more me-ish license plate than this one. (I don't think this person would be mad at me for posting their plate in the one in a trillion chance they see this, since I'm not showing the whole car.)

The beach in Key West. I love the Keys. Fun stuff. Go. (I split the picture-taking duties with Kim so we have a lot more shots of the sparkling blue water and other interesting places but I'll either save those for another day or just never show them out of laziness. Oh--we also spent a night in Miami Beach, and incredibly Sam Horn walked right past us. He was in his Joe Montana jersey, ready to watch that Giants-49ers game. So I've seen the guy a few minutes from my home at the supermarket, at Fenway, at the showing of the 2007 World Series film, and now in Miami!)

Let's ALL Boycott The Media

2012-02-20T13:25:00.003-05:00

Players, too! Boston Red Sox: Just stop answering their questions! Walk right by! In the meantime the rest of us won't read or watch anything they throw out there, and we can stop the insanity together.

I hope the next time a media member asks a baseball player for an apology, they tell 'em to shut the fuck up and mind their own business.

I'm really serious about bringing anti-media signs to Fenway this year. I hope others will join me. Just stuff like "Boston Sports Media: SHUT UP" or whatever. These guys need to know they are shit and not the center of attention.

They are loving this crap. They can invent anything they want, brainwash the entire casual fan base who doesn't have a clue, causing them to revolt, causing the media to then say "see, team, how much they hate you? Whatcha gonna do now?" causing the players to say "who the fuck are you?" causing the media to say to the fans "look at that! They don't care about you since they won't apologize to you for doing the stuff we made up in the first place! You gonna take that?" causing the PR department to have the players try to "say the right things" to avoid more shit--which wouldn't happen if NONE OF US PAID ATTENTION TO THE ASSHOLE MEDIA so let's do that, okay? How many times to they have to admit flat out that they do what they do to get attention and ratings before we stop taking them seriously and just completely ignore them?

(And before you tell me about great media members who only write awesome things--I'm not talking about an actual journalist writing a story about a player or something, I'm talking about shitty talk show hosts and gossip columnists, which are the ones who basically control the way an entire region thinks. And yes I still believe most people who are actual fans and not just water cooler assholes know what's up, but the ones who just pay attention to any given day's buzz word fuck it up for all of us by repeating what the media tells them. Hey--technically the Red Sox are not currently winning the first game of the season, as it's still essentially 0-0. And our winning percentage is .000 as we speak. You know what that means. Tell your friends: Panic! Put it on the front page!)

Double Dialin'

2012-02-18T16:11:00.003-05:00

Wow, I actually sat redialing two phones for two whole hours. I lost the Green Monster lottery, so I was stuck with the phone route at 2:00 today. I used one phone in my hand and then had the free phone that GMail gives you going on the laptop. I was rooting for the real phone to win, as it's less likely to cut out or end the call or have the Wifi signal drop for one little second therefore losing everything. Well, the GMail phone won, and I'm happy to say, I was able to place my order with the nice fellow at the Red Sox ticket office and get what I wanted. (You know my deal--standing room only, then see if you can slide into a seat, for just $35, instead of guaranteeing a seat for a hundred-fifty bucks or whatever.)

The bad news: I was also trying hard to get some Yanks 100th anniversary Monster tix for a reader who desperately wanted them. By the time I got through, though, at 3:57, I was told all Yankee games, including SRO, were sold out. (The ticket office guy let me know that I could of course still get them from "a scalper or S---H-- or something, but we're the ones who sell them and we are sold out." Isn't that weird that he'd mention scalpers?)

Anyway, I grabbed a screen shot of my little GMail phone, so you can see the "rating" I gave my call...

Prediction

2012-02-17T14:41:00.002-05:00

Tim Wakefield throws out the ceremonial first ball on Opening Day at Fenway Park. And if Tek retires, he could catch it! Then later in the year they should each get their own day.

Also, Dr. Charles is back with the Red Sox. So cue up a lot of sarcastic comments about how he's gonna bring back his evil, evil Red Sox-promoting, special event-planning, Fenway Park-saving, World Series-winning ways.

Go Away, Story Breaker

2012-02-17T13:15:00.005-05:00

Was watching NESN Daily earlier. As Nick Cafardo rambled on from Fort Myers, I noticed the cover of Zeppelin II behind him. Where the hell is this guy that this would be the wall art? Let me know if you figure this one out.

So Wakefield is supposedly retiring. Press conference tonight. I'm sure I'll be doing some kind of tribute here. In the meantime, if you're a blogger and you're doing a post about Wake, instead of grabbing the first image to pop up on Google, why not look for a pic taken by a fellow blogger, or any non-media person for that matter? I've been taking this guy's picture for years, check the sidebar and find one. Or, better yet, check out Sitting Still's (better and easier to navigate) collection of Timmy shots. Just make sure you give credit where it's proverbially due. Thanks.

[Just read that Okajima failed his physical, so it doesn't look like we'll have to see him in pinstripes.]

I Think This Deserves Its Own Post

2012-02-17T11:46:00.002-05:00

In my previous post I told you about the Yankees calling their ballpark "Yankees Stadium" in the big, bold headline of a press release. I put a link to that post on reddit, and here's a response I got:

"I don't see the issue here? Am I missing something? That's what it's called. Yankee stadium. Yankees stadium. No difference man, c'mon."

Yanks Still Getting Used To Their New Stadium's Name

2012-02-16T12:00:00.002-05:00

Don't worry, Intern Boy, you'll do fine with the press releases. Just don't spell "Yankee Stadium" wrong, you'll be all right, heh heh.

Oh shit!

Yes, They Still Exist

2012-02-15T22:15:00.005-05:00

I made the mistake of listening to a few minutes of that terrible Boston sports station today. (Hey, always good to check in on what you're boycotting, right? Or does that technically end the boycott? Anyway....) Guy calls in and says that he can't believe the Red Sox gave Papi so much money. Starts criticizing him. Then takes it to the next level, saying Papi isn't a "good citizen." At this point the hosts were a little confused--"well what do you mean by not a good citizen?" Guy starts talking about how "you never see Papi doing any charity work." Uh...ok then. Hosts of course start defending Ortiz by saying that he does plenty of stuff like that. And that's when the guy says...

"Not for the WHITE communities he doesn't!"

Then he goes on to say Papi is "100% Dominican" (as if that were a synonym for...I don't know, any negative word). And that the Red Sox are fourth in his mind among the Boston teams, who all presumably cater to his kind more often.

At this point one would think the hosts would cut the guy off, or at the very least come right out castigating him for being shamelessly racist. But they just went on talking to him. I'm not saying they agreed with him, but you have to do something there, you can't just continue on acting like he's a normal person making rational points.

Oddly, they did cut the guy off later, but only when he started claiming that Johnny Pesky has been in assisted living in Danvers. Such horrible information is grounds for dismissal, but saying that David Ortiz is a bad citizen because he only helps Dominicans in need and neglects the poor, oppressed, middle-aged white guys of the North Shore is just normal banter. These hosts have to wake up. (Of course I know they're busy going through lists of hilarious texts from random no-names so it's hard to concentrate on the person who's actually talking to them.)

Then they went on with their usual brainwashing of the casual fan about complete lies from deep inside the Red Sox clubhouse.

Anyway, even if Papi really did help only Dominicans, that would still be totally fine, but here's a site that shows the different causes he's attached to. The guy won the Clemente Award last year. That's for the player who contributes the most "on and off the field"--not just among his teammates but everybody in the league. And yes, you might even see the faces of while kids at his charity's web site. (And you'll also notice plenty of non-Dominican celebs play in his charity golf tourney every year.)

I doubt that caller will actually see this, but if you know any racist motherfuckers like him, please let them know that David Ortiz is one of the most charitable athletes out there, and he's not actually removing the diseases from Dominican kids and putting them into white kids. In fact, that asshole caller has inspired me to donate to the David Ortiz Children's Fund. I hope you will do the same.

'Cic Catch

2012-02-14T01:23:00.000-05:00

Start at 1:55. Watch Bob Zupcic's amazing catch from 1992. I didn't think I'd ever see video of this play.* (In fact, last year, Bob himself claimed he'd never seen it. Hopefully he finally does before the Em Ell Beasts take it down.) Too bad the main camera missed his route to the ball, but they show it from several angles. [Quiz: Without looking, which of the Red Sox players to appear in this game later played a key role in the 2004 ALCS?]

The beginning of the video is Bob's first homer, a game-winning grand dong. It also brings back incredible memories hearing Ned Martin's voice. And while typing that sentence I thought to see if any videos are up with Ken Coleman's voice. His will always be #1 for me, as he was "the voice of the Red Sox" on radio when I was growing up, and that's how I got most of the games. I found one--a special he hosted on the 1967 season. The guy at 1:14--that's Ken. (I also like how at the beginning they call us "the sun-drenched, wind-burned, soar-throated fraternity, the baseball fans of New England.")

Oddly, they show the Yaz catch, which was one of Ken's most famous calls ("...and makes a tremendous** catch!"), with the TV call instead of Ken's.

Great commercial at 3:05, hyping up the convenience-doubling power of a second phone for your house!

Wow, this post strayed very far from Bob Zupcic. But that's how we roll here at A Red Sox Fan From Etc. Etc.

*I have no memory of it at the time, but have read much about it, with people saying how it was the best catch they'd ever seen. September '92? I was starting my senior year in high school and my first job, bagging groceries at Stop & Shop. So between having a lot on my mind and plate and the cellar-dwelling Red Sox not being on TV much, it makes sense that I would have missed that game. And without the Internet and only having access to New York papers, the extent of my Red Sox coverage was pretty much the score on CNN Headline Sports at :19 and :49, or waiting for the highlights (if any) on SportsCenter or CNN Sports Tonight. Look, quit grillin' me under these hot lights, I missed the damn game, okay?!

**I remember seeing the transcript of this call on Wikipedia, and someone had written "prodigious" or something instead of "tremendous," and I totally corrected their ass.

Gedman Among Six Finalists For All-Fenway Catcher

2012-02-13T16:06:00.002-05:00

In the coming months, you (and also I) will get to vote for the All-Fenway Team. Each position has a handful of guys for fans to choose from.

Gotta get Pedro in there over Roger. And hopefully Lowell and Mueller will both beat Boggs at third. The top 5 second-placers get awarded with the 10th Man prize. And all the winners will be honored throughout the second half of the season in pre-game ceremonies. I don't wanna see Clemens or Boggs on that field. Or Damon! So we gotta get Lynn and the Lil' Professor into those top two spots at CF. (Sorry Tris Speaker, something tells me the guys from way back are gonna get hosed on this, unless their name is Ted Williams.)

Oooh, nice job getting Dave Roberts involved by having a "bench" category. He and Bernie Carbo should take the top two in this field: Jerry Adair, Bernie Carbo, Alex Cora, Billy Goodman, Dalton Jones, John Kennedy, Ted Lepcio, Rick Miller, Dave Roberts and Dave Stapleton.

And Papelbon has a real shot at winning the "bullpen" category. I would love to see that. What a hand he would get, especially if at that point we're using the "one lucky fan as tonight's closer" theory after having let the best closer in Red Sox history go for no reason.

Will be nice to see Tito honored, too, as he's a lock for manager.

Iron Colt

2012-02-12T23:38:00.000-05:00

When I lived in Manahttan, I could see a plaque from my window, across the street on the side of a building. It marked the birthplace of Lou Gehrig. Ninety-fourth Street, between 1st and 2nd Avenues.

Recently, I was looking up something related to Gehrig, and I noticed that his Wikipedia page says he was born on 2nd Avenue, near 103rd Street. The source was a New York Times article, from May of 2005 (which happens to be the month I moved to NYC).

A fake Gehrig birthplace! Or was it? I don't care if it's Lou Gehrig or Rey Quinones--a major leaguer was born across from my old apartment, and I'm not about to let them take that away!

I tried to find a better picture of this *new* plaque, but I couldn't find one. (My plaque, placed there in 1990, can be found on several sites--try this page, which despite being from 2008, still notes it as the one and only birthplace.) I wanted to know exactly what it said, so I asked my friend Chan to take a walk up 2nd Avenue and check it out. I figured maybe they just meant his family lived there (103rd) when he was born (94th). Kind of like how Carlton Fisk and I were both born in a different town from where we lived, since neither of our towns had a hospital.

Chan got back to me saying that the second plaque isn't even there anymore. Before he could even take the walk to the spot, he found another article which said that when the garden center that had been at that spot left, the plaque disappeared too.

So did somebody make a terrible error? And then when they had their chance, they slinked away with the incorrect plaque in the night like the Baltimore Colts? In the Hardball Times article linked above, they specifically talk about how Gehrig was born in Yorkville (94th, where I lived), as opposed to the New York Times article which speaks of the pride East Harlem has for Lou. So I really think the original plaque wins. Let me know if you hear anything and I'll do the same.

People We Know On TV (Updated)

2012-02-12T01:30:00.005-05:00

On NECN's* Truck Day coverage, Cyn** (Toeing the Rubber) made it into the background of one shot (below, left), and Kelly (Sitting Still) was interviewed (below, right) outside Fenway Park.

Seven degrees on Mt. Washington? Spring really is here!

*For people who are familiar with NESN but don't live in New England: NECN is a different network (unlike NESN, it is available in Fairfield County--I remember getting it in my Danbury apartment where I lived from '02 to '04), with news all day long when they're not showing paid programming, and a low-key, public broadcasting-esque style, much like New York's NY1 channel. New England Cable News.

**Really should have used a "Cyn of Spring" reference in this post, right?

[Edit, Sunday morning: Below I've added the full shot Cyn was in. The person shown with the camera is Kristen, who, like Cyn and Kelly, runs an amazing site: Red Sox Diehard. I bet those NECN people didn't even realize all the famous people they captured in this story!]

Does this cover everybody?? If you were in this story too, let me know....

Relief

2012-02-11T12:24:00.002-05:00

What a feeling it is when you finally get that confirmation screen. Because you know even after you've sat through the VWR and found your seats and entered all your info, they still could call shenanigans on you at the last screen and just say your order failed and you're totally screwed.

I got the relief feeling around 12:23 today. VWR opened around 11:46, little man appeared around 11:56 in Chrome, 11:58 in Firefox. I had men in the second and fourth position to start. Twos moved up to ones around 12:05, and around 12:20 the haunted choir of Tessies began. Used two of my tickets to get a game for mom and Charlie, and got two other single Yanks games for myself (it was a 4-tix limit). I've got more windows ready to roll if any of you winners are stuck deep in line. (You know the drill--you'd just have to trust me with your credit card, address, etc., but you know where I live....)

David Ortiz Takes Paternity Test, Meets Potential Son

2012-02-10T23:50:00.004-05:00

According to this article, David Ortiz took a paternity test. I think. Then he met a kid that looks like him. And then according to the video below, he fled the scene before the Springfield Shopper could get him on film. Look, it's all in Spanish, and I'm a little rusty.

It's weird because I found an article from 2010 saying a kid named Edward Bonifacio wanted Papi to have the test, and now it's Edward Jiminez. Has to be the same person, right? So I guess two years later Papi agreed to it...and for some reason had to go to the Dominican and meet the kid to do it. And...we don't know when the results are expected. The Google Translate version of the article:

Santo Domingo: The Dominican baseball player, David Ortiz, agreed to a paternity test done and came face to face yesterday in the Dominican Republic with his alleged son. The meeting took place in a relaxed atmosphere. Both arrived on time for your appointment at the lab and spoke warmly in the test area. Edward Jimenez , 17, took months requiring you to the player to take the test laboratory. The youth, who also plays baseball, has a physical resemblance to the Red Sox slugger. "It's a great guy, we were talking and joking all the time," said Jimenez, the Dominican Telenoticias television. After the meeting, 'Big Daddy' did not attend the press that was in place, but unlike other similar events with celebrities, there was a large security operation. According to several interviews by the press quisqueyana, Jimenez trained in one of the academies that holds the major league in the country. In fact, the resident of the community of San Luis, runs daily walk a distance of four kilometers, hoping to be a contract for equipment in the United States. In recent days expressed the Dominican baseball player hoping to avoid salary arbitration with the Boston Red Sox. "I want this to be resolved before go to the court (arbitration), but I will leave in the hands of my agents. On I be doing now to train and prepare for spring training'' he said in remarks Ortiz picks Associated Press. Leading Dominican baseball player 36, Ortiz, 36, batted .309 with 29 homers and 96 RBIs last season as Boston's designated hitter.

********

Lottery winners: Good luck getting Yanks/OD tix today. Lottery losers: 2:00, call ticket office. Redial. Thank me later.

Happy Truck Day! It's gonna be a snowy one.

Ridin' That Train To Florida

2012-02-09T19:48:00.003-05:00

Here's your TV/radio schedule for spring training (and beyond). We'll only have to see the Twins on TV twice! Speaking of the team from the city whose average high temps in the summer are pretty much the same as Providence's*, we play them six times this spring, which means there's a chance of a Mayor's Cup tie.

And surprise, a constantly wired workahaolic from the 80s says he was coked up most of the time. Oil Can fesses up.

*I happened to look this up earlier today

You're In The Big Leagues

2012-02-09T15:29:00.001-05:00

Here's an incredibly long history of Big League Chew.

Moore Of My Usual (Meaning Both Puns And Box Score Research)

2012-02-08T15:28:00.000-05:00

I'm a big Michael Moore fan. I'm reading his current book, which is a collection of stories from his past, going all the way back to his birth--and beyond, as he even tells his family history. His great (x6) grandfather fought alongside Ethan Allen in the Revolutionary War days, which is special to me because ol' Ethan is my great (x8) grandfather. You may know him as the guy who surprised the British in the middle of the night at Fort Ticonderoga. (See, I even have night-owl roots.) Sadly, you're more likely to know him as a furniture store.

But back to Michael's book. In a story about the Detroit riots of 1967, he talks about his family venturing into the city shortly after calm had been restored to see a Tigers game. Of course, I had to find the game he went to. He said it was against the White Sox, a Thursday night game which Detroit lost, 2-1. So I headed for the Tigers' 1967 game log on retrosheet, and it turns out Michael had his facts right. The riots happened in late July, and the only home loss to the White Sox by a score of 2-1 on a Thursday night after that was August 10th, 1967.

It was the finale of a four-game split, and Moore's memory of the nice black man who helped get his father's wounded car to a gas station saying the game was a stinker is correct if you're a Detroit fan. The Tigers gave up the tying run in a 7th-inning rally started by a dropped fly ball, and then stranded the bases loaded in the bottom of the 8th after having given up the lead in the top half.

Chicago manager Eddie Stanky made a controversial decision to bring in starting pitcher Gary Peters to face Norm Cash in the 8th with three on and two out. As the caption below his picture (left, Windsor Star, 8/11/1967) says, "he knew best," as Peters struck Cash out. The author of the accompanying UPI article wondered if this would cost the White Sox down the line. I'm not sure it did, as Peters kept his ERA right about where it was the rest of the season. He did throw in two bad performances against the Red Sox a few weeks after this, but those were sandwiched around an 11-inning shutout, also against Boston, which kept the White Sox a game out on September 1st in the incredible four-team race that year. But Chicago, as well as Detroit, would come up just short in 1967, with the Impossible Dream coming true on October 1st.

So Michael saw a pretty important game, considering the Tigers would end up one game out of first place. Funny, he didn't mention the Tigers left fielder, Willie Horton....

Buncha Stuff

2012-02-08T10:00:00.000-05:00

Well isn't this fun? I bought those "digital tickets," the ones where you just swipe your credit card at the gate, and since then, somebody stole my credit card #, so my account has been closed, and I will get a new card with a new number. So now what happens when I walk up to Fenway with no ticket? Do I hold onto the old card just for scanning that day? Will the new card have all the account info from the old? I'll have to call the ticket office on this one. But I'm imaging a potential shitstorm, which will be bad enough aside from the fact that a thousand people on line behind me will be pissed at me.

Great story about a kid helping some old Negro League players get what they deserve. It got me thinking, there should be a Negro League version of retrosheet, with all the stats and box scores. I found that this site has a lot of info, but I don't see a centralized place for actual box scores. Considering how poorly reported the games were, I'm not sure that's even a possibility.

Here's Mark Melancon swimming with great white sharks in case you missed it. (It's essentially a commercial for the people that take people on these excursions, but it's still pretty cool. I just hope our new reliever doesn't get eaten by a shark.)

Me opening a grab bag on YouTube.

A Natural Discovery, 28 Years Later

2012-02-07T01:39:00.002-05:00

I was watching The Natural for the millionth time the other night. In the background of one of those "spinning newspaper" shots was a view of Times Square at night:

You can see the Coke sign in the middle, with a note about Hobbs being a "maybe" for the playoff game scrolling by on the ticker above. Then there's the Kinsey whiskey and Ruppert beer signs, and ones for the Capitol Theatre and Hotel Astor. Many of these are visible in this Andreas Feininger picture from 1940:

But I couldn't help but notice a sign with the state of Oregon on it (at left in top still frame). I rewound. It said "White Stag Sportswear" (Oregon's shape is around it, barely visible in close-up below):

I found this odd since in all the pictures of Times Square from decades ago, I've never noticed any signs for Oregon-related companies that I'd never heard of. After noticing that the movie marquees were clearly covered up with different movie titles (Golden Boy and Blind Alley, both from 1939, the year the bulk of The Natural takes place in), I realized that the White Stag sign could have been inserted by the filmmaker. Then when I unpaused it, there was a dead giveaway: the other signs were all kind of vibrating, in the way a video camera locked on one spot shows slight movement, whereas the White Stag sign (like the movie titles) was stock still. It was clearly inserted into the shot, and not really in Times Square.

So using Reservoir Dogs "if he's betting on the Brewers he must be from Wisconsin" logic, I figured the director must be from Oregon. Either him or maybe the writer of the original novel. I looked it up, and it turns out that the writer, Bernard Malamud, indeed spent about 10 years teaching at Oregon State University, and The Natural was published while he was there.

As for the sign, it came from Portland, and it's still there. It currently reads "Portland, Oregon." Read about its history here. According to that, it's only been around since 1940 (and it didn't say "White Stag Sportswear" until 1959). So not only did that sign not look like that in 1939, it didn't exist at all. But I like the nod to Malamud. Here's a better look at "White Stag":

I have done some extensive searching online, and I can't find this tribute to Malamud mentioned anywhere. So maybe this is some new Natural news.

Bonus stuff:

1. I'm also not sure about the red Baby Ruth sign, which seems to be floating in mid-air to the right of the Kinsey sign, and could just be a nod to Babe Ruth. Probably another insert.

2. I apologize for the darkness of the stills above. I took these from my 2001 DVD of the film. When I noticed the sign, I was watching it on some TV network, and they must have used the 2007 director's cut or some other restored version, because you could clearly make out the shape of Oregon, and the theater marquees were much more visible. Had that station shown the older, dark version, I probably wouldn't have even spotted the Oregon outline on that sign. As you can see, it's almost invisible on my DVD's version.

3. In the version of White Stag used for the movie, you can see something at the top left above the W. Almost looks like a 17 in quotes or another W or something. Whatever it is, it's consistent with one of the pics I found online of this sign, which has "home of" in that spot.

Scavenge

2012-02-06T18:06:00.003-05:00

I'm the proud winner of Section 36's annual Scavenger Hunt! It's my second win in three years. The blogmaster over there is throwing the word "dynasty" around....

See the pictures of the stuff I found over at his blog. I'd like to thank my teammates and my lord and savior, Richard Leo Gedman. Actually, I would like to thank Kim for going with me over to Fenway Park and the Yawkey Way Store after a brunch we had in Brookline with 6 friends, all of whom I'd also like to thank for not mocking and ridiculing my scavenging plans too much.

Below is the pic I got the most things into: Poster with Sox player on it (a Greenwell one I've had for 20 years); food item with Sox player on it (Papi Wheaties I got in '05); Sox media guide (an '08 one I got from a Fenway Yard Sale); Sox autograph (A Buchholz card I won on one of those ebay group breaks); a Sox magnet schedule (a 2012 one I got at the last game last season); a ticket stub from a Sox ALCS game (2008--the comeback); a ticket stub from section 36 (5/1/2011); and a Sox cup (I assume he didn't mean the dick/balls-protecting kind so I used an old Fenway souvenir one).

I also thought it would be cool to use a pic of me with my mom and dad when I was 5 years old for "male and female Sox fans."

Yes, the souvenir store helped with some of the other items, but hey, I used plenty of stuff I already had. (Actually, I don't know which of those is considered less legit in the scavenger hunting community). And if you wanna beat me and my budding dynasty, try to take me out next year, sucka!

That Was Crazy (And The Game Was Too)

2012-02-05T23:32:00.005-05:00

Okay, gambling stuff first. After the early safety, it wasn't very likely that anybody would win my contest. We had a 9 after Q1 and Q2, and a 5 after Q3. None of you picked a 5 or a 9 for either team. Then after the end-of-game craziness, I went to look at the grid I drew up, and thought, Oh, weird, it did end up as a "normal" score, 21-17. I looked across...then down...and there it was: "MOM." So that was crazy that we got a winner after all. But it's also crazy because: The prize was the extra ticket I had for the Mother's Day game at Fenway. Which I had because I'd bought two more after I'd bought that single, just so I could take my mom to the game. Now she's got the extra one, too. (Of course she could choose one of the baseball card packs but I think she'll find someone to come along with us. (And sit by him/herself.))

More gamblin' fun: Okay, obviously I was way more interested in prop bets than in the actual game. My dad had made future bets on both the Pats and Giants (he actually got 14-1 on the Giants during the playoffs), so he knew he was gonna win a hunk o' dough either way. (Though he was of course rooting for his adopted Pats all the way.) So he treated us to some action. My theory was that the key to a big payoff is the early safety. Because you can make so much on it, in several different bets. If you wanna take a huge risk, you can come outta there with an astronomical reward. Well, my risk wasn't that big, but I made sure we had a little money on the following bets: A safety will happen; the first score of the game would be a safety (one bet for each team getting the safety); and that the first score by each team would be a safety (two separate bets). The first one of those is 6 to 1, but the other four are either 40 or 60 to 1. So we got about $175 for a wager of $14. If I had really thought about this I might have put more than a damn buck on the huge-odds ones, but whatever. I was just incredibly psyched to see the safety to start the game! Another bet my dad made also came in--Green-Ellis made the first Pats reception, giving us about a hundred more dollars. But our big boy barely failed. We picked total points for each team. For the Pats we went high, around 30, and for the Giants, we had them at 11, 12, 13, 15, and 16. (Going for a big score, we had no use for the 14 with its mere 7-1 odds.) So once the Giants got that safety, things were looking great provided the Pats D settled down. Because a TD and an FG gets us to 12, and another FG keeps us at 15. Or 2 TDs gets us to 16. The 16 would pay 140, but 12 or 15 would pay 625. And wouldn't ya know it, they ended up right on the 12, and then went to 15, and had FREAKIN' BRADY NOT FORGOTTEN HOW TO THROW A FOOTBALL and had he maybe gotten a little help from his receivers, not only would all the Pats fans in the room (I was with all Pats fans) been happy, but we would have split $625 on top of our other winnings. Still, dollars-wise and excitement-wise, we all had quite a night.

So about this game. Yeah, on those drops, I blame Brady on those two passes on the second-to-last drive, and on one of the two on the last drive. Had ball, with lead, down to about 4:00 left--you win that game. But that one pass was behind Welker. Could have caught it, but when you have to turn back against the direction you're going and are going to land awkwardly, you have to brace yourself, it's hard to hold onto the ball. Brady needed to place that out in front more. Then I think the next one was also behind the guy. Oh and the interception too--when a guy's past the defense, and holding his arm up, you better get that ball way down field so only your guy has a chance. But he lofted it way short and was intercepted. Then on that last drive--after the incredible catch by that Giants guy at midfield, Eli is good but that guy is one lucky bastard sometimes too, lucky in this case that the receiver did such a great job, though I don't know if he even knew he was still in bounds--Brady did throw one perfect strike that was dropped, and another was again behind the guy but he landed on his feet after he spun around, so he should have caught it. And wow, they got what they wanted on the hail mary, a tip drill, and Gronk was inches away from making it the best ending of all time, similar to Butler's half-court near-winner in the NCAA two years ago.

But it all goes back to that drive, when the Pats were up two. I did feel myself absolutely pulling for the Pats, but hey, I knew that I was getting my share of the $625 if they could have just run out that clock, or at least scored and had the Giants not have enough time to score again. And I did get a hint of those feelings at the end, of "how did that happen?" And knowing that I've felt this before when my team was involved, and that it really stinks. I know what it's like to go to bed with that feeling.

So as you know, I'm a loser either way, both as a Sox-fan-who's-not-a-Pats-fan and a Jets sympathizer. Yankee assholes will mock ME unfairly at Fenway Park next year, and Giant assholes, should I mention I'm not a Pats fan but that I grew up a Jets fan, will mock me since they are once again kings of NY. But the good news, both for you Pats fans and all of us Sox fans, is that after a little grace period for the Giants where seemingly everyone loved them for no apparent reason, the sports world will again start to point their hatred toward them. Which will, despite that it's two different sports, translate into more Yankee hate--another team who's somehow fooled the world into thinking they're "not all that evil" when they're still the fucking Yankees.

So, terrible job Giants for winning and terrible job Pats for letting them. And if the opposite had happened, I'd have to say the same thing in reverse. But GOOD job by both teams for giving us two of the most incredible Super Bowls ever. I kinda wish you Pats fans could have seen both of those games in a world where somehow two blank-jersey-wearing teams had been involved. I mean we had a team going down 9-0 and hardly ever having the ball in the first half, yet somehow having the lead at the half. Then they came out like a different squad and went through the other team like shit through butter, or whatever, only to somehow not be able to put the game away when it seemed inevitable. And then a hail mary that actually had a chance of succeeding with no time left on the clock. And all that after the first game they played a few years ago that rivaled it.

Another good thing if you happen to be an all Boston sports fan, and not just a one-Boston-team-fan like me, is that all your teams have recent victories. In 2001, you were looking at, what, over 80 years, over 30 years, 15 years, and never as your droughts. New York idiots could talk about curses and puritans and eternal choking. Now you've got parades in your recent memory banks, and while you may screw the pooch occasionally, it's nothing like the way it was a decade ago. Nobody can bring up any of that bullshit--well, of course they will but at least you know it's completely irrelevant.

Also, after that '08 game, the Red Sox had just won, and it (again, unfairly) took something away from our win, with brainless dickholes acting like it somehow "made up for 2004." At least this year they can say all they want about this completely different sport, but our Red Sox already blew it this time, so they were gonna fuck with us anyway! Ha! We sure fooled them, huh??

[Bonus stuff: I totally forgot to talk about the weirdest thing of all. Pats up two, a minute left, one timeout left, Giants a few yards from the end zone. It's that moment where you want your team to just "let them score" so you have time to come back. And Belichick actually does it! But not only that, the Giants don't want to score a TD they want to run the clock down and kick the FG with as little time as possible left--so when the ball carrier realizes the defense isn't stopping him, he actually starts to fall to the ground at the one yard line! It was like one team trying to intentionally walk the other team to extend the game until the umps put the tarp on the field, while the other team swings and misses on purpose to try and make the game official! And that Giants guy was fighting within his mind--"I'm about to score a touchdown in the Super Bowl, yet I know the smart (assuming everything after goes according to plan) move is to fall down and not go in!" And his instincts get the better of him and he rolls into the end zone. Belichick absolutely made the right move there and gave his guys a chance to win. And what an asshole that Giants guy would have felt like had the Pats scored in the end. But most people would have done exactly what he did. What a moment that was.]

A Very White Board

2012-02-05T15:14:00.002-05:00

Lots of empty space in the contest. Oh well. I'm surprised nobody took 0-0, so I grabbed it myself. Should I win, you'll each have to get me a prize. Good luck to all 13 of you.

I was at Fenway yesterday and noticed the Ted Williams banner isn't looking so hot. Somebody get on that....

Last Call For The Contest

2012-02-04T17:17:00.002-05:00

Well, another year, another shitload of commercials saying "the big game" because they're not allowed to say "Super Bowl." Am I allowed? Super Bowl! Fine me, buttholes!

Anyway, there are a lot of available squares in my Super Bowl contest, so enter now. Deadline: Super Bowl Sunday at 2:22 p.m.

The odds for winning the 2012 World Series are up on at least one site. Here are the top few:

Phillies 6/1
Yanks and Angels 6.5/1
Tigers and Rangers 9/1
Red Sox 11/1
Marlins 15/1

The last few years we've been right near the top with the Phils and Yanks. So here's a good chance to get 11 times your $ on the Sox. It's always sad to look at the Mets, who really should be a yearly contender. Right now, only three teams have worse odds than they do....

Super Bowl!

Terrible Job By Some Guy

2012-02-04T10:00:00.001-05:00

Watched about thirty seconds of the "Town Hall" on NESN last night. One fan's question to Bobby Valentine and Ben Cherington came via the Internet. The man claimed that "halfway through the 2011 season" the Red Sox lost him. He'd been a fan for 50 years and that had never happened to him before. He wanted to know how what the team was doing to "bring him back."

Halfway through the 2011 season, the Red Sox weren't too far out of first place and led the wild card race. They had the third best record in baseball. In their previous 69 games, they had played at a .652 clip, which translates to about 106 wins in a full 162-game season. They'd done even better than that in the most recent 25 of those games. All this plus two recent championships, and this man had HAD ENOUGH.

All I have to say about this is that I hope that guy picks any other team and goes and roots for them. Maybe he could become a Harlem Globetrotters fan. Going undefeated every year just might--might!--make him happy.

The Thing With The Teams In That Sport

2012-02-03T15:46:00.000-05:00

Ever since the final play of that Super Bowl four years ago, I told myself that if the Pats and Giants met again, I'd root for the Pats this time. It made sense--now the Giants will have had the upper hand, and already have gotten to be their obnoxious selves and somehow turn it into a loss for the Red Sox, so therefore, let them get beat and laugh at them. (Until they meet a third time, and back and forth and back and forth.)

Flash forward to two Sundays ago. I'm in Miami, Florida, with my Red Sox hat on. Kim and I are about to go eat dinner, and the first of the two championship games is starting. Pats-Ravens. I'm already in a weird position, because even though I'd like the Ravens to win, I know the Giants might make the Super Bowl, and I'd prefer to have the Pats in there since they have a better chance of beating the Giants. Plus, every single person in Miami is assuming I'm a Pats fan. So we find a restaurant, and of course the guy assumes I want to watch the game (while my girlfriend is the only one of us who's an actual Pats fan) and sits us next to the TV, with a table full of people with that weird Maryland accent on the other side of us.

So it's completely uncomfortable for me. Too bad my hat didn't say "Red Sox fan who isn't a Pats fan and who wouldn't be rooting for them today were the Giants not alive in the NFC, therefore I'm rooting against them but thinking it's okay if they win, only to have to root for them in the Super Bowl but also be okay with them losing that." But no, it was just a B.

It was the fourth quarter. I finally decided to just go all out Pats fan, screw it. They were winning, and I could just sneakily take the credit for their win against my better judgement to avoid confusion and to know that should the Giants win their game later, I've at least got a team in there with a chance to beat them.

Then there was that play. That one play that turned me around again. Pats have the ball, up by three, with seven minutes left. I'm not saying you kneel on the ball there. But my lord, if you're gonna throw, it better be high percentage. And what does that sporkly-faced Belichick do? He throws end zone! Into double coverage! And of course it gets picked off, and I was so mad at the guy, for taking that one time when I was fully on board with his team and just risking it all because of his selfishness. And I'd think Pats fans would be just as mad at him. I said "Screw these guys, I can't root for this man and his team. GO RAVENS and even if the Pats win and play the Giants, GO GIANTS." I was really pissed. And on top of it, I realize I tried to take the easy way out by just using my Red Sox hat to allow myself to be the "winner." If I was gonna claim victory, I also had to take the mocking if they lost. And since I don't deserve that, I quickly jumped right back off. Again, screw these guys. (I knew as I was saying this that as the two weeks went on, I MIGHT ease off on them and go right back to thinking I'd just rather have the Giants lose, should they have their rematch.)

But first we had to get through this game AND the Giants game. So as you know, the Pats lucked into the win, and then much later the Giants lucked into theirs. Goddamn, it's really happening. Again.

So began two more weeks of hell. And I just keep going back and forth. You think when I hear asshole Giants fans saying how much they hate Boston and stuff, that I say "Yay, I'm with you, Vinny!"? Of course not. I want to see his team all break their legs at once on the final game-losing play. But do I want to see Belichick and Derek Brady celebrating as that happens? Hell no.

I honestly am back to leaning toward rooting MORE against the Giants than against the Pats. But whatever, if you're a Pats fan, do you want ME on your side USING your team as a hired gun? No, you should be telling me to fuck off and go root for the Giants. And Giants fans should say the same thing.

I just wish I could be happy about the fact that ONE of these teams will lose, instead of sad that one will win.

And how come it seems to be only ME that has to deal with this? As a person who grew up a Jets fan, I'm pissed either way. Yet I don't hear Giants fans saying "the one bad thing about winning is we might make some Jets fans happy," or Pats fans saying "the one bad thing about winning is that we might make some Jets fans happy." (See how it's the same sentence?) Not that either team would consider rooting against his own team, I'm just saying, it seems like I'm always the only one concerned with this stuff. My friend Jim, the Celtics/Yanks fan, never seems to worry about anything at all. My friend Mike, the Yanks/Knicks fan, seemed unaffected by the Nets/Yanks partnership (more on that later).

It's interesting to hear Jets fans' take on Sunday's game--I feel like most are more anti-Pats. But not all. The FAN's Joe Benigno is going through the same thing as me, and when he made his call about officially rooting for the Pats because he's just so sick of the "other" teams in his city always having parades (he's also a Mets fan), I thought, Well that's refreshing. I wish more Jets fans were saying that, because I feel like the ones rooting FOR the Giants think the Pats and Red Sox are the same team, which they are not. (I also know Joe was a Yaz fan back in the day and I can relate to his Jets/Mets-ness with my Jets/Sox-ness.) If the Pats were at all likeable to me, I'd have no problem here. And if people could separate sports, I'd also have no problem. The Pats winning shouldn't make people paint all fans of Boston sports teams with the same brush, but unfortunately that's not how it works. On the way home from my Florida trip, I stopped in Baltimore to visit my friend there, and I realized all the people there probably wanted to kill me for wearing a Red Sox hat. Meanwhile I was rooting for the Ravens to beat the Pats! (At least some of the time.) It's so stupid.

And that takes us back to where I'm coming from in all this just so people understand. As a kid, I was as die-hard a Jets fan as I was a Red Sox fan, in the in-between land of Connecticut. I was in the 1% in both cases. (And I was literally the ONE PERSON who rooted for the Nets in basketball.) If you lived in Fairfield County in the 80s, you liked the Yankees, Giants, and Knicks, period. You of course switched to the Mets in 1986 because you're a goddamned frontrunner, but other than that, you stuck with your commuter dad's traditional, stiff-collared NEW YORK teams. The occasional outer-borough dad might have Jets/Mets kids, but I didn't come across many. My teams were the exact opposite of Yanks/Giants/Knicks. (It was a rough childhood. I remember my friend once said, "well, we're all frontrunners when you think about it, because we all started liking our team at some point when they won in the past," at which point I said, "I've NEVER seen my teams win." He then pointed out that I always seemed to be the exception to the rule in our group of friends....) And there never was an issue. I'd wear a Sox hat and a Jets shirt at the same time. My football team's main rival was the Giants. We also of course had our division rivals, mainly the Miami Dolphins. But I never thought about the Pats. Never really thought of them as being in the "same town" as my baseball team, which they're totally not anyway. In '86, I rooted for the Bears in the Super Bowl, but I would have rooted for that fun-lovin' bunch against ANY team. The Pats weren't on my radar.... We got the NY papers, and there was no Internet. So if the Pats fans gave a shit about the Jets, I didn't know about it.

And then we got toward the late-90s. I was out of college, still a huge Jets fan. And things started to change. Maybe it was Curtis Martin. Maybe it was Bill Parcells. But suddenly the Jets and Pats hated each other. I certainly was super-pissed at Bellichick when he royally screwed us over by quitting as coach on his first day or whatever. We were ready to take it to the next level and he fucks us. But really, I still wasn't thinking of the Pats as any kind of rival. Hell, we gave you Brady by knocking out Bledsoe. (Actually, now that I think about it, I must have started to at least dislike the Pats before that, because my little line about Bledsoe was that he's "the most overrated PERSON in the world." But anyway, soon the Pats hated the Jets and the Jets hated the Pats and I was in a weird position. Was I supposed to chant along to "Boston sucks" at the Meadowlands? I was slowly getting the feeling that I "couldn't do this anymore." It was 2001, and now the Pats were champs and whole new fanbase was mocking me as the loser. I was already a tormented Red Sox fan, and baseball took up much of my year. I finally made the call to just give up on the Jets. Which tells you something about the Jets--pre-2004 Red Sox fans found them too difficult to root for. But I also did it to get my winters and my Sundays back. (Because if was really just quitting on them because they lost, that would go against everything I stand for, and I would have given up on the Sox long before then.) The Nets had just partnered with the Yankees on the YES Network, so I basically said I'm giving up on everything but baseball. I even had this possible plan of going for all the Boston teams, but decided that if I did, I'd wait TEN YEARS so that all the players would be different....

Well, it's been ten years, and I show no signs of becoming a Pats fan, in case you couldn't tell. It's still the same freakin' guys anyway! Apparently you can take the fan out of the Jets, but you can't take the Jets out of the fan. Or something. Every time a Pats fan mocks the Jets, I take it personally. How can I help it? So my plan of "not caring" anymore never REALLY took, because here we are with a freakin' SECOND Pats-Giants Super Bowl, and I'm writing pages and pages about it. And before you tell me to "get over myself, it's not about you" or whatever, just think what you go through when two of your rivals play each other. (Hey, maybe you truly can make yourself not care--I don't know how you do it.) And by the way, I'm still pissed at Pats fans for being SO anti-Jets while seemingly not giving a fuck about the Giants, who beat them in their most horrific loss. Maybe THIS goes against what I say about separating the sports, but Giants fans are mainly Yankees fans, and Jets fans are mainly Mets fans. I know there's the division rivalry, but I'd love it if Jets fans and Pats fans united in their hatred of the Giants. But of course, many Pats fans' parents were Giants fans before the Pats existed, so I guess that's where the soft spot comes from.

The other night I noticed an HBO documentary about Joe Namath. He, of course, is my Ted Williams when it comes to football. Seeing all the shots from the glory days, or as Jets fan call it, "glory day," started giving what little Jets fan remains in me some pride. As long as I still have these feelings, why not just go back to the way it was? Instead of being afraid another Sox fan might find out I'm a Jets fan, shouldn't I be wearing THAT team's colors with pride, just as much as I do with the Red Sox? I don't know. We'll see. I do kind of like being able to do stuff on Sundays in the winter and completely not care that football games are going on, and knowing my heart won't be broken. But maybe that's the easy way out. I say I "don't care," yet, again, look how many words I just wrote. Remember that day I tried to be a Lions fan? I just think switching teams is something I'm not capable of. So it's either Jets or nothing. And I just may stick with nothing, but I know I'll always, at the very least, if not "care" or "pay attention," check the score.

This Sunday, Go _______s!

A Would-Be Win

2012-02-03T12:35:00.004-05:00

Wow, again they put Opening Day and 100th anniversary day games on sale before the lotteries start, with the SRO packs. I got in right away at noon, had OD tix, but then didn't buy them, since I already have them. But it's always good to get practice in the Virtual Waiting Room--and it's fun to pat yourself on the back when you succeed--even if you're not actually making a purchase.

I did take the opportunity to finally record the "haunted choir" of Tessies, though. Check it out:

I would have given you a heads-up on this sale, but I didn't see the e-mail till about ten minutes to 12. You can try to get in now--I don't know what's still left though.

I Love This Stuff

2012-02-03T00:12:00.004-05:00

Left: Sword swallower I saw on a family vacation in Key West, late December, 1991.
Right: Same guy, same spot, January 2012. Click to enlarge.

My dad was filming with the giant top-loading VHS video camera the first time. Above left is a screen shot, from the point in the act at which the guy purposely wastes the film of someone (us) shooting "moving pictures" by standing still for a long time.

As Kim and I strolled along that same pier a few days ago, I was thinking of this guy--and there he was. He noted he was 61 years old now. (In the '91 performance he said he'd been swallowing swords for 18 years, so he's up to almost years in the biz 40 now.) Above right is also a screen shot, from a video I took with my still camera.

In '91, he was calling himself "D.W. Blademaster." The Internet tells me he's now "Dale the Sword Swallower," and further research shows his real name is Dale Pritchard.

I gave the guy a buck and told him I'd seen him 20 years ago. He smiled his now-much-fewer-toothed smile and thanked me. Then we watched the sun set and everyone cheered as it sunk into the sea. And then we went to a drag show. ("That was a pretty good day. Why couldn't I get that day over and over and over...")

Didn't You Just Ask Me That?

2012-02-02T12:01:00.002-05:00

Groundhog Day: Where Are They Now?

Still time to enter the Super Bowl contest.

Holy Shit!

2012-02-01T12:08:00.004-05:00

Got into the VWR a little before 12:00, got through almost immediately, scored those digital upper bleacher tickets for OPENING DAY and that 100-year anniversary game! And more! I couldn't believe it when I saw they were including these games in this sale, considering the rest of the tix to those games are lottery only--lotteries which haven't even started yet! And this is great for me because I live for the 12-dollar seats since I go to so many games.

As for the fees, they're the same--4.50 per ticket, plus the $7 "per order processing fee." But, whatever, huge bargain for some huge games.

Now I just have to make sure I bring that credit card to the game! And remember which one I used! And hope the person at the gate actually knows about this and doesn't look at me like I'm crazy when I give him a credit card instead of a ticket! It says you have to go to Gate B or C so I'll have to remember that too.

[Added: They had said the Nats series would be in this sale, but it was NOT there at all. Also, it's funny--the registration for the Opening Day/Yanks series lottery started today too, but because of today's sale, I already have what I want for those games--and at the exact price I would have wanted! I still entered for the Monster drawing though.]

[Update to update: The Nats series in June is now there, as of 1:42--so I'm finally in for that series.]

Three Things And A Bonus Thing At The End

2012-02-01T00:21:00.000-05:00

1. Today those "digital tickets" go on sale. Go to redsox.com for details. So...the handling/processing/order/made-up fees will be much, much lower, right? Right? We'll see. Maybe there'll be a $10 "digital fee" tacked on to every invisible ticket....

2. My Super Bowl contest is on. Go and enter! You can win stuff.

3. Check this out:
Sticker of my old band, The Pac-Men. I was in Baltimore the other night, on my way back from Florida, and I timed it so I could see my friend Brian's new band, Wargames. (Brian was the singer of The Pac-Men, I was the bass player.) And right there on a soda machine in the venue, one of our old band's 10+ year-old stickers. I don't know what's more amazing: That any of these stickers are still around, that one would be found so far from our home base of Danbury, Connecticut (we did play at least one show in the Baltimore area and exchanged shows with a band from down there called Charm City Suicides, but it's not like we were well-known in the mid-Atlantic region, or anywhere else outside Newtown Teen Center and Tom Perkins' bedroom, really.), or that nobody stickered over it in the last decade! This machine was almost like a punk rock art installation. It's as if people only had the goal to cover the whole machine with one sticker layer, then leave it be till the end of time, as opposed to just having a spot to plaster with sticker over sticker over sticker. And then that machine, since 2001, has been salvaged from each DIY club as it closes, moving on to the next one, showing a new crowd ten years worth of stickers. The only uncovered part of the machine was the soda buttons. Brian suggested we make Coke and Dr. Pepper stickers in a punk style and put them on the buttons. I suggested 7Up be done in the 7SECONDS logo. But the point is, I was very proud to see our sticker there. Thanks to every kid in Baltimore over the last ten years who had the chance to cover that thing but decided not to.

4. There wasn't gonna be a 4, but while writing this, I had that Bryant Gumbel show on, and holy crap, there's this high school football coach who never punts. And goes for the onside kick after every time he scores. Genius--never, ever give the ball to the other team (without first giving yourself a chance to keep it). Guy wins, too. I can't wait till this practice reaches the NFL. Or at least college.

New York City, FL

2012-01-30T22:56:00.003-05:00

I sometimes like to listen to my old AM radio standbys, the FAN and WCBS-880 out of New York, when I'm driving. It seems like no matter where I move to, my car picks up these stations. My friend joked that I'm "grandfathered in." It's a little weird listening to the details of traffic jams on the Jersey Turnpike while driving through Attleboro, Mass., or some shit. But I'm just used to it. And of course I'd take the FAN over any Boston sports radio so that's a little more normal. But recently, I took it to a whole new level. I was driving to Florida, and listen to what was coming in crystal clear as I crossed the state line from Georgia:

Too bad you can't see much of Florida in the video, but those stations only come in down there at night.

I'll be posting more about my little big trip soon. Including my amazing feat: seeing the same street performer in Key West that I saw when I went there in 1992! More his feat than mine, I guess. But needless to say I shot video BOTH times. I guess that was needful to say. But I was. It's gonna be a fun comparison. I just have to find the VHS from twenty years ago. But I'm pretty sure I can come up with it.

Super Bowl contest is still wide open. Scroll down and enter.

Super Bowl Contest! Win A Red Sox Ticket! New Krazee Rules!

2012-01-30T05:04:00.002-05:00

Super Bowl FunSquares! But this year there's a twist: It ain't random! It's first-come, first-fun. You choose your numbers.

Here's how it works: At the end of each quarter (1st, 2nd, 3rd, and Final Score (if game goes to overtime, the score at the end of the 4th becomes meaningless)) you look at the last digit of each team's score. Let's say it's Pats 14, Giants 7 at the end of 1. The person with "Pats 4, Giants 7" wins that quarter. The hierarchy goes: Final, Halftime, 3rd, 1st, in terms of prizes.

So go ahead and enter in the comments section. Make sure you look at all the other comments before you post--don't repeat someone else's numbers. (Obviously you can repeat ONE of someone else's numbers, just not both.) (Also check after your comment went through in case someone beat you to the same numbers. In that case just change yours and enter again. But then someone could have beaten you to those numbers, and you may end up in an endless loop, like Super Mario World 8-4. Hopefully this doesn't happen to you.)

To clarify, your comment should look something like this:

Pats [single digit number], Giants [single digit number].

Remember, this has nothing to do with who's winning the game, only the last digit of each score matters. (Another clarification: You just pick the one set of numbers, not four sets. Your one set is what you root for in every quarter and you can win multiple quarters.)

The fact that you get to choose makes it interesting. 0, 3, and 7 are the best numbers, with 4 and 6 next, then maybe 1 and 9, by my football math. But you never know what'll happen. And besides, the final score is the big prize, and the hardest to predict (since the first quarter is way more likely to end with the better numbers than the fourth, since they're starting the game at 0-0). So we'll see if the earlier people to enter actually win more quarters than the late-comers.

One thing I did do randomly is select the time of day to put up this post. I'm writing this on Sunday, but I have set it to post automatically at 5:04 a.m. on Monday, as per a random time generator. Proof here. Of course, I could have just kept trying it until I got a time I wanted, but come on, 5:04? Why would I purposely give the advantage to early birds? I'm a card-carrying member of NightOwlsAnon. Also, I have been using Twitter strictly to let people know when I do a post, and I've decided to not put this one on there until later in the week--that way a bunch of random people who don't even read my blog won't beat the real readers to the punch. (If you want to be updated when I do a new post (if I think of it!), you can follow me on there @rsfpt. And I might not even keep that up because it's just not something I'm that excited about. But I'm trying it for now.)

Let's talk prizes. I bought an extra upper bleacher seat to the Sunday, May 13th Sox-Cleveland game at Fenway by accident. (Don't worry, you don't have to sit next to me, it's in a separate location from my seats.) So that's the top prize.

The other prizes are two wax packs of 1989 Fleer baseball cards (a chance at the B. Ripken Fuck Face card!) and a wax pack of 1984 Topps baseball cards.

Final Score Winner chooses one of the four prizes. Halftime Winner chooses from the remaining three, 3rd Quarter Winner chooses from the remaining two, 1st Quarter Winner gets the prize that's left.

There's room for a hundred entries. So tell your friends. If any blank squares win, there'll just be that many fewer prizes given out. Maybe. Price to enter is zero dollars. Good luck!

Huge

2012-01-29T14:46:00.002-05:00

I was on va-fun-tion last week (as you could probably tell by the sparse posting) so I didn't see this press release until last night. The Red Sox (and supposedly all the teams) will finally be offering a scalper-killing type of ticket. You buy the ticket with a credit card, and when you get to the ballpark, you show the credit card you used to get in. For now, this will be done only with upper bleacher seats for select games.

This is a big deal as far as I'm concerned. I remember writing about doing it like this, and wondering if it was possible to maybe have people show ID at the gate. This seemed like it would just make everybody have to wait longer, but if you can just swipe a credit card, it shouldn't take too much extra time.

And I love that they're doing this with my ticket of choice, the $12 upper bleacher. (These seats will go on sale February 1st.) Because if you haven't noticed, the BASTARDS at FuckHub have it set up so that all the bleachers tickets appear to be one section. So people sell the $12 seats as if they were $28 seats, and then raise them soul-lessly from there. An entire generation of people already thinks tickets originate from ShitHub--so they don't even know that the face value of the tickets they're buying could be $12 as opposed to $28. (Look closely on their seating map and you can actually see the line dividing bleacher from upper bleacher, yet they group them all into the "bleacher" category.)

So I wonder, if the teams really go through with this and end up doing this for all seats for all games, is the secondary market history? How sweet it would be. And what does this mean for the FecesHub/MLB partnership? Is the Hub pissed, or have they worked it out so they're still in on the take? There's still a link in the redsox.com ticketing area for SH, telling you how great it is, while out of the other side of their mouth they preach the evils of gauging. It's like, Hellloooo, you're the ones that allowed this shit to happen in the first place. Go all out on this and say "fuck the secondary market" or don't do it at all.

Of course there's also the question of: What if I want to buy tickets and then give them to someone else? If I buy a $100 ticket and then Aunt Gilligan dies the day before the game and I have to fly to Seattle that day, I'd just lose the $100. There needs to be a way you can give your ticket away (or sell it for face value or less). As Robert McKee said, Do that, MLB, and you'll be fine.

The Day

2012-01-28T02:37:00.002-05:00

Good luck in the VWR this morning. I don't see any major changes with the ticket-buying system. I'll let you know how I did. Feel free to let me know how you did. I won't have time to wait around so if I don't get in early I'll have to deal with it. But I know I can get tix to whatever game I want just by waiting till that day almost arrives when they release more tix, so whatever.

A Note

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

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

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

Dougie Takes Down Thundering Herd

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

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

Not Again

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

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

Geddy Movin' On Up

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

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

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

Happy New Year

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

The first Red Sox tickets have arrived!

Gray envelope, as usual.

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

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

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

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

Wert, Yu've Got Company

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

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

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

WERT.

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

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

YU.

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

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

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

Cheap Bloops Save Lives

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Hundred-Year Old Trade Rumors

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

Providence Evening Tribune, 1/8/1912:

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

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

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

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

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

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

Left photo: Lord. Right photo: Speaker.

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

Play These Games

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

You play these things yet?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

4/16/1990

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

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

Resurrecting Green Death

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

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

GREEN DEATH

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Organ (Still) Does Not Lead The Charge

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

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

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

More Proof Halper Was A Fraud

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

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

Sun, Baby, Owl

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

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

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

Also, ducks and stuff.

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

On to Saturday...

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

This shot and the one below it are seconds apart.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Here's a closer look:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Putting Spinners On Things

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

Two things:

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

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

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

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

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

The Nod: Celts From Even Higher Than Usual

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

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

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

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

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

At mid-court.

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

This other room of craziness.

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

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

Fans looking on from our special level of awesomeness.

Fans looking...well, whatever.

Bass with the two-handed jam.

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

Hey, who's that up in the promenade?

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

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

Close, But No Million

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

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

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

2012: Futures Altered?

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

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

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

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

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

Greenville is on the road that weekend.

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

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

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

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

Sun Settin' On 'Eleven

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

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

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

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

Inspectah On-Deck: Back In America

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"It's Beautiful"

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

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

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

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

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

My Lastish At Bat

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Packin' And Unpackin'

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

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

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

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

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

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

From a game against the Padres.

From Wake's 200th win game.

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

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

Another One

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

See what you can do with this one:

Merry F'n Xmas

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

Did you know Hideki Okajima was born on Christmas Day?

Did you know he's a New York Yankee?

I believe their organization has now had three Hidekis.

Midnight On December 28th

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

San Diego: 54 degrees

Corpus Christi, TX: 53 degrees

Durango, Mexico: 51 degrees

Atlanta: 42 degrees

Tallahassee, FL: 42 degrees

Temp in Providence right now: 57 degrees

Win!

1990s Film Alphabet

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

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

I'll Just Leave This Here

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

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

Update

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

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

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

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

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

The Forgotten Man Plan

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

My Gift To You

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

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

Edited to add--also, this guy:

Inspectah On-Deck: Random Fenway Pic Decoded

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Epilogue

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

Quickie Shea Detective Action

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Bobby V. The Truth (Retro Edition!)

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

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

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

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

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

******

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

Some Pictures Of Things

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

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

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

That new-ish Lucky dunkin' off the trampoline.

Guy gets some serious air.

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

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

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

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

Blurry woman carrying the sun in the subway.

Somebody call the lube room, stat!

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

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

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

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

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

Wow. What a life that building has led.]

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

For The Fan Who Has Everything

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

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

The Lost Game

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

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

Vlad and Papi.

Papi.

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

City at night.

Sunset.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

STH Q

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

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

Nuf Ced

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

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

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

Schedule Stuff

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

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

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

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

Amy Labor*

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

More replay, maybe. Yes, please.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Melancon And The Infinite Sadness Of Life Without Papelbon

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

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

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

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

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

Louie: It Worked

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

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

Bob Costas Like You've Never Seen Him Before

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

From the Conan show.

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

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

Dirty Ballplayer, Bad Prognosticator

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

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

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

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

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

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

Louie Live

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

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

Louie, on his "least favorite memory":

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

Throw It Back

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

My final predictions:

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

Septa

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

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

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

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

The Great Unnecessarily Secretive Fenway Yard Sale

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Yard Sale Fun

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

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

B+

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

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

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

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

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

Special Secret Unannounced News

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

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

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

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

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

All Times In

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

Here are your weekday afternoon home games for 2012:

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

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

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

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

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

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

"FP"

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

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

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

Fenway 100

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

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

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

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

A "living museum" on display at Fenway.

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

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

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

Waiting By The Inbox

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

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

That Thing

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

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

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

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

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

This Is Not A Repeat Post

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

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

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

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

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

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