I reclaimed the television for the final round of the Home Run Derby. But I was reduced to radio for David Ortiz’s three homer performance in the semi-finals that eliminated him. It’s too bad home runs don’t carry over from round to round, or it would have been Abreu and Ortiz in the final. On the other hand, with the first round going the way it did, the second round would have been moot.
Abreu was on fire tonight — 41 total homeruns, more than double his nearest competitors (Ortiz and Pudge Rodriguez had 20 each). Granted, the homerun derby doesn’t actually count for anything, but it was still an impressive display.
But more importantly, I learned an interesting piece of baseball trivia tonight: Twins legend and Hall of Famer Harmon Killebrew is the man behind the silhouette in the MLB logo.
Also, I had a mild epiphany during interviews with Varitek, Ortiz, and Damon and I would like to officially declare the following: David Ortiz is my favorite active MLB player and my two favorite all time teams are the 2004 Red Sox and the 1991 Minnesota Twins. (The 1987 Twins are close, but there’s too much overlap between them and the 1991 Twins for me to consider them a separate team.) I suppose there’s a bit of stating the obvious in that.
Jul12
Colossus of Rhode 
In your world of considerable personal reality manifestations, i.e., you seem to have an inordinate ability to affect your surroundings in ways that are overwhelmingly insignificant while the moment-by-moment stuff seems to slip right on past (see manipulating first baseman in conjunction with an inability to pick up your room; both presumably explained by chaos theory), it is of note that the second finalist in the HR Derby was Pudge Rodriguez, Detroit’s own.
Is it possible that you are now going to transfer your spectral control over 1b’s to catchers? Should I worry that one J. Mauer is destined to be a Detroilet Tiger? (Remember, in this eerie world of unexplainable coincidences, Jason Varitek was drafted by the Twins and preceded you to Boston. Now the catcher snaps to as the first “Detroit” phenomenon.)
I also fear that when the movie of your life is made as the fifteenth installment of the Steven Spielberg extraterrestrial series – not to be confused with his American History series or WWII series – I will be played by an aged, banshee screaming Tom Cruise. I’d like to say right now that this is a mistake and a more reasonable choice would be Elijah Wood, who, of course, will be much older and grown out of his ears.