ampersand wrote:So are we in agreement that it's basically the Rangers/Angels versus Red Sox/Yankees for the AL

The Tigers could win the AL as well. Verlander, Cabrera, and Fielder should be enough to compete, and who knows what could happen in a seven game series? You also forgot about the Rays, who belong in the AL East conversation at this point.

ampersand wrote:and I suppose St. Louis in the NL? Is the NL really that jumbled (note, I didn't say bad)?

Philly would probably be the odds-on favorite in the National League. I wouldn't be surprised if San Francisco turned out to be a force to be reckoned with. Miami can't be ignored after all the money they put up, and Cincinnati has the talent to do a lot of damage. The Phils are the easy pick, but I'll pick the Giants coming out of the senior circuit. I think this is going to be a huge year for Tim Lincecum.

Today started off low scoring, Halladay was Halladay, Verlander was Verlander, and the Cleveland are in the 16th after a 2 hit outing by Masterson....

-Here's a very simple concept: when you have two teams in the same city, in any sport, there is one team that is always going to be the other team. You can win. You can watch your crosstown rivals fall off the map. You can make your sport more entertaining just by showing up. Doesn't matter. The crosstown rivals will always be the more popular team. The Mets, White Sox, Jets, Clippers...these are teams that are always going to be the second game in town. The Angels need to learn this. Albert Pujols, C.J. Wilson, all the hype of the offseason, then opening day comes and everybody in LA is talking about Magic Johnson buying the distressed Dodgers.

-Another very simple concept: in any sport, the team that makes the biggest splash in an offseason is doomed to get off to a rough start. How many times in a row has this happened? The Miami Heat had a tough first month with LeBron and company, the Phillies and Red Sox struggled last baseball season, the NFL's Philadelphia Eagles had a great free agency period and a disappointing season, the Philadelphia Flyers changed their entire team in the offseason and struggled to find their stride early...so is it really a surprise that the Angels and Marlins are off to shaky starts?

-At what point do we have to say Matt Kemp may be the best player in the game right now?

-And now, a Screw Liverpool update.

Andy Carroll had a hand in Jacoby Ellsbury's shoulder injury. I can't prove it, I can't even imagine how it would happen, but it has to be true. You know Luis Suarez was making inappropriate comments about the Navajo the entire time, too, that racist. (Even more racist than European pitch football usually is. Yep. Went there.)

You don't even get to go to the Europa League when you finish 8th in the Premiership, right? Could Liverpool end up stuck in England all year next year?

(I'm really enjoying my "blame Liverpool for everything bad that happens to the Red Sox this year, even if it's seemingly destined to be Bobby Gruden...er...Valentine's fault" strategy.)

-Where do Ozzie Guillen's pro-Castro comments rank on "dumbest things that people in a specific job could POSSIBLY say?" What tops it?

In Miami, yeah sure. But better to be him in Miami than Valentine in Boston.

I don't know about that. Guillen could still lose his job over this. If nothing else, he lost a sort of job security that Bobby Valentine could never have because we care far more about baseball than we should up here. You have to understand, it wasn't just what Guillen said but the position he is in. He didn't just piss off Miami with some pro-Castro statements, he pissed off the majority of coastal Florida with those statements. Think about it: one of the chief reasons for hiring Ozzie Guillen (who, by the way, I think is grossly underrated as a manager) is for entertainment purposes. You hire Guillen because he shoots his mouth off, because he's not afraid to say anything, because he could end up throwing a fit on the field, which is by far the most entertaining thing that a manager can do. Now that he has, in one statement, turned a major aspect of the Miami area against him, much of that value is lost. He's now on the hot seat, no matter what.

Bobby Gruden, on the other hand, never had a shred of job security in the first place. The front office in Boston was divided on whether or not to hire him in the first place--the general manager supported Dale Sveum--and he was replacing a guy that he could never eclipse. But that's beside the real point, which is simple: The reason the 2011 Red Sox collapsed in September is the same reason that they came back in 2004 and 2007. That loose atmosphere defined the Red Sox in general under Francona, which probably meant that it could only end the way it ended, but it did more good than harm in the end. In putting a stop to all of the party atmosphere around the team, the people in charge of the team have unintentionally created an identity crisis, which is exactly what this off-and-on start has been.

What is going on in Boston so far--and to a similar degree, in Anaheim--is further proof that chemistry is not overrated in baseball, nor has it ever been. I wouldn't say it's a crippling problem for either team, as chemistry can be easily and quickly fixed for all sorts of random reasons.

Fact that came across ESPN:
Jaime Moyers age: 45.20. (Oldest starting pitcher to win a game.)
Mark Molson ERA: 45.50. (I think. Correct me if I'm wrong.)
Moyers has pitched to 8% of all Major League Players in history.

ampersand wrote:Jaime Moyer's age: 45.20. (Oldest starting pitcher to win a game.)

He's actually 49, just shy of 50. I thought Satchel Paige had a win over 50, but I guess not.

ampersand wrote:Mark Molson ERA: 45.50. (I think. Correct me if I'm wrong.)

Are you sure Mark Melancon doesn't have a higher ERA thus far? It feels like his might require a comma somewhere. When he comes into a game, at this point, I am certain that whoever is playing the Red Sox will soon score.

10 inning by Cliff Lee, and the Phillies couldn't put any run up for him.

Matt Cain had a pretty good night on the other side, too. 9 innings, two hits, only got pulled for a pinch hitter.

-Fenway Park turns 100 today. I know it gets a lot of hype, and I know that the national baseball narrative has made the Red Sox and their fans out to be some kind of villain, but trust me when I say Fenway is the genuine article. It looks awesome on TV, yet TV doesn't really do it justice. None of the recent additions (right field roof deck, bleachers on the left field roof, seats on the Green Monster, a new JumboTron in center field, and a re-structuring of the luxury boxes behind home plate) feel tacked-on, and for the most part it's hard to remember the place without it. (Seriously. Ten years ago there were no seats on top of the Green Monster. There was only a screen in place to keep balls from sailing out into the nightclubs across the street. Only ten years. Seems like they've been there forever though, right? By the way, I had Monster seats for a game last year. Unbelievable how awesome those seats are.)

Some facts about Fenway:
-Not only has the new ownership renovated Fenway Park to an extreme degree, they've renovated the neighborhood around it. Back when I went to my first game there, the neighborhood around it was full of bars that didn't open until 5:00, a Tower Records, a bowling alley under the park (no longer there, but it was for a long time) that didn't open until 5:00, and that was about it. Now there are restaurants (including a Jillian's and a House of Blues), about a dozen official team stores, a movie theater, a Popeye's (where the "chicken" in "chicken and beer in the clubhouse" came from), and a couple of high-end hotels in Kenmore Square. Again, all of this is less than ten years old.

-Why is all of that "ten years ago" stuff so important? Because back then, before New England Sports Ventures bought the team, there was serious talk of replacing Fenway with a "replica" in Southie, near the waterfront. I don't see any way this would have ended well. A) the area where they wanted to build happened to be occupied by a couple of parking lots. These are the same parking lots that Frank McCourt used as leverage to buy the Los Angeles Dodgers. No shit. That is how rare parking in Boston is--two parking lots attached to, at the time, not much at all were valued in the hundreds of millions of dollars. B) That area is also now the home of the Boston Convention Center, and seems to be the new area of interest for developers. I don't know where the Hell we would have put the convention center if there had been a baseball stadium in the way. C) Speaking of, I just attended PAX East a couple of weekends back, and the traffic coming in was ridiculous. See, as it turns out, this patch of land is also right in the middle of what was once the Big Dig, and what is now a traffic nightmare. Things would have been a bit crazy if some 40,000 people were trying to get to the waterfront, eighty one nights out of the year at bare minimum. So yeah...

-Total attendance: 139,632,062 (coming into the season). No word on how many italian sausage sandwiches have been consumed in the park's history, but I'd bet on it being somewhere around that total. That's right: the signature food at Fenway Park is not the Fenway Frank, nor is it Legal Sea Foods' clam chowder (no that's not a joke, yes we really have that, yes even on hot days), and it isn't Dunkin' Donuts iced coffee. Italian sausage vendors are all over the place, and that's what the locals get when we come in.

-One JumboTron in center field, one electronic scoreboard in left-center, and that's it. That's all the "stuff outside of baseball" that the inside of Fenway Park has to offer. Miami can have its fish tanks, Arizona can have its pool, Pittsburgh and San Francisco can have their waterside ballparks, and Milwaukee can have its mascot slide. All we ever seem to need is baseball. It is the opposite of the modern sporting venue. (I imagine there are some people thinking about what a huge baseball nerd I must be at this point. Look, I'm sure the new places are awesome in their way. I'm sure Cowboys Stadium gives what it promises, but I imagine I would feel like an idiot any time I caught myself watching that gigantic screen while a live sporting event unfolds beneath it. I just prefer the Fenway experience, where it's you, whoever you came in with, and the game, and that's it.)

-I dare you: check out Fenway Park on Google Maps, and figure out where you would put your car if you were going to the game. Go ahead. Give it a shot. (Note: you cannot park on any of the streets that touch Fenway.) Good luck.

Spoiler: (click to reveal/hide)

The real answers: 1) "Don't." 2) "a little way up Beacon Street toward Brookline." (That's twenty bucks.) 3) "HOLY LIVING SHIT, HOW DO PEOPLE GET TO THIS PLACE?!" 4) "Make friends with somebody who lives around the park and has a spot of their own." (Ah, the joys of being a local.)

I'm mildly enraged over Bobby Valentine "tipping his cap" to a booing crowd at Fenway Park. It's one thing for the team to start out the way it has--only so much of that could possibly be the manager's fault--and we pretty much know by now that sports teams don't really care about things like "what all those people who aren't millionaires like we are care about." Fine. But to shit on the fans the way that Valentine has thus far--not once acknowledging that, if nothing else, our role is that of the financier who blindly bankrolls all of these millions--hits a nerve with me.

Tomorrow night, ESPN is going to do the game. This means that one of the announcers in the broadcast booth will be Terry Francona. The crowd at the game will be well aware of this. If the Red Sox fall behind early, tomorrow night could be one of the most awkward games in MLB history.

What was so bad about chicken and beer anyway? Didn't the Red Sox win two championships on fried chicken and beer? This is all Liverpool's fault.

Meanwhile, Seattle had less hits than an Amish website today. And at this point, getting lit is what Boston's bullpen does best.

I've decided to tell every Cub fan I know some key words of wisdom: If it ever happens, get so loud, so "obnoxious," so intensely happy that every other fanbase starts projectile vomiting. Why? Because the moment it happens if it ever does, you become the bad guy for everyone but other Cub fans. You dare to actually support your favorite baseball team, which does not sit right with fans of other teams. Also, just wait until everyone else has to stop laughing at you for the Cubs' championship drought--they will never forgive you for taking that joke away from them. People will wait with baited breath for your team to start losing again, and then they will let you have it like you've committed a crime.

So if it happens, show no mercy. Don't let people lie to you and say they wanted your Cubbies to win--they want to make 1908 jokes more--and don't let people share in the celebration. Tell them to kiss your ass before they have a chance to tell you first.

The Cid wrote:I've decided to tell every Cub fan I know

Aren't they the Cubs, plural?

Yeah, and "Cubs fan" is probably more correct, but it doesn't sound right to me. If I can make it singular ("Cub fan;" "Cowboy fan") I usually do.

I've never heard someone being referred to as a fan of the Cub or the Cowboy.