DL troubles

Wells and Schilling are going to the DL.
OMG WE HAVE LOST 60% OF OUR PITCHING STAFF?!

My Reaction: who cares?
Schilling is 1-2 with a 7.13 ERA
Wells 2-3 with a 4.91 ERA
Both with 20 K's on the year.

Schilling wasn't ready to come back anyway. At least now he'll get the rest and repair he needs. And Wells? Who wanted him anyway?
I'll take Papalbon or Halama over him any day.

So what if Schilling and Wells are gone? They weren't doing good for us anyway -- in games we pitched we wasted run support -- at least now we can give it to guys like Arroyo who put us in the position to win.

Don't pitch me the well the sox were .500 till July last year - BECAUSE THIS ISN'T LAST YEAR!

This will force the pen to step up. It will force Theo to look into trades. I want Wells gone. I want Schilling out too. His job was to win the WS, he did that. Now dump him. Find someone new, young, who can continue the organization. We need another Arroyo, we have enough guys with veteran ability and experience. We need fresh legs.

I'm sick of hearing WEEI - they have the most idiotic pregame talk show ever, yes even more so than the Yankees. Everyone calling in, no one having a real opinion. Everyone living in the past.

I got news folks, so what we won ONE WORLD SERIES bringing our total to 6. Get complacent - I don't care. All the old folks out there - you got what you wanted. Now you can "die in peace" but I can't because I don't want to die knowing this is the only one I got. This team better step up and I have faith they will. But I will critique until the end because in my heart I know they can do better than what they are right now.

YET IT IS STILL APRIL - so calm down and shut up about two guys that didn't mean anything going to the DL. It is a good thing for the Sox. But don't live in the falsehood that we can do what we did last year - playing .500 and than stepping up. Because this year - competitions tougher and everyone's watching us.

Just a Little Class

Class. Whether it is Boston, Oakland(Chokeland), NY, Tampa Bay, Pitsburgh, Anaheim/LA, or Milwalkee it is hard to make an argument that class exists. While I will not dissagree that fights are part of the game, that throwing at a guy is part of the game, however, I wonder if lately it is not the case that game is part of the fight. Has baseball really gone away from being America's Pasttime to become America's Scandalous Entertainment?

As much as I enjoyed seeing A-rod getting the crap kicked out of him last year it was not as nearly good as the Home Run in the ninth Bill Mueller had to win the game. Yet no one remembers Mueller's heroic antics because their minds are firmly stuck on Tek's glove meeting A-rod's face.

On Sunday, my heart went out to Ortiz - no one should throw at someones head in a game like that, if ever. Throwing up and in is fine, but not at the head. Yet, what's the point of a brawl in April with the Devil Rays? OK - so stick up for Ortiz -- but why did the benches have to clear a second time that game? Why did we retaliate after we had obviously won the fight before? This year we don't even have the justification of 86 years of misery - we won - BE HAPPY - and don't fight with the Devil Rays.

In a time where baseball is blackened by Steroids, Gambling, and who knows what else, why add to the black mark with pointless fights? Why take away from a game that should be so pure and so holy and perfect? How can you not read the following quotes and not get chills up your spine?

Any baseball is beautiful. No other small package comes as close to the ideal in design and utility. It is a perfect object for a man's hand. Pick it up and it instantly suggests its purpose: it is meant to be thrown a considerable distance-thrown hard and with precision. Its feel and heft are the beginning of the sport's critical dimensions; if it were a fraction of an inch larger or smaller, a few centigrams heavier or lighter, the game of baseball would be utterly different.

Hold a baseball in your hand ... Feel the ball, turn it over in your hand; hold it across the seam or the other way, with the seam just to the side of your middle finger. Speculation stirs. You want to get outdoors and throw this spare and sensual object to somebody or, at the very least, watch somebody else throw it. The game has begun. --Roger Angell in Five Seasons "

I can sit in a ballpark after a game and love looking at the field. Everybody's gone, and the ballpark is empty, and I'll sit there. I sit there and think, 'Is this as close to heaven as I'm going to get?' Or, 'If I get to heaven, will there be baseball?"--Kim Braatz-Voisard, Silver Bullets' center fielder, 1997

"The players are too serious. They don't have any fun any more. They come to camp with a financial adviser and they read the stock market page before the sports pages. They concern themselves with statistics rather than simply playing the game and enjoying it for what it is." - Rocky Bridges, from The Sporting News, December 12, 1970

I love baseball. I always will. Yet it seems the things you love break your heart. Baseball is doing that.

I have n'O' words

There are no words.

Why?

Why?

Why?

The only thing I know is we are still the Red Sox we were before the World Series victory.
Blowing 8-3 proves it.

n'O' more losses please?

Okay Boston here's my plea - I know it is Baltimore, I know they are in first place. BUT I know we can do better!!!

Wells is still not pitching as "Well" as he should, and Schilling - well Schilling will continue to get a Shelling until he goes for some nice easy minor league starts. Both of these guys are good - but both need some work. Its disheartening that they wont take the time needed to recover properly.

My suggestion: Schill to the minors for a start or two, when he returns, put Wells in the pen -- we have more than enough starting pitching - and when Miller returns we will be overfilled and we can't sit Arroyo or put him in the pen - thats INSANE.

So far Bronson Arroyo is our ace - so FranCOMA please PITCH HIM! He hasn't lost a game since August of 2004.

Tonight we settle in for another round of Baltimore @ Boston -- with Boston up in the season series 2-1. Boston has always had problems with the O's - but if Boston focuses they can prove that they have problems with Balti-no-more! So regain that Idiotic Boston Swagger, let your hair loose and PLAY BALL!

Playing Favorites

Bandwagoning. It is a simple term, simple idea, a hated term, a hated idea. But it happens. And it happens a lot. "Oh boy," I can hear all the Yankees fans thinking, "not again - not another Sox fan about to rant and rave about how people only like the Yankees because they win." Hate to dissapoint you, but no, this is not that kind of rant. Sure the Yankees are more infamous than any other team for its bandwagoning fans, but in case no one told them, the Yankees have not won in five years.
What I'm talking about is two types of bandwagoning that have been bothering me a lot lately.

1. The Red Sox Bandwagoning
2. Anti-Yankee Bandwagoning

First, don't get me wrong, I like my team to have fans and nothing excites me more than seeing someone enjoy the Red Sox, but they don't know what it's really like to suffer. Sure I'm only 18 and haven't suffered like many Red Sox fans, but after Aaron Bleeping Boone I have every right to say I am a true fan. After being born in 1986 and dispising it, I have every right to say I am a true fan.

But these days, everyone is a "true" fan. I have never seen so many brand new Boston hats in my life - and those people wearing them don't even know who Bronson Arroyo is -- pathetic. Being a Red Sox fan is about wearing more than a hat. It's about loving no matter what. It's about knowing that a six run lead is not enough. It's about knowing the Devil Rays could come back in the ninth.

Oh but the curse is over. Hate to break it to everyone -- there was no curse -- just a five lettered word.

We last won the World Series before 2004 in 1918 as every human being knows, but didn't trade Ruth until 1920 -- someone tell me how those 2 years = curse of the Bambino??? If we traded him right after I would understand but NO WE WAITED 2 YEARS! GET OVER IT!!! As Trot Nixon said, "Any time you don a Red Sox uniform, you have to talk about the history of this team and not having a World Series championship since 1918. Sooner or later, that hex had to stop. Everybody thought it was a curse, but to use it was just a five-letter word."

Things go deeper than just baseball, because as Mike Barnicle from the Boston globe said in 1977, “Baseball isn’t a life-and-death matter, but the Red Sox are.”

Wearing a Red Sox cap isn't just for anyone, it means a life of heartache and a life of joy. As they said in Fever Pitch, it is loving under the best and worst conditions, it's a rollercoaster ride. Being a Red Sox fan doesn't make you cool, it doesn't make you right, it wont make me like you. Red Sox hats should be banned from anyone who can not name the starting line up and the record of the team. This World Series was great but now it is disheartening because we have become just like everyone else. I want to see the Boston Spirit back.

Sure, some of these "new guys" may be true fans and may stick with the Red Sox, but why are they Red Sox fans -- you ask them and get these answers:

• "The Red Sox rock man!" -- Ooookayyy, Why not give me something with more substance than this???
• "Well the (misc. team of old fandom) suck and you guys are cool and won the World Series" -- LAME!
• "The Red Sox beat the Yankees!!!" -- Ahhh, now we are getting somewhere - people are liking the Red Sox for the sole reason that they AREN'T THE YANKEES!!!

This brings me to my second complaint, which coincides with the first -- Anti-Yankee bandwagoning.

Just because I'm a Sox fan doesn't mean I hate the Yankees and their fans, because honestly, what fun would baseball be without both teams, do you really think something like Baltimore - Boston is as such an exciting match up??? Real Boston fans don't hate the Yankees - they love them because without them there would be no meaning to being a Red Sox fan. Without the Yankees, Johnny "Caveman" Damon's hair wouldn't be as cool.

All being a Red Sox fan means is that you want the Yankees to lose. Yet, if the Red Sox lose too, the day still isn't good! I'm sick of hearing "Well it's okay we lost because the Yankees lost too." That's absolute crap! If you really care about your team be happy when they win, love them when they are down, love them when they are up, but don't be pleased because it is okay that we lost when the Yankees do -- because it is OK if we lose when the Yankees win too. If it isn't, find another team because IT'S GOING TO HAPPEN. And what kind of fan are you who only is OK with the playing when it is only either a win or a loss when the Yankees lost too. Love your team regardless and don't write off losses based on other games. And shut up about the Yankees already because you are becoming worse than their bandwagon fans.

On that note I will leave you with a few memorable quotes over the years to remind you of what Red Sox Nation is all about:

“An almost inexorable baseball law: A Red Sox ship with a single leak will always find a way to sink ... No team is worshipped with such a perverse sense of fatality.” -- Thomas Boswell, How Life Imitates the World Series, 1982

“Boston has two seasons: August and winter.” -- Billy Herman, Red Sox manager, 1965

“The Red Sox are a religion. Every year we re-enact the agony and the temptation in the Garden. Baseball child’s play? Hell, up here in Boston it’s a passion play.” -- George V. Higgins, Time, 1980

As Yankees fans always say, Boston is still down 6 to 26 in the World Series count. Do you really think they want to make it 7 to 26? I don't think so; it is only going to get harder from now on, but at least we have the monkey off our backs.

Finally, when it comes down to it, one more World Series championship, as great a meaning it had and forever will, doesn't change the most important thing and I'm glad it doesn't. Because in the end of the day I have more pride in the fact that we are the Boston Red Sox than in any ALCS or World Series victory. If you have more pride in those victorys in 2004 than in the actual team, I will personally take your Boston hat into my posession and offer to buy you a hat of any other team of your choice.

This One’s For the “Yankee Fans”

By: Lowie

GRANTHAM, PA -- As I scanned over my usual pro-Boston and anti-Yankee sites for my daily reading that annoying Yankee fan from down the hall – the one who is apparently oblivious to the fact the Yankees haven’t won in five years but insists on calling them World Champions, not to mention doesn’t know anything besides “OMG Derek Jeter is sooooo great” and “we have the most championships” – yes, you know the one I’m talking about, popped her head in only to say the typical. “Go New York – Boston sucks!” - yet again oblivious to the fact that Baltimore swept New York while Boston swept Tampa Bay. Meanwhile, in order to continue to be the intrusive fan, she asked what I was doing and than complained about my “anti-Yankee feelings” (hard not to have with fans like her around).
But Yankees fans are always ranting and complaining about the anti-Yankees feelings coming from Boston, Oakland, and Baltimore, not to mention the rest of the world. Yankees fans insist that their life is more meaningful and that we are “pathetic” for wasting our time making up anti-Yankees jokes and websites. However, I can’t help but notice that the Yankee fans know every punch line, every article, and every website. This causes me to wonder what is really more pathetic: Writing about your rival team sucking or spending time reading how much everyone hates you and your team?
It may be a bit risky but I’m going with the second option. What are you Yankees fans really thinking? Why waste your day fighting with people who obviously aren’t going to agree with you never mind change their minds?! Next time Derek Jeter denies you an autograph are you going to try to persuade him that you deserve your over-priced, worthless piece of memorabilia should be signed because you stuck up for him on http://www.yankeessuck.com/? I highly doubt he cares and that this would change his mind, but if it does, there is a deeper problem. Grow up and get back to doing what you always preach about doing and support your own team in a positive manner. If Yankees fans can’t do this I suggest George Steinbrenner stoop to a new low and add fans to his 205 million dollar payroll, which really seems to be paying off so far this year.

Boston Swagger: Lost and Found?

You know you've had an interesting series when Mike Timlin is the only pitcher to come out with a win and you've made Mariano Rivera blow two save opportunities, yet he has a record of 1-1. The first two games this week against New York left Boston fans everywhere wondering "Where is our offense?" "What's the deal with Wells?" and "Why did we replace Cabrera with Renteria?" The first two games alone left Sox fans with little to be proud of. Sure, they knocked Mariano Rivera up for a blown save in game two — but did it matter? Not so long as Jeter's heroic antics were still at play, not to mention Matsui's continued domination.

Combined, however, the series left much more hope for the Sox. After all, Boston did cause the "unstoppable" Mariano Rivera to blow two saves. Knocking Rivera for 5 runs in the ninth during Wednesday's game allowed Sox fans to let out a sigh of relief because not only did Boston pull one out, they continued to dominate Rivera. While I doubt he will ever be the closer he was, we all must keep in mind Mariano isn't going to blow every save, but will settle down. So, does this take away from the hope given to Sox fans from this series? No — because the ninth inning did a lot more for the Red Sox. It was a momentum swing for the offense and also gave the players back that "Boston Swagger" which was missing in most of the players during the first two games. That is, in the ninth inning the Dirtdogs returned doing what needed to get done to win. This was a step away from the first two games where much of Sox nation felt they were watching a Yankee team as few of the players seemed to "fit."

It is only the first series and it will take time for the new guys to find this comfort level that others like Millar, Otriz, Bellhorn, and Mueller have achieved. The biggest thing the Red Sox led the majors with last year was character and after a few more settling wins the Red Sox will be right back up there.


This article was also published on YankeesSuck.Com

Passing of Pope John Paul II

By: Lauren Kras
As most of us know on Saturday, April 02, 2005, Pope John Paul II passed away. Whether Catholic or not, we are all affected by his passing. Throughout his life John Paul II influenced the world in a way we may never encounter in our lifetime. He not only sent the message of Christianity, he led by example, showing what we are called to do and be as Christians.
Pope John Paul II, originally Karol Jozef Wojtyla was born May 19, 1920. He was a friend with all regardless of beliefs as he grew up desiring to care and love everyone; befriending and defending Jews growing up in anti-Semitic pre-war Poland. John Paul II studied theology secretly during the Nazi occupation of Poland and became a priest. He also was an actor and poet, participating in cultural resistance to the Nazi occupation. He spoke over a dozen languages, held two doctorate degrees, and was a professor of ethics. As a professor he started and ran a program dealing with marital problems, from family planning and illegitimacy to alcoholism and physical abuse and was one of the most successful marriage institute in Christian history. In 1958 he was named the bishop of Krakow. Shortly after in 1962 he became a leader amidst the Vatican II council and was named the acting archbishop in the same year when the incumbent passed away. Due to his compassion, intellect, and care for all, he rose through the church hierarchy quickly and became a cardinal in 1967. As cardinal he led Poland through the communist government’s oppression insisting upon permits for building churches. He also defended youth groups and ordained priests that worked underground in Czechoslovakia. He became pope October 16th, 1978, choosing the name John Paul II, commonly known as JPII. He became the first non-Italian Pope in 455 years, and the youngest Pope in 132 years, and the first Slavic Pope ever.
There exists a common misconception that a Pope is concerned only with church affairs and is a figure rather than a person. However, John Paul II took responsibility in caring for the entire world visiting 129 countries during his papacy particularly taking concern with the world’s youth. He drew crowds of millions to hear Christ’s message of love and forgiveness, which is one we can all agree upon. This concern for the future prepared many youth to become the “Light of the World, and Salt of the Earth.”
The Pope took great concern with human rights and promoted peace throughout the world during times of war and conflict. John Paul II sent messages to imprisoned union leaders helping to contribute to the downfall of communism in Poland. The Pope also visited Communist Poland as Pope - drawing huge crowds. Many Poles attribute the peaceful uprising and fall of Polish communism to John Paul II’s visit and his leadership as Pope.
John Paul II cared for every person no matter how small or meaningless society saw them. In the early 1980s, a time when AIDS was not well understood but rather was looked down upon due to its association with homosexuality, John Paul II kissed an early victim. This compassionate act sent the message of Christ’s love for all of His creatures, and set an example for all Christians to treat victims with compassion rather than contempt.
John Paul II taught the world to share wealth with those in the Third World – warning of the consequences of materialism and egotism. John Paul II was always vocal about the immorality of birth control and abortion saying, “A nation that kills its own children has no future.” John Paul II was honest; he admitted to the past failings of the Church and actually made change. He emphasized the importance of reading the Bible and the truth that only prayer and faith, as he said, “This world is not capable of making man happy.” John Paul II was a true believer and carried this over and epitomized forgiveness when he visited the cell of his attempted assassin, Mehmet Ali Agca, in 1981 to forgive him of his attack. John Paul II demonstrated his concern for forgiveness and understanding as well as for inclusion and peace between all denominations when he altered services when he visited Harvard in 1979 to represent a variety of beliefs and denominations.
If you visit Messiah’s homepage you will see the following statement “At Messiah College our mission is to educate men and women toward maturity of intellect, character and Christian faith in preparation for lives of service, leadership and reconciliation in church and society.” If I were to pick one individual in our time that has epitomized this mission, it would be John Paul II. John Paul II did what was right all throughout his life and was a man of integrity and prayer. He was a strong Christian who stood up for what was right regardless of what people believed. He stood for peace, justice, and love. He took an interest in those that we are called to help but whom we often forget. The countless millions that have seen him will remember him. I hope we at Messiah, Catholic or not, do not forget this great leader and witness of our time along with his Christian message.