singapore sox fan: the red sox from half the world away

Oakland Series

Gah. Another late loss, and then a blowout. Willie Harris is a waste of roster space. On the "always look at the bright side of life"side, at least Tek seems to have been moved further down to other and Kapler seems to be hitting. But right now it looks like the good side of the "Way" Beckett trade was getting Mike Lowell...

Meanwhile, anyone have a black Brian Roberts bobblehead doll?

Ho hum

"[It] was all right, but you have to grow up sometime." - Johnny Damon, on his marijuana use (Link)

Anyone surprised by this?

Home Run Derby

Those weren't moon shots Ortiz and Howard launched: those were Mars shots.

The 7th Inning Stretch

The kids are all right. More than all right, they were pretty brilliant last night. Hansen, Papelbon - I've started espousing this theory that the way to judge Sox relievers is to look at the last letter of their names - those ending in "-n" (throw in Delcarmen and Timlin) give me less heart trouble that those ending in "-z" or "-e" this season. Hey, they always say evaluating relievers is a crapshoot - it's about as good a method as any. But then Lopez was brilliant in getting Thome out.

Sox 12, Rays 5: On to Chicago

I fell in love again
all things go, all things go
drove to Chicago
all things know, all things know
we sold our clothes to the state
I don't mind, I don't mind
I made a lot of mistakes
in my mind, in my mind
- Sufjan Stevens, "Chicago"

Well, that wasn't the greatest of series. But the Sox avoided the sweep, and it's on to Chicago. Urbs in horto and all that (I honestly can't remember what the Boston motto was). Time to beat them, 25 or 6 to 4. (Damn, just as I wrote that the song actually came up on iTunes. Freaky!)

One of the great parts of last night's game was seeing not just Papelbon but Manny Delcarmen play a key role. Very sweet to see what looks like the heart of an emerging young, solid relief corps.

Speaking of emerging young pitchers, seems like Philip Hughes, about the main bright spark on the otherwise woeful Yankees farm system, grew up a Sox fan:

Ironically, Philip Hughes came to the Yankees having grown up a fan of the Red Sox! When we spoke to the 19 year-old a few weeks ago, we asked him what it felt like pitching for Boston's arch-rival. “I’ve learned to deal with it,” Hughes says jokingly. “It was fun (to root for the Red Sox) when I was a kid, but right now it all comes down to who you play for. That’s where your heart and your sweat go so it all doesn’t mean too much to me anymore.” (Link)

I guess they can have Hughes. I'll take Paps - Lester - Delcarmen - Hansen, thanks.

Carl Crawford steals home

Carl Crawford steals home. Good Lord. Am I glad I have a new Macbook that doesn't play Windows Media - I'm almost afraid to fire up my old computer and watch it, even though were it any other team I would absolutely love to watch him - or anyone, really - stealing home.

Salve

That the Yankees lost 19-1 on Steinbrenner's birthday to George's hometown team does salve the wounds of the Schilling loss somewhat. But not totally. Anyway, watching A-Rod go 3-for-4 (when I woke up, only the Yankees game was on...) made me also think: maybe it's not that he's bad in the clutch. Maybe he's the kind of player who's especially good against bad pitching, even more so than normal players, and since in blowouts he ends up seeing the mopup guys a lot he feasts on them.

Schilling's comment after the game was interesting: "That's a very, very good offense top to bottom, an American League offense" (link) - man, now even the players are crowing about how much better the AL is...

Superballs

Because we have a shared interest in the Sox, I guess, Seth Mnookin e-mailed me to promote his Feeding the Monster book (very different from his previous investigation into the Jayson Blair scandal, I suppose - but here, I'll do some free publicity and link to this interview with Curt Schilling).

But I ended up being distracted by this Sony ad that he linked on his blog - there's something about superballs that brings out the kid in me... and José Gonzalez's "Heartbeats" is a beautiful, delicate song.

Graig Nettles is probably so jealous right now.

Manny, the Missing All-Star

Buster Olney complains about Manny not going to the All-Star Game:

Francona, a good guy who is always willing to take a bullet for his players, is trying to give Manny as much cover as possible, saying that the slugger's knee is hurting, that he -- Francona -- would prefer that Ramirez didn't play, etc. But let's face it: It's a lot of bunk. If Ramirez can play in 77 of 81 games for the Red Sox, he probably can slog through a couple of innings and an at-bat in the All-Star Game.

(Link - think it may be ESPN Insider though)

I think that's dumb - it starts from the premise that Manny isn't hurting in some way, and I'm guessing that minor or major all ballplayers are a bit banged-up right now and coud get some rest. But it's interesting that Olney points out Manny's durability - too often we get this media image of him as sort of lazy (in itself a lazy image) and yet the simple facts are that Manny plays more than most of the other Sox outfielders.

But as a thought, even if the knees really aren't bothering him, why is it necessarily only Manny who wants to get out, with the Sox depicted as covering for him? Wouldn't the Sox want their premier slugger rested? I think it's in every manager's selfish interest to get his players rest they need.

Kazmir shuts the Sox out

Why did I not keep Kazmir on my fantasy keeper team? Which left me with absolutely nothing to celebrate about Kazmir's general continual dominance of the Sox. Victor Zambrano for Scott Kazmir is going to go down as one of those legendary lopsided trades.

There is one thing to celebrate: happy Fourth of July to all my American readers! (which is, I suspect, almost everyone who reads this but myself)

The All-Star Game

I actually want to get worked up about Mark Redman being included on the AL All-Star roster (do you think he even had an All-Star bonus clause in his contract?) but not Liriano, but I understand the principle of having each team represented (Grudzielanek probably a better choice). On the other hand, Nomar being screwed over upsets me.