For the convenience of everyone who works, the city of Boston has announced that the parade will be on Saturday at 10:00 AM.

And now, after looking through my baseball encyclopedia, more baseball trivia…
The Red Sox just won the World Series after an 86 year drought. This is the longest a baseball team has gone between championships. It turns out that the second longest is the Washington Senators/Minnesota Twins franchise who went from 1924 (as the Senators) to 1987 (as the Twins). After that it’s the Athletics who went from 1930 (as the Philadelphia Athletics) to 1989 (as the Oakland Athletics).
The only teams with longer droughts are the two Chicago clubs. The NL Cubs, who last won in 1908 and haven’t been in it since 1945, have their own version of the curse. Instead of involving the Sultan of Swat, it involves a billy goat. The AL White Sox haven’t won since 1917, and threw the 1919 World Series in the infamous Black Sox scandal. They were last in the series in 1959.
For those curious, the following franchises (all expansion teams) have never won the World Series:

Texas Rangers	1961 expansion team (as the Washington Senators), moved to Texas in 1972
Houston Astros	1962 expansion team (as the Houston Colt .45s), became the Astros in 1965
San Diego Padres	1969 expansion team, lost 1984 series to the Detroit Tigers, lost 1998 series to the New York Yankees
Montreal Expos	1969 expansion team
Milwaukee Brewers	1969 expansion team (as the Seattle Pilots), moved to Milwaukee in 1970, lost the 1982 series to the St. Louis Cardinals
Seattle Mariners	1977 expansion team
Colorado Rockies	1993 expansion team
Tampa Bay Devil Rays	1998 expansion team

Wow.
As I walked home, a man came up to me with his right hand in the air. He approached me and said, “Respectfully, ma’am…” at which point I gave him a high five, “… tonight we are World Series Champions!”
About a block from my house is a man standing in the street wearing a Red Sox jersey, waving a broom, and drunk off his ass.
In Harvard Square, a tuxedo clad trumpet player is probably still playing “Take Me Out to the Ballgame” or the “CHARGE!” fanfare, because that appears to be all he knows.
Car horns are honking like crazy outside my window.
85-year-olds (and younger) around the city are relaxing a little bit, because yes, it did finally happen in their lifetimes.
Tony LaRussa, like Joe Torre before him, is trying to figure out how his team just lost four games in a row — in a row!
Manny Ramirez is holding the MVP trophy, drenched in champagne.
And the Boston Red Sox are the World Series Champions.
Who’da thunk it?

Well, it seems that the Red Sox don’t need me to sit in that lucky armchair after all. In a sick and twisted way, I’m a little disappointed. As my housemate put it, it’s hard to be so into something and not feel like you have any control over the outcome. But such is the nature of professional sports.
Being sick, I don’t have a good enough short term memory right now to comment on the game. Except that it was nice to see Larry Walker get the homerun in the ninth so that the poor Cardinal fans had something to cheer about. And it turns out that David Ortiz isn’t that bad of a first baseman — in fact he’s pretty solid. My dad pointed out that he probably got the bad reputation by always playing on the same team as Doug Mientkiewicz.
Now the Sox are up 3-0 in the series. One more win and the curse is reversed. I vow to be better by tomorrow night so that I don’t have to risk watching the end of the series alone.

Tonight I’m tempting fate and not watching the game from Amrys’s armchair. Instead, I’m sitting on the couch at home covered in blankets, wondering if I’ll be able to keep oatmeal down, feeling like death on a triscuit. But the game is on, and so far so good. David Ortiz is fielding well at first, and the Sox are up 4-0 in the seventh.
When the crowd at Frogstar called to find out why the armchair is empty tonight, Cyrus asked an interesting question regarding starting pitchers in the National League. Since I’m only semi-lucid at the moment, it took me a minute to figure out what he was asking and then it took me until well after I got off the phone to come up with the answer.
The question:
Why didn’t the Red Sox announce that Curt Schilling was the starting pitcher tonight? This way, if they got through nine batters in the top of the first, they could substitute Kevin Youkilis in as the pinch hitter and reduce the number of times the pitcher has to bat. Then, in the bottom of the first, they make a “pitching change” and give the ball to Pedro. Schilling never actually pitches, and you’ve hypothetically kept the option open for reducing the amount of times Pedro looks awkward at the plate.
The answer:
Initially, I just said it was ridiculous — what’s the likelihood of getting through nine batters in the top of the first anyway? But there had to be a real reason. Consulting the official rules, we run into rule 3.05(a) which states that:

The pitcher named in the batting order handed the umpire in chief, as provided in Rules 4.01 (a) and 4.01 (b), shall pitch to the first batter or any substitute batter until such batter is put out or reaches first base, unless the pitcher sustains injury or illness which, in the judgment of the umpire in chief, incapacitates him from pitching.

Which basically means that if the Red Sox announce that Curt Schilling is the starting pitcher, Schilling has to pitch to at least one batter.

After only existing for two days, Mike pointed out that my blog was already being linked to by some one I don’t know. And since I’ve been appreciating this fan’s posts since I found his Hallelujah chorus, I’ll gladly return the linkage.
Also of note, Boston Common seems to have picked up on me as well.

Yesterday I said that the Red Sox needed to step it up on defense and that they wouldn’t be able to get away with 4 errors again. Well, apparently I was wrong. Yet again the Red Sox made four errors — three by Bill Mueller alone. And yet again, the Red Sox escaped unharmed with a 6-2 win to go up 2-0 in the Series. Miraculously, only one of the errors contributed to a run — Mueller missed a play at third in the 4th inning and Albert Pujols scored. Once this series heads to St. Louis and David “Mr October” Ortiz puts on a glove, who knows what will happen in the field.
But the real story of last night belongs to Curt “My Red Socks Are More Hardcore Than Yours” Schilling and his bloody ankle. He’s either the stupidest man in baseball, or the bravest. I haven’t quite decided. Either way, with six solid innings, he’s definitely The Man. You also have to give him credit for wearing his cause on his shoes — “K ALS” which translates to “Strikeout Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis.” Curt’s Pitch has raised millions of dollars to help those living with Lou Gehrig’s Disease.
Offensively, The Man is turning out to be Mark “Who Wants to Bench Me Now?” Bellhorn, who came through with another pair of RBIs off a double in the 4th to put the Sox up 4-1. Including games 6 and 7 of the ALCS, Bellhorn, who practically couldn’t get a hit in the first 5 games against the Yankees, suddenly has 11 RBIs in his last four games. For Whom The Bell Horns, indeed.

And now for more random baseball history trivia…
Last night, Tom “Just How Many Movies Have I Peed In?” Hanks sat in the Green Monster seats and was asked by a FOX reporter, “Are you a Red Sox fan?” Hanks responded with “I’m an American.” Besides apparently being raised an Athletics fan, Tom Hanks’s most famous tie to baseball comes from his role in one of my three favorite movies of all time, A League of Their Own. Hanks played Jimmy “There’s No Crying In Baseball” Dugan, the fictitious manager of the Rockford Peaches in the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League.
To bring this back to the Red Sox, Dugan is supposedly loosely based on Hall of Famer Jimmie “The Beast” Foxx who played from 1925 to 1945, spending 1936 to 1942 with, you guessed it, the Boston Red Sox. Often overshadowed by one of his contemporaries (some guy named George Herman Something-Or-Other), Foxx hit 534 career home runs, 217 of them with Boston. After he retired, he spent a season managing the Fort Wayne Daisies in 1952.

Okay, now I’m Red Sox fan. Perhaps even bordering on the edge of insanity, since there is a little part of me that truly believes that sitting in Amrys’s armchair helps the Sox win. (I’ve been 5-5 this year.)
But deep in my blood, I’m still a Minnesotan and a Twins fan first. So when certain foolios send me the following e-mails, I feel the need to play dirty in my response:

To: errhode@alum.MIT.EDU
Subject: twins
why you shouldn't be a fan of a team from a shitty baseball town
even if you're from there
"David carried the Twins the second half of the season but when you play in Minnesota, no one notices or cares," Boston first baseman and former Twin Doug Mientkiewicz said. "Now he's playing here in Boston and people are able to see what a great hitter he is."

You’re from Boston, buddy. The town that traded Babe Ruth to New York and was subsequently cursed for 85 years. So don’t be getting up in my face about unappreciated players and bad decisions by the front offices. Okay, so releasing Ortiz was a bad move, but I’m not such a fair-weather fan that I’ll abandon my team over it.
You sound like a Yankees fan.
That being said, Go Sox! Perhaps this year the Curse of Ortiz will overrule the Curse of the Bambino.

Well, it certainly wasn’t the prettiest game I’ve ever seen, but the Red Sox managed to slip through with a Game 1 win. The Sox broke away early, leading by as much as five in the 3rd inning, highlighted by a David Ortiz three run shot — I would offer to name a son after that man, but I already did that in the 2003 ALCS. It looked like perhaps this wasn’t much of a matchup. Other than Larry “Just a triple away from the cycle” Walker, the Cardinals consistently looked baffled by Wakefield’s knuckleball.
But then Wake couldn’t find the plate in the 4th inning, walking the bases loaded, and the Cardinals brought it to within two. Edgar Renteria and Larry Walker, the scariest man in St. Louis’s line-up tonight, each doubled in a run in the 6th to tie it up at 7 runs apiece.
With an RBI each from Manny Ramirez and Ortiz (aka Manny Ortez), the Sox regained the lead in the 7th. But then Manny committed two errors in the top of the eighth, including a slip in the outfield grass that left a massive divot, and suddenly it was tied up again. As often happens in the World Series, it was the unlikely Mr. .162-in-the-ALCS who became the hero of this game. Mark Bellhorn dinged the Pesky pole with his two run shot in the bottom of the eighth to give the Sox the permanent lead and eventual win.
The Sox defense made me nervous tonight. Outside of Walker, the Cardinals weren’t doing much to earn their runs. Granted, the defense wasn’t only to blame here — walking the bases loaded is never a good idea. But unless they plan on scoring 11 runs every night, they won’t be able to get away with 4 errors again.
Tomorrow Schilling and his bionic ankle gets the start. Let’s hope he’s as dominating as he was in game 6. (And tomorrow’s recap will be lighter on the numbers — I promise.)

And now, since I bought the Baseball Encyclopedia the other day, some relevant baseball history…
If while watching the World Series on Fox, you sense a little bias from Tim McCarver, don’t be surprised. He was there the last time these two teams faced each other in the World Series in 1967 — behind the plate for St. Louis. He hit a meager .125 with 2 RBIs in that series. On the other hand, McCarver also played a total of 23 games with the Red Sox in 1974 and 1975, backing up Carlton Fisk. He was traded to the Phillies before the ’75 season ended, where he finished up his career.
But then again, since McCarver doesn’t usually make much sense, he might still be rooting for the Phillies.

The greatest series in ALCS history finally ended, with Red Sox coming out the victor. And while I spent games 4-6 on the edge my seat, knowing the tide could turn with any batter, game 7 was some how anti-climactic. The Sox had already made history just by forcing a game 7, and with Boston jumping ahead to an early lead — 6-0 by the end of the 2nd — this game lacked the drama of the previous three. Sure, everything was on the line this time, but it had been for the past three nights and by the time the final game rolled around, my nervous system had acclimated to it. (As a sidenote, I think my nervous system appreciated that this wasn’t a close game.)
Unlike everyone else in the room, I wasn’t nervous when Francona brought Pedro in in the 7th. A questionable move to be sure, but the Sox were up by 7 runs and I had faith that they would take him out if the lead reduced to less than four. Maybe I was being naive, but that may have been Pedro’s last opportunity to show up the Yankees at Yankee Stadium while wearing the Red Sox uniform. And there was no safer opportunity to allow him to do that. As Jeff would put it, I had already reached zen at that point. I had no doubts that the Red Sox would pull it off.
And then came the strangest moment of the evening for me. Mientkiewicz made the final putout and instead of jumping up and down and cheering like everyone else, I just sat in my chair and took a deep breath. Now, perhaps this is because I didn’t grow up in Boston as a Red Sox fan, but my first thought was “Okay, now who’s ready to pitch game 1 of the Series?” Because as big as it is that they beat the Yankees, as historic as it was that they came back from three games down to do it, winning meant that the season wasn’t over.
Perhaps the difference comes in that I’ve seen this before — twice. I grew up in Minnesota, the home of the Twins, Kirby Puckett, and the Homer Hanky. Granted, I don’t remember much of the 1987 season directly, but I was taken to the Metrodome homecoming after they beat the Tigers in the ALCS and it was pure chaos. I remember clutching my father’s hand and losing sight of my mother and 3-year-old sister amongst the crowd. And I remember the roar of the crowd when they announced each one of the players as American League Champions. A few weeks later they would become World Champions for the first time in Minnesota history. This is quite possibly my earliest professional baseball memory. (I have earlier ones of my parents softball games, the weekly event that defined my youth until I was about seven.)
But what will probably always be the greatest season and World Series for me, was in 1991, when the Twins became the first team to go from last place (1990) to World Series Champions, helped by a club record 15-game winning streak in July. And amazingly, the Braves also became the second (behind the Twins) team to go from last to the World Series in that year. Kirby Puckett made a catch that every kid I knew tried to copy in Game 6 and followed it with an 11th inning homerun to win it and force a seventh game. And then in the game 7, Jack Morris pitched 10 innings of shutout ball, possibly one of the greatest World Series pitching performances since Don Larsen threw a perfect game. About half the kids in my class didn’t go to school the next day — they were attending the parade downtown. Those of us in school spent the day watching the parade on TV, because Mrs. Chazin was perhaps the biggest Twins fan of us all. The season was over and our team was the best and there was nothing left to prove.
Tonight the Red Sox open Game 1 of their last hurdle — the St. Louis Cardinals. Sometimes I get the suspicion that East Coast snobbery has many fans believing that since the Sox beat the Yankees, winning it all is a given — the curse has been reversed. But this a rematch of 1967 and 1946, a perfect opportunity for the curse to live on if it wants to. I, for one, have lost my zen and look forward to an exciting series.
But please, can we have less five hour games this time? I miss my sleep.