Archive for the ‘Jason Bay’ tag
But baby that's a lie
I dig the Jay Bay but I'll be happy when we don't have to keep hearing about him any more (Photo courtesy of Kelly O'Connor/sittingstill.net and used with permission)
Red Sox baseball on television today!
Unless, of course, you actually live in the Boston area.
If what they’ve done historically still holds true, the MLB Network will be airing today’s 1:05pm Sox/Mets game as long as you aren’t in the Boston area market (not sure about NY – do they get blacked out too?). I always hope against hope that someone, somewhere will forget to flip a switch and we’ll get the game – but I sincerely doubt that’s what will happen. The game is also being aired on MLB.tv (but, seemingly, not on the radio) so there are options out there for folks who want to see there first glimpse of Jason Bay v the Red Sox.
It’ll come as no surprise that CHB chimed in today on the Nomar “signing” and wasn’t impressed. Much to my surprise, Sean McAdam wrote a similar (if not even more scathing) piece yesterday about how the Red Sox “jumped the shark” by signing Nomar so he could retire. It’s nice to see that while Nomar and the Red Sox can acknowledge that people are human and baseball sometimes has to be treated like a business, these guys can still hold a grudge.
If by doing something that holds a lot of meaning for the individual player and the fans is “jumping the shark” I hope the Sox continue to circle that shark tank and jump it multiple times. They made a lot of people happy yesterday and it didn’t cost them a dime (Rob Bradford tweeted yesterday that since Nomar immediately retired the Sox aren’t on the hook for his $30 as outlined in his contract). They didn’t make it any kind of big show (hell they didn’t even present him with a jersey and cap – and I was really hoping for that!), they just made the announcement, let Nomar talk a bit and ended it. Warm feelings all around and bygones being bygones. Whats the big freaking deal with that? It’s good PR (how great did the FO look yesterday?), it made Nomar feel good, most of the fans absolutely loved it and it helped close a relatively ugly period of Sox history (I say relatively because his leaving the team led to the greatest moments in Sox history – that part was damn beautiful). Stop pissing in our cheerios, fellas. It was a nice gesture and you’ll find more fans who loved it than who didn’t.
Although that was always CHB’s problem – no matter how much he wanted the fans to hate whichever player of the week he was pissed at, they just wouldn’t. Hell, I’ll bet you can find more Red Sox fans who like(d) Carl Everett more than they liked Dan Shaughnessy.
I’ll say it forever – Nomar loved US (the fans) and hated THEM (most of the sports media) and I’m perfectly all right with that.
So it’s off to Port St Lucie for the Sox today (a Kyle sighting perhaps?). Every one of these “meaningless” games brings us another day closer to April 4th!
Should've told her that I can’t linger
Photo I took of The Big Unit in May 2006
I genuinely surprised myself with my reaction upon seeing Jason Bay in a Mets uniform. It was a lot more negative than I expected. Pirates fans still are the ones wounded the most here. One of the only reasons they want to go to the park gets traded and they have to see him in a Sox uniform talking about his father putting him in a Red Sox onesie when he was a baby. I probably would have punched a wall in 2008 were I a Pirates fan (I imagine, Bay or not, there are a lot of punched walls in Pirates fandom). So I won’t pretend to be heartbroken or devastated that Bay is now a Met but it sure was weird to watch. As I’m sure the Pirate fans felt about the Sox uniform, he looked odd dress in the Mets jersey and cap. Initially, I thought the first photo I saw of him from his press conference was photoshopped. He looked so stiff and unreal in front of the CitiField backdrop. But, alas, it was real and Jason Bay is now a Met. It was hard to watch. Difficult to hear him talk about how he knew he wanted to play for the Mets. Which struck me odd since I was (and am) okay with the Red Sox not really wanting him back. Oh well. I wish him luck and think the Mets have, on paper, a really good team for 2010. Sadly, we’ve seen what the Mets do with really good teams. I hope this year is different for them.
More interesting news, to me, was the announcement that Jacoby Ellsbury will be the starting left fielder come the 2010 season. Unlike so many I know, I don’t have a problem with this. Less wear on his body = more opportunities to steal. Plus, the idea of Mike Cameron in Fenway’s left field didn’t leave me with the warm and fuzzies. If Jacoby feels slighted, and Terry Francona’s comments indicate they tried to do all they could to make sure he DIDN’T feel that way, I’m sure he’ll get over it soon enough. Could be worse, he could be Mike Lowell watching the front office build a team where they obviously don’t want to make room for him.
Adrian Beltre. Admittedly, not the Adrian most Red Sox fans were hoping for but I’m not all that disappointed with this if it happens (only writing “if” since the Sox nor Beltre have owned up to it yet even though ESPN.com already has him on the Red Sox page). The contract isn’t crazy (sorry, Mr. Boras) and his defense is amazing. Take away my fondness for Mike Lowell and my desire to see anyone who hurts him hogtied and there isn’t anything to dislike about this deal. Those who don’t like it (and we’re taking away the Mike Lowell component here) seem to be obsessing on his 8 home runs in 2009. In 2009 Beltre had shoulder surgery. I think we can give him a pass for the weak home run count for one year. The last time he had a season with under 20 home runs was 2005, when he had 19. Before that, it was 2001, and from 2006 to 2008 his home run totals were 25, 26, 25. As long as that shoulder is healthy, I’m not worrying about his home run total being low. (I only pulled out home runs because that seems to be the biggest worry of the naysayers. I’m not one who thinks your offense lives and dies with having 9 guys in the lineup who have to hit 20 home runs or better.) I guess we can’t “officially” welcome Adrian to Boston just yet - but it seems that he’s already getting a taste of what the fans will be like and he hasn’t even put the cap on yet.
MLBN with a marvelous recap of Randy Johnson’s career. I did the Big Unit and can’t wait for him to get into the HoF. http://bit.ly/7O4M0Z
Lovely typo from yours truly there, eh? Well my intentions were pure. Regardless of his mind-numbingly painful pit stop in the Bronx, Randy Johnson has always been one of my favorite pitchers. I DIG the Big Unit and all of his grumpiness and pitching splendor and for him to be out of the game feels almost wrong. Hell, though, 22 years is a long enough time for anyone to be doing what he was doing so I hope he enjoys retirement and maybe even smiles a time or two.
The 2010 Hall of Fame inductees get announced today. How great is it to not be gnawing my fingernails in anticipation of Jim Rice being disappointed again?
And there’s been a lot of broken dreams
We lost Greg Montalbano in 2009. Kelly O'Connor took this photo of him at the Lowell Spinner's Alumni Dinner in January 2009 (Used with permission)
Just a note of warning: This entry is long and although I want it to be all-encompassing, I’m sure I’ve missed few things. But this is pretty much how I remember 2009!
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2009 was a fairly eventful year for me personally in both the good and bad categories. Sadly more bad than good which is probably why I initially avoided writing any kind of recap for the blog. But while I was writing my recap of the Red Sox decade (and I’ll have that up as soon as I finish it!) I realized I should probably write something about the final year of the decade as well. So here goes.
January: I started blogging at WEEI.com. Looking back on my entries for this month, I’m genuinely surprised I found so much to write about (it didn’t stop new readers from complaining that I was writing “drivel” though. Should have been a sign!). Personal highlights in January: The ongoing Jason Varitek saga, the signing of Rocco Baldelli, Kyle Snyder getting picked up by the Mets, the beginning of the MLB Network and Jim Rice finally gets voted into the Hall of Fame!
February: Bombshell of bombshells for MLB. Selena Roberts exposes Alex Rodriguez as a steroid user. The MLB Network cuts its teeth on this one and, unlike Peter Gammons and ESPN, doesn’t disappoint with their coverage. Unafraid of losing access to the players (again, unlike Peter Gammons or ESPN), they go full throttle on this story and introduce us to their newest addition to the network: Bob Costas. I wrote a lot about MLBN in 2009 and a bit about Sl*ppy. I would have written much less about the two, most likely, had this story not broken. Personal highlights in February: The Caribbean World Series on MLBN (I was genuinely surprised at how much I enjoyed it!), Truck Day, pitchers and catchers reporting and Joe Torre’s book about the Yankees.
Chapter 10: The End of the Curse. When asked by Regis Philbin the other day what happened to the Yankees over the past 7 years, Joe responded “The Red Sox happened”. That will go down as possibly my favorite Red Sox/Yankee-related quote ever.
March: I spent a lot of March writing ‘rants’ and pointing folks toward baseball-related Twitter accounts. Must have been resting up for April! Personal highlight in March: The WBC. I spent a lot of time ranting about players getting hurt and how I didn’t care who won only to be totally sucked into it by the end.
April: The beginning of the season! Lots of liveblogging and picking up more WEEI readers (with mixed results!). Personal highlights in April: Going to both Sox/Mets exhibition games at CitiField, attending Opening Day at Fenway and high-fiving JD Drew and Hideki Okajima during their introductions, being at Fenway for the walk-off win against the Yankees, Jacoby Ellsbury stealing home on Andy Pettitte, Tim Wakefield taking a no-hitter into the 8th inning (thus setting the table for his All Star selection), watching Jonathan Van Every pitch while Javier Lopez floundered in right field then eventually getting DFA’d (watched on television, not in person), the Patriots Day game where Luke Scott got all pissy and some idiot fan threw a ball onto the field and “Toeing the Rubber” getting nominated for a New England Sports Blog Award in the category “Best Red Sox Blog”. Relatively speaking, a great month except for one thing that really hit the baseball world hard and made the month miserable: the death of Nick Adenhart.
But I don’t cry because of any personal connection I have to Nick. I don’t cry because a future baseball star is dead. I cry because parents lost a son today. Many people lost a friend. And the world lost someone who could have potentially been great. Not just at baseball but at life. No drunken ass has the right to take that away from us. This doesn’t “put things into perspective” for me. I hate when people say that. I’m forty years old for God’s sake, I’ve seen enough death and tragedy in my life to have proper perspective, thank you. I don’t watch baseball and think that what goes on down on that field is life or death and more important than anything else in my life. I’d argue that most sports fans, even if they act like they have no perspective, have exactly that. Baseball is an outlet to forget about the realities of life for a few hours.
May: Getting to see Daniel Bard’s first Major League appearance (after having seen him pitch in Pawtucket) was very special. Finding out that Jerry Remy was recovering from cancer was sad and a little frightening. Personal highlights in May: Seeing Kyle Snyder with the Bisons at Pawtucket, Javier Lopez signing Steve the Ferret’s “Lopez” jersey (also at Pawtucket), Aubrey Huff fistpumping to Joba Chamberlain, appearing on “The Baseball Show” on Comcast SportsNet, crying (literally crying) over Big Papi’s first home run of the season, getting to meet metsgrrl and “paloozaing” with a huge group of people I love during the Mets/Sox series at Fenway.
Yesterday was an amazing day spent with friends (most of whom I haven’t seen in quite a while or hadn’t met yet!). There are many amazing tales to tell (but not here!) – my favorite being when our friend Susan noted that we could start singing “O Canada” except no one knows the words past “O Canada!”. Standing up and singing loudly and proudly, a group of us proved her wrong. That our serenade didn’t get us thrown out still kind of surprises me.
June: This month brought us the end of interleague play, the end of Jonathan Van Every’s season (thanks to knee surgery), Tim Wakefield hitting ten victories with his torn labrum, John Smoltz making us all wonder why we were so excited to have him on the team while Dusty Brown makes his major league debut. Personal highlights for June: Derek Lowe returning to Fenway with the Braves, Nick Green’s walkoff against those same Braves, sitting in Fenway during a mind-numbing rain delayed game that turned into a loss for the Sox (okay, that one is a lowlight, really) and the Sox capping off 7 wins in a row against the Yankees with an eighth.
