Papi & Circumstance

Angst Along the Appian Way

2010-06-25T23:01:00.001-04:00

When my wife and I went to Italy two years ago we had the good fortune of hooking up with a great driver — Giuseppe Mirossi, a.k.a. “Beppe.” He took us all over Tuscany and, trip of trips, all the way up to Campi, a mountain village in Northern Italy that was the native home of my wife’s great-grandmother.
How that woman ever got off that mountain and down to Genoa to sail to America is the wonder, not the voyage itself. It took us hours to get up there and we were dealing with paved roads. We are forever beholden to Beppe for his driving skills and translation services.
Suffice it to say, I got to know Beppe and his passion for soccer, which occasionally drove him to take both hands off the steering wheel. (You know how Italians are always talking with their hands.)
I keep in touch with Beppe, and the e-mails started flying once the World Cup started and the Americans advanced out of pool play while the hopes of defending champion Italy hung in the balance...
*
Ciao, Beppe!
Hey, are you guys going to win a game any time soon?
I will be rooting for Italia today against Slovakia.
That way, your team can join the United States in the next round.
Your favorite American,
Bryant Carpenter
*
Hi Bryant!
How is Laura? I guess she does not care of soccer. Does she???
Italian team is not very good this time. Here there are lot of complaints because we have not been able to win a game up to now and we say that our forwarders are tired as they are coming from a very fighting national tournament (we call it "serie a"; a sort of premier league).
Then other players are too old (over than 33 years old).
It will be not very easy to win with Slovakia; the game will start at 16:00 Eu time today.
If we win Italy will play vs Holland in the next round.
Ciao,
Beppe
*
Beppe!
Laura and I are sorry Italy lost to Slovakia today.
Laura does watch soccer (she wore blue today) and she has a question: Why did Italy play with no passion until it was too late?
If the Azzurri had played as well as they did in those last 20 minutes throughout the tournament, they would be getting ready to play Holland rather than catching an airplane home.
That one goal should have counted -- not the offside one, but the goal earlier that struck off the defender's knee. His leg was behind the end line.
But no matter: The Azzurri have only themselves to blame. This year's Italy team did not play up to Italian tradition.
The rest of the tournament will not be the same without them.
But look on the bright side. At least Italy wasn't as bad as France.
Your favorite Americans,
Bryant and Baby Laura
*
Hi Bryant!
Here it has been almost a tragedy.
The worse team ever played...
Much better to give up and keep going.
A new coach (his name is Cesare Prandelli) will be presented on July 1st. Let's hope better than Marcello Lippi.
Ciao,
Beppe
*
Yes, you’re right, Beppe.
It’s time for Marcello Lippi to go.
Maybe you could take him for a very, very long drive somewhere and just leave him there.
You might be considered a national hero.
Ciao,
Bryant

To err is human, to review hardly divine

2010-06-04T18:42:00.001-04:00

I don’t mean to be flip about a topic that generated so much serious commentary from sports observers across the land, including those in high office, but Jim Joyce’s blown call that cost Armando Galarraga a perfect game Wednesday night reminded me of the scene from “Animal House” when Boone, Otter, Pinto and Flounder return from their weekend road trip with the car entrusted to Flounder by his big brother in shambles.

“Flounder, you can’t spend your whole life worrying about your mistakes,” Otter says. “You f***ed up; you trusted us.”

The point being: We all make mistakes; we all occasionally go against our better judgment. The consequences are relative. On one hand, you can bust a pitcher’s perfect game. On another, you can bust an oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico.

The way you respond is also of great import. You can fess right up and make immediate amends, as Joyce did, or you can bumble around British Petroleum-style while millions of gallons of crude pour daily into the ocean.

In the wake of Joyce’s mistake, a predictable cry went up for expanded replay review in baseball and a reverse of the call. Major League Baseball did right in brushing aside the latter pitch. Reversing the call would set bad precedent, plain and simple.

Hopefully, MLB will also resist the urge to expand replay review beyond home run calls. Does replay weed out human error? Of course it does, but it also sucks the life out of human endeavor, which by definition makes it a little less than human.

And that’s what matters most. We could put all our swell technology to use and eliminate all human error from our games, which by definition ultimately means eliminating human presence entirely because there is a little Flounder in all of us. And so, in the end, we would reduce human competition to — what, video games?

A science fiction writer could have a field day. Any worker displaced by machine will say it’s all too real.

The true humanist looks at what happened in the wake of Joyce’s admitted mistake and Galarraga’s graceful acceptance of it and says there is the best solution you can ever hope for.

Joyce will be haunted by his mistake for the rest of his life and he knows it, yet the very next day he was back in the arena. Galarraga, with his empathy, won’t get his perfect game, but is likely to be remembered equally, if not more so, than the 20 pitchers who did.

Two Roses and a Mint Tulip

2010-05-09T21:23:00.002-04:00

My politics are a tad left of center, but when it comes to money, I’m a conservative son of a gun. Multiple savings accounts, credit cards with no carried balance, 401K top heavy with steady blue-chippers (or what used to be considered blue-chippers).

I’m not a tightwad. I just play it safe.

Consequently, I do not gamble. I think not of the money I stand to win, but the money I stand to lose, and that’s hardly the attitude to take to the table.
But my little bambina may get me to bend on this.

Little Miss Laura Agatha, who happily chirps away in her stroller as we wheel into the bank each month to buy a bond and make a deposit into her passbook savings, who humors me when I show her the quarterly statements from her college fund (already knowing it may cover the Bachelors, but definitely not the Masters), just might show me a way to rapid and independent prosperity.

My little Bean, at a mere 10 months, has a nose for the horses. On Kentucky Derby day, she picked Super Saver to win-place, Paddy O’Prado to win-place-show and collected on both.

These picks were all hers, conveyed via plastic shapes from her toy box: green square for the horse with the Irish name, orange star to match the insignia Super Saver jockey Calvin Borel wore on his helmet and jersey.

This horse sense Laura gets from the maternal line. Her late great-grandfather Dan was such a frequent visitor to the Southampton, New York OTB that he could have sold his own line of miniature pencils.

(Fortunately, he fared well enough with the trifectas to avoid such a fate.)

And it was his daughter Linda — a.k.a. Lucky Linda and, for 10 months and counting, Nan Linda — who placed the Bean’s bet at the very same parlor.

(Nan Linda also handled the wagering for the Derby pool she runs at the Catholic school where she teaches; Line of David being a popular, but fruitless pick there.)

I don’t know how many grandmother-granddaughter betting tandems are out there, but I’m willing to invest in this one. Lucky Linda and Lucky Laura: I like the shape of things to come.

Southington football: A necessary turn of the page

2010-05-06T18:00:00.000-04:00

I could spend time here speculating on Bill Mella’s resignation Monday as head coach of Southington football.

I could just take it at face value: Mella, a college assistant at Trinity before he came to Southington in 2005, got an opportunity to do the same at Wesleyan and, as he said, it was too good to pass up.

I could also wonder if he was pushed in that direction.

Maybe that was the end game always in sight from last year’s brouhaha, when the Southington football coaching staff imploded.

You know the story. Long-time assistant coaches Frank Stamilio, Mike Prairie and Tony Mazzarella Sr. raised questions over Mella’s handling of fundraising money and resigned. School officials investigated. So did the police. An independent audit was done.

Mella was exonerated, but the football program’s finances were brought under tighter oversight. Two independent checking accounts were closed. In the end, no money went unaccounted for. It just wasn’t where it was supposed to be.

The appearances are what looked bad. The amount — $4,000 — didn’t warrant booting Mella, the father of three young children, from his teaching job, though perhaps union shall and shall-nots factored into the equation.

When it came to the football position, though, that was probably another story. A lack of trust, a sense that here was a guy who played by his own rules, may have settled in some minds, and so Mella had to go.
But all this is just speculation and so it will remain, because even if I’m hitting nails, who would confirm it publicly?

All I can say with any certainty is what I know from being around Southington football for the past 12 years on a pretty intimate basis. While I have good relationships with all the football teams I cover, I came in the door during Southington’s 1998 state championship run, lived with the team for a week in 1999 for a feature story and easily fell in with the family atmosphere former coach Jude Kelly instilled in the program.

Not that that atmosphere went out the door the minute Bill Mella came in. In fact, I was impressed at how well Mella and the coaches he inherited from Kelly’s staffed blended together.

Because that was the arrangement: Mella was in, but the old-guard assistants were to remain.

Normally, a new guy is entitled to have his own people, but guys like Stamilio, Prairie and Mazz Sr. helped Jude Kelly build the Air Raid version of Blue Knights football. They are men of value, and for Mella’s first two years they helped him piece together two straight undefeated runs to the state finals. And even though Southington lost both of those games, there was a good thing going.

Of course, winning smoothes out rough edges, and those edges became rougher with time and diminishing returns on the field, culminating with Southington’s failure to make the postseason in 2008. Then came the messy divorce in May 2009.

I told both camps I was surprised the marriage lasted as long as it did and that by hanging in there and making it work, the football players of Southington benefited.

Which brings me to the only point that matters in all this. By the end of the 2009 season, the Southington football program was a shell of itself. Not because the team went 5-5, but because all the joy had seemed to run out of it, and that was painful to see.

I’m not going to just dump that on Mella. The guy had gone through a lot. The season was just the natural fallout of controversy and fractured relationships.

So, in the end, this had to happen. Southington football had to go back to a Square 1.

No one really loses. Mella still has his teaching job and he continues coaching, back at the college level, where he’s arguably best suited. Stamilio and Prairie are coaching over in New Britain, still involved in the high school game, where they are arguably best suited. And the next wave of Southington players comes of age under a fresh regime.

If behind-the-scenes maneuvering produced all this, it did OK in my book. The challenge now is to make a good, strong hire to continue a good, strong tradition.

The cost of a few shekels more

2010-04-11T17:29:00.000-04:00

Must we, for the sake of money, ruin everything under the sun?

The rim had hardly ceased reverberating from Gordon Hayward’s near-miraculous shot at the buzzer for Butler against Duke in the men’s basketball final when NCAA vice president Greg Shaheen was outlining a proposal for expanding the tournament to 96 teams.

Long rumored, a tournament of that size would feature first-round byes for the top 32 teams and third/fourth rounds on the Tuesday and Wednesday after the opening two.

There’s no mystery why this baby was put on the table. More games, Shaheen said, means more revenue for the NCAA.

In the big picture, I’ve often wondered: With all the cash the NCAA reaps from its major sports, with all those multi-millions from TV contracts, why does anyone have to pay to go to college or, more reasonably, have to still be paying for it 10 years after graduation?

As for the tournament: Why mess with it? The NCAA Division I basketball postseason is matched only by the Major League Baseball and NFL playoffs, multi-tier systems that span multiple weeks and accrete in drama as the field narrows.

This year, from the moment Ohio knocked off Georgetown in the opening round through Northern Iowa’s upset of Kansas to Butler’s classic final with Duke, the tournament was nigh perfect.

The NCAA D-I men’s basketball committee and board of directors could approve the 96-team field. It could suck up more money. But it would water down its product and cheapen the magic.

Papi, Pap, Josh: What's It Gonna Be

2010-04-04T22:51:00.000-04:00

I went back and forth over the hot stove season.

At first, I was alarmed by Boston’s offseason moves — who the Red Sox initially acquired, who they let go, who they were talking about letting go.
That changed when the Sox signed John Lackey, given the added potency he leant to the starting rotation, and stuck with Jacoby Ellsbury. That’s when I started buying whole-heartedly into all that conventional wisdom about the defensive upgrade wrought by the addition of Marco Scutaro, Adrian Beltre and Mike Cameron. Shoot, given our shortstop situation last year, Scutaro can’t help but be better.

But, you know, it never pays to go with the crowd and simply join the chorus. Here at the dawn of the 2010 season, I find myself quivering in the middle like a tuning fork. As I see it, Sox success will be determined primarily by the guys they already have.

To wit: Will Jonathan Papelbon be the lights-out closer he’s been or the high-wire act he was last year? Pap may have had 38 saves in 41 opportunities, but his collapse in Game 3 of the ALDS against the Angels was more indicative of the steady flirtation with disaster that was his 2009.

Same with Josh Beckett. For a 17-game winner, his work last year was very uneven and followed on the heels of a sub-par 2008. We need a return of Revolver ’07.

If the Sox get that in combination with Jon Lester, who I believe to be the true team ace, and Lackey, well, that’s one hell of a 1-2-3 punch. Winning contributions from Clay Buchholz, Dice-K and Tim Wakefield would be rich gravy. (Respect Timmah, pulling for Clay — he needs to break out now — and still far from sold on Dice, though his head seems to be finally in the right place.)

The other pitching variable is the catching. This is the season Jason Varitek cedes ground after manning the Sox plate for a decade. His bat may have faded years ago, but his ability to handle the pitching staff has not, and that’s the most important part of the job. That’s where Victor Martinez, who can belt the ball, must truly deliver.

As for the offense, which took the biggest hit with the departure of Jason Bay, the biggest linchpin, it seems to me, is Big Papi. There’s no question the larger-than-life role he filled in the middle of last decade has passed for reasons either natural or unnatural. But he’s still a key cog in the wheel and we can’t be sitting around till Memorial Day waiting for him to hit his first home run and get over the Mendoza line.

Not with the Yankees to chase and the Rays to reckon with in the East, and the Twins, Angels and even Rangers to confront on the rest of the AL game board. But we’ve gone to the postseason six of the last seven seasons. Why should we expect that to change?

Handicapping the Huskies

2010-03-25T18:45:00.002-04:00

I suppose I’m as much a homer as the next guy and granny. I want to see the UConn women’s basketball team run the table and rack up an undefeated national championship for a second straight year.

Who inside these state lines doesn’t?

But, really, can’t the Huskies make it a little more interesting? They are so dominant their games are now like watching Brady Bunch reruns. Marcia’s boyfriend is always going to steal Greg’s playbook and UConn is always going to win big.

So you get to thinking about where else your entertainment hour and dollar can be spent.

That’s the irony of excellence. After a while, it’s taken for granted and becomes a status quo — a status quo miles beyond the rest of the realm, to be sure, but a status quo all the same.

Knowing that Geno Auriemma and his Huskies would never be content with status quo, knowing they are always looking to raise the bar, perhaps it’s not too late to throw in some added challenges that maybe should have been in place all along this season.

Call them the Husky Handicaps.

* UConn has been winning by nearly 36 points a game. Perhaps, then, the opposition should be spotted, say, 30 points before the opening tap. The scoreboard would read OPP 0, UCONN -30 and the Huskies would spend much of the first half just getting to ground zero.

Had this Husky Handicap been in effect for the opening rounds of the NCAA tournament, UConn still would have won by rout — 65-39 over Southern and 60-36 over Temple. UConn’s overall record would be 23-12, the Jan. 18 game at Duke would have been a 51-48 barnburner won by UConn and West Virginia would have won the Big East championship game 32-30.

* In practice, the Huskies often go against an overloaded defense — 5 on 7, 4 on 6, that sort of thing. The coaching axiom is you play like you practice, so why not give this a twirl? Opposing coaches would have the option of going with six or seven.

* The photo you see there of Tiffany Hayes and Lorin Dixon slapping hands with UConn fans after the Temple win — selected with the help of Cub Scout Pack 10, Den 2 out of Meriden’s Thomas Hooker School on a visit to the Record-Journal — prompted another thought. Opposing teams could select a six- or seven-player rotation or go into the crowd and hand-pick a few ringers. They could also choose to suit up assistant coaches.

*All opposition field goals would count as 3-pointers. If that Husky Handicap had been effect all season, UConn would still be outscoring opponents by an average of 82.1 to 59.7 a game.

And, if that 22.4-point differential was made the pre-game spot, with the Huskies down zero to negative-23 at the opening tip — rounding UP, for Pete’s sake — they would still be 28-7. That College Game Day date with Notre Dame would have been a riveting 47-46 UConn win, with the contest tied 19-19 at halftime.

UConn would have also won the regular-season finale in South Bend 53-51. ND coach Muffet McGraw can take solace, though. Her team would have thumped UConn 44-36 in the Big East semifinals. Against these Huskies, one out of three ain’t bad.

Tiger's Tale

2010-02-20T10:13:00.001-05:00

So, on Friday, Tiger Woods became the latest in a long line of rich, powerful and/or famous men to apologize for being found out for indiscretions of the flesh brought on by temptations made available to them by their wealth, power and/or fame.

Tiger wasn’t the first. He won’t be the last.

He’s had congressmen, governors and preachers go before him. He’s had a sitting President. (Babe Ruth and Warren G. Harding lived at a time when philanderers didn’t have to say, “I’m sorry.”)

Who will be next to sidle up to the Podium of Shame? Glantz-Culver should issue a line, right below the sport spreads and right above the Oscar odds.

It makes for must-see TV. No doubt you heard Tiger live, for it seems all the free world stopped at 11 a.m. Friday. No doubt you’ve watched and read punditry’s take on Tiger’s degree of contrition.

But none of that jabber, this column included, means jack. The only opinion that matters — and I agree with Tiger here — belongs to Elin Woods. But it doesn’t look good for Tiger on that end because Elin wasn’t in the Audience d’Apologia on Friday.

His mom was. I felt for that woman. Kultida Woods had a front-row seat for her son’s abject admission. She kept her eyes glued to the floor — until the end, when she embraced her boy.

And that, I’d say, was the only moment in Friday’s production that was fraught with genuine emotion, with genuine contrition and sorrow and a desire to make right. The rest came off as completely staged, so you can’t help but wonder how sincere Tiger is.

It smacked of so much damage control, just like back in late November, after the early-morning crash, when Tiger declined to talk to the police and retreated behind his gates because, well, he’s Tiger Woods.

Look, the day will come when Tiger Woods is back playing pro golf and making god-zillions. Whether he ever returns to his family’s embrace is their affair. Their pain or their healing: It’s the only game that matters. You hope he truly understands that.

But he’ll be back playing golf because Tiger is the game’s cash cow. And those sponsors that ditched him while the slime was oozing will eventually sign him back up and peddle new-and-improved products with a new-and-improved Tiger.

Just another round in the American art of image construction, destruction and resurrection. A lucrative pursuit, with plenty of room around the Podium of Shame if you can act a good game when the curtain and/or your pants are caught down.

Asking Absolution on the Half Shell

2010-02-13T22:14:00.000-05:00

A belated point to make, but with pitchers and catchers reporting to spring training this week, it’s worth pointing out again: Mark McGwire and that little confession of his last month about using performance-enhancing drugs?

Man, he’d never cut it as a Catholic.

See, you’ve got to be “heartily sorry.” That’s the operative phrase. That’s all it takes to wipe the slate clean, and McGwire whiffed completely.

No surprise. McGwire wasn’t sorry about juicing so much as he was sorry about what the lingering black cloud would keep him from becoming.

His unspoken preface was essentially “in order that I may coach with the St. Louis Cardinals, in order that I may generate Hall of Fame consideration so sadly lacking in my first two years of eligibility, I hereby confess...”

One act of contrition and a few days of heat in the media, he figured, and the whole chemical business that defined his career would be in that convenient little closet called “the past,” which, as Big Mac once so awkwardly told Congress, he doesn’t care to talk about.

That seems to be standard operating procedure for most pro athletes who transgress these days. Guns, gambling, philandering: The vices vary. The one constant is that once caught — and they’re always caught; in this high-tech I Spy, YouTube world there is no place to hide — we are subjected to the quick admission and ghost-written apology.

That’s to close the door. The catch-all “I’ve moved on” is to keep it locked, as if their say-so holds sway over justice and absolution. Perhaps we’ve empowered them to do so when, really, we should barely have a passing, never mind rooting, interest in these guys. If they were neighbors, we’d tell the kids to steer clear.

As for McGwire, even if his admission was sincere, he undermined its legitimacy by insisting performance-enhancing drugs had nothing to do with his freakish home run totals of 1998.

And 1+1=1.

Who knows, maybe he’s one of those people who build up altered realities in their conscience, who truly believe what they’re saying and, therefore, aren’t lying. But what does that matter when virtually all proof and reason scream otherwise?

Major League Baseball, with its drug policy now in place, would like to think the Steroid Era is in the rearview mirror, but who can swallow that? Not with the track record of performance-enhancing drugs staying one step ahead of the tests to detect them. Not with the record book pocked with needle marks.

I suppose there’s no helping that, just as there’s no escaping all those gaudy pitching records passed down from the days of legal spitballs and the Dead Ball Era.
In a perverse way, you could call the Steroid Era the second Dead Ball Era. And that’s the irony. McGwire said he juiced to stay healthy, and for a while it worked. But in the long run, it put him prematurely on the shelf.

And that’s the only shelf he should remain on. If Tony LaRussa wants to employ him, fine. (The professed ignorance of steroids among the managerial ranks, especially from a super-sharp guy like LaRussa, is a whole other underbelly to this sad story, but one left for another day.)

For now, forever, there should be no Hall of Fame talk for any of these guys — the McGwires, the Barrys, the Mannys and all those not content to simply ride their vast God-given talent.
Steroids damned the game. A check swing of an apology shouldn’t throw open its pearly gates.

The Bambina Steps to the Plate

2010-01-31T19:50:00.002-05:00

Well, my little bambina Laura Agatha Carpenter is a Red Sox fan after all. This comes as no surprise, but with relief all the same.

You just never know how these things are going to work out. In utero, you go in for ultrasounds and you’re just peering into the murmuring woosh to see which chromosome has won out.

You might get the occasional hand or arm as a bonus, but no indication as to which banner they will wave.

Nor did I get any clues at birth. There was no cap on that full head of hair, no numbered Varitek jersey like the one her mother owns. Just the birthday suit and a whimpering cub-like cry.
Cubs? Cubs! Certainly she wouldn’t grow up to root for that cursed franchise. I dwelled upon this from time to time for the first six months of her existence.

Then, the other day, I woke up and found my girl decked out as you see here.
Whew.

Immediately we began talking Red Sox hot stove in between episodes of Elmo’s World.

I confess I’m starting to think they’re one in the same. Because I don’t get it: How is that Red Sox ownership, pockets deep to begin with and selling out Fenway Park night in, night out since long before my little bambina was a gleaming, get so penny-ante over eight-figure contracts?

It’s how we failed to land Mark Teixeira, who proved to be the linchpin of New York’s 2009 success by catching every ball throw in his vicinity at first base, smacking three out of every 10 pitches thrown over the plate (ignoring all the rest) and, in both capacities, making everyone around him better.

“Sure, the Yankees bought the 2009 World Championship, but that’s the name of the uncapped game, and we got chintzy over relative nickels while the Yanks played for keeps in their new stadium. You get what you pay for, whether it’s a Bumbo seat or a banner,” I babbled to my bambina.

She gave me a “where is this going?” look.

“Jason Bay, of course. The Mets are paying all of six million more than the Sox were willing to pay to the guy who made us forget about Manny Ramirez.
“Well, on a lot of nights,” I hastily added. “He sure was a heck of a lot more enjoyable to root for. But it had to be clear to him by the All-Star break where the Sox would come down in negotiations. It seemed to show in his play.”

Bambina, having broken into her bin of plastic circles, squares and other shapes, gave me a “at least we still have Jacoby Ellsbury” giggle, then began gnawing in earnest on a green diamond.

“Yeah, but one of the fastest guys in the league is now in the smallest of left fields, giving way in center to an aging veteran who will be in and out of here in a year.
“And I still can’t believe the pundits who were saying Ellsbury was expendable when the Sox were trying to land Adrian Gonzalez from the Padres. Clay Buchholz? Ummm, OK, maybe. Ellsbury? That’s high. Mr. Noodle might as well be running the show.”

By then my bambina’s attention was back on Elmo. Elmo was talking to his pet goldfish Dorothy. I couldn’t help but notice Dorothy had one active imagination. I found her effect on me to be quite calming, certainly more so than Tom Carron’s caffeine chatter.

“Well, bambina, John Lackey was a great pickup. We’ve got an awesome rotation, and it is true that pitching and defense win championships. We’ll stop a lot of balls and make a lot of people miss. We just might not hit too many ourselves.”

And that might not be so bad. It will make for shorter games and leave more time for greater loves.

Beyond Agincourt

2010-01-15T22:59:00.001-05:00

This day is called the feast of Crispian.
He that outlives this day and comes safe home
Will stand a tip-toe when this day is named.

Henry V, Act IV, Scene III. King Henry rallies the British troops before Agincourt. We few, we happy few, we band of brothers. It’s sort of the “win one for the Gipper” of Shakespeare.

And it’s the toughest monologue a kid can choose to re-enact when my wife does her Shakespeare unit in her Language Arts class at Griswold Middle School in Rocky Hill.

There’s never a lack of Macbeths. Act IV, Scene IV: It’s the shortest you can pick. Kids are up before the class as briefly as the candle of which Macbeth speaks.

Henry’s a much tougher nut, so much longer and nuanced. You’ve got to invest more than just memory to pull it off.

A couple years back one student did it with such flair he was asked to repeat the scene before the Board of Education.

That student was Vikas Parikh, the 16-year-old boy who died last Saturday when the bus he was riding to a robotics competition crashed on I-84.

By now, you’ve heard about how Vikas was a gentle soul. His faith was Jain, a dharmic religion from India that prescribes non-violence toward all living things. Vikas was a strict vegetarian and he literally would not hurt a fly.

And you’ve heard about his academic acumen. He went to Rocky Hill High, but also took classes at the Greater Hartford Academy of the Mathematics and Science, the school he was representing the day of the fateful crash.

He was a math whiz. He was also one heck of a King Henry.

He'll remember, with advantages,
What feats he did that day.

The point here is not to sift through the terrible confluence of events that took the life of a young man who had accomplished so much and whose promise bespoke of so much more to come.

Rather, it’s to issue a reminder to we few, we happy few, who will have the gift of to-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow, to embrace all that we may with the same verve and discipline as Vikas, and to stand a tip-toe when challenge and opportunity arise.

Jewel of a Gentleman

2010-01-08T20:09:00.000-05:00

I’m bringing back Papi & Circumstance prompted not by the new year or new decade, but the loss of Southington’s Jim Wallace shortly before Christmas.

Jim Wallace was the sort of man whose passing reminds us even the best eras must end.

Mr. Wallace was still involved in American Legion baseball when I returned home in 1998. He was one of those old-guard Southington guys I always enjoy seeing — the Ray Walshs, Bill Snows, Joe LaPortes and Joe Orsenes of our corner of the world, gracious gentlemen with a selfless air of class and an appreciation for things done right.

Now and then, Mr. Wallace would let me know he’d enjoyed something I’d written. It was usually a piece that had involved extra thought, extra creativity, extra patience.

“I write for readers like you,” I replied to one of his e-mails.

Most Southington folks are familiar with Jim’s legacy, or they should be. Town councilman, Hospital for Central Connecticut incorporator, YMCA, Bread for Life — that’s just the start of it.

I find myself thinking the ultimate measure of a man lies in his children. What truer reflection of one’s values, character?

Southington folks my age had the pleasure of going to school with Ted and Sally Wallace, the youngest of Jim’s five kids. Sally was in our class. She was smart, pretty and polished. She did one of her senior English papers on Faulkner’s “Intruder in the Dust,” if I recall correctly. Simply miles ahead down the road.

Ted, who eventually went to the Naval Academy, was a year older and, in our days at St. Thomas Junior High, part of a tremendous class of athletes. In basketball, he, Rob Dibble, Barry DePaolo, Kevin McCarthy and Pat Kelly comprised a starting five that rolled over most opponents and geared up for it by rolling over younger teammates in practice.

Coach Dave Valentine would wind the scrimmage clock to 30 minutes and, man, even on running time that was an eternity.

One night I managed to do something above average to net two textbook points for the scrubs.

Pick-and-roll? No-look bounce pass?

Can’t recall. I just remember Ted running back down court alongside me saying, “Nice play; now don’t get cocky.”

That was the most influential advice I got all season. I now recognize the influence behind it. Shape your sons well and you’re bound to shape the sons of others.

I’m not sure if Mr. Wallace coached Ted or his oldest boy, Jim, in sports. He was better known for refereeing midget football games and umpiring Little League games. Late in life, he was the scorekeeper for Southington Legion baseball.

Shape the sons of others and you’re bound to shape a corner of the world.

And that, I’d say on second thought, provides the true measure of a man in the eyes of scorekeepers Great and small.

It's a Brand New Ballgame, Baby

2009-07-13T18:42:00.002-04:00

“You think you love now, wait until you hold her in your arms.”
—Retired Southington High School guidance counselor Raymond Walsh

My daughter Laura turned one week old Monday and getting a read on her has been a joy and an adventure.
You learn something every day, you know?

Like the different cries. I’ve quickly identified the “Feed Me” squawk and the slightly louder and more urgent variation that is “Feed Me Now!”
There is the charming whimper of “I Know What You Are Doing is Necessary and in My Best Interests, But It Does Cause Me Mild Discomfort.”

And there is the ear-splitting howl of “I Can’t Believe We Lost to the Kansas City Royals!”

That was just inconsolable. Thursday night sure was rough.
Happily, it was quickly rectified and the next three nights were a breeze of consistent patterns of sleep, feeding and general contentment.

Because, of course, my little bambina is a Red Sox fan.

But please understand, being a parent who wants to foster independent thinking in his child, she arrived in Red Sox Nation on her own volition. We first tuned in Wednesday night, bottom of the sixth vs. Oakland, and the first at-bat Laura witnessed resulted in a three-run homer by Big Papi.
And by the end of the weekend, if I read her facial expressions right, she was asking about Manny Delcarmen’s trade value.

“With the emergence of Daniel Bard and the imminent arrival of Michael Bowden, we have plenty of right arms in the bullpen,” her intent little eyes seemed to say, and I certainly couldn’t argue with the logic or tear myself away from their gaze.

My bambina is also a cycling fan, I’ve been happy to learn. She loves watching the Tour de France after breakfast as I talk to her in my limited Italian.
She has yet to form firm opinions on these pursuits, but she does have questions.

“What’s the peloton? Who’s in the yellow jersey?”
“Do you know anything beyond Ciao Bella and Bon Giorno?”
“What’s a Category 1 climb?”

And this just the other day: “What became of that British sprinter Nan Linda said was cute?”

Boy crazy just like her maternal grandmother. Well, that’s an issue to be reckoned with at a later date.
For now, la mia bambina, all developments have been quite agreeable to Daddy, especially the Tour de France fascination, because there’s a fine, fine Trek 5000 I would like to someday turn over to you.

I can’t wait to teach you how to ride. No training wheels. We’re going straight to two wheels. I’ll run behind, holding the seat, until you master balance and can pedal sure and steady on your own and go long into the day.

And I can’t wait to teach you how to throw a ball and how to bat both ways, and to take you to Fenway and teach you how to keep score.
I will endeavor to explain the finer points of the game, bambina. Your daddy, already a fan, has begun to appreciate more and more, since the day you were born, the nobility of the sacrifice and the fine art of moving the runner along.

Angelic

2009-07-09T16:46:00.002-04:00

My little girl Laura Agatha arrived into the world on Monday, July 6 at 4:40 p.m. She was a tad under 8 pounds, a nudge over 21 inches and born on the same day as her great-great grandmother Nonny, one of her guardian angels in heaven.

So far, it appears my little Laura is a guardian angel for the Sox. We arrived home from the hospital Wednesday afternoon. At night, we tuned into the Sox-A's game. Her first at-bat was Papi's in the bottom of the sixth.

A few pitches later, Papi was admiring a three-run homer the same way I marvel at this little bambina.

Resurrected & Restored Mojo at Your Prompt & Immediate Service

2009-07-01T17:15:00.005-04:00

Outstanding win. Complete redemption from last night's disaster with the bullpen punching out 12 straight.
All is well once again in the baseball universe.
The sun is out after rain.
You've got to believe in karma.
May my little girl be born tonight.
Does "Ellsbury" work as a middle name?

Catch-22

2009-07-01T11:25:00.002-04:00

Sweet Jesus, did that really happen last night?
If I don't turn on the TV or radio, if I don't pick up a newspaper, I can just will it away, can't I?

Out of sight, out of mind, out of cell phone range.
(Is it possible to find a pocket of isolation any longer in our shrunken world? If so, I'd like a one-way ticket, please.)

Truth is, I haven't blogged in a while because blogs, by their nature, are b*tch forums, and when it comes to our boys, brethren, there hasn't been much to whine about. We've won six straight series, we still haven't lost to the Yankees, we have the best record in the American League.

But last night's events beg comment, and here's mine: Our downfall began the minute Jason Varitek was taken out of the game.
Tek: The one guy in the infield who knew there were only two outs in the bottom of the sixth and didn't follow the lead of Julio Lugo and trot off the field.

'Nuff ced.

I understand why he was taken out, of course. It was a 10-1 game and he'll be catching this afternoon. It was the right move.
But George Kottaras, for some reason, clearly wasn't ready to play. Justin Masterson, in a twinkling, went from cruise control to unable to get anyone out.

And the rest of the bullpen following suit? It seems more than just a coincidence. It wouldn't have happened with Tek behind the plate.

Kottaras' crowning achievement was getting throw out at the plate in the top of eighth. On that play, the final die was cast. If Kottaras scores, as he should have, we add to a 10-6 lead, perhaps get more runs and, most critically, grab back momentum.
Instead, it kept building in Baltimore's favor. A palpable force: Saito actually seemed physically unable to throw pitches in the bottom of the eighth.

Meanwhile, Geoff Zaun, Baltimore's backup catcher, came on in the ninth and blocked a handful of balls in the dirt preventing the tying run from getting in scoring position until Youk got hit by a pitch.

We talk about this Red Sox team having enviable depth, both in terms of position players and pitchers. Yesterday's events, between Lowell going on the DL and a 10-1 lead melting away, erode that notion a bit.

And championship teams don't lose games like that. They don't lose focus so dramatically.

In the end, I guess (hope), we chalk it up as a momentary blip, a well-timed kick in the pants, a loss more monumental in our psyche than in the standings.
We hang our hat on Smoltz pitching well, curse a poorly timed rain delay and look forward to Revolver Beckett putting the finishing touches on a 6-3 road trip.

OK, let me wake up now...

Contemplating Thoughts of Mortality

2009-06-23T11:30:00.003-04:00

Heading down to our nation's capital with a four-game lead courtesy of lights-out pitching by Revolver Beckett Saturday night and Sunday's walk-off by Nick Green.

Maybe the latter will shut up Suzy Waldmann -- a certain Connecticut broadcaster, too, who sarcastically referred to our shortstop as "The Immortal" Nick Green in a recent telecast.

"The Immortal."
I like that. A better nickname than, say, "Greenie," performance enhancers of choice back in the now seemingly innocent 70s and 80s
And I like how, on the same afternoon, the Immortal hit a walk-off home run and Derek Jeter grounded out to end a game.
That's OK, though. Maybe the Yankees will still get that Sunday win courtesy of their protest.

Other than that, brethren, the necessary and the obvious has finally taken place. After Friday's disaster, management knew it had to do what we knew had to be done all along: Get Dice out of the way.
Dice: Whose 18-3 record of 2008 must go down as the eighth wonder of the world.

Perhaps he can be reclaimed. Let's hope so. $100-million-plus is an awful lot to eat, even when you're selling out 500-plus times in a row.
For now, however, we've got too many options (Smoltz, Masterson, Buchholz) to continue wasting a start.

Actually, we could say Dice's starts have also been Masterson's, seeing how Masterson usually enters the game in the fourth or fifth inning.

Looking for another strong start tonight by Penny. You've got to like a guy who takes a line drive off the chest and doesn't flinch.
How durable, how immortal.

More the Merrier

2009-06-17T21:04:00.003-04:00

I've got two eyes on baby watch, two ears on the radio.
Chiming in just to say this: I like the idea of initially going with a six-man rotation to accommodate the return of John Smoltz.

Or arrival, I should say.

A fair deal all around.
Take a spin or two around the six-man block and see who earns keep and who earns a push to the bullpen.
Because it's not a given that Smoltz is going to tear it up, though with his track record you've got to believe that he will.

Tell you another thing, I'm really starting to like Brad Penny. He's throwing too well to just trade off to free up roster space. Remember '06 and the lesson of Bronson Arroyo.
You can never have too much pitching, and the last thing I want to see is some half-assed deal that brings in another Wily Mo Pena.

The front office is to sharp to make the same mistake twice.

Three Nights in Boston, Pt. 3

2009-06-12T12:02:00.002-04:00

Sox 8, Yanks 0 is the frequency, Kenneth.
And the immediate response is, How does this keep happening?

Yeah, yeah, OK, the obvious: Our starting pitching's been better, our bullpen's been better and last night we got the sort of late-game pluck and timely hitting that the Yankees have been heaping on the hapless heads of everyone else in the Western hemisphere.

You know what, too? Our manager's better.

In the big picture, though, here's what I'm seeing: one team that's an ideal blend of home-grown talent and smart trade/free agent acquisitions enjoying a deserved upper hand on a team that's a Frankenstein, lumbering around and terrorizing the countryside until inevitably being laid low for the affront to nature that it is.

At least I'd like to think that.
We'll have to wait until all is said and done in October (and it will come down to that) to give the final assessment.

For now, it it is interesting to note that, this week in Beantown, the Yankees were not the team hitting on all cylinders that they were coming into the series.
To wit:
*Mark Teixeira tears it up one night, but the bats behind him are quiet.
*The bottom of the order and Jeter at the top hit well the next night, only to have Damon and Teixeira fall silent or hit long, harmless outs.

The Sox, on the other hand, had that pick-me-up Mojo, particularly when it came to the vaunted relief pitching that hardly was lights out across the board.
*Ramirez bombs on Wednesday, Oki bails him out.
*Delcarmen struggles Thursday, Saito saves the day.

And Pap closing both out was a welcome sight.
As was Papi hitting two home runs.

And here's one other thing: Is it a given that we must deal Penny? The dude's only shown a steady arc of improvement. Six scoreless last night.
Question is, did Penny feel like he was pitching for his Boston job or auditioning for his next employer?

Hate to beat a tired drum, but Penny is not the guy to come out of the rotation upon the arrival of John Smoltz.
But, hey, this issue of excess pitching is a good problem to have on June 12, sitting at 36-24 and two games up.

Three Nights in Boston, Pt. 2

2009-06-10T22:42:00.002-04:00

This one seemed to have Yankees' comeback written all over it. Who knows? Maybe we're immune to what the rest of the American League is susceptible to.
Don't normally end sentences with prepositions, but I'm gaga over Oki's work. The Bridge of Sighs.

Truth is, we should have had a much bigger lead in the early going. Should have really stomped on Wang Dang Doodle right there in the first as he struggled to find the plate.

Youk's shot proved to be the game-winner. Actually got a smile out of J.D.
That's a special moment.

My little bambina started kicking when Youk went deep. She's still got two weeks to go. Tonight, though, would have been a fine night to come into the world.

Three Nights in Boston, Pt. 1

2009-06-09T22:37:00.004-04:00

I told Pettit he could write from home today.
His little ones are under the weather.
So was his ballclub.

Don't want to say you could see it coming, but with the way Beckett's now pitching, you could see it coming.

Plus, I didn't want to see John suffering along with the Yanks. I like him too much. Mark Teixeira, on the other hand, is a different story.
Official hatred has set in.
Nothing specific to set it off. You know how the antipathy is just suddenly there, brethren.

Good to see Papi pop off again. The biggest hit, though, was that two-out, 0-2 double off the wall by Drew. Deepest dagger, the true point on which the game swung into the realm of rout.

You know, just before the game, a fellow Red Sox fan here at the office who shall go nameless was babbling about which young pitchers the Sox might trade to bring in another left-handed bat.
Bowden? Bard? Buchholz?
How about none of the above.
We've got holes -- holes like everybody else -- but we're sitting tied for first with the Yankees. No need to panic and make a bad move.

Tumbling Dice (Exile on Matsuzaka Street)

2009-06-02T17:48:00.003-04:00

Well, brethren, I believe I'm well prepared for the Diceman's start tonight against Detroit. I got a massage and I am at this moment listening to Gordon Lightfoot.

"Sometimes I think it's a shame when I get feeling better when I'm feeling no pain..."

I could make a Keith Richards reference here, but it might be taken the wrong way, and I want it to be known that, contrary to occasional appearances, this is a drug-free blog -- unless, of course, the very act of following a professional baseball team so passionately at any age beyond 12 is proof of addictive behavior, which I firmly believe it is.

So, on that note: What's the score, man?

I'll tell you what. One-third of the way through the season, we seem to have a good team, a contending team, but one operating below full potential. Not all the parts, but some -- and those parts are key parts.

You know that, I know that, the whole Nation knows that.
Pedey's been solid, Bay's been great, Youk is elite, Lowell is the Working Class Hero with prematurely bum hips.
But Papi looks like he's done.
And we have big issues at shortstop.
And J.D. Drew makes a helluva lot of money for what we get out of him.

But the biggest key of all, of course, is and always will be pitching. We must pray that Beckett and Lester have turned the corner and will be their solid selves from here on it because, if not, the Yankees are going to run away with the AL East and we're going to be scrapping for a wild card.

The bullpen has been mostly solid save for (how the sands do shift): Pap. How many 1-2-3 innings has he had this season? Yeah, he's like the real estate market. No gimmie closings these days.
Thank goodness Delcarmen has improved, Okie has returned to '07 form and Ramirez was acquired (best pickup of the offseason so far).

There's still a ways to go, but I sure would like to end this spell where we hit the final game of a series having to win to salvage something.

The Yankees, meanwhile, are cooking, all their high-ticket, market-spree parts blending quite nicely in the pot. Still, they strike me as a team that could toggle back and forth between unbeatable and abysmal. You know how the media circus just feeds the negativity -- that "dwelling on the mole on the belly of an exquisite whore."

Patti Smith sang that. It sure wasn't about the Empire, but it sure seems to apply now that I think about it, now that my perfectly mellow mood has been utterly shattered.

Huh, shidube: Bring on Dice, bring on the Tigers.

Rollin' Dice with Timmah, Pt. 1.1

2009-05-28T12:14:00.004-04:00

Got a call last night from old friend Tim Kolehmainen, hard by the banks of the receeding Red River in Morehead, Minnesota.
"Miiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiister Carpenter!"

I couldn't help but note the timing: My Sox, trailing 3-1 in the fifth inning to Timmah's Twins at the Metrodome.
"Tim, how un-Midwestern of you to call and bust my stones."

"Oh?"
He suddenly sounded like Margie's decoy-carving husband in "Fargo," O's and lower jaw elongating. "What's the score?"

"To be honest with you, Tim, I can't really be sure, because I've finally gone ahead and done it. At long last, Dice-K has made me gouge out my own eyes like the mother of Oedipus. What was her name again? Clytemnestra? Okeefenokee? I can't think straight for all the blood."

"You've gone wild, Mr. Carpenter."
"Yes. How many wild pitches are the Sox up to?"

"Let's see ... I think it's four, which if extrapolated over the course of nine innings -- well, eight, if the Twins hold their lead -- will eventually, if we apply the Pythagorian principal of exponential sandbagging, a theory I learned at the Upper Peninsula Institute of Technology, Logging, Edible Roots & Wildnerness Survival and applied to this spring's flooding, will, I say, add up to 8.325. Yes, most definitely 8.325."

"You got a date tonight with Iris, Rain Man?"
"Nooooope. Just watching my girls and watching Kevin Slowey pitch."
"That's another thing: We're losing to a pitcher named Slowey."

"Yep, he was one of the guys pitching for the Rock Cats when I covered them two summers ago."

"And Cuddyer and Morneau and Mauer were around when I was on the beat before that, Tim. That's why I cannot root against them with the same sort of hatred that bubbles up in me for all other Red Sox opponents. But, Tim, the blood! The blood!"

"Try cold compresses."

"No! What I need is for Dice-K to be put on the permanent DL. We called you 'Central Standard Time,' Tim, because you always seemed to be an hour behind the rest of us, but Dice makes you look like a New York Minute at a meth lab."

"Speaking of which, you called me when the Yankees were beating the Twins two weeks ago."

"Yes, but I wanted the Twins to win. I was pissed that Gardenhire left Blackburn in to get torched by Teixeira in the eighth inning of Saturday's game. Was it Blackburn? I can't recall now. I'm growing faint. The Twins should have won at least two of those games. Alas ... the Yankees are gathering steam and Big Papi still isn't hitting his weight, two numbers that seem destined to head in opposing directions."

Another wild pitch ricocheted off the armor of George Kottaras. Was that Dice still pitching? Delcarmen? Masterson? I was very faint, my frame of reference all askew.
"Adieu, adieu, remember me..."

"Miiiiiister carpenter" repeated and dwindled in my ears ... those Midwestern O's got even longer ... a hit batsman with the bases loaded ... "there's more to life than a little baseball, don't cha know?" .... OK, Margie ... the landscape's turning white ...

...

I confess to passing out and not waking until just now, moments before the first pitch in the Sox-Twins series finale.
Was last night's game for real?
I grab the paper. Yes, there it is 4-2. Six wild pitches to tie a Major League record.

"Hah, Kolehmainen!" I say into a phone long dead, "so much for 8.325! We'll see who makes the telephone call today."

Moving on Up (Pole Sittin', Phase 1, in the Julio-Free Zone)

2009-05-25T09:41:00.006-04:00

A 4-2 homestand that, for all the Friday-Saturday frustrations against the Metropolitans, leaves the Sox in first place.

Things have a way of first sorting themselves out by Memorial Day.
To wit:

*The Blue Jays, with their starting pitching in such tatters this side of Roy Halladay, simply can't hang. Theirs was a hot start born of a weak schedule. They ran into Boston and New York and promptly hit the skids.

*Conversely, Boston's starting pitching is finally shaping up nicely, even Brad Penny.
Even Dice did decently by methodical, tortorous Dice standards in his return Friday night. That one bad inning, as we all know, could have been defused by The Double Play That Was Not. First time I've ever seen a shortstop try to turn two standing flat-footed.

*Which brings us to Issue N0. 3 -- no more Julio. The Sox lineup must be a Julio-Free Zone. He was never that good to begin with and now his speed and range are gone, daddy gone, left somewhere on an operating table or some fried chicken take-out counter.

That was a cruel and unnecessary shot, I know, but who can really take watching the guy anymore except maybe Mrs. Lugo (and then again maybe not even her)?
Nick Green has more than earned his keep and should hold it until Kid Lowrie gets back and gets a shot to prove if he is fact or fiction.

*Nice two-HR day for Youk on Sunday. Joe West, on the other hand, batted 1-for-2. It was good he and the umps went to replay on Youk's shot down the line, but you knew that baby wasn't getting overturned.

Great win on Sunday, though. It took away the sting of Saturday night. Don't know about you, brethren, but watching some Punch-and-Judy hitter take Pap deep for a game-winning, two-run HR with two outs in the top of the ninth did not sit well. First one to really piss me off since some of those Tampa games last September. (Shades of Bucky Dent, too, on the Chintz Scale.)

*Lastly, Papi's drought-breaking HR on Wednesday night was sweet, a testament to the loyalty and magic between the Sox and their fans, but the rest of the homestand proved it was hardly cathartic. I know he's swung into some tough-luck outs, but .195 is .195. It's time to drop him out of the 3-spot and flip-flop him with J.D. Drew.

And with that, it's time to plant some pole beans on this Memorial Day. The peas popped through yesterday, just like the Sox. The key is to provide proper support to keep them climbing.

May 19: Lay o' the Land

2009-05-19T11:41:00.003-04:00

I've been thinking about old friend Tim Kolehmainen the past couple of days.
His Twins were in New York finding new cruel and unusual ways to lose to the Yankees and, while mowing the lawn, I found myself cutting a Minnesota-shaped pattern into the grass, which is totally weird because my yard is shaped like North Carolina.

Tim, with his background in engineering and Freudian psychoanalysis, could diagnose the cause.

Except he's too tuckered out after sandbagging his backyard in Morehead, Minnesota against last month's onslaught of the Red River.

Tim's sandbag structure, as I understand it, resembles the George Washington Bridge.
This, too, is clearly a product of a tortured subconscious.

Sorry, Tim. Try as you might, there is no bridge or ford you can forge to carry the Twins past the Yanks, who are suddenly gathering a distrubing head of steam, like the Red River.
Then again, it did subside in time, thank God, so I cast a hopeful eye to the future.

But let us tend to our own garden, brethren. With how much alarm do we view our Sox as they limp home from the West Coast and start a telling series back at Fenway tonight against the first-place Jays?

We've got holes. Yep, we've got holes. And we need sandbags.
We've got issues at shortstop, we're getting no production out of the DH spot and our much ballyhood starting pitching is still far below cruising altitude.

Perhaps the sandbags are right at hand. Revolver Beckett was sharp Saturday night, though he did benefit from some strong defense. Hopefully, Lester is on the verge of getting untracked. Dice is due back soon. Jury's out on that scene, though, as far as I'm concerned.

As for the dismal DH production, perhaps Papi will have benefited from the weekend off. Perhaps the happy confines of Fenway and the Monster will get him back in the swing. I wish I wasn't so pessimistic. Still, who among us is ready to give up on Papi?

As for shortstop, we could just sit tight until the return of Jed Lowrie, but I sense a stopgap move coming at the trading deadline. Fourth-fifths of the NL West will be out of it by then, as will half the NL Central.

Bottom line: This team is too good to go through lackluster 2-4 stretches, be they on the West Coast, East Coast or Red River.

Getting Youk back will be a huge boon, a domino effect through the lineup that will restore guys like Jason Bay to their comfort zone. Papi, though, is the key. That big gaping hole in the 3-spot has to be shored up. You don't have to be an engineer like Minnesota Tim to know that.

I'd also like to see us stop being so stagnant on offense. Too much station to station lately. Not enough running. We attempted only three stolen bases on the West Coast swing, which was anything but, since we hit .115 with runners in scoring position (6-for-52), grounded into eight double plays and left 48 guys on base.

We need to get wheels a-spinning, get defenses moving.

And I need to get off my ass and get outside. I hear a lawn mower droning. No need to ask for whom it tolls.

Diaper Up

2009-05-15T18:03:00.002-04:00

One last thing before we leave Anaheim and the travails of Papi (hopefully) in the rearview mirror:

While we Sox fans have a way of anguishing and dwelling on what doesn't go right, we do know our team is far better run than most and, when our guys struggle, no matter how much we rag them on the Internet or on talk radio or in newspaper columns, we're behind them when it's go-time.

So long as they're wearing a Red Sox uniform, we almost never boo. (Christ, look at the crap we put up with Manny.) Even if Papi goes 0-for-Seattle, when he steps to the plate Tuesday at Fenway, he'll be applauded, he'll be pulled for.

This is in direct contrast to New York, which tends to eat its young and falls all over itself to boo its struggling stars. What they ought to boo is an ownership team that has built a soulless new stadium where half the seats are beyond the means of 90 percent of the fan base.

Cheer up, though, New York. I understand you get to come down from steerage and watch batting practice from the two sections in the outfield corners.

Poopie & Circumstance, No. 2

2009-05-15T17:22:00.003-04:00

Went on a great bike ride, mowed the back 40, but still bothered by yesterday's loss in Anaheim.

Somehow, in the SoCal sun, the Sox had a collective brain freeze as cold as Papi's bat.

That inning Lugo led off with the double -- the 10th, I believe -- I was hoping Tito would have Ellsbury bunt Lugo over to third. There, he could have scored on an out, such as that bomb Pedroia hit to deep CF magnificently hauled in by Torii Hunter. Instead of it going utterly for naught, it would have brought Lugo home with what would have been the winning run.

You had to figure Pedroia, 4-for-4 at the point, was going to put the ball in play. And, really, once it fell to Papi, what could we expect?

Weird new reality.
Do love the bullpen, though, even with yesterday's loss. Ramirez continues to excel, Delcarmen is way better than he ever was and NASCAR Bard makes throwing in the high 90s look like a warm-up run around the track.

Tell you what, let's go up to Seattle, pound that rag-ass team and go home with a 4-2 trip that ends our West Coast travels for the season.

Poopie & Circumstance

2009-05-14T20:27:00.003-04:00

Hate to say it, but Papi's got to be moved in the lineup. He's killing us in the 3-hole.

You can spot April as a mulligan with a slumping slugger, but once you get halfway through May and the dude's barely batting over .200 and his number of home runs matches John Blutarsky's grade-point average, well, you've got to take measures and nothing double-secret about it.

0-for-7 today with 12 guys left on: Papi's officially killing us.

Tom Comes A-Knockin'

2009-05-12T19:13:00.007-04:00

I was awakened this morning by a rap-rap-rapping at my front door.

Stumbling, fumbling, for I am very near of sight, I could barely make out the long staff and the crazy hair in the morning light.

He was shouting even before I got the door open.

"SLOTHFUL SLUMBERER! WASTER OF THE DAWN! RISE FROM THY COUCH OF DEBAUCHERY AND DESIGNER SHEETS!"

I'm not in much of a mood when forced to wake early, and here was Old Testament Tom, bane of the neighborhood and the ears of canines, howling on my front stoop, bearing false witness against my morals and bedding.

I noticed the woman across the street peeking out her window.

Tact, I fear, escaped me.

"Tom, you raggedy bastard. Get off my godd*mn porch!"

The SOB didn't back off an inch.

"Not till ye cast of your indolent ways, Idler, and take up thy pen!"

"What are you talking about? I write every day."

"NAAAAAAAAY! Not on the Magic Screen! Not on the Papal and Circumcision!"

"Papi & Circumstance? My blog? What do you care if I blog? That's on my time, Jack, and I've got a baby's room to get ready and a garden to plant and --"

He cut me off. "IT SEEMETH YOU HAVE ALREADY SEEN TO THE PLANTING!"

I was shutting the door at that point, but he wedged his staff into the narrowing divide and lowered his voice to an urgent, conspiratorial whisper.

"You must blog anew, my friend."

"What for?"

"I am in need. I am in need of -- wissssssssdom."

I swear the bastard hissed.

"What for?"

"For material. Mute fell I upon my last tour stop, in Madawaska, Maine, and I was pelted with rotten potatoes and all means of farm refuse and French-sounding epithets. They threatened to hang me from the wind turbines atop Mars Hill, where the sun and crows would unkindly play upon me, if I failed to offer full refunds."

This got me chuckling and got Tom fired back up.

"LAUGH NOT, YE SLACKER! Scott Boras himself has sent me hither to tell thee, to order thee, back to thy keyboard. We have a show this weekend in TURNERS FALLS, MASSACHUSETTS! You must provide me material and means for a bus fare."

"Boras, huh? Well, he's not going to like what I've got to say about his client."

"The falsely denounced Emmanuel? The Righteous Ramirez? The Right Arm of the Chosen Ones? He who has been exiled for games 10 plus 40?"

"I told you last summer when the Sox finally unloaded his circus act that it was a good move, one long overdue. I liked Jason Bay from Day 1. Funny, ain't it, how he's exploded at the exact time Manny has imploded?"

"Manny hath been contrite."

"Looks like he used steroids, Tom."

"Nay! NAY! A poor prescription of a fumbling physician."

"A female fertility drug, Tom? The sort of thing guys use coming off a steroid cycle?"

"An elixir for the manly pursuits!"

"Well, even if that's true, Tom, it still means Manny wasn't swinging real wood."

At that, Tom spat. He stammered and he swore. He dropped his staff, slipped and fell upon it, fumbled 'neath his nether robes and flung it limply once it was retrieved.

Then he grinned and pointed both fingers at it in a lame attempt to save face.

"I bet you're not much for running out come-backers to the mound either, Tom. Push any traveling secretaries down lately? You're lucky I'm the only one in the audience today. Sooner or later, the curtain comes down on the sham show."

And with that, I turned my back on the fallen idol, and it was easy to do.

Two Days in New Amsterdam (Pt. 2)

2009-05-06T10:58:00.003-04:00

Five up, five down, high-fives all around.

But, you know, it's May 6. Don't know about you brethren, but I don't sign off on any Yankee death certificate until they're good and dead and buried with a stake driven through their heart and their severed head placed atop an explosives-laden tortoise to wander across the desert.

You know, the usual sentiment.

Funny, the cycles of this great rivalry. Since the cauldron of 2004, it lost some steam. Then, into the mix, steps Joba. Comments from Sox fans such as, "I really respect Jeter and Posada and Mo" have given way to, "I really hate that $*#&! guy!"

Now I fully understand why non-Sox fans loathed Pedro during his Beantown days. It's pretty cowardly to stand up on that hill and bounce fastballs off people when you don't have to step in that batters box.

I could sit here and be just as cowardly and say, "There must be Meth-od to Joba's madness," but that's as cheap a shot as putting a ball between the numbers of someone who homered off of you in the first inning.

I'll just say that Joba & Hyde, the master of extremes, who gives up five straight hits to start a game, then strikes out 12 of the next 18, is one of those great talents and outsized personalities that are good for the game and good for this rivalry and would be wasted anywhere outside the Empire and Nation.

Two Days in New Amsterdam (Pt. 1)

2009-05-05T15:39:00.003-04:00

Talk about a world turned upside down: Who thought the day would come when Yankee Stadium (new, old, retro or otherwise) would be a welcome sight after Tropicana Field?

The Rays simply own us. (5-2 vs. Sox, 6-14 vs. Everyone Else).
But, hopefully, we own the Yankees. Four up, four down so far, with Papi showing signs of life to boot. No slicers to left, but head-of-the-bat rips down the RF line.

Great outing, too, for Johan Lester last night. Only one bad inning, but that should have headed off with a double play. At least this one we can't hang on Julio Lugo.

One last note: I know Pap got the job done, but I hate those multi-inning saves. It backfired on the Yanks and Mariano that Friday night in Boston and it nearly did to Tito last night. Too many pitches get thrown; the in-between innings wait throws off the rhythm of the closer. October's one thing, May's another.

And one other item: How about, whenever Ellsbury gets on, we put him in motion. You know, the guy who stole home? Let's run him at every opportunity. Straight steal, hit and run -- whatever. Let's get him and the enemy defense moving. We've been hitting into an awful lot of double plays lately. Movement keeps the train whistling around the track.

Every Man a King

2009-04-29T23:06:00.003-04:00

Well, tonight's come-from-behind win makes up for Tuesday night's crap-out. PawSox crew delivers, led by Jonathan Van Every, who'll probably do just fine as an everyday player should J.D. Drew, you know, need some rest and rehabilitation from time to time.

Something to ponder, though, as April comes to a close: Who'd of thought at this early juncture that our most reliable starters would be Tim Wakefield and Justin Masterson?

Ladies and Gentlemen of the Jury, I'll Be Brief

2009-04-29T00:14:00.029-04:00

The 11-game winning streak comes to a close on a night when it seemed predestined to extend to 12.
At the bookends of the streak we have Javier Lopez suffering the losses in almost Little League-like fashion. Got news for you, bro. Hunter Jones is taking your job.

Mostly, though, Tuesday night's ugly game in Cleveland raises two basic points:

1. Why Julio at short? He's not really much of an upgrade on Nick Green, who did little over the previous 11 games to warrant being taken out of the lineup. He might not be the most potent hitter on the planet but, shucks, he catches the ball when it's thrown to him.

2. Brad Penny has struggled with command every time he's pitched this season. If the trend holds, it's a no-brainer about what to do with Justin Masterson when Dice-K returns.

Sox-Yanks, Round 3

2009-04-27T10:50:00.053-04:00

Giddy as a schoolboy on Christmas morning, brethren. Still buzzing over Jacoby's steal of home, which stands as the exclamation point (or middle finger, if you are of a hostile bent) to this weekend's sweep of the Yankees.

Preferring the eloquence of punctuation, I'll go with proper grammar and add this simple declarative sentence:

This latest series and its crowning jewel of Jacoby's swipe of home illustrate the point Brian Cashman made last week at SCSU. The Yankees, as an organization, are still chasing after the Red Sox and their more efficient business model of drafting well, developing from within, plugging gaps with free agents and not overpaying for older talent.

What a lovely role reversal. No wonder I can watch games calmly these days. Larry Lucchino may make us cringe from time to time, but at least Sox ownership, as a whole, has little of the impetuous egoism and occasional insanity that are hallmarks of The House of Steinbrenner.

Those are the true standings, the "big picture" that lies behind the actual three-game gap between Nation and Empire in this morning's paper.

Sunday's series finale underscored this point. There was none of the comeback drama of the first two games, just a lesson in the ways one storied franchise has gotten the upper hand on another.

*Exhibit A: Young Jacoby's steal on a still-effective, but aging Andy Pettitte.

*Exhibit B: Young pitchers. Justin Masterson starts and gets the win. Farmhand Michael Bowden, up for one game only, helps close it out. Now he goes back to Pawtucket and continues to develop with the likes of Clay Buchholz and Daniel Bard.

Would the Presence of A-Rod have made a difference this weekend? Maybe. But you know what? We're still waiting for the Presence of A-Rod to make a difference.
Right now, from the bushes to the bigs, the Red Sox are the better franchise.

Sox-Yanks, Round 2

2009-04-26T10:58:00.003-04:00

Listened the Sox on the radio Saturday en route to seeing "Hair" up at UConn, which was overrun with the madness of Spring Weekend. Somewhere in that orgy of home runs, hippies and hedonsim all things merged into one, and a 16-11 Red Sox win ran through it.

Unreal.
Good Morning Starshine.
Let the Sunshine In.
Burn it, Berger, burn it. Burn that Yankees bullpen. The Connecticut Repertory cast wasn't the only thing standing naked in public Saturday.

And that's the lesson of the day. At this juncture, the Sox have one arm fully up on the Yankees based on relief pitching, a disparity that, for the moment, increased with Brian Bruney going on the DL. The X-factor for the Sox is definitely this Ramon Ramirez.

That and Mike Lowell's pride. Joe Girardi: His moves don't seem to pan out too often, do they? When does his honeymoon end? The post-Torre Age of Aquarius in Bomber Town has yet to dawn.

Sox-Yanks, Round 1

2009-04-25T13:45:00.049-04:00

"Hey, hey, Bay; that's what I say."
Much satisfaction from Friday night's game, at least from the bottom of the ninth on.

For a while there, it was looking like the first week of the season all over again. A pitiful parade of double plays and unproductive outs. Just when I was resigned to defeat -- almost on the verge of logging in and blogging out my frustration -- Jason Bay did his thing, reprising the role of Mo Killer previously held by Billy Mueller, a player cut from the same cloth: hustler, hard-working, team guy, no bullshit, someone you can root for 100 percent.

In other words, the anti-Manny.

Sure, Manny, if he were still a Sox, could very well have taken Rivera deep in the same situation. But he wouldn't have made the diving catch Bay did in the 7th, which backed up the great bailout work by Manny Delcarmen and set the scene for his own homer heroics.

I've liked Bay from the get-go and haven't missed Manny one iota. Don't know about you, but I always disliked the dilemma posed by Manny's presence on the Red Sox. I found him to be a compromise of one's values. Does greatness ever outweigh character?

Cash & Carry

2009-04-23T19:30:00.003-04:00

The Red Sox and Yankees meet tonight for the first time this season, but we here on the Nation-Empire frontline know the 2009 series began Jan. 6 when the Yankees introduced Mark Teixeira as their new first baseman.

The signing, coming fast on the heels of CC Sabathia and A.J. Burnett, was the final piece of New York’s free-agent triptych of the offseason. It was also made in the wake of Boston’s failed push for the top positional player on the market.

Where have we heard that before?

That’s OK. We Sox fans haven’t regretted missing out on A-Rod for a solitary second. Hopefully the same will hold true for Teixeira, though I’m doubtful. At the very least, Tex lacks those personal qualities of A-Rod’s that border so hard on the farcical.

But, dig this, we could have had him — should have had him.
That was the word from ESPN’s Peter Gammons at Wednesday’s Fusco Distinguished Lecture Series at SCSU. Gammons, sharing the stage with Yankees GM Brian Cashman, indicated the Sox went wrong when two team owners accompanied GM Theo Epstein on a trip to Teixeira’s home.

One of the owners — Gammons didn’t name names, but my bet’s you can pin this on that hub of discord, Larry Lucchino — made the face time go terribly awry. In my mind’s eye, I see “Rock of Love” and all those other reality shows featuring people with puffed-up body parts.

“There was definite friction in the meeting room,” Gammons said. “Theo, who is a good people-person, was not pleased with how that meeting went.”
The implication was Tex would be a Sox had Epstein flown solo.

Instead, there was Cashman, swooping in and picking up the very guy he was gaga about from the beginning, but had to cool his jets while locking up the pitching the Steinbrenners coveted first and foremost.
“We weren’t after Tex all winter, which is why people were so shocked,” said Cashman. “We were shocked.”

This story, just like the A-Rod story and the “Bernie Williams almost went to the Red Sox” story, are easy to take when heard through the lovely white noise of Boston’s 2004 and 2007 World Championships, which stand like a massive fulcrum between the modern day and the Yankee dynasties of yesteryear.

That’s a reality Cashman readily acknowledges. He’s spoken twice in these parts this year — the Middlesex Chamber event in February being the first — and while it’s clear he’s a sharp, shrewd dude who cloaks much behind a public persona of tact, graciousness and self-deprecation, Cashman has the confidence to call it like it is. As the bearer of four World Series rings, he’s got the cache to do so.

And here’s what he said Wednesday about the Red Sox as he twiddled one of those rings:
“Even the years we won these, Boston was always on our heels. Because we won World Championships, people forgot how tough they made it.”

Now, under the Henry-Epstein regime, the Sox have the Yanks playing catch-up, following their model of preserving picks, drafting well, developing talent, building from within and mortaring with select free agents rather than relying on them so heavily, a trap into which the Yankees fell in the middle years of the decade.

“You gravitate to programs that consistently put out a winning product and you try to learn from it, even if it’s your hated rival,” Cashman said. “They’re doing a fantastic job, but we’re trying to close the gap.”

This weekend will provide some measure of Yankee progress.
So far, it’s mixed. Burnett has been solid, Sabathia hit or miss and Teixeira slow out of the gate. I’ll be honest, after watching Teixeira in last year’s ALDS, admiring his great range in the field and exceptional eye at the plate, I hoped the Sox would land him even though it would have meant parting with the highly admirable Mike Lowell. Wish I was in that room with Theo.

Some other highlights from Wednesday’s gig at SCSU:

- It was well attended. Most of the Lyman Performing Arts Center’s semi-circular auditorium was filled, though the far wings were as empty as the four-figure ringside seats at the new Yankee Stadium.
Cashman was asked about that and deferred. “I’m the director of spending, not the director of revenue.”
He did maintain that, overall, 50 percent of tickets are still at same price they were in the old Stadium.

- An increase in home runs is another matter: 26 in the first six games at the new Stadium, with 17 to right field. “It’s something we have to keep our eye on because the numbers don’t lie,” said Cashman, who did note the early returns comprise only a small statistical population.

- Re: Statistics. “Moneyball” came up and Cashman, a numbers guy by reputation, advocated blending the new statistical approaches with old-school player evaluation.
“What the explosion of Moneyball did was illustrate how important it is to acquire as much information as you can, because your eyes can deceive you sometimes,” he said. “We don’t (rely) solely on that stuff because it’s still about scouting the tools of the player.”

It seemed a case of Cashman playing it down the middle for public consumption. After all, a Moneyball mentality lay behind the acquisition of Nick Swisher. Last year, with the White Sox, Swisher batted only .214. Yet other numbers — line drives, putting balls in play — were consistent with previous seasons.
“The guy was unlucky, in our opinion. We think last year was an aberration,” said Cashman, as assessment so far borne out by Swisher’s performance.

Cashman also noted how technology dovetails with statistical analysis. Exhibit A: Chien Ming-Wang’s early struggles. In the past, a coaching staff could only speculate and try to discern from video if a pitcher’s arm angle had changed. Now they can actually measure it. The Yankees found Wang’s has risen by five inches.

- Carl Pavano’s name came up. Cashman was talking about how he’s learned to have a thick skin in the New York media market. It’s the kind of glare, he said, that magnifies mistakes that create little buzz in other markets.
“Carl Pavano played loud in New York. He got hurt for four years. Mike Hampton got hurt (in Atlanta) for four years, but you didn’t hear much about it while you heard about Carl east and west.”

- On steroids and A-Rod admitting he once used them: “We’ve gone through a generation in this game that made big mistakes. It’s now up to everyone in the game, including those who made the mistakes, to get it back on track.”

- Recovery was a recurrent theme. Gammons talked about the aneurysm he suffered in 2006. On the first day he came to in the hospital, a FedEx package arrived. Inside was a chain medallion with a cross sent by Don Mattingly, sent in hopes that it would keep Gammons alive. Gammons hasn’t taken it off since.

I'm Digging It

2009-04-20T00:24:00.050-04:00

Listened to Sunday's 2-1 win over Baltimore on the radio while toiling in the garden.
Naturally, it occured to me: Listening to baseball on the radio speaks volumes about advancing age.

But now, hours later, listening to Wilco, which speaks volumes about enduring taste, a deeper thought surfaces: The Sox season so far is an awful lot like that soil I worked this afternoon.

And that's good news, because the backyard patch is coming together quickly.

Real ratty-ass to begin with. Leaves and assorted autumnal debris gouged into gullies scoured by winter's icy runoff. The wear and tear of the seasons hits the hips and hydrangeas with equal vengeance. All you can do is get out the sharp instruments, prune here, prune there and get ready for the new buds of spring.

But spring we know to be fickle, at least in the early going. It takes a while to get rolling. But once you grab a shovel, dig around, get a little dirty, mix things up and rake it out nice, a 2-6 dust bowl suddenly seems ready for the first wave of pole beans.

Brethren, today we saw the return to form of Johan Lester.
On this homestand, we have seen the return of the heavy lumber and that old Fenway magic. Once we got a few back in the bottom of the second after falling behind 7-0 on Friday, who among us didn't say, "Shoot, bro, there's still a lot of baseball left to be played in this one; grab me another frosty."

Youk is an absolute felon with the bat (hopefully it's contagious and will infect Papi), the bullpen is an absolute force (with Javier Lopez the only suspect link at this juncture) and our defense wins us games others lose (again, witness Friday night).

Weirdly enough, considering where we were when the season dawned, the prime concern is starting pitching. What are we going to get? Hardly sold on Penny. Who could possibly be? The Diceman?

But this is rich man crying poor, or at least I hope so. Smoltz looms as a nice pocket kicker, not to mention Clay Buchholz. If Ramon Ramirez and Okie and Delcarmen are consistent set-up guys, Masterson becomes more and more viable as a starter.

We'll see how he does today. Based on the long outing in Oakland, you've got to expect good things, especially if the slider's movin' and groovin'.

Just throwing seeds here in April.
Space two inches apart in rows two feet apart, thin to 6-8 inches.
That's what the instructions on the packets say like so many scouting reports. Sun and rain bring more to bear, and the best gardens bear deep into October. Here in April, it's enough to say the soil's shaping up fine.

Pacific Pacifier

2009-04-15T22:42:00.051-04:00

I'm on vacation this week, tending to a lot of baby stuff. Settled on a pediatrician this morning and got some tips tonight in childbirth class on how to soothe a crying baby.

In between, in the vast nursery of Red Sox Nation, Ol' Timmah Wakefield demonstrated his own particular technique. Seven-plus innings of no-hit ball in Oakland to cap the West Coast swing. He didn't just eat up the innings, he ate up the A's.

And so an A+ for Ol' Timmah.
Just what the doctor ordered for our struggling club.
That and the six-run eighth inning. Did we actually bat around? String together a long two-out rally?

Perhaps today's win, coupled with a nice long upcoming homestand, will be the catalyst that reverses the 2-6 start. (Though I am tempted to posit the recovery started with the great relief work of Justin Masterson and the bullpen in Tuesday's 12-inning loss. Finally, something consistently good.)

In the big picture, the biggest downside to the West Coast jaunt wasn't the lost games, but the lost bodies:

*Jed Lowrie, for all his early offensive struggles, will be missed. We are suddenly dangerously thin at shortstop, though Nick Green sure played a good game today.

*Revolver Beckett loses a start due to suspension from a game in which he wasn't even ejected. That's sort of like doing hard time for a crime for which you weren't even arrested.

*And, lastly, the Diceman with his shoulder strain.
You know where he got that? Not pitching for the team paying him millions, but for Ol' Nippon in the World Baseball Classic, which I suppose would make good theater if not for the casualty list that builds in its wake.
Pedroia and Youk both hobbled away from it back in March. The Diceman's woes seem to be on tape delay -- sorta like the way he pitches.

But this is just me whining when I should be kicking back and relaxing in my crib. Think I'll swaddle my hand around a pale ale and contemplate the good days to come.

Glass Houses

2009-04-12T22:47:00.051-04:00

I really dig that AMC show "Breaking Bad." Problem is, the same title can apply to Red Sox games here out of the gate. Six games in and we're 2-4, two clicks under .500 for the first time since '05.

OK, all right. We're just two series in. No need to chuck it all and start cooking crystal meth in an RV out in the desert in our tighty-whiteys with the local street punk. Our boys are showing early April ills, but who's to say it's terminal? Who's to say we must resort to methods desperate and extreme?

I'm not going to freak, even though Revolver Beckett, who I wager will be getting Cy Young votes when all is said and done this season, was on the losing end this afternoon.
The starting pitching is going to be fine. Dice isn't going to give up three bombs every game and Wakefield, even at his worst, is going to eat up innings. The bullpen is still forging its identity. Okie's looking shaky, but Ramon Ramirez is fast developing as this year's set-up find.

No, the problem, brethren, is obvious. The lineup lacks not so much punch, but timely punch. We're just not hitting worth a lick with men in scoring position and, just as bad, our outs are not productive. We saw that time and time again this weekend. Take away Jason Bay's heroics on Saturday and we get swept in Anaheim.

A roller coaster of series, wasn't it? On Friday night, with the Angels playing two days after the death of Nick Adenhart, a true fan of the Human Condition could only empathize with the home team.
"I kind of want the Angels to win," my wife said, and I certainly couldn't disagree with her.
Our condolences, Anaheim. We'll spot you one.

Then, by Sunday, it was back to pure hardball, with Revolver zipping one in the vicinity of Bobby Abreu's head. Hey, that's the potential hazard of a timeout granted after a pitcher is into his windup. Stay in the box, pal.

In the end, though, fireworks gave way to fizzle, with J.D. looking at a game-ending strike three an inning after he and Mikey Bones Lowell failed to deliver in the eighth.

The numbers are grim: Of the usual starting nine, six are hitting .208 or less. We're averaging 3.6 runs a game. Big Papi is becoming petite grandpapi (all lower case, no CAPS whatsoever) right before our eyes.

Please don't let it be real. Please let it be a momentary hallucination, a temporary lapse, a strange wander in the desert. Let's get cooking, boys, in the right direction.

The Return of Old Testament Tom

2009-04-08T10:27:00.053-04:00

It had been a while, a little over a year, since we'd last seen Old Testament Tom prowling the by-ways of our town.

But here he came again, snuffling along the ground by the corner Dunkin' Donuts like a cloaked bloodhound, then rearing upright like a wild horse, throwing ratty gray locks and polished curses to heaven.

"HOUSE OF STEINBRENNER! KNOW YE NOT THE ERROR OF YOUR WAYS IN THESE DARK RECESSIONARY DAYS? THE STREETS RUN RED WITH INK AND YOU HEED IT NOT! IT WILL RISETH UP THE WALLS OF YOUR NEW PALACE AND WASH AWAY THE FALSE IDOLS THAT ARE YOUR MONUMENTS! THE BABE HAS FORSAKEN THEE! THE CURSE OF TORRE IS UPON THEE! GIRARDI LEADETH THEE BLINDLY THROUGH THE DESERT!! A-ROD IS NOT THE CHOSEN ONE! SABATHIA IS A GOLDEN CALF!!!"

Much of the assembled crowd at Dunkin Donuts fled before his verbal and olfactory onslaught. Like I said, it's been a while since Tom came around.

"Tom," I said, plucking at his tattered sleeve and breathing through my mouth. "Tom, where have you been?"

He gave me the old thousand-yard stare, but had the consideration to lower his voice to a seething whisper with only the occasional howl that I knew he could not help.

"Have I not walked every HILL and dale of Red Sox Nation, from Hartford to HALIFAX, preaching the RIGHTEOUS WORD, since the glorious October of '07?"

"Preaching?"

"Yes, to great HALLS and assemblages gathered from MILES around."

"People paid to see you?"
"Yes, and DEARLY, delving DEEP into savings and 401Ks now worth little more than the paper upon which their values daily DWINDLE!"

Having done book promotions to mixed success and reminded of my own retirement savings, I found dispiriting envy rising in my heart.
"How can that be?"

"The midges. The sweet, swirling MIDGES that descended upon Joba Chamberlain in the ALDS of '07 like some VISITATION! The hand of I AM WHO AM in Cleveland after an entire season of me HOWLING against the Yankees! I was hailed as a prophet."

"But how did anyone know about that?"
"Because you wrote about me in your blog."

Here was a revelation.
"You gotta be f***in' kidding me."

"No, and MIND THY WICKED TONGUE in my presence! Scott Boras read about me during your 2008 holdout, sent forth his MINIONS, who found me upon a PATH low in protein but rich in marketability. They packaged me up and put me on tour. The appearance fees nearly SMOTE me dumb."

"SO THE PROPHET HAS BOWED BEFORE PROFITS!"
Now it was I who raged and foamed and before whom others fled.

Tom chuckled and ducked into Salon Sciarrino, the very establishment that tends to all my grooming needs on days of book promotions.
My very own Jayneanne was there to greet him.
"Come on, Tom. Get in here and let's get you tidied up."

"It's a new season, son," said Tom, as the door swung to. "A new tour and a whole new GLORIOUS season!"

How Do I Begrudge Thee?

2009-04-07T00:51:00.052-04:00

Rain.
Rain?
RAIN!

Rain on this day of all days?
Opening Day.
My wife's birthday.
The sun must shine on such occasions!

Figuratively, it always does. But, come on, a Red Sox win for the birthday girl would have been a perfect confluence. Instead, we have a perfect confluence down at the Portland Fairgrounds, where the Connecticut River is overflowing its banks and will take that scenic stretch of road out of my bike rotation for the rest of the week.

So, to paraphrase another April 6 baby -- none other than your favorite sports fan and mine, Elizabeth Barrett Browning -- I find soggy grounds to say, "Rain, how do I begrudge thee, let me count the #*#@* ways."

One upside of rain delays and rainouts is the time and space it allows for fun and creative games to challenge one's mind, competitive spirit and ability to multi-task -- such as Dyslexic Scrabble, Beer Pong and Bong Hit Backgammon.

But, ah, who's kidding who? I quit those games long, long ago or, closer to the truth, never could be sure I was playing them right to begin with, wonk tahw I neam?
Instead, in my mellowing middle age -- turned Hank Aaron (the ol' Double 4's) yesterday -- I find myself matching up April 6 babies with their favorite Red Sox, real or imagined.

Like my wife. Loves Jason Varitek. Doesn't matter what he hit last year. Jason Varitek can do no wrong in her eyes. "He's team captain, handles the pitchers and without him, the team doesn't hang together the same way," she says, to prove that she very much knows what she's talking about.
She's got a Varitek jersey. I think it's going to be our kid's first blanket.

An old college friend of mine, Mary Camp, celebrates a birthday on April 6. She's a Sox fan, and if I had to pick her favorite, I'd say .... hmm, maybe Papelbon, maybe Jason Bay. Not sure. She'll have to let us know in person with an e-mail response. (Shameless plug to expand readership, yes, admittedly so.)

What about ol' Beth Browning? Easy. She was something of an recluse, you know, until Robert Browning came along. So you figure she'd be all over J.D. Drew. ("What is it that puts thee on the DL, let me count the ways?")

(I actually like J.D. Drew and feel bad writing that, but it sure does fit.)

Here are some other April 6 babies and their likely Sox favorites:

*Butch Cassidy: The Revolver, Josh Beckett.

*Merle Haggard: The dearly departed Mike Timlin.

*Gertrude Baines, the world's oldest woman, who turned 115 today: Tim Wakefield, and that's meant in the best way. ("Wouldn't it be Rickey Being Rickey?" my wife chimes in. "He was with us for a while, wasn't he?" She's got a point.)

*Zach Braff, actor: Jacoby Ellsbury. Meteoric rise, though "Garden State" was much better than, what's it called? Scrubs?

And, best for last:
*Bob Marley: Heh, heh, heh. You think Manny plays a lot of backgammon? I do. I really, really do.

To a sunnier Tuesday, mon.
No rainout, no cry.

Back by Improbable Demand

2009-04-04T10:46:00.055-04:00

Back by improbable demand, John Pettit and I return to the blogosphere as a new Major League Baseball season dawns.

Visitors to this gilded edge of the digital universe may recall that I and my cherished (if misguided) colleague rode the Blog Train for all of 2007.

After such a workmanlike performance, we contracted Scott Boras as our agent and promptly held out for all of 2008.

We now return in this recession-shrouded campaign of '09 as self-represented free agents. It's a sort of precursor to law school, should our careers as Captains of the Keyboard Cursor go the way of all flesh and industry.

Anticipating no bailout to be coming our way, John and I are looking forward to the new season. His team has followed its business model and thrown gobs of money at big-ticket free agents. My team has followed its business model of cultivating home-grown talent and taking low-risk, free-agent gambles.

His team has a brand new ballpark. My team has the same old Fenway, bane of the obese.

It will be another neck-and-neck run to October, the advances of the Tampa Rays not withstanding.
The Yankees will be strong because, for all the Monopoly money they threw around in the offseason, they spent it far more wisely than previously this decade. Their starting rotation is alarmingly good.

But so is Boston's. Josh Beckett, the right-handed equivalent of Chianti Classico, is due for another vintage odd-numbered year.

Jon Lester has proven his mettle. He beat cancer. Nothing that steps foot in a batter's box is half as daunting.

Then there's Dice-K, who somehow manages to win games.
(In the spirit of full disclosure -- a little something I picked up in pre-law class -- I must confess here and now that I cannot and will not watch Dice pitch, for he has engendered in me anxiety disorders and bladder-control issues that manifest themselves only .... when ..... he ...... takes ........ the .......... ............ mound.)

That's a Big 3, the sort of trio that can dictate a postseason series.
Should Brad Penny pan out, it's a Fab Four.
John Smoltz lies in wait as a sort of fifth Beatle (a la Billy Preston, not Pete Best).

Out of long-earned respect, I'll withhold comment on Tim Wakefield.

With the everyday players, there are three critical issues:
1. David Ortiz: More Achy Breaky Papi or a full return to Big Papi?
2. Mike Lowell's hip. We cannot have another replay of "Torn and Frayed" or, as was proven in last year's postseason, our offense will be Exiled on Lansdowne Street. (Obligatory Stones quota met; commission can be remitted to the Home Office).
3. The development of Jacoby Ellsbury and, perhaps more critically, Jed Lowrie.

Tomorrow Never Knows, but it will be telling. Ipso facto, I'll be watching.