HELLO, 2018. The blog-of-feng has a new home (and a new name.)

AARON BOONE'S HOME RUN was the end of everything. His offseason injury was part of a providential start.*

Edgar Renteria has made the last out of a Red Sox season twice in a row: first, on the other side of the diamond, then on this side.

One season ended with 69 wins. The very next ended with all of them.

It’s spring (apparently); it’s Opening Day; and, like every season before, anything can happen, again.

*Imagine the 2004 season with Boone — and without this or this.

AS THE CURRENT RED SOX SEASON limps its way toward ignominy and oblivion, the retelling of the “Greatest Comeback in History” is a reminder of just how unbelievably good the good times really were. I never get tired of watching this.

MAY I HAVE THE PLEASURE of introducing you to Clark Griffith, aka "The Old Fox," Major League Baseball Hall of Famer, and pioneer of the squeeze play? The 2011 Boston Red Sox, under less fortunate circumstances, already made Mr. Griffith's acquaintance earlier today.

BIG PAPI FINISHED HIS SEASON with a curtain call — following a bunt single. In a (mostly) meaningless final game, it was something to cheer for. Jon Lester finished his season one win shy of 20. The Red Sox finished one win under 90. And, in what was possibly his final at-bat in a Red Sox uniform (the only major league uniform he's ever worn), Jason Varitek drove a ball that was destined for the bullpen, but caught on the warning track. This season, a lot of things came up just a little bit short.

Today, the standings show the Red Sox seven games out of first place in the American League East and six games out of the wild card, with zero games left to play. But back when there were still 130 games left to play, CHB was already on the ledge, just short of declaring the end of everything in early May. "I don’t want to panic or overreact," he wrote, "but is it possible the Red Sox season is already over?" This was the outlook even before Beckett, Matsuzaka, Buchholz, Martinez, Varitek, Pedroia, and Youklis all went down with one kind of injury or another, two of them the season-ending kind.

And, of course, Papi was done for, we all knew that. (Never mind that he was done for last season, as well.) This time it really was the end — it certainly sounded like it: "I miss the old days, too," he said. Yikes. No matter what time of year it is or where the team is in the standings, it's hard not to take a gloomy view of the season when your affable, heroic, universally beloved DH starts talking like this:

"Do you understand that this is killing me?" [Ortiz said]. "Do you know when I'm going good I cannot sleep because I'm trying to remember everything that I did right so I can repeat it the next day and the next? And that's when I'm going good. When I'm going bad, it's even worse because everybody looks to me to be the guy who comes through for this ballclub. It's like I never sleep anymore."

So, the 2010 Red Sox season was ending before the spring would. Not just ending, but scuffling, crashing, breaking its ribs (twice), breaking its foot (also twice), catching mono, and developing mystery infections. And then getting up off the dirt to play again. Because despite the mess, somehow there was still plenty of baseball worth watching, right through the summer and even into the first weeks of fall when playoff chances looked more like lottery odds. As the Boston Globe's Chad Finn said, "Can't think of a Sox team that missed the postseason that I'll remember as well as this one. Call it the D-Mac Effect."

Last year, there was the improbable rise of Nick Green. This year, half the line-up was filled with D-Macs. After being hastily added to the 40-man roster and following a memorable pinch-hitting debut, Darnell McDonald kept showing up to the park and playing major league baseball all season long, even after nearly being designated for assignment halfway through. Daniel Nava, a 27-year-old rookie, played 60 games for the team, hitting exactly one home run. And Bill Hall, a utility player who turned into a 96-game starter, seemed to be everywhere, including the pitching mound, playing every position except catcher and first base.

Hall was also part of one of the most exciting half-innings of the season, in which the Red Sox stole four bases off Mariano Rivera, and rallied to take the lead from the Yankees in the bottom of the 8th. Of course, the Sox went on to lose that pivotal game in the 10th, following their own blown save, because that's just the kind of season it was. Their record was 6-12 in extra innings, and they had 13 walk-off losses on the road — two statistics that add up to a lot of heartbreak and sleepy-eyed muttering. After 149 games, the team had used 133 different batting orders and 43 different starting outfield combinations – often filled with no-name journeymen, rookies, minor league call-ups, and banged up regulars.

In short, a great many things happened in this shortened season, and, as expected, none of it could be expected. That's why they call it baseball. Fifty years ago, Ted Williams hit the very last major league pitch he ever saw for a home run. Fifty years later, Daniel Nava hit the very first major league pitch he ever saw for a grand slam. The very last major league pitch to Mike Lowell was dinged high off the top of the Green Monster, just another long Fenway single. Varitek's last swing was just a loud out. And, Ortiz, he finished his season with a bunt.

But the once beleaguered big guy also ended up with 32 home runs and 102 RBI this season — and he's just three short of the all-time RBI record for a DH (currently held by Edgar Martinez). The informed baseball watcher will tell you that RBI is a meaningless statistic. That may be true, but so was the last game of the season: a surprise bunt single, a frivolous curtain call; a well-struck ball by the team's captain that might have made it out of the park, but didn't; and one more win. None of it really adds up to anything. But just like the statistically meaningless RBI, at least it was still fun to watch.

We'll get 'em next year.

ADDENDUM: Somehow I wrote an entire recap of the 2010 Red Sox season without mentioning how much fun Adrian Beltre was to have on the team.

First, a chart detailing the "Causes of Red Sox Injuries".

Second, one of my favorite Jerry Remy/Don Orsillo on-air exchanges, during a dustup with the Indians:

Orsillo: I tell you, one of the last people I'd throw at is Adrian Beltre.

Remy: The human destroyer.

WHAT'S THIS NOW, it's spring again? Whatever happened to the winter? Not to mention the fall? Let's forget about all that nonsense, and think back on happier times while we wait for a new season to begin.

The good eggs at YFSF.org have set their happy thoughts on October in March — a compilation of the most significant postseason plays ranked by their WPA, or the potential effect the play had on the outcome of the game. The result is a strange combination of analytical and emotional gooeyness that at once fills you with an appreciation for the role of stats in modern day baseball-ing and pure, old-fashioned reverie.

Ranked this way, Game 5 of the 1999 ALDS versus the Indians bubbles up as one of the top three most dramatic games in Red Sox postseason history. Watching the game on iTunes 10 years later, the lineup looks familiar, but any postseason game before 2004 still seems a parallel universe away. Certain scenes stick out as particularly odd/amusing: Pedro throwing to Tek, but with Manny at the plate. Manny sharing the outfield with Dave Roberts, who catches a towering fly off the bat of Trot Nixon. Plus, appearances by good ol' Lou Merloni, Nomar in his prime (intentionally walked twice), and the Derek Lowe Face. The game itself is dramatic and fun; the intervening events since 1999 and the overlapping, wacky "what we know now" quality make it even more enjoyable to watch today.

Regarding events closer to the present, Sox first base coach Ron Johnson got to experience his own personal happy moment during spring training, in the form of an on-field reunion with his son. From the Sox-Astros game update on Boston.com:

Pre-game: The exchange of lineup cards had an interesting twist with Sox first base coach Ron Johnson (coaching third in today's split-squad game) exchanging lineups with son Chris, who will play third base for the Astros today. Umpires seemed to get a big kick out of it.

Seems like simple, father-son baseball fun. But the next day's follow-up by Nick Carfado hints at something a little deeper:

Johnson has been a baseball lifer, which means being away from your family. He probably missed most of Chris’s Little League and high school games. But yesterday he watched him as a major leaguer.

"I’ve been around the game for a long time," said Johnson, "and I’ve seen everything and been around a lot of players, but I almost can’t explain it. It was a strange feeling.

"There were just a lot of things that kept sinking in during the course of the game. I know he’s been doing well, but I’m a developer and an evaluator for the last 20 years, and all of a sudden now I see my son on the major league field.

"I know he came up last year in September, but to see him with my own eyes . . . and I’m in the third base coach’s box . . . and there’s Terry Francona and Brad Mills and Roy Oswalt, Jason Varitek, and Jon Lester is on the mound . . .

"Obviously you’re looking at a guy on the other team who you have emotional ties to, and you realize that he moves around and he looks like he can play here. It was exciting. It was really very exciting."

Baseball's timelessness can also turn into a form of time travel: today's games mingling with the memories of games past. There are always the same nine positions on the field – but it's a little bit strange when you look back and one of them is played by a shortstop whose greatness you'd forgotten or when you look up and third base is occupied by your very own son. It's baseball's ability to keep telling stories across years and generations that lets us appreciate and experience the past and the present in new ways.

But enough of yesterday's happy thoughts. As Cleveland Indians manager Lou Boudreau once said, "On Opening Day, the world is all future and no past." Right now, every team's got a .500 record, and it's anybody's guess what happens next.

Happy Opening Day.

NOMAR GARCIAPARRA RETIRES as a Red Sox.

IT'S BEEN A YEAR-LONG PARADE of underdogs, resurrections, and redemptions, with many a misguided notion reconsidered, revised, and upended in its wake. We accepted Bay would never be Manny (but we didn't know what a blessing that would be). The "faithful" were certain Varitek was done, or at least believed the Sox should be done with him. Nick Green was in AAA hoping to get signed in Japan someday – maybe – if he worked at it hard enough. Wakefield was 41 years old and All-Star-less for every one of them. Brad Penny and John Smoltz weren't even on the radar. And Big Papi was laid to rest. A lot's changed since the previous All-Star Break, and more will change by the next one, making now a good time to savor the standings – which show the Boston Red Sox with the best record in the American League, leading their division by three games over the New York Yankees.

WELL, WHEN YOU PUT IT LIKE THAT, it doesn't sound good at all. Adam Kilgore gives us the rundown on the Nats' season so far:

Plenty of teams lose bundles of games. Only the 2009 Washington Nationals saw their bombastic general manager resign during spring training, played part of one game not televised locally, and sent their franchise player on to the field wearing a uniform with the team name misspelled.

This one is definitely worth reading all the way through, at least for little gems like this:

The twin culprits of Washington’s season have been rotten defense (a league-high 64 errors) and the gas-can bullpen (a league-high 16 blown saves). “We’ve seen a lot of things you’ve never seen in baseball,’’ Acta said.

THE IMPROBABLE RISE OF NICK GREEN is the news of the day. Spring training began with franchise future Jed Lowrie and big contract veteran Julio Lugo battling it out for the starting shortstop position — both eventually ending up on the disabled list. So, in movie plot fashion*, the unknown utility man steps out of the shadows and onto center stage . . . and things go just okay:

“I can’t tell you that on the first day of spring training I envisioned him playing shortstop for us,’’ said Terry Francona. “That’s not the case.’’

Nor would it be the case early in the season, when Green was leading the majors in shortstop errors, including one throw in Seattle that the skipper recalled “went halfway up the bleachers.’’

All season long, fans have been lamenting the black hole in the 6 position. (Actually, it's been like that ever since the team let Orlando Cabrera go after the 2004 championship season.) But Greenie keeps plugging away, and then, in an instant, something crazy happens – a walk-off home run in the most unlikely circumstances – and an underrated player's value to the team takes sudden, perfect form:

As Nick Green pulled around second base, the baseball having tucked itself into the right-field corner behind the Pesky Pole, he noticed a commotion at the plate. Amid the mist and fog and wind that turned a Sunday in June into a day ripped from March, the player doing his best to excise the interim tag from his position had lofted the first pitch he saw from Jeff Bennett into the elements.

He didn’t know that it had the means to get out, at least not off the bat. But the wind was drawing it deeper, the fly ball yielding to Fenway Park’s quirky dimensions and lifting the crowd of 37,243 in celebration.

The home run catches everyone by surprise, including Green:

“To be honest with you, I didn’t realize what was going on,’’ Green said. “I didn’t even comprehend the fact that I had swung at the first pitch and it was a walkoff. I just knew that we still had to hit. When I hit second base, everybody’s standing at home plate, then I realized what was going on . . . ."

The stat-minded fellas at YFSF.org point out that Green didn't even play in the majors last season — he was languishing in the Yankees' AAA affiliate in Scranton all last year. Then they look at his numbers as a member of this year's Red Sox starting nine, and uncover his remarkable contribution:

More than just the surprising turnaround is the timing of his hits.

Entering today's game, Green was hitting .409/.500/.545 with runners in scoring position, .364/.434/.530 with men on, .373/.418/.549 with two outs, .500/.560/.636 with runners in scoring position and two outs, .308/.379/.500 with the game tied and .330/.390/.479 when the game is within two runs.

Following a player's ups and downs over the course of a season is part of what makes watching a baseball team rewarding and fun. On the night of Fenway Park's 500th consecutive sellout, Brad Penny's 100th career win, and the anniversary of Ted Williams' 500th home run, John Henry offered his own appreciation of what makes baseball a uniquely quotidian pursuit:

“It’s remarkable,’’ owner John Henry wrote in an e-mail. “There is a love associated with this franchise that transcends sports. The great thing about following a baseball team very closely is that it’s an everyday pursuit. We follow all of our own personal stories day to day – our kids, our spouses, this baseball team – there is a continuity of hopes, surprises, joy – all the daily ups and downs of the Red Sox provide a backdrop that is often a respite or enhancement for everything in the foreground . . . ."

So Green's dinger isn't just a turning point in an isolated game, it's another twist and turn in a longer story that started in Spring and will hopefully continue into the Fall. But right now, it's just nice to know RemDawg approves.

*For fun, first read Bob Ryan's take on the Nick Green story, and see how many "Blockbuster, I'm tellin' ya's" you can get through without imagining an old-timey huckster chomping on a cigar and twitching his big bushy eyebrows. Then erase that from your mind and go read Amalie Benjamin's game wrap for real baseball poetry.

UPDATE 08/27/09: Nick Green's pitching line: no hits, no runs, three walks, 35 pitches, 13 strikes, one slider, 0.00 ERA.

HOW DOES THE GREEN MONSTER COMPARE in height with the Statue of Liberty? How long did it take for each Major League Baseball team to break the color line? What percentage of the Cleveland population do the Indians really represent? What happens when you mash up seldom considered (and sometimes whimsical) baseball stats with the magic of infographics? You get Flip Flop Fly Ball. From the people (okay, guy) who brought you the wonder of Minipops, now you can really see how much seats at the new Yankee Stadium cost compared to the rest of the league – via the elegance and beauty of bar graphs.

"EVERYTHING ENDS BADLY, otherwise it wouldn't end." Bill Simmons quotes Cocktail as he keeps vigil over the demise of the legend of Big Papi:

The best way I can describe Fenway during any Papi at-bat is this: It's filled with 35,000 parents of the same worst kid in Little League who dread every pitch thrown in the kid's direction. There is constant fear and sadness and helplessness. Nobody knows what to do.

Fans may not know what to do, but they know what not to do:

It's been a sports experience unlike anything I can remember. Red Sox fans refuse to turn against Ortiz. They just can't. They owe him too much for 2004 and 2007. It's like turning on Santa Claus or happy hour. Every Ortiz appearance is greeted with supportive cheers, every Ortiz failure is greeted with awkward silence. The fans are suffering just like he is.

Ortiz's futility has been a terrible thing to watch in the middle of what has been an otherwise promising season. But as gruesome as it's been, it's also somewhat heartening to see the fans stick by him. Luckily, we don't have to make out the lineup card every day. It's probably much more difficult for the Red Sox skipper to stick by him – but stick by him he does:

Francona also took some time yesterday with David Ortiz, who has been a shell of the hitter he has been in the past. Ortiz went into the game with a .208 average, .600 OPS, and zero home runs. So Francona gave him a pep talk of the kind he rarely has had to give in their tenure together.

"I've been standing there for five years patting him on the fanny as he runs by driving in all those runs and winning games for us," Francona said. "Now, when he needs a little help, I don't want to be the one to abandon him."

Sure, we love Papi for all the big hits he made in the past, though it has more to do with the feelings we experienced in those moments rather than the exact number of runs driven in. (Let's also not forget that by all accounts he's a genuinely nice and fun-loving person.) Anyway, you certainly can't boo the man responsible for this kind of joy.

UPDATE: After a month of encouraging swings, YFSF.org takes a look at evidence that suggests previous reports of the death of Big Papi's bat may have been greatly exaggerated.

IT WAS A GOOD NIGHT IN THE FENS, with a Major League record-tying 12 putouts by the center fielder, two home runs by the captain, and four home runs in an inning — including one by the designated hitter:

Before David Ortiz finally ended the longest homerless streak of his career, he got some words of encouragement from his dad.

Sort of.

Enrique Ortiz had flown into town on Tuesday and "told me, `Hey, son, it's not going to get worse than this so go out there, have fun and forget about what happened," Ortiz recalled.

It may be tough to hear your father say you've hit bottom, but Ortiz said he kept that in mind Wednesday night when he hit his first homer in 150 at-bats in the Boston Red Sox's 8-3 win over the Toronto Blue Jays.

"I tried it all. I was about to hit right-handed," the lefty slugger said.

THE AMAZIN' METS seem to be foregoing their traditional season-end implosion by peaking early and putting the suck on well ahead of the All-Star break – all in spectacular fashion, of course. And although I don't usually go for the "bummed out beat reporter's bitter tirade" schtick, Ben Shpigel of the New York Times is penning gloriously dry and downtrodden accounts of the team's most recent woes with fun quips, like: "Making the simple difficult since 1962 — that could be the Mets’ motto." Here's some more from Shpigel's story on a 5-error, 11-inning debacle, which included a runner missing third base on his way home:

“I’ve never seen anything like that,” Carlos Beltran said.

And neither had anyone else. To be fair, [Jerry] Manuel said he had seen his former charges, the Chicago White Sox, commit five errors, not that he was boasting of that achievement or anything. But no, he had never seen a player completely miss tagging third base on his way home as [Ryan] Church did in the top of the 11th. That gaffe canceled what would have been the go-ahead run, ended the inning and breathed life into the Dodgers. Not that, on this night, they needed any extra help. The five errors were the Mets’ most since they committed six on Sept. 16, 2007, against Philadelphia.

“The guy missed third base, that’s unbelievable,” Manuel said. “I can’t explain why or how or anything, but he actually missed the base. To me, it’s just hard to miss third base . . . ."

That exceptional display of baseball prowess was immediately followed by another very bad outing the very next day. Shpigel leads the recap with this:

The Mets showed up for work at Dodger Stadium early Tuesday afternoon, eager to give this baseball thing another try. They hit. They caught. They fielded. And they threw a little, too. It all may have helped, as they committed one error instead of five, and managed to touch third base every time on their journeys home.

What they could not do Tuesday night was pitch . . . .

And clearly, the previous day's incredulous loss still stings, as Shpigel throws another jab or two where he can:

Before the game, the Mets refrained from holding tutorials on touching third base, perhaps because the clip of Church stepping over it in the 11th inning Monday night was broadcast roughly 412 times.

The Mets are in no way done for the season — they're just one game out of first in their division, after all. But it's been fun following their hijinks in the paper, even if it's probably painful to witness in person. And, hey, at least they're not the Nats.

EBERT BLOGS ANTICHRIST, another fun-filled romp by Lars von Trier, aka crazy man. (I believe von Trier and Werner Herzog compete for that title year to year.) I only read the beginnings of these Ebert posts, but will return to them if I ever actually get around to seeing the movie, which I've naturally become a teensy bit wary of, considering it's being described as a mildly traumatic life experience. Here's Ebert after the premiere at Cannes:

There's electricity in the air. Every seat is filled, even the little fold-down seats at the end of every row. It is the first screening of Lars von Trier's "Antichrist," and we are ready for anything. We'd better be. Von Trier's film goes beyond malevolence into the monstrous. Never before have a man and woman inflicted more pain upon each other in a movie. We looked in disbelief. There were piteous groans. Sometimes a voice would cry out, "No!" At certain moments there was nervous laughter. When it was all over, we staggered up the aisles. Manohla Dargis, the merry film critic of The New York Times, confided that she left softly singing "That's Entertainment!"

[ . . . . ]

If, as they say, you are not prepared for "disturbing images," I advise you to just just stop reading now . . . .

And then his follow-up two days later:

Lars von Trier's new film will not leave me alone. A day after many members of the audience recoiled at its first Cannes showing, "Antichrist" is brewing a scandal here; I am reminded of the tumult following the 1976 premiere of Oshima's "In the Realm of the Senses" and its castration scene. I said I was looking forward to von Trier's overnight reviews, and I haven't been disappointed. Those who thought it was good thought it was very very good ("Something completely bizarre, massively uncommercial and strangely perfect"— Damon Wise, Empire) and those who thought it was bad found it horrid ("Lars von Trier cuts a big fat art-film fart with 'Antichrist'"— Todd McCarthy, Variety).

[ . . . . ]

Enough time has passed since I saw the film for me to process my visceral reaction, and take a few steps back . . . .

All this before an actual review.

IN THE WAKE OF THE EPIC MANNY BUMMER, let us focus only on the good things. Like, when Ellsbury, in a fit of daring, all of a sudden decided to steal home against the Yankees:

The plate beckoned. Jacoby Ellsbury, creeping farther off third base as Andy Pettitte delivered his second pitch to J.D. Drew, saw the situation clearly. The pitcher was throwing from the windup, the lefthander's back to third base, the third baseman playing off the bag, the bases loaded.

So on the next pitch, Ellsbury was three-quarters of the way down the line before Pettitte noticed him, the pitch coming as fast as he could throw it to catcher Jorge Posada. Ellsbury was coming, too, then sliding, head-first after a brief stumble, as Drew stood watching. Posada's tag was futile.

Ellsbury had stolen home in the fifth inning, the highlight of the Red Sox' 4-1 win last night and a series sweep of the Yankees.

The roar was deafening, even though the crowd of 38,154 at Fenway Park seemingly was having trouble realizing what it had just seen. This was better even than his tear for home from second base on a wild pitch in his rookie season, the one that made them think he was a god on the base paths. It was simply brilliant.

And Pettitte had never even looked over.

Let's just make sure not to dwell too long on the likelihood that steals are becoming a bigger part of the game because teams are compensating for the significant drop in dingers that go along with stringent drug testing. Let's instead look towards the Bronx and the fancy new stadium with its ludicrously overpriced seats, "mallpark" atmosphere, and other fan-unfriendly features, like employees who literally leave paying fans out in the rain. A little schadenfreude goes a long way. But the troubles in the Yankee empire don't just warm the cockles of the heart for their own sake. They also remind us to appreciate an ownership and a franchise that fans can happily get behind — if for no other reason than the invaluable gift of a new old Fenway:

“There are those who want to build the Eighth Wonder of the World,” Larry Lucchino, the Red Sox’ president and chief executive, told me Friday. “We just wanted to preserve a nice little old ballpark.”

So even though the ghosts of ownerships past continue to haunt Yawkey Way, and more upsetting disclosures may be just around the corner, we still get to watch the game at the same address as always. The seats are still cramped (along with necks), pillars still obstruct, and the dented wall standing in left field is still the same shade of green. These things at least are mostly unchanged — ready for a new generation of players to step in and pull off memorable, daring feats, all on their own.

SO, BASICALLY, IN ONE WORD . . . UGH. You could also read Bill Simmons' 2,000-word imaginary conversation with his son regarding the epic Manny bummer, and pretty much arrive at the same conclusion:

We settle into our seats. I point toward the championship banners over the first-base side. They go in order: 1903, 1904, 1912, 1915, 1916, 1918, 2004, 2007. Ever since Boston won the World Series 10 years ago, I always imagined pointing to that 2004 banner and telling my little boy, "That's the team that changed everything."

So that's what I do. I point at the banner and tell him, "That's the team that changed everything."

"Isn't that the team that cheated?" he asks.

Like I said . . . Ugh.

1B, BB, 2B, BB, 1B, BB, 2B, 1B, 1B, 1B, 1B, HR — yet another strange line involving the Cleveland Indians, only this one's not in their favor:

Twelve batters crossed the plate before Indians pitchers – three of them – could record one out in the sixth.

Or, to put it another way:

Four RBIs make for a decent week. Jason Bay achieved that in one inning, going 2 for 2 with a double and a three-run home run.

BAMARAMARAMAheyhotdogRAMARAMARAMA — also known as the sound of your Football getting in my Baseball:

I went to a Baseball game the other day, and I have a few complaints. First of all, I understand the whole deal of how it (Our National Pastime) is a Business, and an Industry, and how it is Entertainment, so therefore you gotta make it Exciting--as in, way fucking more exciting than Baseball is to people who are not crazy about the Baseball but who end up at a game every now and then. So you gotta wake the motherfuckers up every inning because Baseball can be (get ready for this News Flash), according to some people, kinda Boring, but it's like all this goddamn Intro Music every time somebody from the Home Team steps up to bat, like BAMARAMARAMARAMARAMARAMA with whatever fucking shit they got--Metal, Hip-Hop, Country, even Western--it's all this goddamn BAMARAMARAMARAMARAMARAMA "BLAHRBLAR NOW STEPINNNN UPTOMRRMPH BALLLH, NUMMMBR PHRM-TNRMZLE BALWRR BLARR BLAHBLAH!!!" and then BAMARAMARAMARAMARAMARAMA BRRT-BRRT BAMARAMARAMARAMARAMARAMA, goddamn Jesus Fucking Christ, man, every goddamn time one of Your Baltimore Orioles steps up it's gotta be BAMARAMARAMARAMARAMARAMA?

Amen.

(via YFSF)

1B, 1B, HR, FO, 2B, 1B, 2B, 2B, 1B, 2B, 2B, BB, 1B, K, HR (GS), HR, K — the top of the 2nd inning today at Yankee Stadium. Yikes. Also, it appears the ball gets a little extra giddy-up in right field at the Yankees' fancy new digs:

In three games at the new Yankee Stadium, there have been 17 homers — 12 to right-center field. The dimensions are the same as they were last year, but in the very early going, all on relatively warm afternoons, the ball seems to jump in that direction.

Ultimately, that could help the Yankees, who have several left-handed or switch-hitters with power, plus right-handers who hit well to the opposite field. But on days when their pitching was so dreadful, it contributed to a historic mess.

The gamer over at YFSF was particularly prescient: "Bring a Glove."

EBERT LOOKS BACK on the early days of a career as a good ol' fashioned newspaperman, and it's right out of All the President's Men or the Daily Planet — except with a bit more booze and a little heavy petting.

Here, he's a wide-eyed kid in the company of a Pulitzer Prize-winner:

I sipped the brandy, and a warm place began to glow in my stomach. I had been in Chicago four months and I was sitting under the L tracks with Mike Royko in an eye-opener place. A Blackhawks game was playing on WGN radio. The team scored, and again, and again. This at last was life.

"The Blackhawks are really hot tonight," I observed to Royko.

He studied me. "Where you from, kid? Downstate?"

"Urbana," I said.

"Ever seen a hockey game?"

"No."

"That's what I thought, you asshole. "Those are the game highlights."

Another anecdote ends with free blow jobs. On the eve of the death of newspapers as we know it, the full, romanticized blog post is worth the read.

THE FOUR-SIDED TRIANGLE is a science fiction novel by William F. Sample which was turned into a movie in 1953. And judging by this MovieTome synopsis, it sounds kind of great:

Graduate students Robin Grant (John Van Eyssen) and Bill Leggat (Stephen Murray) have both loved the beautiful Lena (Barbara Payton) since childhood. After years of perseverance by both men, Lena finally chooses Robin, and the two become engaged. Devastated by the news of Lena's plans, Bill uses his latest science experiment, a cloning device that duplicates matter, to create a "new Lena" for himself. Unfortunately, this device performs too well, producing a clone that also loves Robin. Furious and desperate, Bill decieds to use electro-schock to burn the memory of love out of the clone's brain.

(via Roger Ebert's blog)

AS THE NEW YORK TIMES PONDERS the fate of Stan's Sports Bar – the central watering hole around Yankees Stadium for the last 30 years – Joe Mondi, one of the bar's managers, reminisces about the old days:

“I remember we played the Red Sox in ’91,” Mr. Mondi said, “and right in that corner, some guy came in wearing a Red Sox jersey, and they ripped it off his body, they lit it on fire, and they urinated on it. Right here in the bar.”

Now that the stadium itself has moved and Stan's is no longer in a prime location, the bar's future is uncertain. But, oh, the memories!

EVERYONE BEING MANNY, or at least everyone would like to be Manny, according to Jeff Bradley in his ESPN.com article:

Quite simply, he's the most studied, most observed hitter in baseball — and that's just by his peers. They marvel at Manny's ability to translate his prep work into success when the lights come on. They envy the short-term memory deficiency that seemingly allows him to bring the same level of confidence to the plate regardless of whether he struck out or hit a home run his last time up. "If slumps are between a player's ears, which I think they are," says former Boston teammate Sean Casey, "then Manny is slump-proof, because mentally he's always the same."

In the article, teammates and rivals alike heap admiration and awe on the slugger's beguiling hitting prowess. Orlando Hudson, former second baseman for the Toronto Blue Jays, says when he played against Manny:

"I'd get so focused on what he did at the plate that I forgot my job was to see the ball coming off his bat and make a play. He can mesmerize you."

His secret seems to be no secret at all – a solid game plan for every at-bat, plenty of hard work and preparation, a keen eye and great mechanics. But even so, Manny's formula for success remains, like the man himself, a mystery. He can try to explain it – as he did for Russell Branyan, a former teammate on the Cleveland Indians – but good luck imitating it:

One time, Ramírez laid it all out for Branyan, gave him the whole hitting equation. "He told me that he put 70 percent of his weight on his back foot and 40 percent of his weight on his front foot. And even though I knew the numbers didn't add up, I thought for a second, I've got to try that."

JAPAN BEATS SOUTH KOREA to win its second World Baseball Classic in a row. The final game between the two rival nations reached its peak with a two-out hit from Ichiro that put Japan back on top for good in extra innings. From Jack Curry in the New York Times:

Ichiro Suzuki lined a two-out, two-strike single to center field off Chang Yong Lim to drive in two runs in the 10th and ignite a celebration from Dodger Stadium to Tokyo. But Suzuki did not immediately celebrate. After he scooted to second on the throw home, he showed no emotion. He calmly lifted his hand to call a timeout.

“I believe that Ichiro’s hit is something I’ll never forget,” said Tatsunori Hara, the Japanese manager. “It’s an image that will forever be imprinted in my mind.”

Amazingly, it was a hit that shouldn't have had a chance to happen in the first place:

The South Koreans decided not to intentionally walk Suzuki, who batted with runners on second and third, and the decision doomed them.

In Sik Kim, the South Korean manager, said the team had signaled to Lim that he was supposed to pitch around Suzuki. If Suzuki did not bite at a bad pitch, Lim was supposed to walk him. But Lim apparently did not get those signs or did not obey them.

“I don’t know why the pitcher tried to pitch directly to Ichiro,” Kim said.

Suzuki diplomatically said that he was not surprised that the South Koreans pitched to him because walking him would have loaded the bases. But even Kim said that he regretted not walking Suzuki. During the memorable at bat, the usually focused Suzuki said his mind was cluttered.

“I really wish I could be in a state of Zen,” Suzuki said. “I kept thinking of all the things I shouldn’t think about. Usually, I cannot hit when I think of all those things. This time I got a hit. Maybe I surpassed myself.”

And despite the emphasis on their cultural rivalries, the two teams seem to share a similar approach to how they play the game – an approach that has proven mostly successful:

The all-Asian championship reiterated that the rest of the world plays excellent baseball, too, and was a credit to the two teams that play in a more disciplined way than the United States. Japan and South Korea feature pitchers who are not immune to throwing strikes and players who are smart and aggressive. Japan was a little smarter, a little more aggressive and a little better.

“They try to play as sound, as errorless and as perfect, that word should be perfect, as perfect baseball as they can,” said Shane Victorino of the United States. “And that’s how you win ball games.”

Good stuff.

ONE DAY, YOU, LIKE ME, WILL DISCOVER TEDTALKS, and, just like me when I was you, you won't know where to begin. If I were you, and you were me, I'd start with these:

• Ze Frank: What's so funny about the Web? (2/04)
• Janine Benyus: 12 sustainable design ideas from nature (2/05)
• Scott McCloud: Understanding comics (2/05)
• Hans Rosling: Debunking third-world myths with the best stats you've ever seen (2/06)
• Vilayanur Ramachandran: A journey to the center of your mind (3/07)
• Larry Lessig: How creativity is being strangled by the law (3/07)
• Mark Bittman: What's wrong with what we eat (12/07)
• Doris Kearns Goodwin: Learning from past presidents in moments of crisis (2/08)
• John Hodgman: A brief digression on matters of lost time (2/08)
• Paula Scher: Great design is serious (not solemn) (5/08)
• Jennifer 8. Lee: Who was General Tso? and other mysteries of American Chinese food (7/08)
• Ueli Gegenschatz: Fulfilling the dream of flight in a high-tech wingsuit (2/09)
• Elizabeth Gilbert: A different way to think about creative genius (2/09)
• Eric Lewis: Striking chords to rock the jazz world (2/09)
• Dan Ariely: Why we think it's OK to cheat and steal (sometimes) (3/09)
• Stanley McChrystal: Listen, learn ... then lead (03/11)

Also available on Ye Olde iTunes.

"THE EARLY BIRD GETS THE WORM, but the second mouse gets the cheese." Different circumstances present different risks and opportunities, and in this brave new world of psychobiology and genetics, how and why we respond to any specific circumstance seems to be increasingly explained by what's in our genes rather than what kind of diapers we wore growing up. In other words, nature seems to be edging out nurture as the chief culprit for shaping our behavior and identities. But, of course, the whole story is a little more complicated than that. Steven Pinker talks about the somewhat muddled implications of getting to know your genome in his New York Times Magazine article "My Genome, My Self". Mapping our individuality through our genes at first seems like a straightforward proposition (i.e. this gene makes you fat, this one makes you good at math). But the endeavor quickly becomes a rabbit hole that leads you from piece to piece to piece – all of which refuse to neatly add up and explain a concept like intelligence, let alone demystifying what makes you you:

The search for I.Q. genes calls to mind the cartoon in which a scientist with a smoldering test tube asks a colleague, “What’s the opposite of Eureka?”

REDBELT is an unusual little flick – a samurai/noir/fight film with turn-of-the-screw plotting, some enjoyable martial arts scrapping, trademark Mametian masculinity throughout (for better and for worse), and, yes, a somewhat dopey ending. But I dug it. Every scene contains both surprise and a sense of inevitability, and the characters and themes resonate with a singular, uncomplicated understanding of decency – a notion usually ignored, upstaged, or over-sentimentalized in movies. Here, despite all the twist and turns, decency remains the simple principle on which all the action pivots, and by the end, it becomes a virtue raised almost to the level of nobility.

EBERT LOBS BON MOTS on cinematic bombs:

No matter what they're charging to get in, it's worth more to get out. (Armageddon)

And a lovely existential one:

Mad Dog Time is the first movie I've seen that doesn't improve on the sight of a blank screen viewed for the same length of time. It is like waiting for the bus in a city where you're not sure they have a bus line.

MIDTOWN HOLIDAYS

Humans
hobbling
along
the
sidewalks —

Some
drunks,
who
fell over
once
too often,
now perpetually stumble
even sober.

Some
just
shopping
and
looking around
but
not at where they're
going.

Bastards!

THE HOT STOVE AIN'T SO HOT these days, as everyone sits around waiting for someone else to blink.

MAN ALLEGEDLY ASSAULTS GIRLFRIEND WITH BURGER, as reported by the Onion. Sorry, I mean, the New York Times.