You have to hand it to Rich Garces. He's no longer in the Majors, but
he may be the only pitcher who has his own sponsor for every
appearance. Whenever he pitched this year for the independent league
Nashua Pride, fans heard this announcement: "El Guapo is brought to you
by the New Hampshire Business Resource Center in Concord."
I just finished watching a Red Sox game on television, and here's a list of what I didn't see: rotating billboards behind home plate, people with cell phones, batters stepping out of the box after every pitch, RemDawg signs, promos for reality programs, Wally the Green Monster, and insurance company ducks walking across the screen. You see, instead of a 2007 game, I was watching the penultimate game of 1967 between the Red Sox and the Twins.
One of the best-selling baseball books of the year is David Ortiz's new autobiography "Big Papi: My Story of Big Dreams and Big Hits" written with Tony Massarotti. What better way to enjoy this fine book than in a book club with fellow Sox fans? After all, book clubs are all the rage these days. On the oft chance that you are reading "Big Papi" with others, here are some questions that might help facilitate conversation and fully enrich your reading experience.
Those who bought a couch from Jordan's Furniture back in April are probably feeling quite comfortable as they watch the Red Sox from that new couch. As most people probably know by now, Jordan's offered a full refund on any couch, dining table, or bed bought before April 16th, if the Red Sox win the World Series. Sure, anything could happen the rest of the season, but the start to this year must at least make them feel pretty good.
It has come to my attention that I may not be quite as well-informed about baseball as I had previously thought. These days, it's not easy following the Red Sox. In addition to baseball, you also need a firm knowledge of medicine, advanced statistics, economics, and possibly Japanese -- not to mention ankle sutures and how much they are expected to bleed. My knowledge of baseball is already a little shaky in some areas, and now I have to know all this other stuff too. Therefore, I would like to take a moment to confess a few things about today's game that I do not know.
Taking a break from their ongoing quest to rid the game of steroids,
Major League Baseball has decided to go after something far more
sinister. I'm talking about 87-year-old men who like to sit in the
dugout. Yes, in their infinite wisdom, the commissioner's office has
decided that Johnny Pesky can no longer put on a Red Sox uniform and
sit in the dugout during home games. And you thought Bud Selig didn't
really have any power.
We all love David Ortiz, but here's how much the Red Sox love him. When
he arrived at spring training, John Henry gave him a brand new $40,000
Toyota truck as a thank you gift. I'm not sure exactly how this works.
On first glance, it seems to be such an outlandish gift, but what is
the appropriate thank you gift for someone who makes $12.5 million a
year?
Partly because he's a well respected athlete with strong opinions and
partly because the other seven Republicans in Massachusetts are busy,
Curt Schilling of the Red Sox may possibly end up running for the
United States Senate. Or at least that was the story on the Boston talk
radio station WRKO during one particularly slow news day this off
season.
If you ask me, the signing of Daisuke Matsuzaka was the single most
exciting Red Sox transaction ever that happened to involve a player I
had never seen before. I'm sure most of you agree. Of course, this
excitement was tempered only slightly by the strange press conference
that was held to announce him as a member of the Red Sox. As soon
became obvious, interpreter Tak Sato is not a professional interpreter.
Instead, he is a Japanese representative of Scott Boras' agency and was
chosen simply because Matsuzaka felt most comfortable with him.
Once again, it's college bowl season, that exciting time when the top
64 college football teams play in 32 bowl games. It's sort of like
March Madness except that if the 64th best team somehow wins the
Pioneer Pure Vision Las Vegas Bowl, they don't live to play another
day. Here's just a little of what to expect:
Football isn't just about winning and losing anymore. There's also body
language to consider. What good is winning, if you look down in the
dumps while doing so? Therefore, it is time to present our first-ever
Body Language Report Card. Forget their record. Let's see what the New
England Patriots are really feeling out there on the field.
Jonathan Papelbon, I hereby challenge thee to a game of Scrabble. We
all know that you can close out a baseball game in style. Let's see if
you can finish off a Scrabble game with similar aplomb.
The Winter Olympics haven't even started yet, and already I am a little
sick of them. When the Games do start on February 10th, they will be
almost impossible to avoid. Over all its networks, NBC is planning an
astonishing 416 hours of coverage. Spread over seventeen days, that's
an average of over 24 hours a day. Finally, during these games, if you
get a hankering to watch luge at 3:30 in the morning, then you can
probably do so.
