Timing

Baseball is sometimes about big muscles and sheer power (see Ortiz, David and Papelbon, Jonathan), but it's also about timing. With two flicks of the wrist yesterday, Alex Cora got himself about 800 feet of Yankee Stadium air, good for a home run, a triple and a Red Sox tally of 6-0 when he starts.

He's also hitting us with the kind of things we want to hear:

"That [RBI groundout in the third inning]'s what I'm supposed to do," Cora said. "The other things, I'll take as they come, but if you ask Tito [Francona], he'll tell you that's what he wants. Man at third, less than two outs, get the run in. When you play once a week and pop up in that situation with the infield back, you'll be thinking about that for a long time,"

and hasn't lost sight of the bigger picture:

"If you win games in April you don't have to win them in September."

A 16-8 record in April is a pretty fine start to the season, especially when it's mostly been the result of good pitching (the Sox lineup yesterday had just one guy hitting over .300 - Mike Lowell). And that pitching should get even better with the early-May return of Jon Lester. That will in turn send Julian Tavarez to the bullpen, a move which a year ago might have had Sox fans wondering which piece of clubhouse furniture Tavarez would smash up in frustration. But now? Well, Tavarez is Mr. Team Player.

This team is coming together, folks. Fasten your seat-belts and hang on for the ride...

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Obsessive Anal-Retentive Game Counter: 23

Don't look now...

...but we're sending guys out there who aren't even looking:

(photo: AP)

and we're still winning the games.

Last night saw the welcome return of one of the most satisfying sights in baseball: the Joe Torre face. I'm not one to revel in the misfortune of others - and I certainly don't want to bring the wrath of the baseball gods down on the Sox - but when I see Torre, Mattingly, Bowa & co. sat on the bench staring into space, I can't help but smile. Torre's "I just chewed on a mouthful of lemons" face as he went out to get Rivera after his 0.1 innings and 4 earned runs made my weekend.

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Obsessive Anal-Retentive Game Counter: 21

Much Mo'

WMP = Weapon of Mass Producion. 1 swing, 4 runs, ballgame.

Of course, his was the big swing, but it wasn't a one-man show. If anyone bumps into Josh Beckett around town, just let him know that we are starting to like this 7-8 innings, 2-earned runs thing he's got going.

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Obsessive Anal-Retentive Game Counter: 20

Baseball Desert Survey

Today's question:

Is Angel Hernandez the worst umpire in the major leagues?

a) Yes
b) Yes
c) Yes
d) Not quite sure, but probably yes

Angel Hernandez is not a major league umpire: he's a controversy waiting to happen. Every time this guy is behind the plate, you know that there's going to be some kind of incident during the game. His aim in life seems not to be to go about his job of umpiring the games in an intelligent and discreet manner, but rather to put those egotistical, overpaid ballplayers in their rightful place. They may be earning more in a week than Angel earns in a year, but that doesn't mean he won't show 'em who's the boss out there.

Maybe he had a point with Lugo's non-time-out, but if he did, then he made it by having Cabrera throw the first pitch to an empty batter's box. The second pitch, complete with over-exaggerated "Play ball!" motion to the pitcher, was designed merely to show Lugo up. That's not umpiring a major league game - that's having a major league chip on your shoulder.

Well, screw Angel Hernandez - the Sox won anyway. They waited to see if the new, efficient Daniel Cabrera could keep it up for a full game, and disovered in the seventh that he couldn't. They welcomed the old, wild Daniel Cabrera back with open arms and then jumped all over the bullpen to secure the win.

Oh, and a word to young Josh. Curt went seven innings today, and gave up just one run on five hits - you wanna show him who the ace is, you know what you gotta do tonight.

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Obsessive Anal-Retentive Game Counter: 19

Fugly

You know your team's in trouble when it has almost as many errors as it has hits.

It wasn't all Wily Mo's fault, but his error in the sixth was he straw that broke this particular camel's back and made me do something that I think I've only ever done twice before: switch the game off. Had I been watching it on the right side of the Atlantic, I'd probably have stuck around, but the 17 games I've watched so far this season are starting to take their toll, and at 3am, heading off to bed was a much more attractive option than watching any more of last night's ugliness.

All I can hope is that the players have decided to listen to Tito:

"This is a long season, and nobody likes to ever lose," said Francona. "But it's inevitable that you lose games. When you do lose, you need to bounce back and play better the next night. That's the whole idea."

Two wins in Baltimore would be a good way to get things back on track.

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I didn't make it beyond the top of the sixth, but I got up at 1am, so I'm counting it anyway - Obsessive Anal-Retentive Game Counter: 18

Hung over

It's good to know that we're not the only ones to drag our feet at the office on a Monday. It was one of those days where you sit hoping that it will all get going at some point, and then suddenly it's the bottom of the ninth, Manny's striking out and the game is officially out of reach.

Never mind - we'll get 'em tonight.

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I'm a big Wily Mo fan, but watching him flail at breaking balls on the outside part of the plate, I couldn't help thinking of Pedro Cerrano:

Straightball I hit it very much. Curveball, bats are afraid.

I think we need some cigars, a bottle of rum and a little help from Jobu.

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Obsessive Anal-Retentive Game Counter: 17

Boring, boring baseball

What a weekend of baseball - coming into the series, it was all A-Rod; this morning it's all Red Sox.

If you've ever wondered at what point a situation moves from the sublime to the ridiculous, just look at last night's game. Back-to-back-to-back homers to tie the game: sublime. Varitek's '-to-back' homer tacked on to that: ridiculous. I loved how the crowd noise increased a notch with each shot, reaching "No f'ckin way!" level as Varitek connected for a little bit of baseball history. I've watched it a dozen times already, and it's one that'll never get old.

The Sox continue to play division rivals (TOR, BAL, NYY) for the next week. Now would be a very good time to ride the wave of momentum created by the sweep and put some daylight between first and second place in the AL East.

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Obsessive Anal-Retentive Game Counter: 16

Wow

You know it was a good game when you can read a Shaughnessy column and not want to stick sharp objects in your eyes.

Danny Boy has clearly been drinking the magic Kool Aid. Outside of one minor dig at Schilling, the column is - *shock*, *horror* - positively, well, positive.

The Red Sox need to keep winning games like this, if only to see if the new and improved CHB can stick around for a while.

October baseball...

...in April.

Common theory amongst many baseball people is that you win 50, you lose 50 and what you do in those other 62 is what determines the season. The last two nights we won games that should have been in the ‘lose 50’ column. That’s big no matter what day on the calendar it is, or who they happen against. (Curt Schilling)

He's right: two runs down against Halladay and four down against Rivera - the odds on getting two wins in those situations are pretty thin. At 6-2 down, I was this close to calling it a day, but I stuck it out and was lucky to see a game that was, as Beth put it, "2004 style."

It's only one game, but it's the kind of game that has everyone feeling that anything is possible. And that kind of feeling, in April, is possibly worth even more than the notch in the win column.

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One more thing. This:

(Photo: MLB.com)

is the face of a man on a mission. It's Coco's "Fuck the Mendoza Line" face, and I'm hoping we see it for many more games to come.

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Obsessive Anal-Retentive Game Counter: 14

Co-Co Comeback

Great game yesterday. I don't have much time to blog about it, except to say that it was good to see Cora and Coco play key roles in the game. The comeback win gives the Sox some good momentum going into this weekend's series against the Yankees.

The Yankees also had a comeback win last night, thanks in part to a walk-off home run from A-Rod, but, more crucially, to some amazingly stubborn managing by Cleveland's Eric Wedge. Jere suggests that Wedge was asleep in the bottom of the ninth, as he left Borowski in to give up six earned runs in 2/3 of an inning. I yelled as loud as I could to try to wake him up, but to no avail. He was determined to turn snatch defeat from the jaws of victory, and his plan worked. Nice job, Eric.

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Obsessive Anal-Retentive Game Counter: 13

Shifty

Every time I see that damn shift against David Ortiz I feel a burning need to yell at the TV (I'm not the only one - Kristen says "I still think the shift is cheating." But if this article in the Herald is to be believed, it bothers me far more than it bothers Big Papi.

I can see Tito's point of view about not wanting to turn Ortiz into a No. 2 hitter. He's getting paid to get the big hits and drive in the runs. I wouldn't want him to be systematically doing it, but now and again I would really like to see him carefully and deliberately drop one down the third base line for an uncontested infield hit.

What if he did that once a game or once every other game? Above and beyond raising his average by a number of points, would it not in time begin sowing a little doubt in the minds of opposing managers? It's not like he's the only big bat on the team. With Manny and J.D. Drew behind him, there'd be a lot of opportunities to put some extra runs on the board by countering the shift. It could become an interesting battle of wits - get them to put their guys back in position, then hit balls to right field; wait until they put guys back in the shift, then drop some more hits down the left-field line. Maybe I'm naïve, but I'd love to see that, if only to piss off Joe Maddon of the Devil Rays and his über-shift.

Alternatively, Papi could just go with the opposite-field home runs. They seem to be quite effective, no matter where the infield is playing.

Broken streak

Up until last night I'd watched all 12 Sox games so far this season, which I'm sure is my best ever streak of consecutive games. But I'm like our slightly fragile outfielders, who need a night off now and again if they're going to compete over a full season, and last night was mine.

My absence clearly didn't hurt the Sox, who notched a nice 4-1 win in Toronto, behind the mighty bat of Doug Mirabelli, who now has 2 HRs in 12 at-bats. If he plays 50 games this season, that would put him on pace for about 25 HRs. Folks, between this and Daisuke not being able to buy a win right now, it looks like we're entering Bizarro Baseball World. Which is good, because today we have Tavarez (0-1, 9.00) - on 12 days' rest - going up against Roy Halladay (2-0, 2.35).

It has all the makings of a BBW classic.

Random Wednesday thought

Whilst trawling the Web in search of examples of companies offering managed IT services (I know - some guys get all the good jobs) I came across a company which uses, as part of its advertising, the slogan 24/7/365.

I've seen this countless times before, but it only struck me today that it makes absolutely no sense at all. There's a logical progression in 24 hours a day, 7 days a week which is then totally lost by going back to 365 days a year. Surely you either need to say just 24/7 (or 24/365, if you're feeling adventurous) or you need respect the logical hours-days-weeks progression and go 24/7/52?

I'm telling you - the world is going to hell in a handbasket. You start off with little things like this, and before you know it you're going from Chance to Evers to Tinker...

The Baseball Desert supports Daisuke Matsuzaka

Which is more than can be said for his teammates. In three games, Daisuke has given up just 6 runs (an ERA of 2.70) and struck out 24. To thank him for this solid start to the season, the Sox have scored a total of 5 runs (of which one came last night), thus giving him a less-than-stellar 1-2 record to start the seaon.

Short of petitioning the league to have Wily Mo's monster shots count for two runs instead of one, there's not much we can do except cross our fingers and hope that Daisuke is not the new Wakefield.

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Obsessive Anal-Retentive Game Counter: 12

The New Yorker: Waiting for Manny

This week's issue of the New Yorker has a piece by Ben McGrath on Manny (Hat tip: Seth Mnookin).

The article proves once again that it's hard to get anywhere close to an understanding of the enigma that is Manny Ramirez, and the result is a real mixed bag. However, in amongst the things we knew already and the things we didn't but probably don't much care about - lots of detail on the now infamous Atlantic City car auction, for example - there are some genuine nuggets. For me, the most revealing paragraph - the one that gets closest to revealing something genuinely interesting - is this one:

Duquette had been following Ramirez’s career since high school, but he now concedes that he had no idea "exactly how unique" his new left fielder was. "When Manny first came to the Red Sox, he would stand in the batter’s box, and the umpire would call ball four, and he would get back in the batter’s box," Duquette, who is now the president of the fledgling Israel Baseball League, told me. "He did this in his first series at Fenway Park and again on his first road trip." After the third such incident, Duquette ventured down into the locker room. "I said, 'Manny, let me ask you something. I was just wondering why you get back in the batter’s box after ball four.' He said, 'I don’t keep track of the balls.' He said, 'I don’t keep track of the strikes, either, until I got two.' Then he said, 'Duke, I’m up there looking for a pitch I can hit. If I don’t get it, I wait for the umpire to tell me to go to first. Isn’t that what you’re paying me to do?' "

At first glance, this just seems to be another "Manny is a space cadet" anecdote: this guy is so out of touch with what's going on that he doesn't even know what the count is. But my take (and I should add that I'm a Manny apologist, so you may feel the need to dash to the kitchen for a pinch of salt) is that this is extreme focus, rather then lazy-mindedness. It's true that it's not that hard to keep count of balls and strikes - I mean, even Johnny Damon manages it on a daily basis - but personal experience has also shown me that you can sometimes be so focused on something that you lose track of what's going on around you.

I can't claim to have been in the kind of high-pressure situation that Manny is in every time he steps to the plate. However, one of my previous jobs was as a translator / interpreter, which often put me in business situations where it was absolutely crucial that I make a faithful, word-perfect translation of what was being said. The pressure in that situation is huge (and is the reason why interpreters in high-level organisations like the UN only work for 20 minutes at a time), and the concentration 100%.

That concentration meant - in my case, at least - total focus on the phrase at hand, to such an extent that I was often incapable of reconstructing the whole conversation later on. That didn't worry me, because my job wasn't to reconstruct or make sense of the conversation - my job was to translate the different sentences as precisely as possible and let them speak for themselves. And so it is with Manny - pushed to the extreme, his job is not to worry about the bigger picture, but to travel those ninety feet from the batter's box to first base (and beyond), and it's a job he does very well.

All the other stuff? Minor details...

Bad timing

Yesterday's game finally got going at around 6:15pm CET, whilst I was still in the office. I could have watched the game there, but after 8pm trains run only every hour back to Paris, so I figured I would head off straight away and catch the later innings of the game.

I left the office just after OC hit his home run in top of the first. When I got home, it was the top of the 4th, and the game was all but over - I'd missed the Sox' six-run first, Beckett hitting Vlad and Lugo's stellar defense. Fortunately, I did arrive in time to catch the play of the game, the one that all Boston is talking about: the Pizza Play.

I have no idea how the whole thing happened. Why was the guy throwing the pizza? At whom? He must have been really pissed (English pissed or American pissed - both work) to be throwing around a $7 slices of pizza like that. Whatever the reason, it was a classic piece of television. Red called it

NESN's own version of the Zapruder film and [...] easily one of the most brilliant things I've ever seen with my two eyes.

The YouTube clip doesn't quite do the whole thing justice, as the main entertainment was to be had in Don and Jerry's in-depth analysis of the incident. And listening to two guys spending time analysing a pizza-throwing incident at a baseball game is maybe no bad thing on a day like yesterday.

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Obsessive Anal-Retentive Game Counter: 11

Who's gonna stop the rain?

The Internet has shrunk the world to such an amazing degree that there are people in Boston I converse with more often than I do with our upstairs neighbours, but one thing it can't do is shrink the weather map. So whilst I sit here in the office recovering from an al fresco lunch in 80-degree weather, Boston crosses its fingers for the rain to stop: Red has his squeegee ready and Kristen is writing to the Big Man.

Well, if the Big Man has finished reading Kristen's post and is now reading this, I'm willing to do even better than that: if he wants to swap Boston's horrendous weather for Paris's sunshine, then he can. I'm willing to take one for the team and get drenched going home from work if it means that we'll get to see baseball at Fenway today.

Watching Marco Scutaro hit a three-run walk-off homer off Mariano Rivera is a lot of fun, but it ain't Boston Red Sox baseball. So if any of you see the Big Man around, can you please tell him to give me a call?

Ace in the hole

So the game came as advertised:

Young pitching phenom tosses one-hitter in first Fenway game.

Unfortunately for the Sox, the young pitching phenom was Felix Hernandez.

There's not much analysis to be done of a game like that. There's no wringing of hands over missed opportunities, because there were no opportunities to be missed. The Sox were purely and simply shut down by a tremendous pitching performance. Tip your cap to King Felix and move on to today's game.

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Obsessive Anal-Retentive Game Counter: 8

Changing perspectives

It's funny how rooting for the laundry changes our outlook on certain players and situations. As last night's shenanigans between Donnelly and Guillen unfolded, I was as puzzled as the NESN team. Once they'd finally sorted out the history it all came back to me. I watched that Angels / Nats game and wrote about the pine tar incident the next day, praising Guillen's restraint (!) and delighting in him shutting Mike Scioscia up. Now, of course, Donnelly's our guy, so Guillen goes back to his default "hotheaded asshole" setting on the Baseball Desert character-meter.

Baseball feuds are always a source of endless entertainment. Something gets made out of nothing, and suddenly there's a whole lot of public yelling going on, and I then spend the rest of the series hoping that Donnelly gets to face Guillen again and we get some real fireworks (as opposed to what NESN called a "bench-clearing shouting match").

You can call me a big kid if you like, but I can rest easy knowing I'm not the only one:

"I don't need to talk to him," said Guillen. "What do I need to talk to him for? Come on, man, we're all grown-up people. He don't need to talk to me, either."

"If he wants to take care of this problem, our clubhouses are pretty close, so he can have one of the batboys come get me outside and we can take care of this as men. That's it. That's all I have to say."

You can't beat a bit of macho posturing to really get the season started.

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Obsessive Anal-Retentive Game Counter: 7

Papel-très-bon

This is why he's back in the 'pen. So that seven solid innings from Schiling and two homers from Papi don't get flushed down the toilet by a rash of Texas Rangers who had no business occupying all three bases in the eighth inning.

I'm not one for quoting ESPN's broadcast team on a regular basis, but Jon Miller said it pretty well: "That's no three-run-lead, starting-the-ninth-inning-with-the-bases-empty save. That is a big league save." One out in the eighth, tying and go-ahead runs on base. 15 pitches, 3 strikeouts and 2 flyouts later, we had ourselves the first jump-up-off-the-sofa moment of the season, and the game was in the bag.

Now we have yet another off-day before what is possibly the best day of the whole season: Opening Day at Fenway Park. The family has been warned (and bribed with the promise of Domino's Pizza and Ben & Jerry's ice-cream): at 8pm CET tomorrow, the TV is mine, and this little piece of the Paris suburbs will have an 02215 zip code.

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Obsessive Anal-Retentive Game Counter: 6

Loss? What loss?

Last night's game was my equivalent of a sac fly - I notched an RBI (one more game on my running total), but outside of that, it didn't happen. No official mention of it anywhere, OK?

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Obsessive Anal-Retentive Game Counter: 5

Proof that God exists

Tonight, for some reason I can't even begin to understand, I don't have ESPN on NASN - I have NESN.

Two words: wicked awesome.

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Obsessive Anal-Retentive Game Counter: 4

Out in the cold

Ladies and gentlemen, I have to tell you: here at the Baseball Desert we're pissed off. Season in and season out, April through October nights, I organise my life around Red Sox games, going to bed at 9:30pm and getting up at 1:05am / 4:05am to watch them play the Devil Rays / Angels on a computer screen the size of a lunchbox. I do this not just once or twice a season, but maybe 50 or 60 times. Do I get any love from the media for this selfless sacrifice for Red Sox Nation? No, I do not. Two or three Japanese fans get up at 3am to watch one game, though, and it's all over the Boston papers. I'm asking you: Where's the recognition? Where's the love? Where's the justice?

So, I'm now officially boycotting the Boston press until they publish an article entitled "In the Paris suburbs, they root all night EVERY DAMN NIGHT." In the meantime, I'll be over there in the corner, sulking and muttering incoherently about "bloody bandwagon jumpers"...

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Obsessive Anal-Retentive Game Counter: 3

Comfort food

OK, so the three errors by Mike Lowell were not a figment of my imagination. However, he has found the perfect antidote to a bad day in the field: an ice-cream sandwich.

He just moved up another notch or two on my list of favourite Red Sox players.

Matsu-who?

Apparently the Sox are feeling confident after their first win yesterday. Confident enough to throw some unknown Japanese rookie out there tonight against the Royals.

In honour of that, The Baseball Desert is going all manga today:

(image: Boston Globe)

Unfortunately, I can't read Japanese, so for all I know, the picture caption might be a Shaughnessy-inspired "All members of Red Sox Nation are pathetic fanboy loser bloggers." But I prefer to think that it's more along the lines of "He's here to kick your ass."

First pitch is 2:10pm ET. Miss it at your peril.

Optical illusions

I'd have preferred Beckett to go more than five innings last night, but I thought he looked pretty good. It was only when I looked at the game report that I realised he had only thrown 46 of his 94 pitches for strikes. It felt like a lot more - there were a lot of balls that were close to the strike zone and a number of "come and get me" high fastballs. Beckett had the heat going, as well as a nice curve and changeup. If he can keep that up, and make those 94 pitches stretch seven or eight innings instead of five, I'll be a happy chappy.

Optical illusion no. 2 was Mike Lowell. I think my Internet connection may have been playing up, because it looked like Mr "Only 6 errors in 2006" made errors on consecutive ground balls last night, and three overall. Surely that can't be right?

Outside of that, it was a good game. Some two-out mojo in the first, a mighty blow from Youk and a first win in the bag. I'll that any day of the week.

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Obsessive Anal-Retentive Game Counter: 2

Here we go again

It's April 4th, the second game of the season, and I'm already thinking about whether I'll be getting up at 2am to watch Josh Beckett pitch tonight. This decision to start keeping all kinds of unreasonable and unsocial hours has come earlier with every passing season, and it seems to me now that the only games I'm not prepared to get up in the middle of the night for are Spring Training games.

We really don't know what we're going to get out of young Josh tonight, but hopefully it'll be a "this is how you do it" class for #38. I suggest that he takes a leaf out of the book of the other Beckett, celebrated playwright and onetime star of the Dublin University cricket team. Wikipedia says Beckett was known for his "stark, fundamentally minimalist" work. On a Wednesday lunchtime, I'm not sure I'm prepared to dig deeper into what that might mean in literary terms - I mean, Waiting for Godot seems like the kind of scary play you could accidentally fall into and never climb out of ever again - but in baseball terms I'm thinking that stark and fundamentally minimalist can mean only one thing: strikes, ground ball outs and eight innings of two-hit ball.

Josh - please prove to me that I haven't read too much into the text.

Another fine Meche

It wasn't quite what we were expecting, was it?

The negatives:

• Schilling just not being on his game. (He's not hiding making any excuses, but that doesn't make it any easier to swallow).
  
• The Sox' adventures on the basepaths.
• Having to listen to Jon Miller call the game on ESPN as if it were Game 7 of the World Series. Jon - it's the first game of a long season, for Chrissakes - tone it down a little.
  

The positives:

• Not much, really, except that the Sox made the much-talked-about Gil Meche signing look like a stroke of genius.

There's no point in wringing our hands in despair. This one is in the book, albeit on the wrong side, and the Sox unfortunately won't get a do-over. All we can do is sit around during this bizarre off-day (Is there a reason for this? Are the players already in need of a rest-day?) and hope that they get their act together for Wednesday's game.

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When I got to the end of last season, I was curious about how much time I'd spent watching eighteen men chase a little white ball around a big field, but I had no way of tallying up the Sox games I'd seen (my guess was 80+). So, this season I'll be keeping a running total, just so that I can work out how much of my life is spent in pursuing this crazy obsession.

Obsessive Anal-Retentive Game Counter: 1

Ten Feet Tall And Bulletproof

If, by any chance, you were entertaining thoughts of insulting me, dissing me, stealing my car or generally just trying to ruin my day, then I suggest that you do these things today, because whatever you try to do to me today won't touch me. Today I'm invincible and the reason is simple: it's Opening Day.

Over the past few weeks there have been moments when it felt like this day would never arrive, but it's finally here. It's a day of promise and hope, the only day of the season when every team (except the Cardinals) has a shot at the perfect season. But the end result - be it a World Series victory or a hundred losses - is only one part of the story. What Opening Day means is that baseball will be with us almost every day from now until October. MLB.com will once again show boxscores from games that actually mean something. I'll start drinking Asahi Super Dry on days that Matsuzaka pitches. I'll get excited about games involving the Devil Rays. All of these little things have been missing from my life over the last six months, and now they're back.

So today life is good. However, life can always be a little better when it has an appropriate soundtrack to it. Today's soundtrack, naturally, has a baseball / Sox feel to it (Tessie, Dirty Water, Sweet Caroline), but there's really only one song that could open up the playlist:

Well, beat the drum and hold the phone - the sun came out today!
We’re born again, there’s new grass on the field.
A-roundin’ third, and headed for home, it’s a brown-eyed handsome man;
Anyone can understand the way I feel.

We're born again, there's new grass on the field. Yes, indeed. Bring it on.