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10-27-04… NEVER FORGET!

Despite the instant gag reflex that Angels fans induce, I cannot for the life of me actually hate the team and the players themselves. Outside of Mike Scioscia and his stupid face, I can’t find anything concrete that would allow me to hate the team. Some folks dislike Torii Hunter, I love him. There’s residual bad will against Bobby Abreu for some people… not me. Even John Lackey’s “we’re a better team than they are” shtick from last year didn’t turn me against them. I just can’t manage to work up any good, solid, lasting hate for the Angels (though Dodgers fans may beg to differ).

Case in point: we happened to leave after the game at Fenway last Sunday rather late (as in, we were the very last fans inside over an hour after the game ended), and so we walked out alongside the Angels as they were going towards their bus and we were exiting out into the cold, cruel, playoff-less reality outside the ballpark. Which was sort of awkward, because there were these big baseball dudes still smelling like champagne fresh from a locker room celebration, and then there was the two of us- otherwise the concourses beneath the park were completely locked down and utterly empty. So we had to shuffle along beside them all awkward-like: two Boston girls and a herd of Angel ballplayers

Reluctantly, I must give them props. Despite the fact that we were decked out in our Red Sox finest, and despite the fact they had just rather soundly delivered a killshot to the head of our team’s playoff hopes, every single one of those players we walked beside smiled at us and said hey or hello or ‘good game’, and were generally nice folk. Kazmir, Lackey, Napoli, Hunter- all of them. I don’t know if I expected them to taunt us or give us noogies or something, but I’m kind of disappointed they didn’t… because now I can’t claim they gave us an excuse to hate them.

The Angels can’t even give me the satisfaction of being asshats so that I can hate them. What asshats.

So despite the fact that their fanbase gives me hives, and despite the fact their ballclub sent the Red Sox home from the 2009 season by giving them a giant wedgie on national TV, all I can say is….
GO ANGELS! BEAT THE HELL OUTTA THE YANKS!

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ALCS Non-Preview: Los Angeles Angels

My non-preview of the Yankees is going to consist of one thing, and one thing only… THIS:

Some ballplayers celebrate their ALCS-clinching victory with champagne, some with beer… but Alex Rodriguez celebrates by peeping through plastic sheets, SWF-style, at Derek Jeter. DUDE IS A CREEPER. Thanks to twitter user @gx5, we are able to crystalize – in one single frame – all of the creepiness of A-Rod. It’s truly a masterpiece. Or, at least it was, until @matt_T took it one step further:

And if the still version or the LOLcats version of PeepingRod was not enough, Dodgers blog Memories of Kevin Malone supplies us with an animated GIF of hilarity to round out the Trifecta Of Creepy:

DEREK! LOOK BEHIND YOU! HE’S COMING TO GET YOU!

Oh, Yankees – you have a special way of making my skin crawl like no other. Kudos on finding new and interesting ways to make people uncomfortable… you’re definitely World Champion Creepers.

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ALCS Non-Preview: New York Yankees

The Dodgers have a lot of things to worry about.

#1: According to Peter Gammons, Joe Torre is gonzo after the 2010 season because “his life with the Dodgers is pretty much a living hell.” (Of course, Torre denies this – which any good employee would do in this shitty economy.)

#2: There may not even be a team to speak of by the time 2010 rolls around anyway, since owner Frank McCourt and CEO Jamie McCourt just announced that they’re getting divorced. California is a community property state, which means all assets get divided up 50/50 in a divorce… and as the Padres discovered, dividing up a MLB club in Cali is no easy feat.

#3: They can’t manage to sell all their allotment of tickets to Game 1 of the NLCS, and are reduced to begging folks on Twitter mere hours before first pitch.

#4: A certain member of the media hates a certain left fielder (starts with “M” and ends with “anny Ramirez”) so much, that he gave away his prospective World Series tickets to the person who would write in and and rip Manny the best. The winning entry?

Dear Manny,

I am a firefighter for the USFS, I make $16 an hour. It’s hot, dirty, dangerous, with long hours. My body hurts all the time. It takes four years to make $170,000. My bonus, somebody telling me ‘Thanks for the hard work.’ You should try it some time.

But even with all those problems, the Dodgers are still smiling big – because at least they didn’t get drilled in the nuts in front of a national TV audience.

Matt Holliday: brightening the faces of Dodgers fans everywhere since 2009.

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NLCS Non-Preview: Los Angeles Dodgers

Cole Hamels, vampire, will shill any product that someone will put in front of his face. Sure, there’s the standard car dealer commercial – but then there is also this horror:

Who on god’s green earth told him this photoshoot would be a good idea? I mean, apart from his spotlight-seeking wife and the condo company people? Then again, Cole Hamels is a man who is definitely secure in his masculinity.

But Cole can’t be all bad, because he harbors a not-so-secret desire to play for the Red Sox. And we know he’s not alone- every player on every major league team ever in history has wanted to play for the Red Sox (even if they didn’t realize it). But what other ballplayer has the cojones to actually put a picture of Fenway up as the header image on his official blog?

Of course, in vampire Cole’s mind, Fenway actually has two ballfields: one in the regular place, and a spare diamond out in right field. No wonder JD Drew is hurt all the time – he’s having to play in two different baseball games at once!

But enough about Cole, let’s talk about the most important person in the Phillies dugout: manager Charlie Manuel. Or, more specifically, Charlie Manuel’s pants. Without those pants, Uncle Cholly’s hands would have nothing to do all game.

Cholly’s pants are clearly the first element of the special magical recipe that is the Phillies. Second only to Cholly’s pants is Jimmy Rollins’ mojo. His throwback mojo is so awesome, folks make tribute videos in its honor. This JRo video could possibly be the greatest JRo video in the history of JRo videos, and that’s really saying something. I think.

The third element of Phillies magic? T-shirts. Not stupid white towels (which, next to the wave and the kiss cam, are the most annoying element of playoff baseball games at many ballparks), not rally caps… t-shirts. The various street vendor tshirt companies here in Boston produce some pretty fantastic stuff – but Philly leaves us in the dust. From Birdland:

And finally, the fourth ingredient in the special sauce of the Phightin’ Phils: ICE CREAM. Just ask Chooch.

Thanks to the full cadre of awesome Phillies blogs for the material for this post: The Fightins, Philebrity, The 700 Level and Beerleaguer.

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NLCS Non-Preview: Philadelphia Phillies

It breaks your heart. It is designed to break your heart. The game begins in the spring, when everything else begins again, and it blossoms in the summer, filling the afternoons and evenings, and then as soon as the chill rains come, it stops and leaves you to face the fall alone. You count on it, rely on it to buffer the passage of time, to keep the memory of sunshine and high skies alive, and then just when the days are all twilight, when you need it most, it stops. Today, October [11], it stopped, and summer was gone.

…There comes a time when every summer will have something of autumn about it. Whatever the reason, it seemed to me that I was investing more and more in baseball, making the game do more of the work that keeps time fat and slow and lazy. I was counting on the game’s deep patterns, three strikes, three outs, three times three innings, and its deepest impulse, to go out and back, to leave and to return home, to set the order of the day and to organize the daylight. I wrote a few things this last summer, this summer that did not last, nothing grand but some things, and yet that work was just camouflage. The real activity was done with the radio–not the all-seeing, all-falsifying television–and was the playing of the game in the only place it will last, the enclosed green field of the mind. There, in that warm, bright place, what the old poet called Mutability does not so quickly come. But out here, on Sunday, October [11], Dame Mutability never loses.

…New England is on its feet, roaring. The summer will not pass. Roaring, they recall the evening, late and cold, in 1975, the sixth game of the World Series, perhaps the greatest baseball game played in the last fifty years, when Carbo, loose and easy, had uncoiled to tie the game that Fisk would win. [S]chool will never start, rain will never come, sun will warm the back of your neck forever.

…The aisles are jammed, the place is on its feet, the wrappers, the programs, the Coke cups and peanut shells, the doctrines of an afternoon; the anxieties, the things that have to be done tomorrow, the regrets about yesterday, the accumulation of a summer: all forgotten, while hope, the anchor, bites and takes hold where a moment before it seemed we would be swept out with the tide… [Fuentes] threw, [Pedroia] swung, and it was over. One pitch, a fly to [short], and it stopped. Summer died in New England and like rain sliding off a roof, the crowd slipped out of Fenway, quickly, with only a steady murmur of concern for the drive ahead remaining of the roar. Mutability had turned the seasons and translated hope to memory once again. And, once again, she had used baseball, our best invention to stay change, to bring change on.

That is why it breaks my heart, that game… It breaks my heart because it was meant to, because it was meant to foster in me again the illusion that there was something abiding, some pattern and some impulse that could come together to make a reality that would resist the corrosion; and because, after it had fostered again that most hungered-for illusion, the game was meant to stop, and betray precisely what it promised.

Of course, there are those who learn after the first few times. They grow out of sports. And there are others who were born with the wisdom to know that nothing lasts. These are the truly tough among us, the ones who can live without illusion, or without even the hope of illusion. I am not that grown-up or up-to-date. I am a simpler creature, tied to more primitive patterns and cycles. I need to think something lasts forever, and it might as well be that state of being that is a game; it might as well be that, in a green field, in the sun.

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The Green Fields of the Mind

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Gameday Open Thread: ALDS Game 3

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Gameday Open Thread: ALDS Game 2

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Gameday Open Thread: ALDS Game 1

First up: Dusty Brown gets his first major league hit… which also turns out to be his first major league home run – and receives the time-honored cold shoulder routine from his teammates in the dugout. That little prank never gets old, especially for a career minor-leaguer like Dusty- who may never get a spotlight like that again. Screencaps by Thomas, as always.

1st major league home run, huh rookie? Eh, big deal.

Okay...Big deal!!

Brown showed early promise in his pro career, but in part due to a succession of injuries, his progress was up-and-down, and his movement up the ladder was thus deliberate. He saw one Sox prospect after another zoom past him on the way to the majors, playing with such talents as Delcarmen, Brandon Moss, Hanley Ramirez, Jon Lester, Dustin Pedroia and Jonathan Papelbon as they marched towards the majors.

There were times of frustration. But nine years into his career as a member of the Red Sox, Brown – who had batted just once since making his big-league debut as a defensive replacement this year – achieved a milestone at the major-league level.

In the bottom of the eighth inning of the Red Sox’ 11-6 win over the Indians on Saturday, Brown crushed a changeup from Indians reliever Mike Gosling. The ball sailed over the Wall and crashed in the last row of the Monster Seats for the 27-year-old’s first career hit and first career homer. The Fenway crowd of 37,562 chanted the catcher’s name – Dus-ty, Dus-ty, Dus-ty – until his teammates pushed him out of the dugout to accept a curtain call.

“It’s unbelievable, man,” said Brown. “Not many guys can say that: at Fenway Park, to get a curtain call from the fans, there’s nothing like it. I’ll remember it forever.”

Before the game against the Indians on Sunday, the Red Sox called four members of the team out onto the field to be recognized for record-breaking seasons: Big Papi (major league record for home runs by a DH), Jonathan Papelbon (Red Sox record for career saves), Jacoby Ellsbury (Red Sox record for stolen bases in a season) and Tim Wakefield (Red Sox record for games started). Here’s video of the ceremony – with special appearances by Tommy Harper, Bob Stanley, Luis Tiant and Jim Rice.

And finally, the team headed out to Anaheim a little early this week to take some practice at and acclimate to Angel Stadium. This happy circumstance – plus several empty days of a photo wire that needs filling – means that we’re treated to photos of the team goofing around in Cali. More specifically, it means we’re treated to this photo:

This is CRYING OUT for a caption contest.

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Good Things Come In Threes

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Gameday Open Thread: Indians 10/4

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Gameday Open Thread: Indians 10/3

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Gameday Open Thread: Indians 10/2

The second one, unlike most sequels, is even better than the first.

Cleveland: We’re Not Detroit!

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Cleveland!

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Gameday Open Thread: Indians 10/1

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Gameday Open Thread: Blue Jays 9/30

Knowing how much their fans hate the Red Sox, I have to admit it makes it a tad sweeter that the Angels had a hand in helping the Sox clinch their playoff spot tonight.

See you in the postseason, Anaheim Los Angeles!

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WILD CARD

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Gameday Open Thread: Blue Jays 9/29

After rooming with a guitar player in college, Stickbug decided he was going to teach himself to play guitar (after googling it on the interwebz, no joke). Following in the hallowed footsteps of music legend Bronson Arroyo, Clay can regularly be found toting his guitar with him from city to city on roadtrips, and playing along in the clubhouse with his laptop open in front of him. And the guitar fever is spreading.

What teammates are also closet rock stars?

CB: There are a couple of guys getting into playing guitar like [Jon] Lester, [Josh] Beckett who are learning. There are a lot of music enthusiasts here who maybe you wouldn’t think would be. Lester, he’s getting into it, Josh and then Dusty Brown who just came up from Pawtucket. He’s a guitar guy too. So a couple guys.

I can practically hear Peter Gammons and Theo Epstein salivating to get them all signed on to play Hot Stove, Cool Music. Joshie and the Pussycats, perhaps? Or given the injured state of Josh and Jon, maybe Clay and the Gimps.

On behalf of Red Sox Nation, I hereby request that in the event a certain team clinches a certain wildcard playoff spot at a certain ballpark in Boston tonight, that three certain pitchers be required to play a mini-concert out on the pitching mound. PLAY FREE BIRD!

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Clay, the Pied-Guitarer

Here’s a roundup of some random Sox news:

	Say hello to Dustin Richardson, erstwhile reality show star (while playing baseball for Texas Tech, Dustin was one of 2 finalists competing to get a walk-on slot for coach Bobby Knight’s basketball team on the ESPN’s “Knight School”) and the newest call-up to the bigs. He started his day in Ft. Myers thinking he was going to go throw in an Instructional League game, and ended up making his major league debut at Fenway. At 1:30 p.m., right as he was about to warm up for a two-inning outing he was going to throw in an Instructional League game, Richardson got word that he had been scratched and that the Red Sox had added him to the 40-man roster. “About 10-15 minutes later, I had to jump in the shower and go catch a plane,’’ Richardson said. At 3:09 p.m., Richardson departed Ft. Myers for Boston, landed at Logan International Airport about 3 1/2 hours later, and made it over to Fenway in time to throw on a uniform (No. 54) and bound out to the bullpen, where he snacked on “barbeque-flavored sunflower seeds’’ to help him stave off the hunger pangs that hit him after going without a thing to eat after 11 a.m.
	In order to make way for Richardson, the Sox DFA’ed Chris Carter. Yeah, the same Chris Carter that was reportedly part of the Billy Wagner trade — until the Yankees stuck their big fat noses in Boston’s business, and placed a waiver claim on Carter. The Sox were forced to pull him back off waivers, and now had to DFA him. It’ll be interesting to see what happens to him this time around.
	Now begins the segment I like to think of as “Needless Histrionics About the Red Sox”, starring: your Boston media! “I bring this up not to make a direct connection between [Matt] Clement and Jon Lester”… but that’s exactly what I’m going to do! “Color me a little creeped out, but is anyone else even the least bit concerned over what’s going on with Red Sox starters these past four days?” And if you’re not, let me try and spread some hysteria!
	The Blue Jays’ 2009 season may be toast, but that doesn’t mean the Toronto Globe and Mail is going to pass up an opportunity to deliver a weird insult to Josh Beckett! According to Terry Francona, the Red Sox manager, Beckett was scratched after he started to feel pain on Boston’s grueling 75-minute plane ride home the other day from New York. These guys should fly coach once in a while. If only your back injury would have happened on a transcontinental flight, Josh, it would have been legitimate – you wimpy, first-class riding sod. The author also refers to Mike Lowell as “genteel” – which is either a compliment and calling him stylish and aristocratic… or is an attempt to refer to him as some sort of mincing fop. I’m going to assume it’s the former.
	Maybe I should cut Toronto some slack, after reading this latest tale from the saga that is the Rogers Baseball Operations ownership’s continued attempts to dump on Jays fans.
	As much as it pained me to see the photos from Sunday’s champagne fest in the Bronx, articles ridiculing the Yankees for celebrating an AL East divisional clinching win are not only dumb, but also hypocritical for a New England media outlet that had covered umpteen similar celebrations by the Red Sox. Either condemn all non-World Series celebrations universally (including Papelbon’s jig in 2007 – and the Cardinals and Angels celebrations this year), or lay off the Yankees. I can’t believe someone just made me defend the Yankees. I feel dirty.
	And I leave you with the brilliance of SG’s Red, Josh Beckett and F. Scott Fitzgerald. Daisy needs to keep her grubby paws off Becketty Boo.

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Rainout Roundup

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Gameday Open Thread: Blue Jays 9/28

Of course, that picture would also be beside ‘disturbing imagery that cannot be unseen’.

Having to endure a pinstriped celebration is just a fact of life. For now. But another fact of life is this: TWO. Two is the magic number left for the Red Sox to claim a playoff spot of their own. A spot that could be claimed anytime in the next seven days… but that might be claimed as early as tonight, if fortune and fate align. And if anybody can gallop up and hogtie fortune while wrestling fate into submission, it’s Josh Beckett.

So let them have their fun down in the Bronx – it stings, but it ain’t the death knell for Boston by any stretch of the imagination. As the great philosopher Jason Varitek once said:

I don’t really give a shit about what they’ve done. I’m worried about what we’re doing.

Indeed, good sir. Indeed.

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There’s Always Tonight

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Gameday Open Thread: Yankees 9/27

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Gameday Open Thread: Yankees 9/26

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Gameday Open Thread: Yankees 9/25