Bambino's Curse

Crabgrass Time

We live in the so-called "age of irony", right? So if I tell you, then, that the moving company we hired calls themselves "On Time Movers," you know what's coming next. I don't even need to say more, do I? I will say this, though, if I were to rename this particular moving company it might go something like this, "We'd be on time if we had any sense of where anything is." My parting words to the movers, "If you're in the moving business, it might be helpful to, you know, have a sense of the major roads and such. Maybe invest in, say, a map, for instance? I'm just sayin' …"

Oh, had every intention of posting yesterday (had it all outlined on a post it from the night before and everything) but, alas, Sprint was very literal in saying they'd disconnect my service on the 29th, as when I awoke at 4am to get the long day started, I had no DSL and no phone. No problem, I though, the movers will be here by 9am and I'll do the post when they're done in the afternoon. Heh heh.

Ever onward. No looking back.

I'm of one mind with Massarotti when he writes this morning,

For all of the emphasis placed on deadline maneuvers, the reality is that the fate of most teams is determined long before the late-season acquisitions. The Chicago White Sox [stats, schedule] obtained Carl Everett and Roberto Alomar in the July 2003 deadline, but the White Sox missed the playoffs. Meanwhile, the 2002 Anaheim Angels did nothing as July 31 passed, yet the club went on to win the World Series.

No trade. No problem. Though the conventional wisdom is that something will need to be done to replace

And it appears that The Mullet Show will not be coming to Broadway.

Schilling's loss on Wednesday in Baltimore was a bummer, and Nixon going on the DL indefinitely with a Grade 2 tear in his left quadriceps makes me want to pout, and all the suspensions doled out for the A-Brawl are going to make August a humid slog that will test our composure … Still, I feel OK, even better than OK, really.

Of course, I'm thinking wild card these days, so my budding hopes during Spring have already wilted and passed. Time now to be like the stalwart weed in your lawn: no matter drought, rain, hot, cold, herbicide, it perseveres.

Oh, almost forgot to mention: Great thanks are in order to Annette who, after my "blister post" on Wednesday, suggested in the comments that I try those special, gel filled blister bandages. What a fantastic product! By that afternoon I was able to walk somewhat normally again and yesterday I actually forgot I had the blisters during the move. My only criticism is that they claim on the box that they can remain on for days, but that hasn't been the case for me. But that's a minor complaint considering how much pain these things have saved me.

The Rain and the Pain

Sometimes the rain is your friend … Remember Travis's famous quote from Taxi Driver?

All the animals come out at night... Someday a real rain will come and wash all this scum off the streets.

Now I'm not implying that the Red Sox are scum (though sometimes they do play as if they were rehearsing for just such a role in noir 70s film), but certainly when "they're trailing, 4-2, in the third inning and their starting pitcher, Tim Wakefield, remains hampered by a shoulder injury he suffered when he was struck by a line drive July 17 in Anaheim, Calif." (Hohler), a rain out is good, cleansing kind of thing.

Elsewhere, as you're considering trade rumors, many of which involve pitching, consider this bit statistical analysis from, of all places, the Motley Fool financial investing website (hat tip to Chris O'Donnell for the link):

It's easy to get wrapped up in the aura of the All-Star and ignore the journeyman, but it's important to remember we're paying for future performance, not what was accomplished the last few years ("On Pitchers and Investing"). 

Now, off topic, I present to you "While I'll never make fun of Derek Lowe's blisters ever again" (alternatively, "More proof that I'm an idiot").

Last night I made the mistake of walking the dog in my nicer, leather sandals as opposed to my more kind to the feat Tiva's or my Nike running shoes. And instead of just a quick walk, I figured I'd give the dog one last long, aggressive walk … To make a long story short I got about half way out (of course) when the pain started to kick in, but even then I didn't think it was as bad as it turned out.

I got home, wincing in agony, and removed my sandals to find that, on EACH foot, I'd worked off about a two inch square piece of skin right on the ball of each foot, exposing raw, tender, red and weeping flesh underneath.

I think this situation was made worse by the fact that I was in water (pool, ocean, spa) so much last week that my normally hard/calloused bottom of foot skin was softer and more pliable and more likely to be hurt.

I managed to peel the skin back over each wound and went to bed last night pretty much unable to walk. This morning it's a better but still not good. I'd be OK for a normal day, but, [expletive] it all, moving is the worst case scenario. I injured the part of the foot that receives ALL the weight of the body.

I'm so screwed. I can withstand the pain for about 5 mins then I have to stop and sit. Then I do it all over again. My only solace is that today is just a partial, one or two loads in the SUV moves, the big stuff won't come until tomorrow. There's a slim chance I'll be able to walk without the brain paralyzing pain by then.

A Midsummer Night's Dream

This is what you want to read on the Baltimore beat:

A largely pro-Red Sox crowd of 42,113 at Oriole Park at Camden Yards saw the visitors -- fresh off an emotional series win against the rival New York Yankees -- torch Bedard (4-5) for seven hits and six earned runs in 4 2/3 innings, batting around against him in the third inning and again against the Orioles' bullpen in the sixth. A steady downpour that began midway through the game only added to the Orioles' sense of gloom (Sheinin, Washington Post).

Other than the "pinch" in Pedro's right hip and my very own pinch in my left shoulder at the base of my neck due, I'm sure, to the two nights of (stress induced?) nightmares I've been having, I have no complaints.

Which reminds me, do you think MLB ballplayer's have stress induced nightmares? I mean it makes sense right? They are human just like the rest of us and we know some guys ([cough] Derek Lowe [cough]) struggle with psychological issues, so they must have nightmares. I vaguely recall some player (forget who) talking about having a nightmare in which he's due to play in minutes but can't get to the ball park in time. I want to say it was Mickey Mantle, but not sure.

As a fan, this is the kind of "behind the music" information I'd enjoy hearing about it. Interestingly, when Curt Schilling started posting to the SoSH site lots of media types (and others) poo-poo'ed this is a combo of egomania on Schilling's part and celebrity, cult of personality adulation on the part of SoSH members, but that's a bunch baloney isn't it?

Schilling continues to offer his straight from the horse's mouth opinions on SoSH, most recently discussing the A-Brawl, and reading his insights continues to be one of best baseball fan experiences I've ever had.

Tangentially, consider this from writer Geoff Dyer discussing academic criticism of literature,

… the vast majority, the overwhelming majority of books by academics … are a crime against literature. If you want to see how literature lives then you turn to writers, and see what they've said about each other, either in essays, reviews, in letters or journals — and in the works themselves (p. 102).

Couldn't something similar be said about baseball? That is, aren't sportswriters and journalists somewhat akin to academic scholars in how they approach their subject matter, both mired in a supposed objectivity that results in distancing them from the game or literary work?

Dyer again,

Spare me the drudgery of systematic examinations and give me the lightening flashes of those wild books in which there is no attempt to cover the ground thoroughly and reasonably (p. 103).

Schilling certainly seems to be providing those "lightening flashes" with respect to baseball. This is also what makes some of my favorite blogs so enjoyable. Take a blog like The Volokh Conspiracy, for instance, where you have a group of lawyers commenting on major issues and laws. This provides a perspective you're unlikely to find from a journalist covering the same issues. And while his political naivete often leaves me wanting to pluck out my own eyes, Moby, when he writes in his blog about music and bands that have inspired him, provides that same sort of illumination to me that Curt Schilling does when he posts on SoSH.

Elsewhere, you may get a kick out this interview on WBUR with a certain blogger you know. Caution: I haven't been able to get an audio feed on my Mac, so I'm not sure just how many idiotic pronouncements I make. Be gentle with me if I sound foolish. Remove me from the space of the written word and I start to get goofy really quickly.

Finally, let me close with a caveat lector: I close on the new house first thing tomorrow morning and then begin the process of moving from my rural enclave into the city (about 30 miles). I may go a period of time without access to my computer and/or the Internet, so be prepared for the daily post coming late or possibly not at all, especially Thursday when Sprint swaps my service from one spot to the next.

Of Seas That Were Open Again

I'm going to have to label Saturday's game with the tagline "Best Red Sox Game I Did Not See," as I was driving back from the beach through the late afternoon, early evening and missed it entirely. Though it was impossible to miss the highlights.

Following Saturday's dramatic win, Dave Pinto writes,

A loss yesterday would have taken the wind out of the fans.… While the Red Sox certainly would not have been out of the playoff race with a loss, I think the fans would have been pushed to the point of exhaustion in supporting the home town nine. They had every reason to believe they would rival the Yankees as the AL's best team, and instead they find themselves in a tight race for the wild card with little chance to catching NY. If they lost yesterday, I believe the terrific fan support they've seen all year would have evaporated.

I don't know about you, but that's a fitting description for my mood leading into the game and a loss, especially after the now infamous A-Brawl, would have left me spent. As it was, my whole week on vacation, sans Internet, sans newspaper, and willful effort on my part to avoid any and all baseball news, had me in the early stages of emotional abandonment of hope for this year's club. I spent many an hour watching the waves rolls in thinking, I'm done with the Red Sox. This is it. I'll finish out my commitment to FSNE then I'm shutting the blog. I can't take it anymore. I don't need this yearly frustration. Only to be countered with thoughts of, I wonder how they did in that double header? If only they can make the playoffs, then who knows? They are a good club …

Back and forth, like the tides.

And now here we are, awash in a "critical momentum."

Curt Schilling drummed into his teammates' heads that Saturday's third-inning brawl and the subsequent walkoff home run off Mariano Rivera would mean nothing if there wasn't a carryover effect. … "Hopefully, it will carry over, not just to tonight, but for the rest of the season," said Sox manager Terry Francona. (Cafardo, Globe).

Yes, the carryover effect. Gotta have it.

One of my book-a-day while on vacation reads (I only managed to go 5 of 6 by the way) was Nietzsche's The Gay Science. This is the one where he makes the "God is dead" pronouncement for which most people associate him with in the cocktail party knowledge circuit (and generally by taking the quote of context completely misinterpret it, though that's another story for another time), however in The Gay Science Nietzsche speaks directly to my Red Sox fan heart this morning after taking 2 of 3 from the Yankees when he writes of a

reawakened faith in tomorrow and the day after tomorrow, of a sudden sense and anticipation of a future of impending adventures, of seas that were open again, of goals that were permitted again, believed again.

We are feeling the "intoxication of convalescence." And it feels wonderful, doesn't it?