Land of the Rising Fans

This morning was a testament to just how deeply rooted baseball's rhythms are to one's own body cycles. When I awoke at 6 am to start getting ready for work and turned on the radio to listen to the opening game of the 2008 season, my body became immediately confused. Here were the sounds and silences of summer evenings weaving textures over the dawn sky. I felt just a little bit disoriented, to say the least.

It was definitely a good game, too. Daisuke stunk up the joint with his first three innings of work, missing wildly with just about every pitch he threw and giving up Jack Hanahan's first home run of the season and Kurt Suzuki's first career stolen base. He settled down after that and ended up with a line much like Tim Robbins' character in "Bull Durham" after his first outing. The offense was surprisingly quiet, with J.D. Drew out because of back soreness and Brandon Moss his fill-in. It was, ironically, Moss who ended up hitting the game-tying home run in the top of the ninth inning to keep the Sox alive, and it was Manny Ramirez, he of the $20 million option years, who brought in four of the six Sox runs. Jonathan Papelbon was human, but effective, and everybody went about their work day a little bit happier.

The sad part about the game today was Kyle Snyder, who managed to ruin Daisuke's win opportunity with one meatball served right down the middle of the plate. It was Snyder who made me a little bit regretful that the Sox were unable to find a more effective tweener reliever than he, and made me fearful of the future bullpen implosions just waiting to happen.

Still, what was most important was that it was baseball that counted, and that soon those radio broadcasts will reclaim their rightful place in the dwindling daylight of summer evening, and all will be right with the world. See you in the morning.

Manny-san

There are certainly downsides to this trip to Japan: the fact that it carries over into the regular season, that the games are hell to listen to, and the fact that you feel like you're living in some sort of alternate universe where you need to use complex fractions just to figure out a game's start time. Or maybe that's just me. Either way, despite the drawbacks to this trip, it's a blast to see the Sox heralded like conquering heroes from across the sea, and it's nice to see them engaged in a friendly contest, an exchange, it seems, between nations and cultures. Add to all the warm fuzzies an article by Amalie Benjamin revealing that Manny wants to finish his career in Boston and hit 7,000,000 home runs (or 700, I could be wrong), and it makes for a good read.

Manny's a funny guy. Not funny in the "ha ha, Manny just went into the scoreboard" kind of way, but funny in the way the fans perceive him. I've given my share of crap to a lot of players over my long 25 years, but I can't recall very many instances of giving it to Señor Ramírez. No, it's the Coco Crisps of the world that drive me to obscenity; all those I-like-to-talk-a-big-game-bug-swing-at-anything-thrown kind of players make me climb the walls. They don't (as Theo put it in the above article "understand it", the "it" being hitting, of course. They don't get their role on the team, they don't understand hitting as a philosophy. They don't learn from at-bat to at-bat, but rather go up their hacking, the embodiment of a single solitary link ignorant of the rest of the chain that surrounds it.

It's true that Manny's defense can be frequently below average and occasionally atrocious, that his effort in the field has him jogging after balls instead of sprinting. His time with the media in the last few seasons has been countable on one hand, and he's provided more conflicting copy than just about anybody currently on the team. What isn't true is that he's cheated the fans. When he stands and the box and strikes out, there's a knowledge that he's walking away from the plate having learned something, even if it's a small sort of something, that is going to help him the next time. When guys are all turned around, having confused their big fly swing with their Texas leaguer swing and have killed the thought of The Other Way swing, Manny has shown us how effective that little flick to the right can be, or how a clutch walk can turn the tide of an inning.

He's a goofy guy, no two ways about it, but I love Manny Ramirez. When he stops producing it will be absolutely tragic, and it will be sadder still when he inevitably leaves the Hub. But for all the haters of the world who jump on the Walter Reed bandwagon and scream bloody murder from the rooftops, I say, Leave the guy alone.

A Sit-Down Standoff

We all know the Red Sox and A's are going to Japan, right? And we all know that the games played in the Land of the Rising Sun are going to bring in buckets of money and publicity for Major League Baseball, right? What about the fact that the players get an impressive $40K purse just for making the trip? Sounds decent, doesn't it? Then I guess that with all these dollar signs floating around that team employees should be compensated at least for any expenses the may incur during this MLB-imposed outing, right?

Wrong. As usual, Bud Selig and his minions have managed to step knee-deep in the smelly stuff. This time they're reneging on a prior agreement to pay all Boston and Oakland coaches, trainers and other personnel a stipend similar to the ones the players are receiving. Fortunately, the sense of decency so lacking in the league's New York (fitting) office has managed to hang on inside the hearts of our very own. The team voted unanimously this morning to boycott their final Spring Training game against Toronto this afternoon unless the league agreed to pay the coaches as previously settled.

Rest assured, the matter has apparently been resolved and the final game of the spring is now underway. With all the negative press and fallout that has arisen in the wake of the steroids scandal and Sox issues like the release of Doug Mirabelli and the center field sniping, such unity in the face of blatant usurpation of league power over the faceless cogs of the major league machine is both refreshing and inspiring.

Here's to Japan, and smooth sailing back to Boston.

If You Read One Thing Today

Make sure you make it this three week old article from Slate.com. I know there's been a lot of rumor-milling, grandstanding, and just plain excessive coverage of the Clemens v. United States affair, but I hadn't really read a thoughtful, original piece on the whole affair until just this morning, and I think you'll agree with me.

But as always, you don't have to take my word for it.

"Bush Leaguer," Stephen Metcalf

All About the Benjamins

We're all abuzz about how calm camp is, if you can believe it, but this week Jonathan Papelbon decided that he would try his darnedest to provide copy by complaining about his sad, unfair contract. I have to say, the man has a point. Really, $425,550 is just so unfair.

Give me a break. Look, I realize that Papelbon, Pedroia, Buchholz, Youkilis, etc. are key to this team, but they're playing by the rules that their union agreed to. They aren't victims of a team's right to renew young players for the first handful of years, they're just part of the cycle. It's been depressing over the last few days to see all the articles reporting on how Prince Fielder and Nick Markakis are upset with their contracts. With all the steroid news finally in the background now that camps are open, picking at this stubborn scab just doesn't seem to be in anybody's interest.

The young players that have come up over the last several years have been a breath of fresh air for the game of baseball. When contracts appeared their most bloated and players their most distant, in came a class of rookies ready to just play baseball. They hit, ran, glove, threw, pitched and slugged their way into the hearts of fans everywhere. When they start using the press in that time-honored tradition as mouthpieces because they don't have the stones enough to just sit down with management, it turns me off completely. Even guys like Papelbon, whom I love to watch play.

Perhaps most surprising is that this contract nonsense (which has been settled, by the way, with Paps getting $775,000) comes on the heels of the team's visit to Walter Reed last week. All anyone could say was that the trip made it so obvious how lucky the players were to be allowed to have a game as their living. So many people would give anything for just a day in a ballplayer's hoes, and even more would give more for just a day of their pay. When you turn on the radio to hear stories of people scraping by below the poverty line followed by Papelbon's bitching about being a victim to poor salary, it just make me shake my head.

Jonathan Papelbon, grow up.