all this talk. can't we just play ball?

photos from Yahoo! Sports and the Boston Herald

1. Little Alex's bid for SS continues! first home run of the year! ok, so it seems he is actually making a bid for 2B & not SS. that makes me a little sad, since i have grown rather fond of Pedroia Pocket's utter adorableness. i would much rather see Cora at short. ::chanting:: Alex Cora for SS! Alex Cora for SS!


2. Schilling got his hair cut! one less hair issue for Boston. not that i want them to be the Yuckees. i just don't understand some of the hair styles & facial hair choices being made by the 2007 Sox.

3. Sam Perlozzo doesn't do pitch counts. i find this interesting. probably because i am used to Tito, who lives & dies by the pre-determined pitch count. after witnessing the fallout of both methods, i have to say... wouldn't meeting somewhere in the middle be a better option? i think Sam left Cabrera in just a little too long. just like Tito has guilty, on many occasions, of pulling a pitcher who could probably go another inning.

4. i love that Mike Lowell is on an eleven-game hit streak. and has four home runs, second on the Sox, only to Papi. nay-sayers can zip it now. =P

5. Corey Patterson made an awesome catch to squelch Manny's bid for a homer in the ninth. (once again, another photo-worthy moment, with not one photo to be found.)

6. Yanks found a way to work in a day off before we square off again this weekend. that makes the pitching match ups a little more interesting. instead of Karstens-Igawa-Wang against Matsuzaka-Wakefield-Tavarez, now the Evil Empire is pitching Pettitte-Igawa (or Karstens, Torre hasn't made a final decision yet)-Wang. i know it will make Brian sad when i say this, since he has tickets to tonight's game, but not only would a rain out give us a precious rest day before Sox-Yankees: Round Two, but our pitching would realign to Beckett-Matsuzka-Wakefield. forecast is inconclusive though. it says "rain likely this evening. thunderstorms after midnight." that could mean we get the game in... or not. if it's not going to happen though, i hope we come to that conclusion before the first pitch. (on a purely selfish level, Grey's Anatomy is on tonight & it's new. i have the DVR set up to record, because even Grey's does not take precedence over Sox, but if the game were postponed due to rain, i could just watch it live... =P )


7. i really like Brendan Donnelly's delivery. seems so many pitchers have an exaggerated, deliberate wind up & delivery. not Donnelly. he just whips it right in there. all power & business.

8. whoa! did my boys trade off The Perfect Infield for relief pitching?! Boston's bullpen ERA is the best in the American League (and fourth over all), compared to being 25th in fielding percentage. talking about a complete 180!

9. this is sounding more & more like the return of The Glass Centerfielder. too bad since it looked like he was finally starting to come around offensively.

10. i was watching the Live StatTracker for my fantasy baseball league last night. i saw my brother's points soaring, so i went to check out what was going on. turns out he has Tim Hudson for a pitcher. eight innings, twelve Ks... and he *lost* the game, 4-3. can you imagine?! ouch.


11. then there is another team in the league who has Jake Peavy. his team lost too (Peavy ended up with a no-decision) -- after he rang up *sixteen* Ks in seven innings, including nine consecutive batters. one more and he would have tied Tom Seaver's MLB record. sixteen Ks in seven innings. sick.


12. ok. everyone in the baseball world is talking about this. here's my two cents on the matter. let me preface by saying that i really enjoyed the Orioles telecast team (Gary Thorne & Jim Palmer) last night. they were very complimentary of the Sox, had lots of praise for the 2006 Sox defense & spoke well of Alex Cora. their announcing is fair, not obscenely biased in the direction of the home team, unlike some other broadcasts i've heard (::coughcoughTampacoughcough::). they aren't as ridiculously amusing as my Rem-Dawg & Orsillo, but they announced the game well & were enjoyable in their own right. then, around the bottom of the fifth inning, Thorne came out with a curious statement -- i thought he had to be joking at the time: "The great story we were talking about the other night was that famous red stocking that he wore when they finally won, the blood on his stocking. Nah. It was painted. Doug Mirabelli confessed up to it after. It was all for PR." (The Joy of Sox) now... i haven't ever actually *seen* The Bloody Sock & i have no proof if it was blood or ink. personally? i don't care. to quote Theo (with whom i finally share an opinion): "I couldn't give two [expletives] about what was on his sock, I care that we won the game." (The Boston Globe) i will reason that whatever was on his sock was certainly bright red during the game. if it was ink, it would stay bright red. if it's blood, it would get darker & brown when it dried. simple as that. but the point is, even if it was blood, i don't care if it was Schill's or the blood of one of Papelbon's ducks, we still won the freaking game. and isn't that the point? (to clarify, i am *not* saying the blood wasn't Schill's, lest that come back to haunt me at some point in time. just saying i don't care if it was his blood, though i assume it was, until proven otherwise.) i am a little concerned that Thorne said he got the information from Dougie, whose response was: "What? Are you kidding me? He's [expletive] lying. A straight lie. I never said that. I know it was blood. Everybody knows it was blood." again, not being a witness to the supposed conversation, clearly one of them isn't being truthful, but i don't have any proof which one that would be. i think the only two that know for sure are Dougie & Thorne. Francona was pretty angry about the whole thing: "[Thorne's remarks] go so far past disappointing. Disrespectful to Schill, to his vocation. I'm stunned. I am just floored. Schill takes his share of shots, and this one is so far below the belt that I'm embarrassed and I wish somebody would have had the good conscience to ask me. I saw the leg. If that had been painted, I wouldn't have had my knuckles so white, and having so much anxiety." and our former prankster, Kevin Millar, pipes in with: "It was definitely blood. He had some stitches there. It was a hell of an injury at the time. So I think that was more [Mirabelli possibly] messing with Schilling. Like I said, I just saw blood and that was the bottom line and thank God we won that game. Blood or ink, it was a win. I mean, it was one of the single greatest performances I've ever been around." that being shared, i think it's really just time for Thorne -- and the rest of us -- to move past all this "bloody sock conspiracy," regardless of who is right or wrong. it's 2007. 2004 is done, two whole seasons ago now, and we're on a new season, one where the champion has yet to be determined. this whole issue is just stupid. it never should have gotten this far. and Thorne maybe should have just left well enough alone -- even if he is right, which i feel compelled to say, since there really is no conclusive answer at this time. what i am really worried about is that this will most assuredly not bring out the best in some of Boston's fan base, and i hate when they embarrass those of us who know how to act respectfully.

13. i am going to bask in the glory of last weekend just once more, before heading to NY to face the Yankees on their turf for the sequel tomorrow: "So what did we learn from the Yanks series? They can hit. So can we.... In a series where our starters gave up 16 runs, we still swept them. That’s not a bad thing. Say all you want about so and so is hurt, we don’t have this guy or that guy, but the games still count so no one really cares.... Obviously they aren’t at full speed due to missing Matsui, Mussina, Wang and Pavano but they are still going to win games. I just think it’s going to be tougher this year because every team in the AL East can hit, and that’s where we play a huge majority of our schedule. Having to get 3-4 innings from your pen every single night this early is catastrophic to bullpens as the season progresses. That was as big a factor this past weekend as any I think, our starters threw 20 2/3 innings and we didn’t have to drain the pen every night. Those innings will be huge later in the season." (Curt Schilling, 38 Pitches) it may only be April, but every game has the potential to count in September! and so far, i like what i see.

14. i can't help it. i still miss Trot when i see a photo like this...


15. joined at the hip. i swear. when Julian gets moved out to the pen, do you think he will ask if Daisuke can watch the game from there on his off nights?


16. Joshy & Loewen. Oriole Park at Camden Yards. 7:05pm EDT. weather permitting.