Was visiting Chan in NYC today. I had this brilliant idea to walk the length of Manhattan. We went bottom to top to make sure we got to walk on Park Ave while it was closed to traffic for Summer Streets. And now....I'm icing my foot. More on this later including pics.

Last night's win was really fun. First dong for Kalish. Too bad Lackey had to be pitching today...glad I missed that one...

Pretty nutty that after all the craziness with Lowell, he becomes a key piece with Youk gone for the year. Nice win behind the Exec's Grand Dong tonight, so we're 6 out going to NY. Sweep and we're 2 behind them.

We're still right around even with the first-place teams in all the other divisions. We knew we were in the hardest one going in, though--still, with all the injuries, to be where we are is amazing. Still time, people, still time.

Invented a new game with my friend Anthony tonight. Band-name Boggle! So initials count, but if you're lucky you can get a full name. Besides the obvious BTO and stuff like that, he got STYX, and I actually got UNSEEN.

Redsox.com has changed, even adding a rare slogan, though it's more of a statement ("The home of Red Sox Nation"). Of course, in this era of boring uniformity by MLB, this means that ALL the sites have changed--all going to the wrap-around background. Most clubs use a photo of their field. At least we did something a little different, going with a shot of the Green Monster scoreboard. Here's the photo on its own, with the middle cut out for the actual content. (You'll also see this on redsox.com, you may just have to stretch your browser window horizontally.)

So, of course, seeing the active scoreboard, I had to figure out what game it was from. The trained eye (read: big nerd) recognizes this as the old, smaller scoreboard that started when the NL scores left in the 60s, and ended a few years ago when they came back. You also see that the Sox' pitcher is #21, while the Yanks have #57 going. The last guy to wear 21 for us was Clemens, so this is most likely a game between '84 and '96. And Steve Howe wore 57 for them for many years--'91 to '96.

After looking at all the games from '91 to '96, I found no game that matched. (You can tell they scored 0 in the first and we most likely had a 1. And you can see some other game scores on the right.) Then I worked backwards, all the way to the 60s, even though the team ending with "A" playing Oakland was most likely SEA, meaning the game is '77 or later. I was stumped. It seemed so easy, like I had to be missing something. I checked again. No matches. I even checked that Mets-Sox Jimmy Fund game in September '86.

Finally it hit me. I thought I'd checked over the Yanks' numerical roster (Baseball Almanac is great for this) for every year in question--but I'd forgotten to check Howe's years, making the assumption he was the ONLY Yankee to wear 57 from '91 to '96. So it hit me--in his first or last year, someone else could have worn 57 before he got to the team or after he left. I checked his final year, and sure enough, someone else wore #57 that year, too. Ramiro Mendoza. So I knew I had it! (And if this wasn't right I would have been really pissed.)

So I checked the '96 games, and there it was. Penultimate game of the season, Saturday, September 28th, 1996. Clemens pitching against Pettitte, but Mendoza came in to start the third. We also see that #2 is at bat--that's Jeter since our #2 that year, Alex Cole, wasn't in that game. While Mendoza was in the game, Jeter batted twice, in the 4th and 7th. Since the game started that day at 1:05, and those two other games we see on there did too and they're both in the 6th inning, I'd say our game was in the 7th, not the 4th.

So there you go. 9/28/96. Yanks lead 3-1. Jeter is leading off the 7th against Clemens, and he'll ground out, Nomar to Mo. Joe Girardi is on deck. It's probably a little after 3:00 in the afternoon...and I know exactly where I was!

I was living at home. My friend Mike the Yankee fan was just starting his senior year of college at BC, and I had gone up to visit him and catch a Sox-Yanks game. This was Friday night, September 27th, 1996. We sat in the left field grandstand for a price that's way lower than what you'd pay today. We had bets going on which team would hit the most triples in the game. And in the top of the ninth, the Sox got the second out, and I stood up immediately. Mike said, "You stand when there's two strikes, not two outs, son." And I said, "Not against the Yankees." And the whole crowd proceeded to stand along with me. (I always think of this--the other night when the Sox lost in Seattle, I saw some M's fans stand when they got the second out, and I thought of the Yankee rule and that night back in '96.)

The next day, driving back to southwest Connecticut, I stopped in Old Saybrook--these were the final days of my grandpa's cottage, as it would soon be sold. The tiny TV with the earpiece on the back porch was long gone. A normal TV had been installed in the little front room. I sat in the cottage by myself, having just turned 21, watching my favorite childhood pitcher throw his last game in a Sox uniform, in one of my last visits to one of my favorite childhood places, at the end of the Yankee World Series drought that was pretty much all I'd known my whole life. I would also enter the world of "actually having a girlfriend" the next spring. (Yes I just admitted I didn't have a girlfriend till I was 21. What do want, I was selective. Oh wait, I mean...they were selective.)

What I'm trying to say is, the background of the Red Sox website kind of represents the line between childhood and adulthood for me.

No biggie.

Well that snowballed outta control in a hurry. Dick Street point five. I hope Lester's okay, because he'd be, like, the only one who is. Oh except for Scutaro with his non-instinctive attempts at plays that Alex Gonzalez makes with one nut tied behind his ass.

A few years ago, I noticed that there were two baseball players buried in East Haven, CT. Since I go to that area a lot, I decided to search for the two graves and photograph them for the Deadball Era site. Without any idea of where in the cemetery they might be, I found one almost instantly. The other took a while, but I got the shots, and sent them in.

I asked the site author why he hadn't put them up a few times, and I guess he just never got around to it. I checked today for the first time in a while, and to my surprise...there they were.

Jack Jones and Fred Woodward.

I'll have to go do some more photography.... Feel free to get shots of your local baseball graves and send 'em in to the guy. He's a Yankee fan and he'll make you wait...but he has a fun site.

Sox v. Cleve. 7:10.

Beltre had the right idea by stepping out in front there--but he shoulda followed through and charged the mound! I'm glad Beckett got out there and got into things. And I was so happy it was the Psycho Ghoul he was one he was jawing with! I wonder if my neighbor is trying to figure out why she heard screams of "I want the ghoul! I wan't the fuckin' ghoul!" coming from our place...

Classic NESN--sometimes once Don and Remy get a thought in their head, it becomes fact. They had time to come up with a full recap of who got thrown at, but since they'd forgotten about Darnell getting one pitch over his head and another that almost caught him in the face, those weren't part of the recap.

But all that a-proverbial-side, we got the win. Great job there by Lowell! And the Yanks are about to be out of first. Sweeeet.

This story is spreading like butterfire! My co-worker told me that we have a chance at seeing the northern lights tonight, as it will be visible from much farther south than usual. At that point, there were three stories online about it. Fifteen minutes later, it's out of control.

This is either gonna be a hell of a show, or the Al Capone's Vault of the 21st century.

My aurora borealis history:

1989 (?) My mom and I looked out the back sliding door and really thought we saw it. Kind of a green tint. Might not have been anything.

2001-ish: My band The Pac-Men were playing a show in upstate New York. Driving on I-90 east of Buffalo we saw it, again green but much clearer this time. Pulled over, tried to take pics, they barely came out.

2003-ish: This was the grand champion. A no-doubter. Driving up route 7 north of New Milford, CT, pulled over by that Furnace thing and watched for a long time as the sky turned all sorts of crazy shades of purple. Just like you see on TV. Couldn't believe it was really happening.

So get your ass outside tonight and prepare from the coming of Gozer.

My mom sprang for the good seats before the season for this game--we picked a good one.
My first look at Ryan "I Could or Could Not Eat Leafy Greens" Kalish in the majors. Got a little Pawtucket left on your shoe, kid.



Buchholz with Beltre growing out of him.

Beautiful day--we were in the first row of the loge (As you can tell by the heads in these shots! Which I'm not cropping out of laziness!), on the sun/shade line.

Youk and Lowrie.

Kalish up.

Youk again.

Verlander with one scoop of baseball.

Cabrera.

Last Wednesday, at PPAC in Providence for that award show where Kim got her thing, Miss Rhode Island sat right in front of us. Incredibly, the previous year's Miss Rhode Island then walks right by us at Fenway four days later. "Rhode Island--they're never in contention!"

Clay comes out in the ninth. He had thrown 8 shutout innings, but Pap blew the save. We won in the bottom of the ninth on an error on a sac bunt. My video of the ending--I'm using somewhere else. Details later. So instead of celebrations, you get...

The dragon ride that we passed on the highway on the way home.

Lackey, a fan grabs a fair ball, bailing you out of a run and you have a chance to get out of the inning unharmed, and THAT'S your 0 AND 2 PITCH to the Psycho-Ghoul? Gimme a goddamn break.

2-1 Ohio in the 4th.

8:35: Bill Hall, we've talked a-goddamn-bout this before. You hit a baseball, and you RUN TO FIRST. he guy just started walking after hitting a ball that hit 18 feet up on a 37-foot high wall. Costs him a double--and right on cue, there's the double play ball. Inning completely ruined. I tried so many times to make excuses for the guy, but these games are important. We needed runs that inning. I'd have pulled him right outta the game. 3-1 Cleve after 5.

8:40: Duncan with his third hit of the game. The first three-hit game of his career. (Congrats, Lackey.) I love hearing that because Yankee fans from Shitsburg to Craptown thought this guy was gonna be the AL MVP in 2008. Here we are in late 2010 and he just now had his first three-hit game. It's only his 8th multi-hit game in his whole career!

9:09: 6-1 them now. At least AJ did worse than Lack tonight. (I said "lack" on purpose.) Hey so Wakefield is now 44 years old. Don just said Yaz was 44 and 41 days when he retired as the oldest Red Socker. So the first game Wake pitches in from September 13th on will be the day he becomes the oldest all time Boston player. Cool.

9:25: Well we're kinda making a comeback but our second guy of the night got thrown out at home--and the Cleveland catcher's knee bent the wrong way, not quite Theismann but disgusting. 6-2 them.

10:05: With 2 outs in the 8th, Executive 3-run dong makes it 6-5. Almost there...

10:29: We lose.

While standing at Fenway after the win, I listened to Don interviewing Scutaro. Don said something about how "it's really turned around in the the last 24 hours." Am I missing something? (That's rhetorical.) Did we not just sweep the previous serious on the road, then win 2 out of 3 in this series? (Also rhet.) We've won 7 or 10. What exactly did the team "turn around" in the last 24 hours? Un-awesomeness?

Clay HH with an amazing performance, [this section deleted], and a walk-off error-bunt! And my mom and I were there. Maybe I'll have some pics up here at some point soon or whatever.