World Series Game 2 matchup

The New York Yankees look to even up the World Series tonight in Game 2 after the Philadelphia Phillies took Game 1 with a robust hammering of the Yankees to the tune of 6-1. Tonight's matchup is an exciting . . . more

October Baseball!

What an awesome game. As a disinterested party (although I was leaning toward the Twinkies on Rhode's behalf) I was nevertheless glued to the action from the 7th inning on. Great to see Orlando Cabrera get that 2-run bomb which at the time put the Twins ahead. Crazy ish happened in that game, amigo. !Muy loco¡

Here's to Gardenhire & co. beating the MFNYY in the ALDS starting tomorrow night.

(Oh, and the Sox should beat the LAAoA, incidentally.)

Little girl throws baseball back video

Hilarious, cute video of a 3 year-old girl as she throws the baseball back down into the stands below. Her long-time Phillies fan dad's expression is priceless (he later got a signed ball and the fam . . . more

Domination. Why?

I also thought Rivera had a chance on that ball. Becks goes tonight in the sweep game!

Yankees-Blue Jays Brawl

It's always pleasing to see those paragons of class, the New York Yankees, get into a knock-down, drag-out brawl over a stupid move by one of their own. In last . . . more

Perfection

Last night, Mark Buehrle of the Chicago White Sox threw a perfect game against the Tampa Bay Rays. I didn't see the game, of course, being that I don't normally take in White Sox-Rays contests, but I did come across the clip below. A perfect game - only 18 of which have been thrown in MLB history - isn't just about the pitcher's sublime performance. It often requires one or more huge defensive plays to keep the perfection going until that 27th out is recorded. With that, check out this clip of Dewayne Wise, a 9th inning replacement, making one of those I-wish-I-was-there catches to save Buehrle's game:

I'm sure Wise is drinking on Buehrle's tab for the next month.

Update: Ah, I see MLB's copyright nazis are out in force. They banned the previous good-quality clip from the broadcast. I put up another very poor quality vid that I found.

Baseball Infographics

Craig Robinson has some interesting, humorous, and beautifully-presented infographics on baseball and other sports up at Flip Flop Fly Ball. Great stuff; check it out.

RemDawg Audio

From the man hisownself:

RemDawg Audio Clip

We need you back in the booth - Eck's great but he ain't no RemDawg. And Don cries himself to sleep every night without you, as do the millions of RSN.

Get well soon, Jerry!

Cleaning

Brand New Day

(Just got that song from the new Target ads - "Brand New Day" by Tim Myers ft. Lindsey Ray. Upbeat and infectious - much like yours truly.)

I don't have to tell you that watching the Sox sweep a two-game series in the Bronx on a drizzly evening in early May is not a bad way to spectate. Big props to 45 for organizing yet another great event in which things were to be had. 30 pts. Guess it's always gonna rain when I watch the kids play Satan's team. The new stadium is nice, certainly, but I have to say it scores a goose egg in the character department. Of course it's hardly fair to compare anywhere to Fenway in this regard. No beer lines, if you're eager to spend nine bones on one.

The "Yankee Clipper" - definitely the way to travel from Hoboken to the Bronx.

Megabus - definitely the way to travel from the Hub to Gotham. Functionally it's very similar to the Fung Whoa but get your tix in advance and you can pay almost nothing. The poor man's Limoliner.

MFNYY fans - abhorrent in general, but exceptions do exist.

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On a more serious note, let's hope Remy has a complete recovery soon. Just found out about this a couple days ago.

A-Side @ MFNYY

Taking Megabus - $15.50 round-trip* - down to NYC this AM in order to watch the Sox play the Yankees in the new stadium this evening. Dunndee's in line for a big dime's worth of points for setting this up.

Here's hoping the rain cooperates. The last time I saw the Sox play the Bombers at their old house there was a 2-hour rain delay in the middle of the game. Of course this was in 2004 during the ALCS and featured the Sox winning it off Rivera's blown save in the 9th.

So that was fine. But let's kill the rain by gametime, shall we?

*Prices vary depending on when you book.

Red Sox-Angels Livetweeting Debriefing

My little livetweeting experiment was fun. Monitoring the #redsox search feed while I watched the game allowed me to interact with others as they were watching and tweeting (several from the actual game). It would be a blast to rig up with a few friends to talk about the game while it happens. A few favorites came out of this afternoon's affair.

Here's some ticket hawking from the game via Twitter:

@GBLPR: #redsox n e 1 need tix for tomorrow game? half price. text 7143968080 or come to sec 108 x 14

The Fox broadcast crew was making a big deal about their new Twitter feed - @MLBONFOX. In one segment they had sideline reporter Chris Rose on camera talking while he was struggling to finish a tweet on his BlackBerry:

@MLBONFOX: Chris Rose: It's amazing how big Red Sox nation is...half the ballpark must be Boston fans.

Damn straight, Rose. Every stadium is home field for RSN.

And, since I was now following Fox's feed, I got this, um, interesting tweet from Joe Buck, who was covering the STL game with McCarver:

@MLBONFOX: Joe Buck: Cold in the booth in STL. Tim and I are bundled up. And snuggling. Hard to type. I think hypothermia is starting to set in!

Disturbing imagery, to say the least.

I'll leave you with these words from the immortal Kenny Albert: "We've been tweeting."

G5: Red Sox @ Angels - Penny vs. Saunders

The Sox take the field in 10 minutes to face the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim for the 2nd game in the series, and the second in six on this West Coast stint.

Sox offseason pickup Penny goes up against Saunders. The Sox are coming off an iffy outing from Wakefield last night (typical Wake start - spots of brilliance but he started getting hit hard) and emotions are likely still running high in the aftermath of Adenhart's pregame memorial ceremony.

In the interest of poor man's Web 2.0 social media sports journalism, I will be live-tweeting this game. If such things interest you, you can follow me: @mrhe25. Or you can also check the twitter feed on the sidebar. If you're also watching the game and want to join in the gametime chatter, tweet it up!

We need a decent outing from Penny and the bats need to come alive. Glad they're on the Best Coast and not playing at Fenway in this grim, cold, rainy, crappy weather. (Actually they wouldn't even be playing because of the weather. So that's even worse.)

Go Sox!

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Postgame wrap: Sox win an absolute nailbiter. Huge heroics from Bay with a 2-run HR and solo shot. Lowell also jacked a 2-run HR to tie it up early. Pap had trouble in the 9th: up 5-3, he gave up a solo shot to Hunter to make it 5-4. Morales then got a double. Pap got Rivera to ground out and then walked two more to pack the bags. 1 out with Kendrick up. After a fierce at-bat, Kendrick lined out to Drew. Pap got him in a 0-2 hole, then Kendrick fouled off 7 straight before he lined out. He saw 10 pitches. Pap didn't have his best stuff - his location was off on his heat, and he was most effective with his offspeed stuff. What a way to end the game. Penny was decent in his first start. Now the Sox are 2-3 on the season, hoping to get to .500 and win the series against LAAoA tomorrow.

3 down, 159 to go.

(Photo from Boston.com)

I feel you, Youk. I really thought you were gonna pull it off: bottom of the ninth with two outs; Tek had just soloed to trim the Rays' lead to a mere run; Papi had worked the walk and it was up to you and your Hellenic/Ashkenazi ways to give us a win in the tiebreaker today.

But it was not to be.

Ah, well. Off to the Best Coast to do battle with the LAAoA. Late game tomorrow night on Easy Coast time.

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A note here about Angels rookie pitcher Nick Adenhart, who was killed in a traffic accident today after his first start. My best to his family. What an awful thing.

Red Sox Opening Day Roster

Giddy with anticipation. I haven't been this excited about baseball since April '08!

The Red Sox today selected infielder Nick Green to join the big club and to set their 2009 Opening Day 25-man roster, Theo Epstein announced. The roster includes 12 pitchers, two catchers, six infielders and five outfielders. Five players (righthanders Miguel Gonzalez and John Smoltz, infielder Julio Lugo, and outfielders Mark Kotsay and Jonathan Van Every) will begin the season on the 15-day disabled list.

The Red Sox’ 2009 Opening Day Roster is as follows:

Pitchers: Josh Beckett, Manny Delcarmen, Jon Lester, Javier Lopez, Justin Masterson, Daisuke Matsuzaka, Hideki Okajima, Jonathan Papelbon, Brad Penny, Ramon Ramirez, Takashi Saito, Tim Wakefield

Catchers: George Kottaras, Jason Varitek

Infielders: Nick Green, Mike Lowell, Jed Lowrie, David Ortiz, Dustin Pedroia, Kevin Youkilis

Outfielders: Rocco Baldelli, Jason Bay, Chris Carter, J.D. Drew, Jacoby Ellsbury

From the Extra Bases blog. Also, as a sidenote - How awesome is it that we have local legend Rocco on the team? And that his name is Rocco?

Very much so, the awesome.

Adjustment

A couple weeks ago the roomies and I decided to switch to basic cable. Basic cable. Cutting out the expanded (i.e. "anything good") cable and HBO/On Demand is saving us about $90/mo. For the most part I don't miss it at all - almost all shows are online in some form nowadays, either at sites like Hulu.com or the network sites - and I had already gotten used to watching everything on my MacBook. The lack of HBO and On Demand is a bit tougher to swallow, but there isn't really much new on HBO that I'm interested in (without The Sopranos and The Wire what's the point, really?). At dinner-time it's all local news; I do miss my CNN.

The big kick in the cubes will come this Monday with the advent of baseball season. No good cable means no NESN - which means no Sox. (I've already felt the pain with the lack of CSN to watch the Celts, but I've seen a lot of them this season already and it'll be playoff/bar time soon anyway.)

So I'm seriously considering getting MLB.tv. I will almost certainly try it out for a month at any rate. The radio's nice once in a while but I need to watch the kids. Looks like this evening they are broadcasting a free Sox-Mets exhibition game:



I'll probably check this out to evaluate the media player.

Anyone have any experience with MLB.tv?

Update: I checked it out in this evening's Sox @ Mets game and I'm loving it. Definitely getting it for the first month at least.

We Heart You, Big Schill

Big ups to the man who helped end the drought and bring us two Sox championships.

Take her easy in retirement, my man. Thanks a million.

Lester Signs 5-year Deal w/Red Sox

Congrats to the Red Sox front office and Jon Lester for signing him to a 5-year deal. Also, although noticed previously but not commented on, big thumbs up for 6 years for Pedroia and 4 for Youkilis. Great to get these kids locked up. Kids have heart, grit, and know how to play baseball. They are baseball players, one and all.

And very belated props to Jim Rice for finally getting into the Hall of Fame.

And Rickey too! Rickey likes the HoF. Rickey's glad he's in.

C-Rod Redux

Juicin' back in '03.

Fare Thee Well, FireJoeMorgan

It's a sad, sad day. FireJoeMorgan.com is closing up shop. Since 2005 this has been one of my favorite blogs. Aside from my friends' blogs (which I'm obligated to follow, despite content highly variable in frequency, quality, logic, and entertainment value) this has been a must-read for three years now. During baseball season, FJM's weekly breakdown of Joe Morgan's ESPN chats were the ultimate in sports meta-criticism; the innumerable other posts on broadcaster and sportswriter idiocy were just as enjoyable. The crew at FJM demonstrated a passion for baseball rivaled only by their admiration for logic, rationality, data, and facts to back up (or more often, refute) claims made by people paid ridiculous sums of money to expound upon sports incorrectly for the common man.

I can only hope that they will reconsider, or find another outlet for their dedication, panache, joie de vivre, and limitless other foreign catchphrases that deserve italicized font.

RIP FJM April 2005 - November 2008