Today's headline

Southern California man gets 30 days in jail for throwing bottle at Piazza

[Roland] Flores pleaded guilty last week to misdemeanor counts of using force and violence to assault Piazza, and for intentionally throwing a substance while at the stadium, [Police St. Rick] Martinez said.

He pleaded guilty? Idiot. He should've just said he thought the water bottle was a baseball and he wanted to give it back to Piazza. That defense works every time.

Anyone awake?...

...for a Game 2 thread?

Nice start to the season...

So, you gotta love that. And here's to 161 more. Now that the season's officially begun, we need to get back to posting on this site. After my hiatus, I'm on board. Anyone else?

I'll start: we never made our yearly predictions. Here I go...

AL East: BOS (96-66), NYY (92-70), TB (81-81), TOR (80-82), BAL (3-159)
AL Central: CLE, DET, MIN, , KAN, CHW
AL West: LAA, SEA, TEX, OAK

NL East: NYM, PHI, ATL, WAS, FLA
NL Central: CHI, STL, MIL, HOU, PIT, CIN
NL West: LAD, ARI, COL, SDP, SFG

Anyone else?

The Next Dimaggio

(AP)—Tampa Bay’s Rocco Baldelli will begin the season on the disabled list because of a condition that the oft-injured outfielder says leaves him feeling extremely fatigued after short workouts.

What is this world coming to. In the old days, we would just say this guy is out of shape. And what else is in the news.

Billy Crystal is going to play a game for the Yanks. I expect this nonsense from the Padres. What's next? Put it on ebay - the chance to play for the Yankees. If NY's governor will pay $80K for sex, certainly there are some fans that will pay at least that to play in a spring training game.

So, Beckett's back is hurting. Is it my fault for jinxing the Sox rotation with my question of what it would look like without him? Also, give me the pulse of the nation. Panic? The whole thing could be a smoke screen for the Sox wanting to have Devern Hansack and Julian Tavarez pitching their first two games of the season.

And I love that today Girardi protested an exhibition game. Okay, what if he wins. Do they have to play the exhibition game over from the point of protest?

2008 SOX

So the reason Earl created this blog was to reduce the zillion emails that could sprout up during a season and then fill someone's inbox with the 46 reply to alls. So in the interests fo that, i will pull in an email from GR and myself and get it going out here.

My message -
I'm looking forward to the season. I worry about a world in which the Sox are the favorites, and that first month looks like a killer. Tor has an easy schedule that first month, so it will be funny to hear all the writers say they are for real on May1 or 15th - right before Burnett goes on the DL, BJ Ryan needs more surgery, and Rolen gets hurt again. The only thing more predictable is the annual Ken Griffey JR hamstring injury.

GR response
I think that Schilling is actually more of a loss than people think. Yes, he wasn’t that great last year, but Lester doesn’t fill me with confidence in that role, yet…Also, a blister from Beckett could prove devastating to this team…AND there are lots of old guys to boot.

So what do you guys all think? It looks like I was early on my BJ Ryan prediction as he is already hurting. Oh no, wait it was AJ Burnett who is now hurt. And GR is worried about a Schilling-less staff. I think there are some people that are saying "no worries" about missing Curt. In the long run, it is probably a game or two in the standings (and that assumes that Curt would have made 25 starts). So a game or two could be HUGE. Or it could be nothing. We won't know for sure. Hopefully he can come back in the second half and *pitch* like he did late last year.

But to pull a page from the GR book, I would argue that the Sox rotation looks great, especially in comparison to the Yankees. GR worst case scenario is a blister to Beckett. And blisters heal fairly quickly.

Take Beckett out of the rotation and match up the Sox versus the Yankees.

Dice-K vs. Wang - edge Sox. Wang gets killed by good teams and the yanks bad fielding is bound to catch up with him one of these seasons.
Pettite vs Wake - slight edge NY
Mussina vs Lester - sorry, even with the walks I'll take Lester
Kennedy/Hughes et al vs Bucholz/Tavarez et al - a complete wash.

Now put Beckett back in and the Sox likely win all those "matchups."

And bullpens. I'll take Paps over Mo, Joba over Delcarmen and all the rest of the guys on both staffs are question marks.

So which team gets Sabathia when CLE is 15 games out in June - could be the difference in September/October.

What we live for

Taking a brief break from hibernation to note Sox's newest minor league signee. Not sure how I feel about it in terms of baseball - no downside, I guess - but the headlines are nothing but good.

Red Sox agree to terms with Colon
Colon hoping to regain form
Sox believe Colon's worth gambling on
Colon has work to do
Colon makes the scene

Brings a little sunshine to my day.

Wake up!

Where is everyone?

Has anyone seen the Sox April schedule? Pretty brutal. We've all heard the Yankee whining about the Japan trip in 2004. So, I won't add to that. Thankfully they are playing a AAA team. So that trip and the ensuing two game set in Oakland should yield 3 wins.

But then, it is on to Toronto. Followed by 10 games (no off days) vs DET, NY and CLE. Yikes.

And then a four game set vs. TEX is followed by 3 against LAA.

Oh, and I have a new player to cheer for. Patrick Currin. On Thursday, his fiancee delivered our second baby. Pretty cool.

Ah... so much better

It's great to see the boys start to trickle into camp!

Slow News Day

Daisy pulled out her DVD collection of Sports Night a week ago. Six Feet Under fans will be pleased to see the role of Casey played by Peter Krause. Anyway, it's pretty good. Witty banter with a tricked out laugh track (only for the first ten episodes). Apparently, it was Aaron Sorkins way of shoving it to the man (so to speak). Well, they have this episode about a slow day in news and it was a slightly more tamed down version of this.

Desperate for news myself, I started my typical blog-run (Deadspin,Baseball Musings, MLBrumors.com, and Boston.com Extra Bases. I didn't need to go far to finds today's musings. The Berman clip above is from Deadspin.com, if you didn't already click on it.

Venturing forth, I was pleasantly surprised to see Ben Watson hanging out at the MIT Sloan Business Conference on Sports Management with David Pinto, Sal Baxamusa, and Rob Neyer. Earl you should look up Sal, he's a chemical engineer. I posted on Basemall Musings as the first comment. I was tempted to do something stupid like, "FIRST", but thought better of it. He posted my comments, so I am sure Pinto gave the GYS a run-down. I am also sure he didn't see anything terribly mind-blowing, expect maybe of awesome connection to the creator of Darkman.

Oh, and funny this, while digging up all these links I came across this. I especially like Peter N's comments - vintage Peter!

XLII post-mortem: the bright side

1) It wasn't the Sox. That loss sucked, but everything is relative: compared to the repeated punching in the 'nads called "Game 7 of the 2003 ALCS", that was a skinned elbow, tops.

2) Boston sports fans could use some humility. Things have been a bit insane lately, and Boston fans have gotten cocky, and are now the most hated fanbase in sports (deservedly so). This will hopefully shut up the bandwagoners and college kids who have never seen a Boston-area sports team lose an important game.

3) Think about that for a second: there actually are "bandwagoners and college kids who have never seen a Boston-area sports team lose an important game". Can you imagine even thinking that, say, 7 years ago? We have it good.

4) Pitchers and catchers report in less than 2 weeks.