MLB

Vote756.com: I’m going with option B, the asterisk.

What happens when a real celebrity has a real blog? There are a few mediocre celebrities that have pseudo-real blogs. (Zach Braff comes to mind. Aside from the fact that you can clearly see he’s high every now and then, he’s about the least controversial guy in Hollywood.) Few truly famous people are out there creating honest-to-goodness blog entries. Mark Cuban is one. Curt Schilling is another.

Schilling is a rock star in the baseball universe, and he has been since even before he helped pitch the Red Sox to the most amazing win in baseball history. He started a blog a few months ago and he writes from the heart, not just marketing drivel or media propaganda. It’s great reading. He writes about Spring training, about his team, about his life. He basically keeps a blog just like I keep this blog.

Right now Schilling’s under a bit of a media attack. Some jerk reporter has accused him (and his team) of doctoring “the sock” — exaggerating the amount of blood by adding ketchup or some nonsense like that. But Schilling — unlike most people who find themselves the subject of media scrutiny — has a blog. His reply to the issue is brilliantly-written and well worth a read. Here’s a snippet:

If you have the nuts, or the guts, grab an orthopedic surgeon, have them suture your ankle skin down to the tissue covering the bone in your ankle joint, then walk around for 4 hours. After that go find a mound, throw a hundred or so pitches, run over, cover first a few times. When you’re done check that ankle and see if it bleeds. It will.

So I had a bit of a bug on Saturday and spent most of the day in a deep Alka Seltzer Plus-induced sleep. At one point I awoke to find a curious message on my answering machine. A little kid somewhere in the San Bernardino area code called with a get-well message for Eric Gagne, the Dodgers pitcher. “I’m your biggest fan,” he said, “and I hope your leg gets better really soon.”

I considered calling him and pretending to be the dominant closer, but (a) I have no idea what Eric Gagne sounds like, how he talks, or what in the world you’d say to a kid that thinks you’re a hero and (b) I feared that since he’s sort of close to LA, he might have a classmate or something that does know Eric, and then I’d get the kid or the pitcher in hot water with a lie …

It would be tragic if I was to pretend to be someone I’m not and then have him brag to all his friends and get busted for it. So I just hoped that someday the kid gets to catch a pop fly at a game, that Eric’s leg is on the mend, and then hit delete.

What the hell is this? I just got an email from Lids telling me that Nike’s got a new BoSox cap. Are they on crack or something? An “S” with the red socks? It looks ridiculous, and most people won’t even know it’s a Red Sox cap!

Check it out:

• S == Seattle
• S <> Boston

What are they thinking?

I really love that I didn’t have to stare at the page and wonder. I knew immediately, based on the context of the rest of the site, what MFY Fan meant. In other news: I just got what is probably my fifteenth or twentieth Sox cap. There’s something alarmingly tragically poetic about a man so hopelessly searching the world for a cap to replace what was “the perfect cap”.

You can win the World Series every year. You only have one chance to destroy the Yanks. As my friend Mike (a Tigers fan) wrote me last night, “Everyone outside of Yankee brats are celebrating quietly with you guys. It’s like you killed Michael Myers, Jason, Freddie Kreueger and Hannibal Lecter in one night.”

This is easily one of the funniest articles I have read on ESPN2 in a while. Dave, tell me what your thoughts are on his adaptation of Kevin Costner’s lines?
‘Roids are all the rage

Red Sox 4, Mariners 1
May 18

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John Lennon’s Revolution 9 - the tuneless dirge that drones “Number nine, number nine” - should have been blaring in the visitors’ clubhouse before last Saturday’s game at Fenway Park. The Mariners were facing Pedro Martinez, who in nine career games against them was 9-0 with an 0.91 ERA. Could they break their streak of futility? Pedro quickly made the answer clear: nein. In the first inning he struck out the side on nine pitches, a feat rarer than a no-hitter. Martinez became just the 35th pitcher in major league history to do it.

By the end of the day Martinez had thrown 99 pitches (73 for strikes) and struck out nine …

I took a class in the Fall of ‘94 called Desire and Power in Western Literature. I hated the class and I’m pretty sure the professor, Dr. Snodgrass, didn’t like me very much. I wrote this rambling, terrible excuse for a term paper, in November of that year. It is titled “The Paradox of Popularity: or What does the 1994 MLB strike have to do with being a Tom Petty fan?”
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Dan Duquette was fired Thursday as general manager of the Boston Red Sox, less than 24 hours after the historic, hard-luck franchise was bought by new owners.
In his eight-year tenure, Duquette grew to be one of the most polarizing figures in Boston sports, guiding the team with a robotic style that never quite clicked with fans who are among the most passionate in baseball.

FORT MYERS, Fla. (AP) — Pedro Martinez was a strange sight in the Boston Red Sox clubhouse Thursday — more muscular and, for a change, an early arrival at spring training.
Then he took the field and looked like the same old Pedro. He threw smoothly and showed no sign of the worst injury of his brilliant career.
“I haven’t gassed it up yet, but I’ve been feeling really good,” Martinez said.
Credit an offseason program in his native Dominican Republic in which he lifted weights regularly for the first time. He said he took just seven days off and spent so much time in the gym that he sometimes didn’t get to his boat, where he listened to music, until 10 p.m.

The highest-priced tickets in baseball got pricier Wednesday when the Boston Red Sox announced a 7.4 percent overall increase for this season.
Prices for the cheapest seats — upper and lower bleachers and outfield grandstand — are unchanged from last year, but all others are rising. Infield roof box, loge and field box seats, the most expensive at Fenway Park, will increase from $55 to $60.

Former Boston Red Sox players Dom DiMaggio and Johnny Pesky hit the road last week for a reunion with ailing teammate Ted Williams, recovering at his Florida home after open-heart surgery earlier this year.

Williams, regarded as perhaps the best pure hitter in baseball history, was the last player to hit over .400, when he hit .406 in 1941.

Major League Baseball and the Players Association donated $10 million and announced the creation of the MLB-MLBPA Disaster Relief Fund on Wednesday to aid the victims of last week’s terrorist attacks in the United States.