Bambino's Curse

I Love Ya, Man(ny)

Despite an estrangement caused by his late season wackiness, I'm once again prepared to take Manny back as my favorite Red Sox player when I read bits like this one:

Manny Ramirez is a huge Patriots fan, according to his Miami-based agent, Gene Mato, and a big admirer of quarterback Tom Brady and cornerback Ty Law. Ramirez bought a plane ticket and planned to fly up from South Florida to attend tomorrow's AFC Championship game …

"He's afraid that if he goes to the game and they show him on the scoreboard, everybody will start booing him," Mato said (Edes, Globe).

Aw, shucks, you big goofy lug, some of us forgive you (and a couple over the screen dingers the first homestand in April will bring the rest around).

And here's another pleasing piece of information from the Kid's Post.

The three cities with the best sports teams [based on regular season winning percentage] are:

City	MLB	NFL	NBA	NHL	Total
Boston	.586	.875	.488	.591	2.540
Philadelphia	.531	.750	.462	.611	2.354
Minneapolis	.556	.563	.703	.478	2.300

Hmm … whither our little friends in New York City? Heh heh …

Playa Hata

I was reading Alex Beam's humorous comparison of Red Sox fans and Patriots fans yesterday and this caught my eye:

MOST HATED INDIVIDUAL
Sox fan: Bucky Dent
Pats fan: Jack Tatum

I know it's fun to mythologize around the effigy of Bucky Bleepin' Dent, but is it really true that he's the individual Red Sox fans most loathe? I know I don't. Even at the time, yeah, it sucked that Dent popped that one up into the screen, but hate him? Maybe I did on that October day, but I don't now. I can think of a few other names that illicit much more loathing and contempt on my part.

So in the interest of science I've created this totally unscientific, statistically meaningless hata poll:

If you choose the "none of the above"option, I ask if you'd be so kind as to indicate in a comment whom it is for you even if it's to say you don't hate anyone at all.

(By the way, a part of me really hates (what a hate filled day this is turning into) these sorts of polls, especially since the code is always jacked up and it ruins my XHTML validation, so this is most likely a once a blue moon thing.)

Beans and Rice (Under 30 Minutes)

So I come to the food section in yesterday's Washington Post and find, much to my surprise and delight, that the Food Network's "it" girl, Rachael Ray, is one of us:

[Ray is] a huge sports fan, particularly baseball and particularly the Boston Red Sox. "With all the success that's happened to me, the most exciting moment was when I was invited to throw out the first ball at a Red Sox game," she says. "I got to throw from the mound and I made the plate. My family was there. Pedro [Martinez, the pitcher] signed my ball and glove. It was fantabulous" (Sagon).

Fantabulous, indeed. I'd always figured she was a Yankees fan. I always figure every celebrity is a Yankees fan until I'm told otherwise. It's part of my Red Sox fan inferiority complex. (Oh, don't deny it. You have one, too.)

I think Rachel Ray, who is single and quite a looker (link is work safe, barely!), should hook up with one of the single Red Sox. What about Johnny Damon, eh, Rachel? Or Kevin Millar? (Though rumor has from a source who attended the Hot Stove/Cool Music event that Mr. Millar has been having a few too many 30-Minute Meals this offseason. Might not be good for his career to be hanging with the food chick.)

Meanwhile, the Red Sox are looking to put a little black beans and rice on the menu. (I'm referring to the national dish of Cuba of course).

Right-hander Maels Rodriguez, who defected from Cuba in October, is expected to audition for big league scouts in El Salvador a week from today and the Sox plan to be on hand (Horrigan, Herald).

That sounds promising, though I confess to having zero knowledge about this guy. I just like the James Bond retro Cold War stuff associated with Cuban defectors. (As it goes, this guy probably has an agent named "Goldfinger" and an assistant going by "Money Galore.")

Hold the Pickle, Hold the Lettuce (Giving the Finger Sure Upsets Us)

BK is back.

"We've been engaged for some time in a process that seems to be narrowing our differences," [Kim's agent] Moorad said. "BK is excited about next season in a number of ways, in part to give him an opportunity to start, and perhaps redeem himself in front of New England fans" (Edes, Globe).

You know, nothing would please more me (well, with the exception of a bunch of other things that would please me more, like a WS pennant) than to witness the redemption of B.K. Kim. Then again, it'd be kind of ballsy to come out opening day at Fenway and give the fans another middle finger whopper when he's introduced. I'm cracking up now just imagining it.

Speaking of BK, when exactly did Burger King stop identifying itself with the "king" aspect of its name. Many of you are probably too young to remember when their signage featured a huge, golden crown (not to be confused with golden arches) and their logo featured a king chowing down on a burger.

I thought Burger King was a whole lot cooler when they had the king. Was the king deemed politically incorrect, too linked to white male Western European patriarchy and repression of women and peasants? (Here's my PhD dissertation title, Labor as Theory: Figuring Aesthetic Womanhood in Burger King's Fast Food.)

And while I'm going down memory lane, anyone recall The Burger Chef? They had one in Dover (8 miles south of my hometown of Rochester, NH) when I was growing up, and, if I can trust my memory (a dubious proposition), the Chef was far better than anything McDonalds or Burger King was turning out, even in those days when fast food was just generally higher quality than it is now (with a few exceptions like Whataburger.)

The Alchemist

It's funny how often I read in baseball blogs and elsewhere how the concept of team chemistry is ridiculous. For instance, Derek Zumsteg calls chemistry "a crutch for crippled sportswriters who don't get on-base percentage" (StrikeThree.com). And none other than Dave Pinto pooh-pooh's the idea.

Yet I keep reading quotes like this one from Tim Wakefield:

"This organization has made a 180-degree turn with this ownership group of Mr. Henry, Mr. Werner and Larry Lucchino… they've made it fun to come to work, whereas before, it was fun to play but we always had so many distractions going on. This ownership group understands chemistry and character in people and what it takes to get a good group of guys that wants to win together. You can't substitute that…'' (Horrigan, Herald).

Or this one from Millar back in September:

"This team never got too low when everyone was against us and we're not going to get too high now that people are with us. We're never going to get too happy or too down. We've got just the right chemistry here" (Shaughnessy, Globe).

So are the pundits wrong and the players right? Is the notion of team chemistry important to a club's success?

I certainly think so. It only makes sense from personal experience. Haven't you ever had a job where everything just clicked? You liked your boss' management style, your subordinates liked your style and everyone just kicked butt only to have one thing change, maybe someone leaves or somebody new comes in and, for whatever reason, it no longer clicks? And from that point on you never feel quite as good about the job and you probably begin to look for other employment options? The job has jumped the proverbial shark?

It's happened to me quite often, going all the way back to the first job I ever had as a produce clerk at Shop 'N' Save. And even in scholarly pursuits I've found the so-called chemistry to be important. The most difficult classes would be a breeze to ace if I liked the particular teaching style of my prof and I felt competitively challenged by my classmates.

So why would a baseball club be any different? If anything, I'd argue that in a team sport chemistry is even more important than it is in the life of your average Joe and Jane.

One thing I think critics of the notion of chemistry get wrong is equating chemistry with friendship. Pinto writes,

I want a lot of Reggies and Barry Bonds and Rickey Hendersons, who want to win, and don't care if they hurt your feelings in reaching that goal. I don't want them as friends, but I want them on my team.

Right. And having those kind of guys are part of a chemistry that just might work. In my own experiences, I've had some of the most productive development teams be made of folks who were not at all friends in the traditional sense. We didn't hang out. We didn't go to each others houses. We didn't play softball together. Indeed, I know a couple of us really didn't like each other very well, but the team had just the right chemistry, just the perfect amount of stubbornness and acquiescence, ego and modesty, sweat and laughter…

No, chemistry is not friendship. Chemistry, for certain, is akin to what the Supreme Court said about pornography: I can't define it but I sure do know it when I see (or rather feel) it. (Of course, it's the inability to quantify it that gets all the sabermetrics guys and gals all pissy.)

Personally, I'm always trying to get that perfect chemistry in my own life. (And I think you could just as easily substitute the word chemistry with "grace" or "harmony" or "feng-shui" so on and so forth). When I've got, there is no limit to what I'm capable of as an individual who is also part of a larger group. I find it difficult to believe it would be any different for Tim Wakefield or Kevin Millar.

"We've Gotten Rid of Him and I Suppose That's a Good Thing"*

With this much backpedaling, it's easy to confuse Kevin Millar with Howard Dean (well, not really since Millar is so much better looking and doesn't need to backpedaling on a daily basis).

Millar, "after proclaiming on ESPN that he would rather play with Ordonez and A-Rod" (Eagle Tribune) over Nomar and Manny, now goes wobbly:

"They were trying to make it me against Nomar, the Cowboy Up guy throwing the white flag at one of his teammates. The way it was perceived was frustrating, like I was against Nomar. I would never bash my teammate publicly. That's not who I am" (Hohler, Globe).

I'll give Millar the benefit of the doubt, especially as now he's backed into a corner with little choice but to take a lick off the foot he has stuck firmly in his mouth, still, it sure did sound like he was, if not bashing a teammate, at least suggesting he'd rather have a different teammate at shortstop.

Meanwhile, as one prone to making many regrettable public statements over the years, I'm not about to cast any stones. Which reminds me, one of the cool side benefits of writing this blog over the past three years is that I tend to be much better at stopping to review and consider what I'm about to say before blurting it out. It's always easier to temper the written word then it is the spoken word, yet even when speaking the blog has conditioned me to be far less prone to the "ohmigod what did I just say and why did I say it?" embarrassment.

Still I know that if I were an MLB player it'd be only a matter of time before I said something that would cause a stir with fans, teammates, management or all of the above.

Relish the Pats

No Red Sox talk today. Let the New England Patriots have their just rewards. "Eskimo Up," indeed. What a great football came that was.