WEIRD. I THINK I AGREE WITH DAN SHAUGHNESSY. Apparently, New Englanders can no longer watch the Sox once a week for free on UPN. Basically, if you don't pony up for cable, you don't get to watch the Sox. Or more specifically, if you don't pony up for NESN, which the Sox own, you don't get to watch the Sox. Not very neighborly of the hometown team.

By the way, the New York Times owns part of the Red Sox and the Boston Globe. Corporations call this "synergy." Shaughnessy calls it "the cartel." I call it "the suck." Who the heck are you supposed to trust when the newspaper of your hometeam's biggest rival co-owns the hometown newspaper, as well as a significant percentage of the hometeam itself, which also belongs to a group of owners who own the only channel that will broadcast the hometown team's games (except for the handful of Fox broadcasts). Well, at least people who can't afford the ol' cable TV can still listen to the games on WEEI, which ain't entirely a bad thing.

UPDATE: I guess I jumped the gun on WEEI. Apparently, WEEI's contract with the Sox is up for re-negotiation next season.

HOPEFULLY, MANNY BEING MANNY is a phenomenon we get to enjoy close-up for many, many seasons to come. The Sport's Guy's email exchange with Curt Schilling reminds me why idiot savant baseball can be way more fun than regular baseball:

SIMMONS: My favorite "Manny being Manny" moment happened in the final game of the regular season — he had just crushed a home run, the cameras caught you guys sitting next to one another in the dugout, he was talking excitedly about what pitch he had hit, and somewhere along the way, you just started staring at him in disbelief, as though he had just said something like, "I knew it was going to be a slider because I started craving a pork sandwich, and that always means a slider's coming!" And you just kept staring at him, and then he walked away to another part of the dugout, and you started shaking your head in shock like, "Wow, I will never, ever, ever figure that guy out." How many of those Manny encounters happen per season?

SCHILLING: Three to four per day.