Friday, September 22, 2006
I was in the Union, again. This time it was not because I had no cable at home but instead because we had just gotten out of a lecture and my friend Sara and I were in the mood for some greasy Union comestibles in the way of dinner. I steered her to a table with a view of the TV, around which the few other diners were already clustered.
I was confused. I had forgotten about the Tigers game being an afternoon offering, and so was surprised by the appearance of the Red Sox on the screen. Not complaining, though, so we sat down to eat our gooey pizza and bitch about the art school.
David Ortiz came up to the plate. I have to admit to being dorky enough that an Ortiz/Santana battle is exactly the sort of thing I love to see. I fell silent and both Sara and I turned our eyes fully over to the TV.
Of course he hit it out of the park. Of course.
Sara knows nothing at all about baseball. I explained to her who David Ortiz was, who Jimmie Foxx was, who Johnny Pesky was, why it was so marvelous to see Johnny Pesky hug Papi and nearly cry, why this homerun was not like all other homeruns. By the time I finished, Ortiz was stepping out of the dugout for a curtain call, waving to the crowd.
"So aren't you going to get up and scream or something?" Sara asked.
Very funny. Art school kids always get a kick out of watching me go insane over baseball. I looked around at all the Tigers fans watching around us, smiling and hopeful, seeing Santana beaten so smartly. Since the Tigers had already lost, it was IMPERATIVE that the Red Sox win, to maintain that slender half-game lead. That's what's important right now, around here. That and Michigan football.
People were still shouting and clapping in Fenway. I'm glad, heck, we're all glad it happened at home. It would've been nice no matter where it happened, but this is better, seeing Ortiz showered in appreciation and love as only a faithful Fenway crowd can do.
I explained who Johan Santana is, how he's usually almost unhittable in September. I explained, or tried to explain, how deeply Boston can care about and love certain players. Sara nodded and mulled it over.
After Ortiz's second homerun of the game, ESPN cut to him smiling in the dugout, right after everyone had given up on the silent treatment and mobbed him. "He looks so... so happy," Sara said. "Like he's always like that."
Yeah. He is.
That's our Big Papi.Labels: baseball, David Ortiz, MLB, Red Sox
2:57 PM
Tuesday, August 01, 2006
That is it. That is IT. The glutes, the elbow however many moons ago, now the knee. It ends here. Varitek is far too important to be left vulnerable to these injuries. Dougie is not a viable longterm backup and who the blibberin' heck else do we have? We traded Shoppach away and tonight he was tagging Dougie out at home (and then forgetting how many outs there were in the inning, much to Don and Remy's amusement). We have nothing*. We need 'Tek.
FROM NOW ON, HE PLAYS IN BUBBLEWRAP.
I know that Kristen will heartily approve of this measure. It is necessary and not in the least bit hysterical. After all, I could be demanding that he swaddle himself in high-impact foam rubber and flak jackets, but I am not. I only wish to see him covered lovingly, head to toe, in bubblewrap. And yes, that's with clothes on underneath, you sick freaks.
Bubblewrap is flexible, so he can move with relative ease. Bubblewrap is tranlucent, so he can see through it. Bubblewrap is fun, so Manny can play with it in the dugout. Bubblewrap protects from damage. It is the solution.
Secure the bubblewrap with duct tape and he'll never break again.
In happier Red Soxish things, Kyle Snyder did valiant battle once again with his inherent Kyle Snyderness, and once again emerged the victor. He's really gutting it out, lately. It must be exhausting to have to continually fight your basic nature of suck, but there's no denying it, he stepped up big today after Boomer did pretty much exactly what we were all expecting him to do. Tito was so proud of him it almost sounded like he was about to cry in the postgame interviews.
And David Ortiz is not human. Seriously, what can you say? WHAT CAN YOU SAY? How do you even begin to quantify what he's doing? And don't tell me it's his 7th walkoff homer or whatever this season, because I know you can quantify things with numbers, and I'm a big fan of the numbers, trust me, so long as I don't have to crunch them and I only ever have to see their delicious, meaty end result stats. I'm a big believer in baseball as logically-run affair and winning as a science and I know that Moneyball is a book about a business scheme and not really about OBP.
But there comes a time when you have to go beyond all that and look at baseball as a human endeavor. And there are some times when baseball as a human endeavor simply cannot be conceived, and it's then that you have to regard baseball as a superhuman endeavor. And then you get someone like David Ortiz who takes it to a level above even that, and you have to just sit back and go, "Holy cats, he did it again."
How does he do it? How? I don't know; none of you know. Ortiz himself may not even know, and maybe that's best, because it might be the sort of thing that, the more its understood, the harder it is to do. For some guys hitting is a very intellectual pursuit but for a lot of them it's like an electron: you can know its location or its directional spin, but you can't know both at once. You can be thinking about hitting or you can actually be hitting, but you can't be doing both at once, the moment you start to do one you have to stop doing the other or it just doesn't work.
I don't believe Papi is thinking very deliberately when he comes up to the plate with a couple men on and a two-run deficit in the bottom of the 9th. If he was he would be paralyzed by the pressure of it all and he'd strike out or lose control of the bat and watch it go flying into the crowd or something. I don't know what he's doing. He doesn't know what he's doing. But everyone hopes he just keeps on doing it.
If he stays on this pace of awesomeity, there can be no sane way to deny him the MVP.
As for the trade deadline, screw that. I never liked trade deadlines anyways.
*Actually, this concerns me. 'Tek is on the wrong side of 30 and not getting any younger, Theo's attempts to find an age-reversing formula fermenting in the bottom of the Atlantic notwithstanding. Who are we grooming as his replacement? Cause I know the market for catchers is thin over all of baseball. I'm not asking for a Joe Mauer or a Brian McCann ('tho that'd be awfully nice and I'd take it in a heartbeat), but we need something going on in the minors.Labels: baseball, David Ortiz, injury, Jason Varitek, MLB, Red Sox
2:11 AM
Tuesday, July 11, 2006
As soon as Papi got knocked out of the race, I started rooting for Ryan Howard to win. Not because I have any particular attachment to Ryan Howard, or because I have some burning hidden dislike for David Wright or Miguel Cabrera, but instead because I actually have photos of Ryan Howard and I've never seen the other guys in person. And c'mon, when else am I gonna have a chance to use any of these damn Ryan Howard photos?
Yeah. I love viewing baseball through a teleconversion lens. This is because I am wholly insane.
And in any event, there's no shame in Papi not winning the whole thing, despite the fact that I think Joe Morgan might have urinated in his own pants if such an event had occurred. I honestly don't know how, after that 19 freakin' inning game we just had, Ortiz was still standing upright, let alone launching a single ball into the river. The fact that he hit as many homeruns as he did is a testament to his stamina, his greatness, his general Papiness, and all that is good with the world. Most things pertaining to David Ortiz come around to that in the end.
My favorite part of the Home Run Derby isn't the home run hitting part anyhow, although it was fun this year to see the kayakers hurl themselves into the Allegheny in search of a ball. I do hope that water was clean. I mean, I probably wouldn't hurl myself headlong into the Charles these days, and they've done a lot to improve the Charles*.
No, the best part of the Derby by far is getting to watch all the ballplayers sit around on the sidelines and goof around with their kids and with each other. You get to see the old hands at this sort of thing kicking back and relaxing (Pudge schmoozing with everyone), and you get to see the guys who are clearly painfully excited to be there, usually with video cameras in tow (Brian McCann was adorably filming everything he possibly could, and Mark Loretta broke his camera out for Ortiz's at-bats).
The best bit is watching Ryan Howard offer his bat to his son for a kiss on the wooden barrel before going up to the plate, and watching David Ortiz let his littlest curly-haired offspring play with one of his batting gloves to keep it busy. You wonder how much of this the baby Pierzynski (wearing, I might add, an entirely hideous headband thing) is going to remember when she's older, and you can clearly see how much the kids who are old enough to appreciate it, do.
It was funny watching Paul LoDuca pitch to David Wright, especially because the dynamic between them, as pitcher and batter, was hilarious. And every time Wright (or anyone else) swore after making an "out", the entire sound feed would go dead for a second. That's what you get for miking up players when they're batting, ESPN. I suppose they must've had the whole thing on a delay of a second or two, or else the whole country would've been hearing David Wright yell, "Shit!" as he hit a big arching flyball out.
Jon(athan) Papelbon telling the TV guys that he had $100,000 on Ortiz to win it all was priceless, especially because you had no idea if he was joking, a little bit joking, or entirely serious. And he had some deranged giant-lensed video camera that he was shooting with at points too, which, combined with his backwards hat, made him look like an immensely loveable dork.
All in all I think that turned out to be a pretty painless Home Run Derby. Nobody blew out their oblique swinging for the fences, the Bermanisms were diluted by the fact that there were so many other people announcing this year. Miguel Tejada seemed to have a snotload of fun, as he does every year. The only Yankee in evidence was Robison Cano, snuggling up to Papi and his brood (where were ARod and Jeter? tsk tsk).
I won't talk about the aesthetic nightmare that is the jerseys until after the actual All Star Game.
*I remember when I was in elementary school, I think 5th grade, we had a poster-making contest where we designed these childish little posters intended to tug at the heartstrings of some lawmaker or other, begging them to clean up the Charles/Boston Harbor. This was back when one whiff of the water from the shore would be enough to mutate small amphibians. I mean it was really bad, back then. Sometimes the surface of the water would be all sorts of interesting colors, and I don't mean shades of blue or green. And the stuff you would see floating in there... urgh.
In 1988, Boston Harbor was the dirtiest harbor in America. And the Charles was just as bad.
There was a massive cleaning campaign, I think in 1995, which would just about jibe with my memory of us doing our pathetic little elementary school part in 5th grade. Things are a lot better now. The Harbor especially is thriving (a few nights ago I was down on the HarborWalk with Amy, and we saw tons and tons of jellyfish floating around in the night-darkened water. It was wicked pretty. So was the view.), and if you dip a foot into the Charles from the back of your MIT sailboat or something, you probably won't get cancer anymore.
But I still wouldn't go diving in it.
This pointless footnote brought to you by: environmentalism!Labels: All Star Game, baseball, David Ortiz, Home Run Derby, MLB, Ryan Howard
2:21 PM
Wednesday, June 28, 2006
So, it's been a few days, and I think I've mostly recovered from Monday's game. Directly after it my ability to think was limited to things like "David Ortiz=happy tiny kittens" and "I am going to be so sunburnt tomorrow". Both of these things are still true today.
You know, having been rained out the day before and being determined to get my money's worth out of the goddamn T, I decided it would be a good idea to meet up with Friend Annette at the park right when the doors opened so we could watch BP. Of course, nearing the end of the 12th inning, something like 7 hours later, this no longer seemed like such a great idea.
The other unintended consequence of coming in early was the life of my camera batteries. I always have two sets with me, and I usually run them both down in the course of a game, but with enough to spare on the last set, so I can flip through them if I want, and download them into my computer on the same batteries.
As the game went into extras, I started nursing the batteries. Turning the camera off. Ignoring Phillies players. I didn't really have a feeling that something special was gonna happen or anything, but it just seemed, well, prudent, you know? We have David Ortiz. Unlikely as it seemed (when he came up in the 12th I said, shaking, to Annette, "He can't, right? I mean, there's no way, right?"), you just never know.
I'm really glad I nursed the batteries along. You've gotta click especially that first one for big, by the way... Alex Cora snugglehugging Papi in the middle of the happy little group is the best bit.
All of the photos are right here and I would recommend going to see them, but because I know some of you are LAZY SODS, here are a few.
David Ortiz scoring the first run of the game past Chris Coste's attempted tag. This was the run that got the Officially Mad Crazy 6th Inning started. The inning where the Sox batted around and 3 guys batted twice (Ortiz, Manny, and Trot).
This game, by the by, ended up being a pain in the coccyx for people scoring the game. Not only did it go into extras, causing me to dig into the designated AB, R, H, and RBI columns, but because both teams batted around once I had to scratch out and change the inning numbers too. Still, it woulda been fun if only the Sox had done it.
I have no idea what Manny and Gonzo are doing here. I mean, they're waiting out a pitching change, I know that much, but beyond that.... no, I won't even speculate. That could be heading into dangerous waters.
It's pretty much impossible to hate Jimmy Rollins, right? I mean, how can you fail to love that?
One of the best things about my cousins' seats (the ones I, obviously, had for this game-- a thousand thanks cousin Beth!) is that you're seated so as to have a good view into, and therefore a good shot at, the Red Sox dugout. And you get to see things like this.
We all know Curt and Beckett have been inseparable this season, standing together on the dugout rail at every game when neither is pitching, chatting the game away. We all know that Curt is taking this opportunity to share his vast and no doubt long-winded wisdom with the kiddies very, very seriously, and very, very happily. He's probably the kinda guy who leaps at the chance to talk to (at?) a captive audience.
This particular conversation, the one I have photographed, went on for several innings, with Annette and I checking back every so often to say, "They're not still talking, are they? Who's Curt bugging now?"
Perhaps it was the heat, perhaps it's the scuzzy facial hair, but whatever it was, Beckett looked like a goddamn mess. He seemed zoned out most of the time, too... I have other photos, that I didn't upload, where he's sitting elsewhere in the dugout, also staring vacantly into space and possibly trying to see if he could feel the individual bristles of his beard grow. With Curt talking and talking and talking and talking, it seemed for the first time, so far as I could tell, that Beckett was not listening. At all.
Jon Lester, on the other hand, was gazing at Curt the entire time with a look that I can only really describe as 'awestruck". He seemed unable to tear himself away. At one point in the 'conversation' Curt started pointing across the field, indicating something. Beckett turned his head in a half-hearted kind of way, but Lester didn't even look up. He could not take his eyes off of Curt for one moment, lest Curt in that moment drop some priceless pearl of wisdom that he would regret not picking up for the rest of his life, or something.
It was great.
Anyways. Things that are pretty:
Gabe Kapler. Pinch hit for Trotter in the 9th.
Mr. Varitek. Pinch hit for Dougie in the 10th, although, as Annette pointed out at the time, Tito was obviously trying his hardest to give Tek a whole day off.
Things you don't notice at the ballpark, but learn upon getting home and perusing your photos of the day's event:
1. Aaron Rowand thinks he's a college frat boy.
Everyone wears the armbands. Most guys have either blank ones, or bands with their number and the logo of whatever sportswear company makes them embroidered on. But Rowand here has his own special pair. When I loaded the photo in I thought, "Hmm, he's got an awful lot of writing on those armbands, I wonder what they say." Zoom proved the horrifying truth.
Yes. Aaron Rowand is wearing armbands that say "BEER PONG CHAMP" on them. Which is not only the sort of absurd, vaguely distasteful and classless yet utterly hilarious sort of thing I would normally expect from AJ Pierzynski, it is also a load of wank. Everyone knows that it was a pair of Wolverines who won the World Series of Beer Pong. Our finest moment, indeed.
But really now, Aaron. You have a Baseball World Series ring. Stop pretending that you have any sort of claim to a Beer Pong ring as well.
2. Mike Timlin has finally gone off the deep end.
We all know he's a hunter and he has a strange, almost manic love affair with the camo pattern. Camo Red Sox hats, clever. Camo shirts under his jersey, acceptable.
But a camo baseball glove? MIKE TIMLIN YOU CRAZY. I didn't even know they made such a thing.
What's next? He paints his face camo and claims it's some new application of eyeblack? See, I shouldn't even have said that, now someone's going to get Ideas.
So yeah, I do recommend checking out the rest of 'em, because there are plenty more and the only reason I don't post them here is I don't want to bust anyone's weakling computer or anything.
That was the second David Ortiz walkoff I've seen live (I saw his afternoon walkoff blast last summer), and man, they just don't stop being awesome.Labels: Aaron Rowand, baseball, David Ortiz, extra innings, in attendance, Mike Timlin, MLB, photoblog, Red Sox
4:20 AM
Tuesday, April 11, 2006
We'll get to that image in a second.
By now you've probably all noticed the change 'round these parts; that is, the new banner. It was a sad day when I realized it was pitiably anachronistic to have Joey Harrington and Bill Mueller as the visual focal points of a site covering the Lions and the Red Sox. So now we have a blue cat (of the appropriate species) wearing red socks, which should withstand the test of time. Or something. I may tweak that banner a bit (if you were swift on the day I first put it up you might've briefly seen a version without any borders), but that's how we're gonna do things here at BCRS nowadays.
And by 'we' I of course mean me, my computer, and Mortimer, the collective cactus being that lives on my windowsill. He's very helpful.
But anyways. It's been a bit, and during this time of year that means that I've missed quite a lot. I blame education. I see that Coco Crisp has done something shattering to his hand and/or finger, the official word being "a non-displaced fracture at the base of his left index finger," which, for us nonmedical sorts, is a hairline fracture (see, non-displaced, the bone hasn't moved).
Doesn't sound too bad in the grand scheme of awful and terrifying possibilities, but I don't like the location. The base of his index finger... ugh, that's something he's gonna need for both fielding and batting. It's a part of the hand that gets a lot of pressure put on it, if you think about how much you use your index finger (even on your nondominant hand) for. But the front office doesn't seem panicked, and it's early yet, and it's not like Adam Stern is a horrible replacement. More Red Sox Jews for Passover, huzzah!
In happy good yay-making news, however, David Ortiz has been signed to a 4-year extension, with a club option tacked on at the end. I'm sure if you tried hard enough you could find some someone who is unhappy with the deal, because no matter what it is there will always be some Red Sox fan who finds something about a deal to be unhappy with, but in this case that person is a bitter, bitter soul who lives out their days in the darkness of their parents' basement, pecking away at their computer and cursing the sun like Gollum and generally hating life and joy. Or maybe they're a Twins fan and they feel ever so shafted.
Also, the presser gave us this image, which is clearly one of the greatest AP photographs to ever exist and in a way validates the entire signing all by itself. Seriously. LOOK AT HOW COOL HE IS. And the bling! And the SMILE. And the FUZZY THEO BENIGNLY PRESIDING OVER ALL IN THE BACKGROUND. His hat kind of looks like a bicycle seat but even that is OK because it's David Ortiz and if he wants to wear a bicycle seat on his head, you damn well best sit back and whistle at how sharp he manages to make it look.
The home opener is in a few hours but I, of course, will not be able to see it, as I'll be frantically painting away in my last (official) painting studio of the year. Beckett's going and I'm just a wee bit annoyed that I won't be able to get a good look at him, but it's OK.
Why is it OK, you ask?
This is why it is OK.
I almost didn't want to say anything beforehand, because I hardly believed we were actually going until we were walking up past Ford Field and into the park. The weather was perfect and Bondo was pitching and we had prime Brandon Inge viewing seats (although not necessarily the best seats for photos, what with my telephoto-lens-less camera and all, but I tried). The Tigs lost but it was an amazingly good time and you should all go look at the photos so that you may enjoy it as well.
For more detail on it you can check out my exhaustion-crazed and vaguely incoherent post about it over at RotT.Labels: baseball, blognews, Coco Crisp, contract, David Ortiz, injury, MLB
10:59 AM
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