I'm Not a Bad Fan; I Just Need a Vacation

Forgive me if I have to get away for a few days. I know you'll understand.

It's been a trying season for us loyal Red Sox fans. Even when the team was doing well and firmly planted in first place—which was most of the season—there were worries. When will Jason Varitek come out of his hitting slump that began last September? Is Coco Crisp's throwing arm really that bad? Where did Trot Nixon's power go? Will David Wells ever pitch again, and if he does, will it be for us? And what the heck is wrong with Matt Clement?

These and other questions were on our minds, even if relegated to the back while we marveled at Kevin Youkilis' painless move to first base, the unexpected resurgence of Mike "Mr. Double" Lowell, the double-play prowess of Alex Gonzalez and Mark Loretta, the absence of any outrageous Manny Ramirez behavior, the remarkable emergence of Jonathan Papelbon, the offensive wonder that is David Ortiz. Even while things weren't necessarily going our way (Josh Beckett still hasn't figured out how to stop giving up home runs to American League hitters), the Sox got the job done. When they stopped getting it done, all the concerns came to the forefront of our collective consciousness. It has been exhausting.

And so, dear friends, I am preparing for a trek to the Carolina coast, where next week's long-range forecast calls for sunny skies and temperatures in the low 80s. I won't be able to see or hear the Red Sox games, I will have no computer access (unless I decide to spring for an hour's worth of internet access at the local cyber café), and I don't plan on reading a newspaper. It won't be all that different from my similar vacation at the same time last year, but unlike this year, last year a week without baseball bothered me.

This site will be in the capable hands of my sistahs, one of whom may even be motivated to post before I get back. Try not to miss me while I'm gone.

For Jon

On September 1st, Red Sox Nation received terrible news. Our rookie pitcher, Jon Lester, was diagnosed with a rare form of non-Hodgkin's lymphoma, a form of blood cancer, and will have to begin treatment almost immediately.

Along with being one of the best young arms the Red Sox have in their system, Jon is a good guy and only 22 years old. The news came as a shock to his family, friends and fans, and as one of those fans I decided I needed to show my support for young Mr. Lester.

So on September 2nd, my friend Kay and I went to the Souvenir Store on Yawkey Way and purchased Jon Lester t-shirts. As I wore my shirt, people asked me about Jon. I then received an email from someone who knows Jon who suggested it would be "awesome" if we "could designate one day for all of Red Sox Nation to wear Lester T-shirts at one of the games at Fenway."

So I got to thinking, 'why not?". Why can't we at least try something like this? So here I am.
This coming Sunday is September 10th. It is the last game in a 10-day homestand for the Red Sox, that started with this news about Jon. I think it would be the perfect day for this kind of show of support.

So here I am, asking you all to wear your Jon Lester shirts or jerseys (which you can get at many places, but you can probably get them the quickest from the Souvenir Store in Boston)...and if you can't get a shirt, make a sign for Jon and bring it to Fenway on September 10th. Show Jon the love and support he deserves.

They say that Jon's cancer is treatable, and that is a blessing. So, with that in mind, in the upcoming days, I will be creating links here to make donating to the cause easy. I don't know where Jon will be treated yet, but Dana-Farber does wonderful work (including having the Jimmy Fund as part of their institute) and they are a deserving recipient, and will be my charity of choice. Any donation, no matter how small, will be greatly appreciated. I won't have them in time for next Sunday, but if we get a big enough response, there will be t-shirts available for purchase soon (with all that money going to Dana-Farber as well) to mark next Sunday and your support for Jon. If you plan on being part of the "Support Jon Lester Day", please email me at supportjon@gmail.com. I'm hoping to arrange it so we can all meet before the game. The Triumphant Red Sox fan will be there with me. We'd love to meet you!

Please pass the word along about next Sunday! Let's show Jon how much Red Sox Nation is behind him!

Suddenly, wins and losses don't seem all that important.

The thoughts and prayers of all the sistahs are with David Ortiz. Here's hoping all he needs is a little rest!

Get well and come back soon, Papi!

How Do You Solve a Problem Like Rudy Seañez?

His name is Rudy Caballero Seañez. The middle name means "cowboy" (an anonymous reader gives the meaning as "knight"; Google translator gives "horseman") and the last name is pronounced "Say-AHN-yez" even though most people pronounce it "SEE-uh-nez." I pronounce it "the bane of my existence." In 40 games this season, he has allowed at least a hit or a walk in all but eight. His ERA is 4.17, but that doesn't reflect the inherited runners he has allowed to score. His WHIP is 1.54, better than only teammates Jon Lester (very shaky in recent starts), David Wells (on the DL most of the season), Julian Tavarez, Matt Clement, Jason Johnson, and several others now relegated to the minors.

So what do we do with this guy? He is taking up a roster spot, so it isn't reasonable to not use him. As a veteran major leaguer, he is out of minor league options. Trading him would require him to go through waivers, from where he would likely be claimed with no compensation for the Sox.

In pondering the situation, I came up with a few alternatives. Cast your vote now. The top three will be sent to Theo Epstein as suggestions.

The Seanez Conundrum

What should the Red Sox do with Rudy Seanez? Use him only when either team leads by 10+ runs Force him to sit quietly and ponder his sins Send him to Single-A Lowell to torture the newbies Trade him and Dan Shaughnessy for a six-pack of beer Make him clean the team's cleats with his tongue Send him out for pizza and don't let him back in Hang him from the monster as a warning to Julian Tavarez Take him out back and smack him VIEW RESULTS poll by freepolls.com

Somewhere in Kansas City...a cell phone rings

(Whispers) Bronson, I can't talk right now!
Lenny! Dude! I'm WASTED!!
So what else is new? Bronson, I CAN'T TALK! We're having a team meeting!
A team meeting? Dude, you're still on the DL! You don't need to go to those!
B, man I'm THIS close to coming back!
DiNardo! Get the hell off the phone!
Dude, now you got me in trouble!
Is that Tito??? Tell him I said "hey"!
B, I am NOT telling him you said, "hey". I gotta go!
Who said, "hey"? Is that Arroyo??
Skip, I'm hanging up now.
Ask him if he misses me! Pleeeease!!!
(sighs) Bronson wants to know if you miss him.
::Looks at his bullpen::
::waves::
::smiles::
::bangs his head against the wall::
DiNardo. Hang up on Arroyo and get Theo on the phone.
Theo?
Yeah. Maybe I can talk him into trading me!




Related Entries:
A cell phone rings in the middle of the night... (Part 1)
A cell phone rings in the middle of the night... (Part 2)
A cell phone rings late in the afternoon...
A cell phone rings in a lonely hotel room...

With props (or apologies) to Surviving Grady and The Dugout.

The Cure for What Ails Them?

Granted, yesterday's 9-8 loss to the Seattle Mariners was a menagerie of "how not to play baseball" moments, but most troubling for me were the implosions of relievers Manny Delcarmen and Mike Timlin. In my efforts to make sense of what happened, I could reach only one logical conclusion.

These men desperately need some Beazer lovin'.

It was way back in January that Little Manny got the thrill of his life


and it is clear that he needs another.

As for Mr. Timlin, I don't think he has ever had the Beazer lovin' experience, which could very well explain his contribution to yesterday's debacle.

It's time for our Beazer to take one (or two) for the team and get these guys back on track. I'm sure it's a sacrifice she would willingly make.

What If? Who Cares?

I admit it, I watched NESN's What If..., a fictionalized account of how game 7 of the 2003 ALCS would have turned out if Grady Little had taken out A Certain Former Red Sox Pitcher Whose Name Shall Not Be Spoken after said pitcher gave up a run to the Yankees in the eighth inning. I wasn't planning to watch it because I don't believe in crying over spilled milk, and besides, I'd take the World Championship of 2004 over a single game/series against the Yankees any day of the week. But when I got home from work and automatically flipped on NESN, there was a game on, and before I realized it wasn't one of those "Red Sox Classics", I was sucked in.

For those of you who haven't seen or heard much about this absurd production, what NESN did is hire a computer baseball operation to simulate the remainder of game 7 from the point at which Grady went to the mound in the eighth, but with the presumption that he goes to the bullpen at that point. The computer takes over from there, including simulating the choice of relief pitchers. (Edit: I was mistaken; the simulation began with Grady going to Alan Embree.) Read here for details about the process and an overview of how those 100 simulations turned out.

The bottom line is that the most likely outcome (41%) was a 5-3 Red Sox win. In another 41% of the sims, the Red Sox won by a different score. That's 82 of 100 sims that yielded a Red Sox win, which indicates pretty strongly (though obviously not certainly) that if Grady had taken out P***o before Hideki Matsui came to bat, the Sox would have won. I don't know many fans who would be surprised by those probabilities.

What did surprise me was that in the production based on the simulation process, Scott Williamson never pitched. The save went to Mike Timlin, but not until he had walked two batters in the ninth inning. Williamson had been rock solid throughout the playoffs that year; it wasn't for nothing that the mantra on everyone's lips was, "Embree and Timlin in the eighth, Williamson in the ninth."

But ultimately, SO WHAT? Should it bother any of us that the most likely scenario turned out to be what we've always known it would have been? Should we salivate over the prospect of a dramatic seventh game win over our arch-rivals? Should we ache for what might have been? My answers are: no, no, and no.

Think about it. There is no guarantee that if we had gone to the 2003 World Series, we would have won. The Marlins cooked the Yankees pretty well; there's nothing to say they wouldn't have done the same thing to the Sox. But more importantly, a league championship might have changed the dynamic of the team for the worse. Grady might never have been fired, Curt Schilling might never have been acquired, and the 2004 incarnation of the Boston Red Sox (both on and off the field) might not have been so driven to right the wrong that was 2003. What we might have ended up with is another 1986, 1975, 1967, or 1946—a pennant but no World Series trophy, and even worse than that, years before we got another chance.

I now see 2003 the way I see pregnancy and labor—something long, difficult, and ultimately painful, but with a really great outcome. I know with certainty what happened after Grady's game 7 brain fart, and it was the best experience in my life as a sports fan so far.

Would I trade that certainty, that thrill, that year-long high, for the mere hope of having it one year earlier? No way. So I don't care about "what ifs". And I believe that if you think about it, you'll find that you don't either.

July 14, 2006 - In the Red Sox Clubhouse

Man, I could barely get in the park tonight! The women were all over me!
Really?
Really. I thought, maybe after last night, they'd be mad at me. But, no, they were as great as usual.
Well, I'm mad at you.
So am I. Man, I had two RBI last night! I could have been the game hero!
Well, I could have had my fifth win! Thanks for nothing, Mark
Oh, I get it. You come here in uniform thinking you're better than everyone else, Rook? Maybe if you didn't walk the entire damn team, we would have won.
You guys have me convinced. You suck, Loretta.
(pouting) How many times do I have to say "I'm sorry"?
You don't, man. It wasn't your fault. It was nobody's fault. These things happen. Leave him alone, guys.
Do not make me shoot you, Tavarez.

Women, stand up and be counted...just don't actually stand!

Photo courtesy of Roadside Photos

I had the wonderful opportunity to hit Fenway last night with roughly 30 people dear to me (including three of the contributors to this blog!). In spite of the extra-inning loss the Red Sox ended the night with, we had a marvelous time. Lot's of fun and cheering and catching up with each other on a beautiful summer evening. I can't wait to do it again.

Alas, all was not perfect. One of the things I am most proud of is being a woman. I don't have penis-envy. I don't wish to stand when I pee. I prefer someone hold a damn door for me and I certainly will let you pay for my dinner, sir. I am also quite proud of being a woman BASEBALL fan. That is, until I see the way other women baseball fans tend to act.

Before I get going, the group I was with last night was both men and women, with the women slightly outnumbering the men. Most of those women are extremely knowledgeable baseball fans. I have nothing against woman or woman sports fans in general, and I wholly support Cruiser in her dislike of bandwagon fans gaining the moniker "pink hat fans".

Having written all that, let me give you a rundown of what I saw last night:

• Two women (one in a yellow Red Sox hat) standing up in the middle of the game, with their cell phones to their ears, waving to the crowd and wiggling their asses.
• Three women screaming for the 'cotton candy guy' as if he were a rock star and jumping out of their seats to get his attention while the Sox were at bat, and then acting like they didn't know what to do once he threw the cotton candy to them. "Oh, we have to pay for this?"
• One woman running across the front of our section, trying to get everyone to do the wave.*
• A woman in our group blowing up a beach ball and tossing it around the bleachers while the opposing team tied the game...rendering everyone in the area who decided to follow the beach ball instead of the game clueless when the scoreboard read 3-3 at the end of the inning.*
• A woman behind me talking non-stop with a co-worker who was, seemingly, trying to get in her pants all night. There were 30 of us, and we could hear her and her man over everyone else. Color me stunned when she finally asked, "Who is the 'big name' on the Red Sox? Johnny Damon?"
• I lost count at how many women showed up late to the game and staggered through the row wondering if they were in seat 11 or 12.
  

I realize some of these, on any given day, can be applied to men as well. Trust me, I've seen my share of male idiots at baseball games. But men don't have a stereotype to fight. Men aren't scrutinized at sporting events the way women are. They aren't calling these bandwagon fans "alternative hat style fans". The major sports love to make the women realize that we are just cute accents to the actual game. Wear a pink hat, drink a wine cooler and squeal when Gabe Kapler gets put into the game. That's all they want from women. And I know all these women were having fun - and I'm all for that, I have a blast at the games...but not at the expense and/or embarrassment of others.

But the women I know, including myself, are much deeper than that. I sat with a woman last night who kept score during the game (that would be our own Triumphant Red Sox Fan!), one who wore a radio to listen to the game while watching it (our own Sox Cruiser) and a woman who collects books about baseball (Booklady, who is supposed to be here but hasn't signed in yet!). I own a pink Red Sox hat. One that has a pink ribbon on it and that the proceeds from the sale went to breast cancer research. I also probably know more about baseball than most of the men sitting in the bleachers last night. I was the one who knew which player the Red Sox called up yesterday - and why. I not only pay attention to my team, but to all the teams in MLB. I read baseball-related news stories from all over the country every morning before I head off to work. I am the go-to person in my office of 8 men to 3 women, and I'm the resident baseball 'expert'.

Then I go to Fenway and am lumped in with the women who only go because their boyfriends got tickets or because their dad gave them tickets and they wanted to try and get Gabe to acknowledge them - or because they want to shake their asses and hopefully get on television.

I have nothing against the women who enjoy baseball because of the eye candy. Along with my genuine love for the game, I am one of those women. I just would like the women I mentioned above to realize that when they act stupid in a crowd of 35,000...they are representing an entire gender of people who do not wish to be lumped in with them. A little self-respect goes a long way. Men get away with it because they are men and they can...as far as women have come, we aren't there yet.

You don't need to be annoying to get attention. And if you need that kind of attention so desperately, there are plenty of bars where you can go dance on a table.

It's slightly unfair to stick these two in the list. I know more people do these things than don't. The thing is, more than anything (at a ball game), I hate the wave and beach balls in the stands. I spend an awful lot of money on baseball tickets and I'm a very intense fan. I go to the game to watch the game and when folks start doing things that distract me and could, potentially, distract the players, it pisses me off. It never fails...the wave always starts (as it did last night along with the beach ball toss) while our team is in the field. Call me kooky, but I'm pretty sure the point of the wave was never to annoy the crap out of your own pitcher. I don't understand why fans need to do something as childish as the wave or bringing a beach ball to a game, to enhance their enjoyment of the game. I've been to hundreds of baseball games and never once did I think "Gee, this would be a lot more fun if everyone stood up while we were trying to watch the game!". No offense to Krazy George, but every time I see the wave begin, I want to hurt someone. Just a not-so brief disclaimer for those of you easily offended.

Coco Gets Props on MLB.com

And he deserves it.

Take Me Out to the Picnic

The Timlins and the Schilling Family during Picnic in the Park 2004

Coming up this weekend, Sunday June 25th is the annual Red Sox wives Picnic in the Park at Fenway. It is a wonderful charity event that the wives work extremely hard to make a success. I believe the first Picnic in the Park was in 2004. That year several of the wives hand painted jean jackets that were autographed by players and then auctioned off at the picnic. The charity chosen in 2004 was the Diabetes Foundation. Mike Cubage was our third base coach that year and he is a diabetic, so I always figured that is how they decided on that charity.

Proceeds from the 2006 Picnic in the Park benefit the team charity, the Red Sox Foundation, and Room to Grow, a non-profit dedicated to enriching the lives of babies born into poverty throughout their first three years of development.

This year they have some wonderful auction items including: A pitching lesson with Curt Schilling, a hunting trip with Mike Timlin and Doug Mirabelli, a chance to play video games at Fenway with Trot Nixon, an opportunity to spend an evening playing Scrabble with Jonathan Papelbon, personalized jewelry custom designed by David Ortiz, a vacation at a Wyoming ranch donated by Mark and Hilary Loretta, and many more one-of-a-kind Sox items.

I look at that list and think, what a hoot to be able to play Scrabble with Jonathan Papelbon. I say that because man learning to pitch with Curt is obviously out since I wouldn’t be able to even throw it to the plate let alone over the plate. Yes, I throw like a girl. I’m a total failure at video games, just ask my son, and I’m assuming any jewelry designed by David Ortiz would probably be a little too large for all of five feet of me.

Which auction item then really has me swooning? Hunting with Mike Timlin and Doug Mirabelli! Do I hunt? Only for my car keys, but give me a gun, a cross bow, heck I’ll use my bare hands if I have to and kill Bambi, to spend a day with Mike and Doug. I can’t wait to see the Camo Country episode that comes out of this adventure and live vicariously through some wealthy guy and his kid as they get to experience what I consider the ultimate thrill. Spending a
day in the country with two absolutely hunkalicious baseball players.

I hope that the third annual Picnic in the Park is a huge success and the weather is fantastic. I have to admit though, I didn’t write this to actually pitch Picnic in the Park, but to ask what the hell were they thinking when someone selected the picture below to advertise the event last year? Not only that but they are using a cropped form of the picture in this years promotions. Check out how the guys in this picture seem to be cold but the woman seems to be a bit too hot. Is it just me?

Somewhere in Minnesota, gathered in the back room of a little-known bar...

You just say the word, Schill, and the deed is done, brother.
Deed? What deed? Mike, it's one loss, it isn't a big deal.
I'm just saying, I have a bow and I know how to use it.
You should take him up on it, Schill...Tavarez is killing us.
Say that to my face, Perra!
The name's Beckett, genius!
Uh, Josh, perra means bitch.
That does it! Forget the bow, I'll kick his ass myself!
Why are you all getting so bent out of shape? We lost one game. We're tied for first place. Things could be much worse.
You're right. Matty could be pitching tomorrow.
Uh, Mike? I am pitching tomorrow.
Crap!
I don't know why Terry just doesn't let me pitch every game. I can start, I can close...heck, I'm pretty sure there isn't anything I can't do!
Easy there, rook. Season isn't even halfway through.
Schill's right. Let's all just get drunk and tomorrow will take care of itself.
About tomorrow, guys. I've decided that Manny, Papi, Trot, Tek, Mikey Lowell and Mark Loretta all need some rest. Couple of you bullpen guys are going to have to pull infield duty...
Mike, would you consider lending out that bow?

(Note from Beazer: This was, of course, written before the Twins swept the Red Sox. The bow in question has since been removed from the Red Sox clubhouse in the name of safety for everyone.)