Bambino's Curse

Rock 'em, Sock 'em, Red Sox.

Of this I have no doubt:

"You haven't seen anything yet from this lineup. We're going to heat up." — Kevin Millar

And leave to this guy to be the one going caliente first.

"My wife, my mom, and kids were here. I wasn't looking for nothing [for a pitch]. I just wanted to see the ball and drive it." — Manny Ramirez

(Short post today. Spent the morning being a good citizen and writing all of my Members of Congress over an issue that is eating a hole in my gut. Always makes me feel better afterwards.)

Bloggus Interruptus

Sorry, have to cut this short today. All is well, I'm just running way late due to logistics. May try to get something substantive written later today.

Meanwhile, I'm disappointed as all heck in Derek Lowe, as I assume you are as well.

Is there anything positive we can spin on this latest disastrous outing?

.600 Ball

I have to agree with the character Bill from the Soxaholix strip today when he says,

OK, 40 games in, playing .600 ball, first place … and all this without two huge offensive weapons. Gotta tell ya, I'm real enthused with these results.

We really have nothing to complain about. Well, sure, we can still worry a bit: When oh when are we ever going see Trot Nixon and Nomar Garciappara in the lineup again?

Regular SoSH poster "Eric Van" concludes:

I'm gonna call it right now: you'll see Carlos Beltran in a Red Sox uni this year before you see Trot Nixon or Nomar Garciaparra.

Plausible?

Meanwhile, I can't think of a time in my Red Sox fan life when a single player's return from the DL was so nebulous, let alone two players simultaneously, let alone two huge impact players. Can you?

Damn, it's easier to get information out of a tight-lipped White House than it is the lyrical little bandbox on Yawkey Way.

It's a Family Affair

This is too good to leave buried in the comments:

Beth:
i wasn't able to watch the game b/c i had to work but during a break i listened to the sox half of the second inning. ortiz was on second base. (i could be wrong, the details are fuzzy). mueller scored him, gaby popped up, belli moved mueller to third, and then poke took the plate.…

and i literally, sitting right there in my car in front of a bunch of people, closed my eyes and pictured pokey getting a base hit. i pictured the ball rolling into the right-field corner of fenway since i don't know what the devil rays' stadium looks like. i sat there and meditated really, really hard on that ball coming off pokey's bat and rolling along through right to the corner. i thought about that till i could clearly picture it as if it had already happened.

when i opened my eyes, pokey had hit. to left field, not to right, but it was a base hit grounder, just as i'd pictured otherwise.

Nfld Sox Fan:
wow, beth. How about this - I had the game on MLB.tv and had just let our dog out to do her business. I was watching the dog through the patio door, while also seeing the reflection of the monitor in the patio door. A left-handed image of Pokey stroked a base-hit to left field (and then ran to what appeared to be third base)... maybe I was positively visualizing that Pokey was a switch-hitter and stroked a triple.

In any case, we were both on at least a *similar* wave-length.

Fantastic!

I had the game on, but wasn't able to give it my full attention. We had a bit of a family emergency involving my wife, which left me in charge of stately Cossette Manor on my own. I was and still am a tad distracted.

But this trumps me in the hectic family related business department:

Wakefield, 37, made the 400th appearance of his resilient career after a chaotic three days in which he traveled from Toronto to Boston for the delivery, drove Stacy and the baby home, then rushed to Florida to rejoin the team.…

Wakefield allowed only one run on three hits and a pair of walks, but he readily confessed he needed all the help he could get from Doug Mirabelli, his catcher and close friend.

"I told Doug before the game he was going to have to help me out because my mind wasn't really there," said Wakefield, who improved to 3-2 with a 3.31 ERA while he lowered the batting average he has allowed opponents to .203 (Hohler, Globe).

This is a bit old news as it was posted yesterday, but have you read all the talk at Boston Dirt Dogs (scroll down) re Manny still on the trading block and V-Tek and D-Lowe both seen as over-rated by unnamed MLB execs?

Combine that with Silverman's piece suggesting that Nomar is gone after this season for certain, and we better prepare ourselves for some new faces and relish the current ones while they are still Red Sox.

Off Day

If the Red Sox can finally get a day off, why not the Red Sox bloggers?

With that said, I'm kicking back today and going off topic.

Over the weekend I broke down and bought a set of pricey Bose headphones. Yeah, I probably could have found something of comparable quality at less expense if I'd shopped around a bit, but this was purely an impulse purchase. (You've got to have the occasional impulse purchase just to shake things up a bit.)

So I was in audio heaven all day at work yesterday. The improvement in sound quality over my previous, $20 Jensen phones is remarkable.

When I get into work, I'm going to fire up Bizet's Carmen with Maria Callas and see how that does.

Meanwhile, if you're able to stream audio at your job, I highly recommend tuning into "Jonesy’s Juke Box" on 103.1 FM out of Los Angeles at 3p.m. (EDT). The "Jonesy" in the show's title is Steve Jones, founder and guitarist for a little rock and roll band from the late 70s known as the Sex Pistols (perhaps you've heard of them?) It's a great show. Not only does he spin some fantastic tunes, but he also fills the space between songs with all sorts of whacky stuff (in a thick Cockney accent) including some really cool stories from his very entertaining life.

That's it. Tampa Bay tonight. This means, of course, I'll have to call MLB.com to get the "secret code" to watch the game on MLB.TV, as MLB thinks my home computer is located in Tampa, Florida.

As Welcome as an Outhouse Breeze

Finally, an off day for the Red Sox. Time for all of us to take a deep breath and chill. Meanwhile, the Boston media is chomping at the bit to go all gloomy.

It may be too early to issue a "Mayday!" distress call, but for the Red Sox, the second month of the season has been full of malaise days (Horrigan, Herald).

Clever. It may be too early to start saying "Mayday!" but that won't stop Jeff Horrigan from slipping the word into the first graf of his game story.

Too continue the metaphor, while I don't think the team is taking on more seawater than the bilge pumps can handle, there are a few dorsal fins swimming around us, and I keep scanning the horizon hoping the Coast Guard cutters named Nomar and Trot will arrive and help get us to port.

I feel like I'm in that Smiths song:

When you say it's gonna happen now
Well, when exactly do you mean?
See, I've already waited too long …

How soon is now? Nomar first week of June? And Trot?

Related, I feel like I was part of web baseball writing/reporting history, when Steve Silva of BDD used postings from this blog to reference previous scoops he's gotten correct over the years in defending his credibility over the Nomar Achilles' sheath story that he broke. Congrats to Steve for doing it yet again, and for having the huevos to fend of his attackers in the traditional media over the story.

So Clemens continues to roll. Didn't get the win, but pitched great. Can't say I'm surprised. I knew Texas would be good for him. It's where he's always belonged. Boston, Toronto, New York were just temporary stops on his journey to the Lone Star state. I know this will come as blasphemy to those of you from New England who feel strongly that you're living in the center of the world and wouldn't ever imagining putting down roots anywhere else, but Texas is a special place. I wouldn't say it's for everyone, but if one is predisposed to it, Texas gets in your blood and won't ever get out.

"We feel what we saw, become what we perceived."

The title above is a quote from the baseball sage A. Bartlett Giamiatti when he writes of what it is that attracts the spectator to the game of baseball.

When Kevin Youkilis, called up only hours before from AAA Pawtucket for his MLB debut with his parents in attendance, crushed Pat Hentgen's first-pitch changeup into the second deck in left field in the fourth inning, I felt that special rush that only baseball gives me.

It is a sensation not merely of winning, for the lesson of life is that you cannot win, no matter how hard you work, but of fully playing: as the gods must play, as whoever is not us—call it the Deity or History or whatever is Untrammeled—must play, complete, coherent, freely fulfilling the anticipated fullness of freedom ("Take Time for Paradise").

And if that isn't enough, there's the unexpected, the quintessence of the ironic, in seeing the prospect branded as the "Greek God of Walks" by Michael Lewis in Moneyball, baptizing his entrance to the Show with a homerun rather than a base on balls.

But, as this is baseball, the moment is fleeting …there's another game to play today and we know not how "the superior forces you cannot control at all must play, as the wind must play with the sun and flowers again on a soft spring day" (Giamatti).