Live Free and Blog : Baseball

Yankees/Red Sox rivalry turns deadly

NHLife — Wed, 07 May 2008 21:39:00 GMT

When did the Yankees-Red Sox rivalry turn from friendly to deadly? On Friday, May 2, that’s when.

It’s one thing to support your favorite sports team. It’s another thing to take a vehicle, plow it into a group of people, and kill someone because you think your team is better than the other one. I don’t care if the group was chanting “Yankees Su*k”, as has been suggested. I don’t care if they were taunting her with the 2008 World Series Trophy. Ms. Hernandez, who is now sitting in the pokey for her actions, had a responsibility (drunk or not) to walk away from the situation. It wouldn’t have hurt if she had called a cab either.

I’ll admit that I’m a Red Sox fan but I think I can speak for most of Red Sox Nation when I say that I have a great deal of respect for the Yankees legacy. I would never have so much as a shouting match with a Yankees fan. I might poke some fun and expect to have some fun poked back at me over wins and losses, players and plays. But it’s something else to have a violent confrontation over a game. It is just a game.

Ivonne Hernandez, 43, is facing charges of reckless second degree murder for the death of 29-year old Matthew Beaudoin. He died of massive head trauma after Hernandez rammed her car – at full speed and without hitting the brakes - into the group of people that Beaudoin was with. Hernandez now faces life in prison. Way to go.

The 'Boys of Summer' are here

NHLife — Mon, 07 Apr 2008 02:54:00 GMT

I’ll admit it. I have a small, tiny, little crush on Jacoby Ellsbury. His tremendous performance in the 2007 World Series sealed the deal. But today he hit one out of the park against the Toronto Blue Jays and I’m afraid I fell in love all over again. Ellsbury needs to be given a chance to shine. Are you listening, Terry Francona?

I know, I know. Dustin Pedroia was the “Rookie of the Year” for 2007 and he gets all of the attention. It’s justified. But Jacoby is a well-rounded player and he is going to shine, both defensively and offensively. Just watch him.

This is the week that Sox fans head to Fenway to watch their team open up at home after a long stretch of games that took them all over the world (a total of 16,000 miles!). Oh, and they are going to get their bling handed to them; the coveted World Series rings will be passed out this week. That’s right. The Red Sox are, once again, World Champions.

This brings me to Manny who has been my “wicked” favorite player for years. How can you not love the man? He continues to be consistently inconsistent in that loveable “Manny being Manny” kind of way. Today was no exception.

I do believe the Red Sox have the best lineup in the Major Leagues this year. They have started off a little rough but 16,000 miles on the road will wear down the best of us. As they get into the swing of the season, they’ll sharpen their skills and get in the game.

I’m happy to see the Boys of Summer on the field. Without baseball, what else is there to watch on television for the next six months?

Note: I should perhaps mention that this is also opening week for the New Hampshire Fisher Cats. Get out and enjoy America's pastime when you can.

Update (4/8/08): My friend Mike Verge was on Fox 25 News this morning. He was performing his song, "Let's Go Red Sox" live from Fenway Park. It's a great ballgame song, the kind that makes you want to sing along with the crowd. WZLX 100.7FM has been playing it lately on the radio (and you'll probably be hearing it a lot in the coming months). If you'd like to hear it, go to: http://www.mikeverge.com/letsgoredsox.

Also today at Fenway, Steven Tyler from the rock band Aerosmith made a surprise appearance during the 7th Inning Stretch to sing "God Bless America". Click here for video, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PtSrbwD-Ko4. The Red Sox received their World Championship Rings during a pre-game ceremony today that featured a "Red Sox Nation" parade of flags and the unfurling of a World Championship banner over the Green Monster while the Boston Pops performed. The ceremonial first pitch was thrown out by former Red Sox first baseman Bill Buckner.

The Superbowl or the season?

NHLife — Wed, 06 Feb 2008 17:42:00 GMT

I figured it out.

That is, the reason why I never cared for football.

You see, I'm a baseball fan. In baseball, the best teams compete in a series of games to determine a winner. Now, I understand that you can't play seven football games in a row or you'd be ripped apart from limb to limb. But, I also think it's unfair to call one team, in this case a "Wild Card" team "the best team in football" when their record indicates otherwise.

Am I the only one who thinks the New England Patriots still has a better team? Eli Manning and his New York Giants won one big game and they won by one toss of the football. Dramatic, yes. But is it reasonable? To now deem them the "best team in football"?

The other night Bill O'Reilly called them that. I wanted to tell him to look at the numbers. I think the numbers tell a different story. They show an undefeated team (in the regular season), a superstar quarterback in Tom Brady, a number of high scoring games, and a wide receiver named Randy Moss, who now holds the NFL's single-season touchdown reception record. That reception was made on a record-breaking touchdown pass by Tom Brady. You see, the numbers tell a different story.

Now I'm sure that this controversy has come up before. There must have been other Superbowls in other seasons in which the team that won was not indeed the "best team in football". But then again, what do I know?

And, I'm not going to check, either.

For what it’s worth, this isn't about me being a Patriots fan, although I admit I have become a casual spectator in the past few years and I have been awed by their ability to win. But, if I had to choose between football and baseball, my money is on the All-American Pastime. In baseball, the numbers matter more than the individual plays. You can't have one bad game and suddenly become irrelevant.

There’s always next year, as we like to say. Maybe I just don’t understand football, but one thing I do know: I’m ready for some baseball.

Baseball's black eye

NHLife — Sat, 15 Dec 2007 22:07:00 GMT

I may not be much of a football fan, but I am a baseball fan. And this steroid scandal has me seriously questioning the players and their now sullied records.

It's just mind-boggling to think that players like Roger 'The Rocket' Clemens, who played for the Boston Red Sox for 13 lucky seasons and most recently, the "evil" New York Yankees, now has a stain on his record. The famous pitcher is the most winning Cy Young Award Winner, taking the title seven times over his career, striking out over 4,000 batters and hitting the 300 win mark in 2003. He is currently pitching for the Yankees (though no one expects him to pitch again) alongside Andy Pettitte - another one of the Mitchell Report's casualties. It's no surprise to me that Pettitte has been outed. He always struck me as a fiesty (somewhat angry) pitcher. Still others - Mo Vaughn, Barry Bonds and company come as no surprise either.

So where do we go from here? Do we shame the players that broke the rules? Is it fair that the players outed in the Mitchell Report may get to keep their performance-enhanced records while the players that earned every run the right way only get a sense of pride for following the rules?

It remains to be seen what the Mitchell Report fallout will be. But has this given the sport a black eye? Will we be able to ever trust the players with the big records or will we always be wondering if they used some sort of untraceable drug to boost their performance?

I'm happy to see that my favorite players, David Ortiz, Manny Ramirez, Josh Beckett, Curt Schilling and the new kids on the block, Dustin Pedroia and Jacoby Ellsbury, did not make it to the Mitchell Hall of Shame. But, now that this practice has been exposed, will we always wonder?

I hope not. I like baseball and I'd hate for it to become a national embarrassment because of the poor choices made by several players over the past decade, thereby ruining it for their colleagues, their clubs and their fans.