Cursed To First - Sox and Pats forever.

At midseason, depth and transitions for the Red Sox

If there's been one theme to this year's Red Sox team, it's depth. This has been a year of devastating injuries and illnesses (3/5 or 4/5 of our starting rotation if you count Buccholz and Colon, 1/5 of which is now off the table for good in the case of Curt Schilling, Papi, and that's just for starters). And yet now that we're at the halfway point of the season (already!?), this team is just one game off the pace of last year's club. And we all know what happened to last year's club.

Some years are just injury years. 2003 was a bad one, and so was 2006. It happens randomly, and can't be taken personally. It's also not necessarily a deterrent to success, depending on the team's makeup. The outcomes in 2003 and 2006 couldn't have been more different, and show how in a good year, injuries show your depth, and in a bad one, they poke holes in your hull you can't recover from.

This year, the Red Sox are showing depth beyond what I've ever seen before. I can't imagine another year in which removing Papi from the lineup would be remotely survivable, and even this year I'm surprised that it has been. There have been nights this year when the boys taking the field for the top of the first have been wearing the right uniforms, but otherwise are a completely different team than I'm used to, and often even a completely different team than was fielded last week or last month. One guy goes down, another takes his place. We've always talked about rooting for the laundry; now it's like the laundry is actually the one playing.

Regardless of how this year turns out, the Red Sox have already achieved their goal of fielding a competitive team year in and year out, and they've done it with that rut we've worn in I-95 restocking the roster with fresh produce from the farm.

It's hard to overstate just how stocked the Sox organization is right now. To quote Soxaholix, (addressing Yankees-fan annoyance Marty) "While you're getting wood for a washed out has been and general club house cancah, we've got a guy like Charlie Zink in AAA who is ready to step into a Majah League rotation right now but we've already got a knuckballah stahting."

And that knuckleballer, by virtue of being a knuckleballer, has already had a longer career than most any other player has a right to expect, and shows no signs of slowing so far.

We saw the way Tim Wakefield works the other night when he faced, and beat, an aging Randy Johnson. At one point in the game an incredulous Joe Castiglione pointed out that Wakefield had quietly amassed more strikeouts and fewer walks than Johnson.

That's how Wakefield is. Quiet. If some pitchers are artists, than Wake is a craftsman. What he produces has few frills, and a utilitarian purpose, even if it's only chewing up innings. Wakefield works at a steady pace, not too slow, not too rushed. It's a pace I recognize from other craftsmen I've seen, like my father and grandfather, who made furniture and, for my grandfather, little carved treasures out of wood. That measured pace seems to be something universal to masters of a skill, whether it's patiently sanding a curve into a piece of wood or patiently stringing together strikes, outs and innings. Watching Wake work reminds me of childhood hours in a workshop redolent with sawdust, country or classical music on the radio, and watching a deliberate, methodical worker with a pencil between his teeth.

A consistent pace has also been with the team this year, despite things that could have caused them to miss a beat. Papi goes down with a freak wrist injury? JD Drew makes an astonishing season-to-season turnaround and proves a decent substitute in the three-hole. Jason Varitek showing increasing signs of fatigue and age, and some strep throat this season? Kevin Cash steps up Wednesday night with a three-run homer. Hideki Okajima a shadow of his 2007 self? Craig Hansen steps in to serve as a bridge to Papelbon / secondary closer (except the other night, when he loaded the bases in the 9th and we had to burn Paps in a non-save situation, but oh well).

But these transitions from entrenched to up-and-coming are always bittersweet. I know that for every Nomar and Bill Mueller you lose, there's a Dave Roberts or Mike Lowell in the wings, and eventually, it'll seem like the team was never any different, just like the teams over the last two or three years have come to feel like there was never a time when Papi and Manny weren't in the heart of the order and Papelbon wasn't coming in to save the day to the grinding chords of the Dropkick Murphys. But that doesn't make easy to let go of the guys who became regulars in your living room. Guys like Curt Schilling.

I've gotten some messages asking me how I feel about Curt Schilling retiring, since people know that I've sometimes been one of the few to defend him. On the one hand, I'm still frustrated with Curt, because I think this writing was on the wall before he signed another $12 million deal, and it never should've gotten to this point. On the one hand, Curt should've made his emotional departure from Game 2 of the 2007 World Series the high note he went out on.

On the other hand, it's still the same feeling for me, thinking about never seeing big No. 38 tug the cross charm on his necklace out from under his uniform behind the mound again, as it was the first time I thought he was going for good:

as he doffed his hat, his eyebrows furrowed. The grim line of his mouth wavered a little. His eyes shone.  He and I both swallowed hard.

"Bittersweet" doesn't begin to describe the feeling I had watching that scarlet "38" disappear into the dugout [for the last time]. It will never be the same team without him.

Now, you see, is the time when the day-to-day gnitpicks about Curt start to fade: whether or not he talks too much, his Republicanism, and so on. Time and memory, by necessity, whittle things down from complex details to bare essentials, and what we'll remember about Curt is how he was the foundation of this current golden age of Red Sox baseball. From his brash declaration that he was coming to break an 86-year-old curse before the 2004 season began, to the October night he put his blood where his mouth was, it was Curt that opened the door to the first victory, and everything that has followed since.

Title Town

champs, originally uploaded by Drew Burton.

Congratulations to the Boston Celtics on their 17th championship. They were already one of the winningest franchises in professional sports, and have just ended the longest playoff game streak--26 games--without a championship. They're also proud owners of the biggest comeback in NBA finals history and, last night, one of the biggest blowouts. All in front of the home crowd, no less.

The Celtics Through Osmosis

My relationship, such as it is, with this year's Boston Celtics probably began with Andrew, a coworker of mine who, at times, has been solely responsible for keeping me sane at work. Andrew, a native of Dedham, is a fan of skateboarding, BMX, hip-hop and the C's. I, a native of Chelmsford, am a fan of the Sox, the Pats, and attempting to work myself to death (cf the last week, when I was incommunicado due to yet another business trip).

In addition to frequent IM-based primal scream sessions, Andrew and I have struck up a kind of cultural exchange, based on our different backgrounds and the sports teams we're passionate about.

Andrew is to the Red Sox as I am to the Celtics: he's aware of them, he'll see a game occasionally, but they're not his be-all and end-all. He and I keep each other updated on how our respective teams are doing, which is how I've understood why adding only two players to the team could have made such a difference, who KG and Ray Allen are, and--though he has to constantly remind me of this last one--their positions.

I've gotten to know the best nickname in sports--Paul Pierce's "The Truth"--and terms like fast break and one on four. Andrew doesn't need as many technical pointers about baseball, but I keep him apprised of the notable quotes from Beckett or Papelbon, the latest losing or winning streak, the latest high five from Manny to the fans.

Another friend of mine, Ryan, has also sprinkled updates on the "Celtiges" when we talk about the Sox or Pats. Most of the time this year, the Celtiges were kicking ass, and he wanted to explain to me how.

Little by little, I've been sucked in to the Celtics' world.

***

BEAT LA

BEAT LA, originally uploaded by ConfessionalPoet.

It would be ridiculous for me to claim to be a Celtics fan--to even say I've been casually following them this season would be charitable. But I'm still up tonight, watching the game. Matt Damon's got courtside seats, which means Boston's playing somebody for something big, and as SG has been known to put it, you have to rep your set.

So I'm in. Simple as that.

Whiskey! Tango! Foxtrot!

It is a weird time to be a Boston fan right now.

I'm on a business trip in Toronto, so I've only been able to piece together what happened with Sox through the blog rounds, Google searches, video clips and the breathless account of my dad, who called in despair when Jacoby pulled a Matsui in center field (no break, thank God).

The weirdness seemed to possess the whole team tonight, like when they got into a knock-down, drag-out brawl with the Rays, which wouldn't be the first time, oddly enough, but this was more than your average "hold me back" baseball fight. Mike Timlin was right at the center of the fray, toward the end, after sprinting in from the bullpen, which somehow makes me perversely happy.

In the meantime, up here my hotel room is jumping with the throwback chants of BEAT L.A.! as the Celtics play the Lakers in the NBA finals for the first time in 21 years. Paul Pierce went down with a knee injury that looked serious, but returned with a brace (and no doubt some Lidocaine) to absolutely blow up the crowd at the Garden by nailing back to back threes like a beast.

In the midst of this, I came across this classic post over at Center Field.

This was my personal favorite part:

It's official: this city is going plain old batshit insane.

And of all the weirdness, there is none more weird than the news I was alerted to just a few minutes ago that apparently Manny and Youk also had a dust-up of their own in the Sox dugout.

Reports the Courant:

Several players and coaches were required to hold back Ramirez while Youkilis yelled at him and was pushed away by first base coach Luis Alicea. It was not at all clear what prompted the Ramirez-Youkilis exchange.

Yet somehow, Terry Francona seems to know just what to say at such a moment:

"I went down to go to the bathroom. Every time I leave [bench coach Brad Mills] in charge, he either puts [Kevin Youkilis] in right or something. Coco got his thumb jammed on the [play] before. I missed the rest of it. I was trying to get my zipper up. It wasn't going as fast as I wanted it to."

Quote of the Day

There are a number of possible responses to this, some of them lengthy and vitriolic, but instead I thought I'd present this recent comment (as excerpted by journalism blogger Romenesko), from Dan Shaughnessy on the state of sports journalism, just as it is:

"There are too many people with media passes. Players don't need us." Interview access is parsed out like a high school hall pass, he writes. "It's just the way things have evolved, and ultimately it erodes the connection between sports fans and their heroes."

I'm sure I don't have to elaborate for any Boston fans on the multiple, richly ironic ways that statement--especially coming from the CHB--is both laughable and execrable. 

We interrupt this losing streak for some Patriots news

Matt Walsh has got nothing on the Patriots the league didn't already know about, the Boston Herald has apologized to Pats fans for running the story claiming that he did, and generally, there are a lot of Pats haters out there who have had their thunder stolen this week.

But that, similar to a lack of credible evidence about WMD, isn't going to stop our government!

In particular, it's not apparently going to stop one Sen. Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania (R, natch). Nope, he wants our government to fund another Mitchell Report, but this time on only ONE football team, because clearly, IT'S ALL TEH BIG CONSPIRECY!!11!!

Jamie at the Patriot Act raised a really good point about the role hefty contributions from Comcast (currently embroiled with the NFL over the NFL Network) may be playing in Specter's zeal for this particular issue. But really, at this point, I have to wonder if ol' Arlen has, say, looked outside or read a newspaper lately.

Given the number of pressing issues he could and should be focusing on at this time - a foreign war, an economy in recession - his continued obsession with this issue passes beyond the absurd, in my opinion, and into the morally reprehensible. Personally, I think the public would be better served by an ‘independent investigation’ into how Mr. Specter is using taxpayers’ time and money.

You can read further bloviating by me on this whole hot mess over here.

Terry Francona, Exasperated Babysitter

With Jacoby Ellsbury whining about how his groin hurts and hurling the ball willy nilly in the general direction of the infield and Jed Lowrie tripping and falling on his face and getting doubled up at first base and then diving OVER the ball after taking the field the next inning, and Clay Buchholz balking and kicking a foul ball fair, basically, tonight was one of the thankfully rare occasions our rookies really looked like rookies.

Tito's probably buying Excedrin in bulk these days with all of them flailing around in the field like newborn giraffes and finally forcing him into a crisis during which he completely lost his composure with an umpire over a balk call that even a complete homer like Jerry Remy couldn't really take issue with.

Can't blame him, though, really. It must be like trying to herd kittens--somehow, I feel like he got even balder during this game.

The older guys, too, seemed nonplussed by the display. Kevin Youkilis cut off Jacoby's errant throw with a nearly palpable eyeroll, and Papi and Wake were caught on the dugout camera looking on thusly:

As I'm sure I've mentioned, I get score updates on my cell phone in the form of text messages, which delivers them with a cheery BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP! about five minutes or so after the score actually changes. When I'm watching live and still have my phone on, that BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP! has a tendency to put either a cheerful or obnoxious note of punctuation on the situation, depending on whether it was the Sox who scored the run.

When I'm watching on TiVo, I've discovered that new wrinkle of modern technologically-created consciousness that is struggling with whether or not I should peek at the score while still several innings behind, or trying to guess by the number of texts and their frequency against approximately how far I am behind in the game, thereby trying to extrapolate which team is likely to be up now and therefore scoring the runs. It's fun.

Tonight, at first, the BEEP tolled for Clay. But he's young, yet.

Julian Tavarez, in the meantime...

P.S. I definitely need to get my hands on this book, if only because I was unaware until I read this post from Surviving Grady that Josh wrote the foreword. First of all, Josh, writing, whuh? This does not jibe with my IBW and therefore gives me cognitive dissonance. Then, there's the fact that the excerpt Denton extracted over at SG is the second time in about a week I've seen / read Josh wax downright sappy about a teammate. I'm still carefully trying to process this information.

P.P.S. I know it's unlike me to venture beyond the borders of the Nation, but my friend Andy actually wrote on his personal blog a little while ago about a Nats tradition known as the Presidents Race, which in turn led to the revelation, for me anyway, of a website entitled 'Let Teddy Win', which is quite frankly one of the most beautiful things I've ever seen.

Baseball doesn't kill people, drunken morons behind the wheels of cars kill people

It's sad but true: nowadays incidents like the drunken road rage that took a life in Nashua over the weekend are all too common. When something's all too common (but not part of a larger trend you can reel in an audience with), if you're in the news business, you need a 'hook' for that kind of story. Sad but true, just the fact that a drunk driver ran down a pedestrian on purpose is not necessarily enough to get the big-time eyeballs.

So for the sake of my sanity, I'm choosing to believe that the news coverage of that incident is focusing perhaps overmuch on the role of the Red Sox - Yankees rivalry in this feud, the better to have a 'hook' on the story.

The story related in this newscast says that the two antagonists fought as they were leaving separate bars. It seems the fight took place as they ran into each other on the street, and the driver of the car who later ran down the other one(within a group of pedestrians) is known to have been intoxicated. Then, the newscast points out, the one with a Yankees sticker on her car ran down the one who was a Red Sox fan, and the two are said to have bickered about their respective teams, among other things, prior to the incident.

Having left a bar late and possibly overserved on more than one occasion myself (sorry, Mom), it's not hard to imagine virtually any source of conflict generating a ridiculous, overblown brawl or 'incident' among irresponsible and (at least in the case of one party for sure) clearly idiotic people.

In other words, if it hadn't been that, it might've been something else. A T-shirt. The classic "looking at me funny". A disparaging comment about appearance. Anybody, no matter how drunk they are, willing and able to run down someone in their car isn't best defined as a fan of a Major League baseball team. Rather, they're best defined as your general "moron and / or psychopath." What baseball team sticker she had on the back of the car she used as a murder weapon is not relevant, in my opinion.

But we also have a tendency to do this in this country, beyond the vagaries and scruples of the 24-hour news cycle. We blame Nintendo when two kids manage to stockpile a huge arsenal of weapons and explosives right under the noses of their parents and then shoot up their school. We blame Marilyn Manson. We blame that rock and roll music.

If you ask me, bringing baseball into this story is just another way of missing the same point.

P.S. Toldja.

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.

***

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.

***

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.