Cursed To First - Sox and Pats forever.

Double Negative

Wednesday night's game turned out to be a near-rerun of Tuesday night's walkoff victory, except this time it was 2-1, I wasn't in attendance at the game, and it was Jason Varitek instead of Kevin Youkilis filling the role of Big Stud with the Big Hit.

And it was a studly hit, bounding with authority into center field while Manny hauled ass to score from second. Also in contrast to the previous night, Vernon Wells had not bobbled the first dribbling single hit his way in an attempt to score Jed Lowrie, and had cut the Sox rookie down at the plate with a surehanded throw. After Manny crossed the plate to finally shove that run across, he flung down his batting helmet, an exclamation point on the victory.

I've heard it said that it has been determined by scientists that if you were to model the entire history of baseball using a series of totally random coin tosses, you would essentially get the same historical record of statistics as actually exists. I can't help but think of that when I think about how a team with so much of the same personnel can have such a totally different character so early into a new season. Last year, I grudgingly got used to the fact that the Sox were not a big comeback team--this year, they seem to have done nothing but come back.

It has been exciting, but I'll also confess to some relief last night, when they finally laid a good old fashioned smackdown on somebody, that somebody being the Tampa Bay Rays, restoring some order to the universe after occupying the receiving end of last weekend's sweep.

After it was pointed out by a coworker that my attendance at the first of the five lost games last week may not have been coincidental, I predicted that my reappearance at the park Tuesday would be like a double negative, turning their luck again. I'm often mocked for my superstitiousness, but that night turned out to be the first of three victories this week and the consensus best game of the season so far. Now, it seems the reappearance of the Rays is having a similar effect, restoring the Sox to normal baseball just as they threw them off track in the previous series.

This is the thing about that series of random coin-tosses that make up baseball. Randomness is full of patterns.

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I finally got around to editing, posting, labeling and tagging the last two weeks' worth of baseball photos on Flickr. Here are some highlights from Tuesday's Blue Jays game (click for photo page):

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I also want to point out one more thing about Tuesday's game, now that I've watched the TV broadcast as well. I was particularly paying attention to Jonathan's inning, of course, and I was struck by the closeups the NESN cameras got of his reaction to Dustin Pedroia's showstopping play. Let's just say that if someone looked at me like this:

Somehow I don't think my first thought would be that congratulations were in order.

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Way back in the hoary mists of last week, I took some photos of a game against the Angels, too:

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***

Next item of business for me in this catch-up post is a blog recommendation.

I first discovered Magazine Man's blog in October 2005, after I wrote a post about the anniversary of Carlton Fisk's famous Game 6 home run in 1975. A commenter posted a link to MM's blog, specifically his post talking about the letters he had exchanged with Pudge as a kid. I got in contact with him right away to ask if he'd ever found the letters, particularly the reply he got from Fisk. He said no, and with my usual rationality I told him to PLEASE FIND IT. He promised to try.

Since then, I've kept up with MM's blog whenever I can. I've chuckled at stories about his kids' hjinks with the dog; gasped aloud at the quest he had to go on to save said dog from an unhinged former owner; joined his substantial audience in mourning when his parents were killed last year in an horrific car crash; and regardless of the subject, I have always, but always, thoroughly enjoyed his vivid and suspensful writing.

And finally, two and a half years after Carlton Fisk first brought us together, I got an email, this time from MM himself, telling me he had some news I might be interested in.

Dear [MM], I am 6' 2 1/2" and weigh 212 lbs. I was born in 1947, the day after Christmas, in Bellows Falls, Vt...

See his post for scans of the orginal letter and autographed picture, finally found.

***

Finally, a DVD recommendation. You might have dismissed the cheesily-titled sequel to the cheesily titled Still, We Believe movie that they're selling these days at the grocery store. And while admittedly, it is all those things, I picked up Blessed: Still, We Believe 2 at the Star market last week on a whim, and have not regretted it for a single moment.

The Beckett content alone, particularly his glowing remeniscences about Clay Buchholz's no-hitter, has to be seen to be believed. And if that's not enough to interest you, might I suggest the later scenes featuring a generous walk-on role for Billy Mueller? Between those things, plenty of drawling appearances by Jonathan Papelbon and the fact that just about every game they show on the DVD is one I attended last year, they might as well have titled this movie "Baseball Porn for Beth." So if you share any of my particular obsessions interests when it comes to baseball, I'd recommend giving Blessed a gander.

Walkoff

Sitting in Section 26, Box 64 for this game, my dad's friends Marshall and Woody, my dad, and I started playing the "hat game" around the third inning. The way the hat game works is, everyone puts a dollar into a hat to get started. One person holds the hat for each Red Sox hitter up. If that hitter gets a single, the person holding the hat takes a dollar out. A double, two dollars. A triple, three. A homer gets the pot. An out means the holder puts a dollar in the hat. Walks and errors are a push.

By the bottom of the ninth inning with two outs, we had twenty-five bucks in the hat.

Save for a hit by Youkilis early on and an almost accidental single by Brandon Moss, the Red Sox bats remained disturbingly lifeless through yet another gem from a starting pitcher, this time an 8-inning, 1-hit, shutout performance from Jon Lester.

"Holy shit, boys and girls," Woody remarked as the Sox walked off the field still scoreless after the bottom half of that inning. "How does a whole team just stop hitting, all at once?"

It had been 20 innings since the Red Sox had scored a run. In the last 35 innings, the team had plated just five runs. In the last 18 innings, the Sox had mustered a total of just five hits.

This while the pitching staff turned in a two-run, three-hit gem; a three-run, thirteen strikeout gem; and aforementioned eight-inning, shutout performance, in that order.

Tonight, though, there was a different feeling than usual at the ballpark. These days, you usually know more about a game if you've watched it on TV than if you've been there in person--on TV, the broadcasters review key plays in slow motion, summarize the key moments of the game midway through, and then again after the last out. They reinforce what's happening by telling you verbally what you're seeing, and all the appropriate stats are flashed on the screen at the precise moment they're relevant.

At the park, in between the incessant cries of "PEANUTS!" and gabbing from people around you and craning your neck to see the hitter and yelling "down in front!" at least once a game, not to mention lacking a close-up or slow-motion on anything, it can all be a blur. The same was true of this game until Lester walked off the mound in that eighth inning.

I've been there on other nights when the game is out of hand by the top of the fifth and the crowd seems to resign itself to sticking around till beer sales end and then calling it a night. But after Lester left, the ballpark took on an electricity I can only remember experiencing once or twice before--a buzzing tension that said, we are not leaving here without a win.

It's not entirely logical, but the players really do seem to take a cue from this, at least sometimes. And on nights like tonight, they seem to be nudged to life by the energy in the stands.

Despite another listless effort from the lineup in the bottom of the eighth, the mere appearance of Jonathan Papelbon was enough to keep that energy going. By the time 'Shipping Up to Boston' was playing, the whole place was on its feet. I was practically jumping up and down, in between taking enough pictures to make a flip-book of his first throws from the mound.

All of this, and he was still just tossing warmup pitches. NESN had probably gone to commercial. But there we were, going out of our damn minds.

"WHOA--OHH--OHHHHH..." the crowd boomed along with the chorus of the song. "WHOOAAAHHHHH!"

Six pitches and nearly two outs into his appearance, and Papelbon was working with 100 percent strikes. The Toronto hitters were frozen by his fastball and waved at his split. He was an explosion of power with each delivery, curling into himself and unfurling with a single quick, smooth motion, just snapping the pitches out. He electrified the place.

Not to be outdone, however, was Dustin Pedroia, who in the end deserves the credit for the save. The Happy Scrappy Hero Pup made the diving play of the game at second base to record the final out for Jonathan with a man on second--if it weren't for him, the 9th would've ended tied at 1 instead of with a mob at the plate.

The crowd was still on its feet when Coco Crisp came to the plate for the bottom of the ninth. When he flied out to center, everyone sat down again, grumbling, through Dustin Pedroia's pop-out.

But I don't care if the other team's ahead by 16 runs or if he's hitting .010, David Ortiz gets a kingly welcome every single time he steps to the plate. And in situations where a bomb from Papi could conceivably do major damage or even win it, people are on their feet for him like he's hit a homer before he's even seen one pitch.

Papi walked, but people barely had time to think about that before Manny was taking his lollygagging stroll behind the umpire, adjusting his gloves with his bat under one arm and looking out into the crowd, where dozens of fans gave him the exaggerated double-guns and pointed toward the Monster suggestively. It was bedlam.

Manny stroked a single to center field, and Youkilis followed. I marveled at how the Red Sox were now looking at the same number of baserunners in this inning as they'd managed the whole game, at the determined force the fans had become, and how, even before it got there, it just felt like it was going to happen.

Ball one to Youkilis.

It had to happen. No way were they letting Jon Lester put in that effort and get a no-decision. No way were they letting Jonathan Papelbon be the losing pitcher, wasting Dustin's spectacular play. No. Hell, no.

And then there it was.

Youkilis lined a base hit, and Papi came steaming around third. "RUN PAPI RUN PAPI RUN!" I screamed, and then everything on the field was lost in the sea of jubilation.

My father left the game still worried about why his boy Jacoby didn't pinch-run for Papi. And the Red Sox have still only managed one run since Saturday. But boy, was it ever a beautiful one.

No Dice

In more ways than one.

I remember about a month ago a terrible plague swept through my office, which is just outside Boston. We have an open office plan, and it struck down people in desk-by-desk order, felling everyone for at least a week. I can't help but think it's the same terrible bug that's sweeping through the Red Sox clubhouse right now, and I wouldn't even be surprised if it was happening in order of lockers.

And I'm now convinced that some kind of super-flu has taken up residence in this area specifically. People I know who live all or most of the time in other parts of the country say they haven't seen such widespread illness in their area; a good example of this is Sam, who lives most of the year in Michigan, but was horrified by the pestilence when she came home for spring break. Another example is my sister, who goes to school in Ohio and only came down with flu after a visit home to Massachusetts.

And now it seems baseball players taking up residence in Boston after an off-season away are also being clotheslined by this New England-specific plague.

The latest victim of this strange phenomenon is the Diceman, who scratched from his start last night just as Josh had the night before. I only found this out once my husband and I had bitten in to pre-game snacks at Rem-Dawgs. Instead, we got Jon Lester, rendering my cheery red Matsuzaka jersey worn specifically for the occasion irrelevant, and making me a pouty girl indeed through the first inning or so. It also didn't help that Lester had hits just laced off him all night by the Angels lineup, and especially by Gary Matthews Jr., who hit two homers on the night.

I did have a grumble or two toward the end of the game about how the Sox had just won six straight, then I show up and they lose (Jonathan Papelbon has also timed his appearances so far this season to fall on the night just before I show up). But really, it was a very enjoyable experience, as losses go, and much of it didn't have anything to do with the score of the game.

Our seats were in a section I've never sat in before - Section 31, Loge Box 162, just a little ways away from where Pizza-Gate happened. In other words, foul-ball alley. We saw two different screaming liners plop into our section; one was caught by a guy in the row in front of us and another bounced off a woman in the row behind us and was caught by someone two seats away from me. (Drama ensued; the woman felt she was entitled to the ball that had left a big red welt on her arm; the guy who ended up with it felt she was entitled to kiss his ass.)

Between the foul-ball incoming and the many colorful denizens of the section, it was hard to pay strict attention to what was going on in the infield. Instead, this game was kind of a weird, fuzzy social event, a big crowded picnic outside on an idyllic summer evening, even though it's still only mid-April.

The man behind me seemed intent on extracting demonstrations of enjoyment from the rest of his family for the tickets he'd bought. "These are great seats," he kept repeating. "And what a night--it's like late June!"

He got only murmurs of assent, but I had to agree with him. The temperature had been forecast in the low 80's, but by the time I was headed into town for the game, my car's thermometer showed 89. By about the third inning, night had begun to fall, and the sky over Fenway was that bewitching indigo blue of early evening. The night air was cooling somewhat, but had that tired, mellow feeling the night breezes have when it's been hot. 

In front of us there were two kids rocking--I mean ROCKING--Celtics gear. They also rocked many beers, and by the 7th inning had taken to loudly announcing the Celtics score, decrying the fact that the Celtics still needed to 'cuvva' the point spread (if I had a nickel for the number of times I've heard this line in Boston stadiums...in our great and mighty Commonwealth where lingering Puritan mores make sports betting illegal), and talking absolute smack to Gary Matthews Jr. every time he reported to the outfield.

He never acknowledged them (why would he?) but it was not for their lack of effort. They repeatedly stood up in green-festooned relief from the section and hollered intelligent criticisms his way loud enough to be heard by Vladi Guerrerro over in right field. Props to Matthews for just letting them look like maroons.

The rest of the section enjoyed much more pleasant interaction with Manny Ramirez. It's true what they say about that left-field corner and its special relationship with him.

And while I knew Manny is a space cadet, I was still surprised when I saw him up close like that last night - it's also entirely true what they say about his daydreaming in the field. He is, at times, just one step away from turning cartwheels and picking dandilions out there. His shoes were chronically untied. His hat never seemed to stay on his head for very long. And most of all, he seems to hate to wear his glove - at times he'd take it completely off and swing it around in his right hand between pitches.

"MANNY, PAY ATTENTION!" screamed the Celtics meatheads.

As I said, the game was a loss, and a vague kind of loss at that. Not the best game I've ever been to, but worth the price of admission was that experience with Manny in the outfield. He also obliged the crowd with a trip into the Monster late in the game, which prompted the entire section to stand up with cameras raised for when he came back out again.

Probably my favorite moment of the whole game was in the third inning, when Manny combined with Julio Lugo to relay a ball from deep left center and throw out the lead runner at second (Matthews again - he was everywhere this game). As Manny settled back into position after the play, practically our whole section started giving him his own patented double-gun salute, exaggeratedly, raising our arms over our heads and bringing them back down again, the better to make sure he saw us.

Like Matthews, and most other professional ballplayers, Manny's developed at least somewhat of an ability to ignore fans shouting at him--or at least to avoid stirring them up into a frenzy by waving or giving the double-guns back. But even from about 100 feet away, I could see him smile, nod just slightly, very quickly touch the bill of his cap.

Red Sox-Yankees Photos

Rainy Night, originally uploaded by ConfessionalPoet.

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P.S. BTW, just in case I'm not the last person in the Western hemisphere to realize this, iTunes now has every game of last year's postseason, as well as a set of full classic games under the collection name 'Baseball's Best', which includes Game 6 of the 1975 World Series and Games 4 and 5 of the 2004 ALCS. So now you can have all essential Sox games in portable form. Ain't technology grand?

Dad's Opening Day Pictures

Finally smoothed out, originally uploaded by ConfessionalPoet.

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The Yankees and the Rain

(AP Photo/Charles Krupa/ESPN.com)

The above is my new favorite moment of the season so far. It's early yet, and so that favorite might change as soon as today, but as Papel-blog's Kelly once commented on this blog, "Every time Jason Varitek pats Papelbon on the head and/or upper back area, I'm pretty sure that God cures the broken leg of a small kitten."

The talk of the fans I know today is Jonathan Papelbon's appearance last night, closing out the second of two games against the Yankees, both of which were complicated by an incorrigible, on-again, off-again rain.

I was watching once again in Brookline, and we all roundly and vociferously cursed FOX for switching to NASCAR with two outs in the top of the ninth and a full count. I know there's such a thing as contractual obligation, but that was absolutely ridiculous. If they were going to switch, they should've switched during the delay, to give people time to, say, figure out where FX is on their cable. By the time we found the game again, Dustin Pedroia was just tossing the ball to Sean Casey for the final out, and having missed even a single heater from Papelbon is something about which I remain bitter today.

Add this to the long list of reasons FOX sucks: we already knew that they weren't competent sports broadcasters (see also, Zelasko, Jeannie and McCarver, Tim), but yesterday they weren't even competent broadcasters, period. It isn't like they didn't have time to plan ahead--the rain was well forecast before and during the game, there was more than one return of the tarp to the field, giving them time to switch, and at any rate, Sox-Yankees games usually run long. Was there any reason to force people to fumble with their remotes with a full count and two outs in the ninth inning of a one-run Red Sox-Yankees game? Is NASCAR really a more valuable TV property for FOX than that?

Okay, I'm over it. Well, I'm really not, but let's get back to Jonathan Papelbon and how much of a complete and total stud he is for blowing 96 miles per hour past Yankees from a wet mound after having to warm up and sit back down twice. With the shape the rest of our bullpen has been in so far this season, I shudder to think what ugliness might have kept those watching FX from returning to their regularly scheduled Terminator 3 yesterday afternoon, had Papelbon not been able to perform.

Similarly, if it weren't for Manny Ramirez swinging the big lumber (and a followup RBI from my emerging binky, Kevin Youkilis), we'd also probably have been looking at a different outcome. While I know the idea of a team is for everyone to take turns contributing, I have to say the continued, shall we say, concentration of contributions coming from some people and not others is killing my April baseball buzz already. Like the Bud commercial says, Leon can't do everything. I'm looking at you, Manny Delcarmen.

Still, thank God for the team's leaders yesterday, including Josh, who pitched a now-forgotten masterful 5 innings before being left in about two batters too long in the sixth, going somewhat pear-shaped, and becoming a footnote to Papelbon. Various talking heads kept saying how his pitching line really didn't match the dominance of his effort in the early innings, but to me "dominant" does not equal 3 runs and just over 6 innings, no matter which way you slice it.

I'd rather say Beckett has looked encouraging in both of his starts so far, both times busting out guns blazing in the early innings, but running out of gas earlier than usual. I think journalists and broadcasters like to use words like "dominant" because it draws eyeballs and ears, but to me, "dominant" isn't accurate, especially if you're talking about the Texas-style all-day-long-country-ass-whupping domination Beckett is capable of laying down, when said about a less-than-seven-inning effort. So chalk this up as the first known instance of me being less sanguine about Josh Beckett than the broadcasters. At least, since 2006.

Meanwhile, between Beckett and Jonathan, it's clear my dad and I ended up at the wrong game this week--we were there in person for Friday night's game, a decent effort by Buchholz in his first-ever start against the Yankees, that wound up being spoiled by Mike Timlin and Jason Giambi, not to mention a strange and frustrating game for the bats, as one by one Red Sox hitters socked the ball deep into the damp night, only to have it directed as if by otherworldly forces into the gloves of Yankees outfielders. About the only one to break on through to the other side was J.D. Drew, who clearly at this point is just trying to taunt me.

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Fair to Middlin'

Picture Jonathan Papelbon on the mound in a one-run ballgame, getting ready to face the first batter in the bottom of the ninth. Know how he has that habit of taking in a big gulp of air and then letting out a cleansing sigh before staring in for the sign? That's kind of how I'm looking at my laptop screen as I set out to catch up on the events of this past week.

Murphy's Law of Blogging or any type of diarism is that the more things you have to write about, the less time, by definition, you have to do so. This is definitely the trap I fell into this week, as between now and the last time I updated, I went to two Sox games in person and the Sox played three more that I definitely want to write about.

I harbored the pipe dream until last night at around midnight, when a long-postponed chore that had become unignorable was finally finished, that I would be writing separate posts for each game. Even once I gave up that ghost, I still clung to the notion I would be writing two posts, one for the game against the Devil Rays that I went to on Wednesday, and one for the Angels series. Several hours of processing photos from the games I attended, however, forced me to concede that probably isn't going to fly, either.

So I am going to tackle it in one post. I promise to try to keep things coherent. I also will try to keep it under 80 pages, but no guarantees there.

True Grit

Like many things have been this week, it seems, this game was a grind, for both players and crowd. Schilling gutted out six laborious innings, working out of jam after jam and firing off around 120 pitches. We dogged Eric Hinske for letting a ground-rule double go in the early innings, and then he proceeded to make us all look like assholes by face-planting twice (once successfully) in pursuit of the ball and hitting the game-winning homer.

"I HATE Eric Hinske," someone behind us began early in the game, a preamble to a lengthy list of why he, the bleacher creature, feels antipathy toward our Blue Jays import. The reasons essentially consisted of, he hasn't been hitting.

Come the seventh inning, though, that tune had changed quite a bit. By then, as Hinske's bomb came flying out in our direction and Iain and I both instinctively reached our hands up and beckoned it towards us, it was all YAY ERIC HINSKE IS THE BEST BALLPLAYER EVAR. When he came back out to the field the next inning, he got a standing ovation from everyone in the bleachers and the right-field corner, people who've been starved for a dirt dog to love on. Hinske tossed the ball back and forth with the bullpen catcher and tried to play it cool for a while, but finally he melted into a puddle of bashful grinning, which made everybody cheer harder, which made him start to giggle and get shit from the bullpen catcher, which made everybody yell even more, and it was just a big old love-fest for Eric for a few minutes.

So yes. We are total hypocrites in the bleachers. It's just the way of things.

I immediately thought Hinske had a concussion after he nose-dived--literally--onto the warning track in the fifth inning and didn't move right away. Apparently that's not the case, but that's pure dumb luck--he took a brutal impact to his face and forehead. "Laying it out" doesn't begin to describe it.

We had a perfect vantage point on that play, and that image--Hinske headed for the dirt with the entire right-field corner leaping to their feet--just add it to the stack of unforgettable moments this week.

I could, if I had the time or energy at this point in the week, write an entire essay on the first inning by Curt Schilling. Every pitch of that inning was fraught with difficulty and tension. The bases were loaded at one point. Yet he escaped, Houdini-like, without a run. Then the next inning, it happened again. It happened again and again--six times. A younger pitcher would've been pissing himself by Gary Sheffield's first at-bat. Schilling struck out Sheffield, though, and the big bat-waver went 0 for 5 on the night as a whole, in addition to being soundly booed every time he popped his head out of the dugout.

What Schilling did yesterday wasn't always pretty, but it was the mark of a veteran pitcher. Time after time he made balls-out pitches to get out of tough spots, much of it brought on by his own spotty location, but another generous portion of the problem was attributable to some terrible defense, most notably Wily Mo in left field, who made Manny look like Fred Lynn last night. Wily Mo did work three walks, though, for which I was very proud of him.

Speaking of not always pretty, it was Thirsty Thursday last night in the bleachers. One girl in front of us showed up with her boyfriend in the second inning completely wasted. About as wasted as it gets. She then proceeded to drink another four beers. If she weighed more than a buck ten I'll eat my hat, but she chugged down more brewskis even though she was already drunk enough by the third inning to be striking up slurred, overly friendly conversations with people around her in the section, conversations that went something like, "I like you. I like you...and you...and you...and you...and YOU!" She pointed out that it was her boyfriend's first Red Sox game easily 20 times, and made sure everyone grasped the concept. By the end of the game she was standing up in front of us at inopportune times, and the boyfriend finally had to resort to grabbing her around the waist and physically sitting her back down. I didn't feel all that much sympathy for him, though, since he was the one who kept bringing her beer.

Still, that girl was a little loud but harmless. She was kind of sweet, actually, and her boyfriend absolutely cracked us up--at one point, while gently wrestling her back into her seat, he looked around and said jokingly, "Please, somebody help me!"

She also paled in comparison to the people behind us, who were also drunk, but nasty. One couple in particular spent the entire game fighting bitterly over everything from sausage and beer to sweatshirts and a bag of some kind (ironically, the woman in that couple, to whom Iain would refer later as "The Psycho Killer", had a few things to say about the drunk girl in front of us after she left, and it was very hard for me not to turn around and tell her where to go). At one point there were two couples fighting in parallel behind us. Then, of course, there were the beach balls, which pegged me in the head several times. And the cold--I didn't dress warmly enough, but it was also ridiculously frigid out there for May. I wound up with my sweatshirt hood pulled tight around my face, which made me look like an idiot, but at least I was marginally warmer.

None of the above is the end of the world, of course, but it made it tough to concentrate on the game. "Fucking bleacher seats," I overheard another person behind me say several times. And it made everything seem longer--every inning, every at-bat. I can only imagine what it was like for the players. And so the fact that they came back to win last night is a real testament to the makeup of this team.

Oddly enough, I bumped into Kristen on the train on my way to the game yesterday afternoon, and we discussed this, as well as the waiting-for-the-other-shoe-to-drop phenomenon that comes along with it. Today when we talked about it again she compared it to an episode of Sex and the City where one of the characters doesn't know how to deal with a seemingly problem-free relationship. I guess one World Series doesn't totally undo 86 years of classical conditioning. So I feel the apprehension too. I keep waiting for this team to break down, show their true colors, insert your choice of phrase here. But they keep surprising me.

It's true there's a mild pall hanging over us as of today with the news that Josh Beckett has been placed on the 15-day DL with a blister (and ok, I'm calling it a damn blister, so fuck it, because has anyone thought to look up the word "avulsion"? It refers to "a general tearing away" and can be used to describe everything from violent amputation to, in this case, a skin tear. You know, like the way your skin tears if you pop a blister?). But look at the way Hinske stepped up yesterday. Look at the way Alex Cora and Dustin Pedroia have stepped up when needed. Look at how Julian Tavarez has come through, yesterday included. There's still just something about this team.

That said, it may be time for a stern public lecture for Joshua. I mean, really. What do we need to do? Take away the X-Box? I have a suspicion that feverish late-night playing of Goldeneye was somehow at work here.

To each his paradise

Monday night found me at the ballpark again, this time to witness a gorgeous complete-game effort by Daisuke, a distinct improvement over the last start I saw from him live. It seems his confidence and development are growing in inverse proportion to the media attention.

More importantly, before the game started I finally experienced another instance of my personal ballpark Holy Grail--getting to watch the starting pitcher warm up in the bullpen.

It all started with Barry Zito, on that fateful July day back in 2004, when I watched his bullpen session thanks to what I now know was uncharacteristic leniency from Fenway Security. Ever since then, I've been trying every time I go to the park to find a way to stand near the bullpen and watch again, and every time, I have had Fenway Security in my face. I actually had a bit of a kerfuffle over the bullpen-watching issue during Daisuke's first start this season as well.

Monday, though, I lucked out: we had seats in section 36 of the bleachers, and I finally found a spot where they let me watch relatively unmolested--behind the wall just over the triangle, a layer removed from the bullpen, but with a perfect view of the Sox side of the 'pens from above.

Here's what I really don't understand: if Fenway Security is truly worried about fans harrassing / bombarding starting pitchers with projectiles, why would they be so uptight about the area right behind the bullpen, where there's a fence, and not the spot some 30 feet behind and above the pen, where there's a clear shot for everything from hollered invective to thrown objects?

But whatever. Hopefully they'll never catch on. Because once again I got to see Major-League pitching up close, and basically, for me it pretty much was like getting to stand next to a unicorn.

I'm also intoxicated by Daisuke in particular. I could watch his quirky mechanics all day--he starts by placing both heels squarely on the rubber in a precise equidistant location from the ends. Then he steps his left foot back just so, and raises his arms above his head, putting himself almost exactly into ballet's fourth position.

He takes his time, in that moment, to align himself, spine, neck, head and arms in that order, unfurling to his greatest height. Then his right hand drops behind his head as he hops that right foot into a position perpendicular with the plate--an incredibly inefficient motion that seems impossible to repeat consistently, but he does. He kicks his left foot straight out, and throws the ball from a hidden position almost behind his back; if you capture him in a photo at just the right instant, he seems to almost be at a 45-degree angle in the moment of the leg kick.

It's an incredibly complex, intricate, totally unique delivery. For the pitching junkie, it's a sampling of an exotic dish. I don't know how many pitches it would take for me to be less than totally fascinated, but I know it's definitely more than the number I got to see.

Just then as I was watching, on a signal from Varitek, Daisuke threw one hard pitch from the windup before moving to practicing from the stretch (which he spent most of the rest of his session working on). I was close enough to hear him suck in his breath sharply, and he seemed to compact all that motion into a split second.

That's when I heard it again--the ball in the air. A fricative pair of sounds--first the breath: Fff! And then the ball: Zzzzzzzzhhhhh.

Golden sunlight was streaming down over the Monster as it neared dusk. It was the second time I'd been at the ballpark in as many days with Iain, my second Daisuke start in as many months, and the second time I've gotten to watch a charismatic starter warm up before a game. It was, in a word, heaven.

It didn't stop there, either. I also got to see Hideki Okajima and, to my infinite delight, Jonathan Papelbon, from the same vantage point, though those forays to the wall were much more brief. It was also much louder by then in the park, and so I couldn't hear what I'm sure is a very impressive sound indeed from Papelbon's fastball.

Okie, like Daisuke, is quirky. I was impressed most by his sheer wingspan up close. Randy Johnson is the only other pitcher I've seen with longer arms.

In stark contrast, Papelbon is all efficiency, all business. He only pitches from the stretch, that left leg shifting from ground to belt-level to ground again like a precision machine. After that, it's the arm doing the talking. Even throwing at about 75% during his tentative pre-warmups in the eighth inning, before the Sox cancelled his save opportunity with a barrage of runs, he made the catcher's glove pop like a rifle report.

I was somewhat torn in my reaction to that sudden rally: an opportunity for Papelbon to rest and for Matsuzaka to get work is the ideal for both of them, and of course it meant the Sox won in grand fashion. But my pitching-junkie side wanted to watch the ballpark light up when the announcer called Jonathan's name, wanted to crouch behind the wall with my camera, dodging security, as he made his slow, dramatic entrance.

Meanwhile, I was thrilled for Daisuke that he was getting his first complete-game, and glad to see that the Sox are letting him have his head a bit more. I still think it's only the beginning with him.

Then I got three hours' sleep and flew to Chicago, which is where I spent the last two days on business, which is why I haven't written and why I'm forgetting to mention plenty of other details, and also why I have yet to post the dozens of photos I feverishly snapped while stalking the pitching staff in the bullpen. Rest assured, they are coming--right after I conclude my whirlwind baseball tour for the week with Curt's start tonight.

The Comeback

I consider yesterday's game a gift from the Red Sox to Iain.

It was, my romantic side would like to believe, his reward for countless wee hours of the morning spent squinting into the MLB.tv feed on his laptop screen, for flying 4000 miles and spending as much as he can possibly afford to see them, for toughing it out through nine innings that were scoreless for the Sox and bitter cold up where we were in standing room on the State Street Pavilion.

Of course I was overjoyed about the incredible 6 runs they put up in the ninth, amazed at how many moving parts there were to that comeback, flabbergasted at its unlikelihood...I was many things, but mostly I felt vindicated for Iain. Watching him jump around hollering himself hoarse with the "LET'S GO RED SOX" chant, hang on every pitch, I thought it was the least the Sox could do to repay one of the most dedicated fans on the planet.

I, for one, became superstitious after having sat back down with my hands in a certain pose inside my hoodie's pouch after the first couple of hits / runs in the ninth, so from then on, no matter how badly I wanted to stand and cheer, I sat back down after each play. All until the last one, though, when I finally leapt to my feet in time to get a clear view of Julio Lugo's leap into the air at first base. It's a mental picture I'll always have with me--Lugo's bright white uniform standing out in the sharp late-afternoon sunshine, the dust still settling around him, while his teammates stream out of the dugout to pile on Eric Hinske at home plate.

I only saw it for a second, because then Iain was hugging me and pounding my back and grinning from ear to ear and we were exclaiming in each other's faces about how we won, can you believe it? Can you even believe what just happened?

If you'd walked up to me sometime in mid-February and asked me, if you had a time machine and a magic carpet and money was no object, where would you want to be right now? On many days I would have told you, at the ballpark on a gorgeous day, watching the Red Sox play, with Iain.

I have other Red Sox companions I could have named, of course, but the reason I'd have picked that particular scenario, given otherwordly means of getting there, is because at the time, I thought it would probably take some kind of sorcery to make it actually happen. And I missed my friend, who somehow should have grown up in Boston, it seems like, but hails for whatever reason over on the wrong other side of the ocean.

Because my parents are incredibly generous people, they offered to let him stay at their house, and so Iain was able to make ends meet for the trip--you could say, in the bottom of the ninth, with one out. So yesterday, on a gorgeous day in May, there we were.

Iain came back. And because they knew what was good for them, the Red Sox did, too.

Game photos here.