Bambino's Curse

Cold front moves in

Looks like the opportunity for Pedro to try and heat things up is going to be pushed back a day.

Rain Saturday morning. The rain may be moderate at times. The rain will end around mid-afternoon. A gusty wind, especially near the coast and in the city. Chilly. Highs 44 to 49. Becoming mostly clear Saturday night. Chilly. Lows 35 to 42.

Highs 44-49?!

Considering Pedro absolutely hates pitching in cold weather, maybe we should be hoping for a rain out?

Update: Listening to the webcast at 1:05pm the word is they will wait indefinitely for the rain to end in order to get today's game in and avoid another double-header. Also this is the only time this year that Seattle comes to Boston, so it'd be a pain for them to come all the way East for just one game. (Like we care.) And they are unwilling to do the double-head tomorrow due to travel plans. (Like we give a damn about Seattle's travel woes.)

I'm not proud of it, but last night marks the first time all season where I quit on the team early. Once Seattle took the lead back in the 6th I caved. I didn't hang on to any hopes that the Red Sox would rally. And they didn't, of course.

``We had a couple of chances to score and break the game wide open there and were not able to get the job done,'' [Manager Grady] Little said.

… with a shiver in my bones just thinking about the weather …

I'm ready for Ichiro. How 'bout you?

The A's and Zito put the Red Sox into double-digit in the loss column, but I'm feeling fine.

"Unfortunately in this game you sometimes have to write off games and say, `OK, it wasn't our night.'" -- Johnny Damon

Yep. Not just in baseball, though, pretty much life in general.

Hey, Shaughnessy is late on this one:

The doomsday scenario [a strike with Red Sox headed to postseason] has been kicking around New England for the last couple of days since it was learned that major league players were discussing possible strike dates. Some cynical Sox souls feel Messrs. Fehr and Selig could be the Armbrister and Burton of the new century.

Last couple days? Try months, Curly. Heh heh heh …

So now I know why the local news always leads with stories like "Is your drinking water safe?" and "Your kids are on Ecstasy, right now!" stories. The more fantastic the story, the more people tune in. And yesterday's reference to the trade Manny story in the Globe sure did spark a lot of dialog both in the comments and e-mail's.

As always, I appreciate the feedback. The community aspect of this blog continually surprises me. While we are all writing from various corners of Red Sox Nation, when I read the things you write I feel like I'm at a Dunkin' Donuts on Route 1 in Saugus the Sox talk is so alive and poignant!

6-1 with a league-leading 2.16 ERA

''He's still improving. Derek's going to keep getting better.'' -- Jason Varitek

1-2-3.

Martinez, Lowe, Burkett.

Anyone got a problem with that?

Meanwhile, anything seems possible these days:

… what might happen if the Sox could swap Ramirez for, say, a 15-game winner. Is it a better-hitting club with the intimidating Ramiriez [sic] swinging the stick? Obviously. But even without his powerful presence in the lineup, the Sox keep winning, and imagine the joy in Red Sox Nation with a rotation of Pedro Martinez, Lowe, John Burkett, and the 15-game-winner-to-be-named (Dupont, The Boston Globe).

I'm not advocating that scenario, mind you, just bearing the message. But it does make me pause.

Rickey, Rickey, Rickey

Absolutely nothing to complain about regarding the Red Sox, so I'll turn my jaundiced eye toward the Boston newspapers' coverage of the team.

Talk about lack of originality, all three papers, Globe, Herald, and ProJo, have nearly identical stories about how crazy Rickey is and how good it is for the team to have him on the roster.

• Henderson's story extremely fast-paced (Globe)
• With Rickey around, Sox feel good (Herald)
• Rickey's antics add spice to Sox' side show (ProJo)

Rickey certainly is newsworthy, no doubt. And as someone who struggles with trying to find something marginally creative to write about the Red Sox every day, I've a great admiration for the sportswriters who cover the Sox day in and day out with aplomb. But c'mon. I expect a bit more than 3 identical stories about Rickey that could have been mailed in from a beach in Tahiti. If we are to believe what we read three times in one day about Rickey, we can be assured that if Rickey were a sportswriter, he'd be working a bit harder than that to find material for his column.

To give credit where credit is due, Michael Holley, once again comes up with some original coverage. His piece today on Tony Clark is revealing:

When you talk with Clark, you are transported to another era. You expect to see adults reading the Saturday Evening Post and kids following baseball via transistor radios. Clark is everything we no longer expect baseball players to be: humble, polite, and conscious that fan support allows him to have one of the best jobs in the world (Holley, The Boston Globe).

Note the the editors of the big three: hire more guys like Holley.

Nervioso

OK. I still feel that things are going great and that the Manny mishap on it's own isn't going to be a Waterloo.

However, that does not mean I'm not nervous as all hell about this homestand. The As, embarrassed on their own yard by the Red Sox sweep, are going to have something to prove. And the laws of probability suggest that it's unlikely the Sox can sweep them again.

Then, of course, there is the Samurai riding in on the divine wind Friday:

Ichiro Suzuki had no problems with Red Sox pitching. In the three games in Seattle, he went 7-for-11, scored five of Seattle's 14 runs and stole four bases. . . (Silverman, The Boston Herald).

Coming out of that rising sun we got the boys from the hog butcher, the city of big shoulders and, finally, the storm troopers from the Steinbrenner Death Star march down Yawkey Way for Memorial Weekend.

Whatever you take to calm your nerves, have it ready … preferably in big doses.

My rose colored glasses are on

It sucks that the Red Sox are going to lose Manny for 4-6 weeks, but I'm not going to lose any sleep over it. At least not right now.

Maybe I'm just buoyed by what I witnessed last night on ESPN. I saw Pedro Martinez with that old look in his eye. And I saw batters whiffing and, at best, getting little bloopers off Pedro. Even the samurai Ichiro was pushed back on his heels.

And did you see those visual callout stills ESPN did showing Pedro's hand gripping the ball in each of the ways he does for each of the pitched he throws? I love that shit. It makes me feel confident. Those are not the hands and fingers of a mere mortal, the way the fingers and bend and stretch around the hide and seams of the ball. There is such pleasure in seeing a man be absolutely at one with his craft.

I especially liked that part where they had the Pedro voice over and he says, "Well, if I threw a sinker, I'd hold the ball like this. But I don't throw the sinker ball." Implicit in that statement oozing confidence is "yeah, but I could if I felt like it."

I'm in awe. No other way to put it.

So back to Manny, I'm OK with it. What appears to be a very healthy Pedro trumps the loss of Manny in my mind.

I think Rickey will shine. I think Clark will bust out of his slump. It's going to be fine. Besides, if injuries are going to come, as they surely always do, better to lose a Manny in mid-May through June than in late August through September, no?