8:03 pm, pre-game Ah, the World Series. The last bit of baseball before the long cold winter. (Or perhaps global warming will make it the long warm winter.) These games that are for all the marbles. God’s team versus the comeback kids. David versus Goliath. Mountain men versus New England’s finest (except for maybe the Patriots). Bull testicles versus Fenway Franks.
Fox’s little pre-World Series vignettes were a little cheesy, but I still liked them.
8:22 pm A Kirby reference! Very brief, but I still got nostalgic for 1991.
8:36 pm, top 1st The first pitch hasn’t even happened yet and Tim McCarver has already said something stupid.
8:43 pm, mid 1st Three strikeouts to start the first. Damn, Beckett is good.
8:47 pm, bottom 1st Whoooooooo hoooooo! What a way to start, Dusty! Can you say Rookie of the Year?
8:50 pm, bottom 1st Why is David Ortiz attempting to bunt? I seem to recall that being a bad idea in the past.
8:53 pm, bottom 1st Jeff Francis looks a little like my old housemate, Matt McGann.
8:59 pm, bottom 1st Hey, Manny was actually running full speed there! 3 runs in the first…

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From Chia, a blog entry about the last professional ballplayer to hit over .400. And no, it wasn’t Ted Williams. He wasn’t even the second to last. (That was apparently Artie Wilson of the Birmingham Black Barons in 1948.) According to Mike Adamick, the last person to .400 in professional baseball was Joanne Weaver of the Fort Wayne Daisies who hit .429.
The blog entry is a good read, if a little long, don’t get me wrong — I’m all for educating people about the AAGPBL (which it was only called in 1954, I believe — ’54 was also the only year they played actual baseball and not a baseball/softball hybrid). In fact, I spent much of my 7th grade tracking down every published book on the subject (at the time, there were 6) and eventually using them as sources for a 12 page “research paper.” (My first such paper ever — I should try and find it.)
However, Mike Adamick gets it slightly wrong. The last professional ball player to hit over .400 for an entire season was not Joltin’ Jo Weaver. It was Aaron Pointer, brother of The Pointer Sisters (no really — I’m so excited, I just can’t hide it). He hit .402 for the Salisbury Braves of the then-single-A South Atlantic League in 1961. (Actually, you have to throw the qualification that he was the last to do it in the US as apparently numerous people have done it in Mexican AAA. However, no one has done it yet in the Japanese pro league.)
So kudos to Joanne Weaver, and it’s unfortunate that she was forced to “retire” from professional baseball at only 19. And a tip of the cap to Mike Adamick for bringing her to the fore in his blog… but let’s give Aaron Pointer his due along side her and Artie Wilson. (Yes, you could argue that Weaver and Wilson weren’t allowed to play in the majors and that’s why their leagues get special mention alongside the MLB and the minors don’t. But he specified professional baseball and it’s too difficult to compare women’s and men’s records as it is.)

8:32 pm, middle 1st Ahh, the 1-2-3 inning to start the game. Maybe I don’t have to worry about Daisuke tonight.
8:35 pm, bottom 1st Why did the Transformers logo just flash randomly on my screen with no explanation?
8:43 pm, bottom 1st Was that an error on Peralta? Who cares — it resulted in a run. (And it was ruled a hit for Manny.)
8:57 pm, bottom 2nd First pitch launched to the top of the wall by Varitek… and yet he almost got thrown out anyway.
9:01 pm, bottom 2nd Double plays seem to be the downfall of the Sox today. At least they got a run out of it this time.
9:12 pm, top 3rd My housemate just asked me how far away Denver was and if it was a reasonable idea to get tickets to a game. “The midwest is all the same, right?” she asked cheekily. (Just FYI, Denver is a 19 hour drive from here… I did it in May.) Also, she’s been wearing her Red Sox underwear since Thursday. (For her sake, I’m not writing her name.)
9:18 pm, mid 3rd So, if we take Friday and Monday off and rotated drivers and slept in the car, we could get to the Saturday world series game in Denver and then drive all day Sunday and most of Monday to get back. We decided that was a bad idea, especially since we’re throwing a Halloween party on Saturday.
9:24 pm, bottom 3rd Does anyone know what’s up with the Red Sox Bullpen band? The Internet tells me that they call themselves “The Black Pearl” and have secret handshakes and a samba band.
9:30 pm, end of 3rd The inning-by-inning scoreboard with all zeros for Cleveland and all ones for Boston reminds me of the 113 logic design exams I had to grade this past week — it’s a truth table! I am a nerd.
9:59 pm, end of 4th Stupid double plays.
10:03 pm, top 5th Erm… Lofton sure looked safe at second to me.
10:06 pm, top 5th Now I’m nervous about Daisuke’s pitching ability… but it seems that Francona is not. From my roommate’s father (via IM): “No, no! Don’t pull a Pedro!”
10:17 pm, top 5th Okay, nice strike out, but please don’t come back in in the 6th.
10:48 pm, top 7th Lugo, if Lofton winds up scoring, you may just be the next Bill Buckner.
10:54 pm, top 7th Holy crap… thanks, Lofton for being a stupid baserunner. And double thank you to Blake for grounding into a double play.
11:00 pm, bottom 7th My housemate on Casey Blake and his giant beard: “Is that Jethro the Amish Guy?” He then brings up an interesting point — why do we only see excessive facial hair on baseball players and not football or basketball players?
11:02 pm, bottom 7th Whoo hoo, Dustin Pedroia! 5-2 Red Sox!! (And then the Red Sox fans in the room jumped on Mark who shouted “They’re going to the World Series!” Don’t jinx it, you fool.)
11:17 pm, top 8th Ahh, Papelbon… I feel so much more comfortable with the game in your hands now. (Er, hopefully that doesn’t jinx things.)
11:20 pm, top 8th Ryan Garko, that was 6 feet from a tie. Thank you, Ellsbury, for getting over there in time.
11:30 pm, bottom 8th Insurance runs are delightful.
11:36 pm, bottom 8th Collision! And I totally called it. (I often call such things and most of the time I am wrong, but whatever.)
11:43 pm, bottom 8th Hurray, Dustin Pedroia! (We just realized that he is younger than all four of us currently sitting in the living room. We feel old.)
11:47 pm, bottom 8th Yoooooooooooooooouuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuukilis! Okay, they can save the rest of the offense for the World Series now. 11-2 is plenty.
11:57 pm, top 9th Down by the River, down by the banks of the Charles! (And, uh, did Coco Crisp injure himself on that last out? He sure slammed into the wall hard and seemed to be limping.)
12:05 am Before they announce it, I’m calling Beckett for Series MVP.
12:10 am I called it — congrats, Josh Beckett.

9:54 pm, bottom 3rd Came home from the grocery store about an hour ago, just in time to see J.D. Drew’s grand slam. As I slowly put my groceries away between innings, the Red Sox keep piling on the runs and it’s currently 10-1. But I had a rule question on Youkilis’s hit… Cabrera threw the ball and it hit Youk in the head. (Actually, watching the replay, the way it bounced off his helmet was almost funny.) I thought that if you threw the ball and hit a runner, it was a dead ball and all runners advance one base. So why wasn’t Youkilis sent to second? Was it because he was heading back to first? Or do I have my rule totally wrong.
10:16 pm, bottom 4th Ken Rosenthal says, “When you talk about Jacoby Ellsbury, think Johnny Damon.” Maybe I should make a cake for Ellsbury. (And it looks like Ellsbury must have had the most depressing 18th birthday ever — he was born September 11, 1983.) Oh, and holy crap, what a catch for Sizemore.
10:20 pm, break between 4th and 5th I’m sitting in a room of Michigan grad students and we just flipped to the football game to see the score. It turns out, we all secretly want to see Illinois win. Not much school spirit in this room.
10:26 pm, top 5th Looked up the rule about Youk getting hit in the head. It appears to be covered by 7.06a: If a play is being made on the obstructed runner, or if the batter-runner is obstructed before he touches first base, the ball is dead and all runners shall advance, without liability to be put out, to the bases they would have reached, in the umpire’s judgment, if there had been no obstruction.
So Youk went to first because he was heading to first.
10:30 pm Michigan game is tied. We just cheered. Two more of my housemates came in and agreed with the cheer. (Neither of them are actually Michigan students — one goes to EMU and one is a research assistant.)
11:07 pm, end 7th There’s something to my father’s comment about this game being over already. We’re not so much paying attention anymore.
11:23 pm, bottom 8th Score is now 12-2… save some offense for tomorrow, would you boys?
11:34 pm, top 9th What a play to end the game! Mike Lowell bare hands it and tomorrow they play Game 7.

9:20 pm, top 3rd Manny hits it deep, but there’s some argument about whether or not it was deep enough. Either way, why wasn’t Manny running his tail off to second?
9:25 pm, top 3rd The ball is ruled has having been in play. Manny gets an RBI single instead of an RBI double because he is lazy. But then again, who cares? It’s not like it’s the end of the world or something.
9:39 pm, top 4th Varitek gets a single and moves Kielty to second… the other day I was explaining to my housemates about the jokes we used to make about VariTeX. The physics guy thought it was funny. The public policy student didn’t get it.
9:43 pm, top 4th Boo… double play to end the inning. My housemate just informed me that she is wearing her lucky Red Sox underwear. I find that hysterical.
10:06 pm, top 5th Oh man… bases loaded, 2 outs, full count on Bobby Kielty. And it’s deep… to… Gutierrez’s glove.
10:12 pm, bottom 5th Can’t wait to find out what happened between Lofton and Beckett. For a second I thought it might turn into an all out brawl.
10:20 pm, bottom 5th Dear Josh Beckett, striking out Cabrera to end the inning and strand a runner at third is why you are the ace. Perhaps you could tell the rest of the pitching staff how it’s done?
10:25 pm, top 6th They just showed the replay of the Lofton foofuhrah with the umpire’s mike on. Gary Cedarstrom is officially my new favorite umpire (not that I had an old one). “Hey, you guys from the bullpen, now that you’ve got your sprints in, you can go back and stretch out.”
10:44 pm, top 7th Youkilis now has a homerun and a triple. Can anyone say “cycle”? Yeah, probably not as it would require two more at bats. And now that I’ve put it out into the ether, I’ve jinxed it anyway.
11:02 pm, bottom 7th He can pitch… but suddenly his fielding skills are lacking. Stick to striking them out, would you, Josh?
11:08 pm, bottom 7th Ahh… much better when you just blow the ball by them.
11:21 pm, top 8th Julio Lugo bunting for a single… back in my playing days, this was my favorite way to get on base. (Primarily because it was my only way of reliably getting on base.) If this is what it takes to generate offense from the bottom of the line-up, I’ll take it.
11:26 pm, top 8th… and now they score on a passed ball. This is exactly my former style of play.
11:30 pm, top 8th… followed by the bases loaded walk. Tom Mastny may want to re-evaluate his current pitching strategy. Also, by walking, Youkilis pretty much killed all hopes of hitting for the cycle tonight.
11:33 pm, top 8th With Papi’s sac fly, the Red Sox have now scored three runs this inning with only one hit — Lugo’s bunt. I love it.
11:50 pm, top 9th Stupid tornado watch. I know what a tornado is. I’ve been paying attention and know that a big storm is coming — you keep running it along the bottom of my screen. So why do you have to interrupt my ballgame and tell me about it?
12:10 am, bottom 9th … and we’ll see you Saturday night!
Now I better go run and cower from this impending tornado they keeping warning me about.

Last night, instead of watching Game 2 of the ALCS, I went to the Dianne Reeves concert (which was excellent, by the way — that woman can scat!). I went out with the friend I had gone to the concert with and forgot to check the score of the baseball game, even after I came home and went to sleep. However, as I was falling asleep, it occurred to me that I hadn’t looked up the score, but as I had just shut down my computer, I distinctly remember thinking that it could wait until I woke up in the morning.
Somewhere in the middle of the night I had a dream. In this dream, the Indians had crushed the Red Sox 13-0. In fact, the dream took the form of what would probably be a Sportscenter re-cap of the game and I was more certain about the 13 portion of the score than the 0. Imagine how creepy it felt to wake up and check the actual score to find that it was 13-6, not 13-0. I had fallen asleep watching a DVD, and the DVD splash screen was still on my television, so I don’t think that I turned on ESPN in my sleep — and indeed, when I switched it to TV, it was tuned to Comedy Central. So now I have no idea how I managed to intuit the Indians score in my sleep.
It’s just weird.

Kudos to Josh Beckett for his four-hit shutout.
Unfortunately, I was sucked into watching two episodes of Ken Burns’s The War and the two times it occurred to me to flip over to the game, it was on commercial. Excellent documentary though… I highly recommend it.
Now I think I’ll fall asleep watching the Cubs attempt to beat the Diamondbacks. (Is there anyone out there who actually wants the Diamondbacks to win that series?)

I’ve been asked by a few people where my loyalties wound up in the final series of the regular season. The Twins are playing the Red Sox, and while I tend to always go Twins over Sox in these cases, going into the weekend, the Red Sox still had a possibility of losing the eastern division title to the Yankees while the Twins had no shot of anything but a .500 season (which they’ve failed at). While the real answer is that I was pulling for Baltimore to sweep New York, most of me was just avoiding the games so that I didn’t have to decide.
But now that the Red Sox have clinched, I’m hoping that Justin Morneau goes yard one more time and Torii Hunter makes a game saving catch that robs David Ortiz of an extra base-hit. (I’m also hoping that it’s not Torii’s last chance to do so as a Minnesota Twin, but given that he’s up for free agency this winter the odds don’t look so good.) So, yes, for today I’m rooting against Boston. But come the start of playoffs, I’ll be a Red Sox fan all the way.
Of course, I don’t get the game here, so it’s all a moot point anyway.