T-Shirt

A great baby t-shirt*.
I'm thisclose to ordering one of these for myself.

!

(*: This is not an ad. A friend of ours, and a reader of L's blog,
sent her a link to it and she passed it on to me.)

What Was Sox's Halladay Offer?

A National League scout told Bob Elliott of the Toronto Sun that a Blue Jays scout told him the Red Sox offered six pitchers (Clay Buchholz, Justin Masterson, Daniel Bard, Michael Bowden, Felix Doubront, and Nick Hagadone) for Roy Halladay.

The NL scout said: "I have zero idea why they didn't take the Boston offer." ... Then he promptly gave two reasons. (Hoo-kay.) The Jays could not decide whether Masterson should be a a starter or a closer and "the Jays were worried about Halladay beating them next year".

Asked by email if that offer was correct, Theo Epstein replied: "Nope."

Over at ESPN Boston, Peter Gammons says the deal was Buchholz, Masterson, Bowden, Hagadone and Josh Reddick. Old Hickory quotes a Sox official: "We are very lucky Toronto didn't do that deal. For the short and long terms."

(Right after the trade deadline had passed, ESPN reported a deal fell apart because Boston would not deal both of Buchholz and Daniel Bard.)

Terry Francona slept at Fenway Park on Saturday night: "Got to tell you, though, I ran into [assistant equipment manager Pookie Jackson] coming out of the shower. That's about as bad a nightmare as you're going to see."

The Red Sox (7 GB in East, 4 GA in WC) are off today, but: Angels/Yankees (a make-up of a May 3 rainout) at 7 and A's/Rangers at 8.

Off-Day Outtakes: Rolling Stones - Tattoo You

We'll do the same thing with this 1981 Stones album that we did with Some Girls last week.

Again, this may not be complete, but it's a good start. Further complicating the problem of completeness is that this set -- called Tattoo Too -- runs a bit fast, so the 9:39 version of "Slave" here is (I believe) identical to the 10:13 version on Rogue's Tattoo You Sessions. The two songs in italics are from the Rogue release.

There really ought to be a fan project to collect all of the songs for the various late 70s/early 80s albums because so many tracks circulate.

Notes: "Start Me Up" began as a reggae-ish song ("Never Stop") during the Black & Blue sessions. ... "Slave 1" is an instrumental with some amazingly crunchy guitars. This song may rank as the greatest Stones groove of all time. ... "Tops" and "Waiting On A Friend" date all the way back to 1972; guitarist Mick Taylor had to sue the band to get his share of royalties for his contributions to the album.

Disc 1
01  Start Me Up (Munich, 3-4/75)             4:23
02  Start Me Up (Paris, 10/77-3/78)          3:42
03  Hang Fire (Paris, 10/77-3/78)            6:18
04  Hang Fire (Paris, 10/77-3/78)            6:06
05  Hang Fire (Paris, 10/77-3/78)            2:24
06  Hang Fire (Paris, 10/77-3/78)            2:26
07  Slave (Rotterdam, 1-2/75)                6:58
08  Slave (Paris, 6-10/79)                   9:39
09  Slave (New York, 4-6/81)                 8:16
10  Slave                                    8:35
11  Little T&A (Nassau, 1-2/79)              3:40
12  Little T&A (Nassau, 1-2/79)              4:12
13  Black Limousine (Paris, 10/77-3/78)      3:15
14  Black Limousine (Paris, 10/77-3/78)      4:08
15  Black Limousine (Paris, 6-10/79)         3:35
  
Disc 2
01  Black Limousine (Paris, 6-10/79)         4:02
02  Black Limousine                          3:48
03  Neighbors (Nassau, 1-2/79)               3:22
04  Worried About You (Rotterdam, 1-2/75)    7:42
05  Worried About You (Paris, 6-10/79)       7:21
06  Tops (Los Angeles, 11/72)                4:38
07  Tops (Paris, 6-10/79)                    4:03
08  Heaven (Paris, 10/77-3/78)               5:14
09  Heaven (Paris, 10-11/80)                 5:22
10  No Use In Crying (Paris, 6-10/79)        3:33
11  No Use In Crying (Paris, 6-10/79)        4:27
12  No Use In Crying (Paris, 6-10/79)        4:26
13  No Use In Crying (Paris, 6-10/79)        4:24
14  Waiting On A Friend (Kingston, 11-12/72) 4:15 
15  Waiting On A Friend (Paris, 6-10/79)     4:32
16  Waiting On A Friend (Paris, 10/77-3/78)  3:33

Castiglione Reads My Email!

As Jacoby Ellsbury batted in the bottom of the fifth, Laura posted to the game thread:

OK Allan, start typing. OB & Castig are talking about Pedro - OB watched Petey dominating the Devil Rays, the 1-hitter where Gerald Williams charged the mound. Castig called Pedro "the Sandy Koufax of his day".

The Pedro/Koufax comparisons rankle me, as you may know. Koufax was great, but Pedro stands well above him. That is a simple fact. So I tracked down the email address for the booth and dashed off a note to Joe, citing some stuff from two old JoS posts.

And less than two innings later, Ish posted: "OH SNAP. This might be Allan's e-mail. ... IT IS! Named on the air!" and Laura followed: "they're reading Allan's email now! AND THEY PLUGGED HIS BOOK!!!!"

From the MLB archive of the radio broadcast (Pedro chat only):

Joe Castiglione [in the fifth]: Pedro pitches tonight, for the Phillies against the Mets. Trying to go 5-0.

Dave O'Brien: I was watching a replay late last night of a young Pedro Martinez, in his prime, pitching against the old Tampa Bay Devil Rays [August 29, 2000]. It was just remarkable.

Castiglione: He dominated them like he did most teams. ...

O'Brien: And he nailed the first batter of the ball game. It was a game down there at Tropicana. He got him on the hand.

Castiglione: Was that Gerald Williams?

O'Brien: It was. It was Gerald Williams -- and he charged the mound. And he got thrown out, Pedro stayed in, and just mowed them down (laughs).

Castiglione: He had a no-hitter until John Flaherty broke it up in the ninth inning.

O'Brien: That's right. It was incredible to watch. ... But to watch Pedro, pitching better at that point in his life than he would ever pitch again, or ever had before that, start that pitch off the outside corner and run it back over and over again, and break bats and strike out guys seemingly at will ...

Castiglione: His command was remarkable.

O'Brien: That was a Hall of Famer. I was watching a Hall of Famer.

Castiglione: ... He's certainly the Sandy Koufax of his era over that period.

O'Brien: Yep.

Castiglione: Of seven years or so. Sure-fire first round Hall of Famer.

And as B.J. Upton batted in the top of the eighth, Castiglione said:

We made a remark earlier about Pedro being the Sandy Koufax of his era. Got an interesting email from a fan -- in fact, the author of Babe Ruth and the 1918 Red Sox, Allan Wood, who makes some great points. [Upton flies to Ellsbury, Burrell bats for Perez]

The blogger, Allan Wood, points out that "while the raw numbers of Pedro and Koufax look similar, Koufax pitched with a higher mound in a pitcher's park in LA and at a time when the rule book strike zone was enforced" -- shoulders to the knees -- and "Pedro's home park favoured hitters, he had a smaller strike zone and pitched in an offensive era", the ultimate steroid era.

So, really, he points out that Pedro "leaves Koufax in the dust" and makes some great points. I would agree. Pedro's performance around '99, 2000, the most remarkable pitching in many, many years.

Very cool. I was watching NESN at the time, so I missed it live. Fellow Canadian Tim was kind enough to extract and send me an mp3 file.

As I've said before, Pedro's 2000 season is the greatest year of pitching since the mound was moved back to its current distance of 60 feet, 6 inches.

And he threw eight shutout innings (8-6-0-2-7, 130) against the Mets tonight! It was his highest pitch count since he threw 136 on May 1, 2001 against the Mariners.

G142: Red Sox 4, Rays 0

Rays    - 000 000 000 - 0  4  0
Red Sox - 010 002 01x - 4  7  0

Wicked Lester: 8-2-0-3-7, 105.

Jason Varitek: two-run single in the sixth.

Plus: An email regarding Pedro/Koufax I sent to the radio booth was mentioned/read during the top of the 8th inning!

James Shields (4.02, 114 ERA+) / Jon Lester (3.44, 138 ERA+)

Friday night's pitchers return for Sunday's second game.

Lester threw 24 pitches -- and allowed three singles -- in the top of the first inning on Friday before the game was postponed.

G141: Red Sox 3, Rays 1

Rays    - 000 000 100 - 1  6  0
Red Sox - 000 001 02x - 3  9  0

Dustin Pedroia doubled and scored Boston's first run, then hit a two-run opposite field home run to break an eighth-inning tie. Pinch-hitter David Ortiz began the eighth with a double.

Buchholz had his stuff working well, especially the changeup: 7-5-1-3-5-97. Hideki Okajima and Jonathan Papelbon closed it out.

Matt Garza (3.85, 118 ERA+) / Clay Buchholz (3.92, 121 ERA+)

First of two today. The "nightcap" is at 5 PM.

If all goes according to plan, Boston could be only 6 GB the Yankees by 9 PM, having cut three games off New York's lead in three days.

MLB.com:

Buchholz won his fourth consecutive decision last Tuesday, shutting out the Orioles over seven innings of three-hit ball at Fenway Park. The 25-year-old right-hander is 4-2 with a 3.00 ERA in seven outings since Aug. 8, posting six quality starts over that span. He has surrendered three runs or fewer in nine of 11 appearances this season.

There is an obvious difference in innings pitched, but: ERA+s going into this series: Buchholz 121, Beckett 122.

Toss out his crappy August 24 start against the White Sox and Buchholz has a 1.79 ERA (eight runs in 40.1 innings) since August 8.

Big Bats: Victor Martinez has a 13-game hitting streak (.356, 16-for-45), Kevin Youkilis is hitting .500 (24-for-48) against the Rays this season, and Alex Gonzalez has hit safely in 13 of his last 14 games (.333, 17-for-51).

Also: Orioles/Yankees at 1 and the Mariners/Rangers will play two: 1:30 (now moved to 5 PM) and then later.

G140: Red Sox 9, Rays 1 (6)

Rays    - 000 010 - 1  4  0
Red Sox - 008 10x - 9  8  0

11:54 PM: The water is Muddy!!!

10:59 PM: Rain delay in the top of the sixth. (The start of the game was delayed 2:05.)

The Red Sox sent 12 men to the plate in the third: Gonzalez single, Ellsbury F8, Pedroia single, Martinez single (1-0), Youkilis single (2-0), Ortiz single (3-0), Bay BB, Drew (wild pitch, 4-0) BBI, Varitek P5, Gonzalez double (7-0), Ellsbury single (8-0) Pedroia (Ellsbury SB #61) 3-1. Yook hit a solo dong in the fourth.

Beckett: 5-4-1-1-4, 78.

The Orioles beat the Yankees 7-3 and the Mariners beat the Rangers 8-3, so Boston is 7.5 GB in the East and 3 GA in the WC.

Wade Davis (1.29, 354 ERA+) / Josh Beckett (3.87, 122 ERA+)

Davis is making his second major league start. In his ML debut on September 6, he had a 7-3-1-1-9, 105 line against the Tigers in Tampa. He left with a 3-1 lead, but the Rays pen allowed four runs in the ninth and Detroit won 5-3.

Over his last five starts, Beckett has a 7.76 ERA. Batters are slugging .617 against Beckett over those 31.1 innings, with 12 dongs. By comparsion, only Albert Pujols has a slugging percentage over .598. Beckett's last start -- Monday, in Chicago -- was the first time since August 7 that he did not allow at least 2 home runs.

And: Orioles/Yankees at 1 and Mariners/Rangers at 8. The lowly Orioles routed the Yankees last night 10-4, so Boston is 8.5 GB. Texas was rained out, so the Red Sox remain 2 GA in the WC.

DFW And The Pale King

David Foster Wallace committed suicide one year ago today.

Telegraph UK, August 13, 2009:

For at least 10 years before his death, Wallace was working on a long novel that he called The Pale King. Set in a branch of the US Internal Revenue Service, it aimed to articulate the hard-won thesis of mindfulness that Wallace had come to after years of depression and treatment: "Bliss -– a second-by-second joy and gratitude at the gift of being alive, conscious –- lies on the other side of crushing, crushing boredom."

Michael Pietsch, who is piecing together the many drafts of The Pale King in collaboration with [Wallace's agent Bonnie] Nadell and Wallace's widow, Karen Green, agrees. "The thrust of it," he says, "is an attempt to look at the dark matter of tedium and boredom and repetition and familiarity that life is made of, and through that to find a path to joy and art and everything that matters. Wallace has set himself the task of making a moving and joyful book out of the matter of life that most writers veer away from as hard as they can. And what he left of it is heartbreakingly full and beautiful and deep. He was looking at how one survives."

I am a huge fan of Wallace's work, especially his 1996 novel, Infinite Jest, and I am beyond excited to read The Pale King, which will be published in May 2010.

TPK continues to explore the same themes that Wallace tackled in both his fiction and non-fiction. According to The New Yorker, the novel is "about the transcendence that comes through boredom". It centers on

... a group of employees at an Internal Revenue Service center in Illinois, and how they deal with the tediousness of their work. The partial manuscript ... expands on the virtues of mindfulness and sustained concentration. Properly handled, boredom can be an antidote to our national dependence on entertainment ...

Wallace began his research for The Pale King shortly after the publication of Infinite Jest. Karen Green, his widow, said that Wallace took accounting classes and studied IRS publications. "You should have seen him with our accountant. It was like, "What about the ruling of 920S?"

That information helps us understand this 1998 exchange between Wallace and Gus Van Sant:

DFW: I'm on leave this year. I'm auditing a class but I'm not teaching. The class I'm auditing is a real bitch but somehow I'm holding on at a high C or low B.

GVS: What's the class?

DFW: It's ah, it's advanced tax accounting, which is a long story and you probably don't want to know about it, but it's wa-a-a-y over my little noggin. It's a Will Hunting class.

GVS: Oh my God.

DFW: 35 pages of incredibly dense, you know, CPA stuff at night and then you get tested on it the next day.

Simon Prosser, publishing director of Hamish Hamilton, a Penguin imprint which won the UK rights to TPK:

I think it's as good as Infinite Jest. I'm really, really blown away by what I've read. It's absolutely incredible. The level of writing is so high. It's just so tremendously sad that he didn't realise how close he was to what he wanted to achieve.

At "Consider David Foster Wallace: A Conference", held in late July 2009 at the University Of Liverpool, David Hering shared the comments he received from Mary Clemmey, Wallace's UK agent. Clemmey said (in part):

It is in a sense a book about everything that matters -- and everything falls within its scope. Nothing is taken for granted and at every level the book puts the greatest distance possible between itself and the cliched and mundane. It is has the highest of ambitions not just in terms of style and subject but also moral compass and indeed humanity. Without meaning to sound hyperbolic, it is unarguably the work of a writer of genius. And for once that word seems apt and indeed unavoidable.

Also re this conference, click here to read the keynote address given by Greg Carlisle, author of Elegant Complexity (a reader's guide to IJ).

TPK runs "several hundred thousand words and will include notes, outlines, and other material". What is totally cool is that Little, Brown will create a website that includes drafts, journals, and notes, so readers can see how the book came together and "have a detailed sense of Wallace as a working writer". As Pietsch said:

To see his mind at play, to see him begin to assemble these chapters out of scraps of narrative, throwing one word against another ... it is extraordinary, and heartbreaking.

There have been three published excerpts (between 2007 and 2009) that are confirmed to have come from TPK: Good People, The Compliance Branch, and Wiggle Room.

Two pages from the manuscript ("Irrelevant Bob") and artwork from Green can be found on The New Yorker's website here.

Other possible excerpts are linked here (this is pure speculation, however). There is also a report that in 2007, Wallace read something (about 30 minutes in length) at New Mexico State University about "a father/husband who was killed when part of him got caught in the closing doors of a subway train, and his family's attempts to deal with it". Nick Maniatis, who runs The Howling Fantods, has tried to get more information on this reading, but has come up empty.

After Wallace's death, two articles were published: "The Lost Years & Last Days of David Foster Wallace" by David Lipsky (Rolling Stone, October 30, 2008) and "The Unfinished" by D.T. Max (The New Yorker, March 9, 2009).

Max spoke to many people close to Wallace, including his widow, and offered the first information on The Pale King. A lot of Lipsky's article was drawn from hours of conversation he had with Wallace during the book tour for Infinite Jest. In June, it was announced that Max had been signed by Viking to write a biography of Wallace, to be published in 2011. A few weeks later, Lipsky also inked a deal. I'm not sure what form his book will take, but I'd be thrilled with an introduction and a complete transcription of the interviews.

On May 21, 2005, Wallace gave the commencement address at Kenyon College. Someone recorded it and a transcription gained some noterity on the internet. It was included in The Best American Nonrequired Reading 2006 and has been edited and published as This Is Water: Some Thoughts, Delivered on a Significant Occasion, about Living a Compassionate Life.

It's not a long speech, but by including only a sentence or short paragraph on each page, Little, Brown has padded it out to 144 pages. What Wallace talks about in the speech is certainly connected to the themes of IJ -- "banal platitudes can have a life or death importance" -- but I think it quite clearly has much more in common with his work on TPK.

The really important kind of freedom involves attention and awareness and discipline, and being able truly to care about other people and to sacrifice for them over and over in myriad petty, unsexy ways every day.

And you may never experience shopping at the grocery store the same way again. Scroll down here for an audio clip.

Infinite Summer, the mass group read of Infinite Jest, ends in 10 days. I'm thrilled that at least one reader of this blog decided to take the plunge after I wrote about it in June.

I hope he made it through! While I did not take part in the project, I have been enjoying discussions at the IS forums and several blogs, including Infinite Detox, A Supposedly Fun Blog, Infinite Zombies, Infinite Tasks, That Sounds Cool and I Just Read About That.

I am once again stunned and amazed by the writing talent that would otherwise have never been read -- and perhaps never been written -- without the existence of the internet.

Weekend

When tonight's game is made up on Sunday, it will be a new game. Jon Lester's 24 pitches on Friday night -- and the three Tampa hits -- "never happened".

Saturday, 7 PM: Josh Beckett / Wade Davis

Sunday, 12 PM: Clay Buchholz / Matt Garza

Sunday, 5 PM: Jon Lester / James Shields

Daisuke Matsuzaka will start on Tuesday, taking Paul Byrd's spot (for now).

Confusion At The Globe

Game postponed
Posted by Adam Kilgore, Globe Staff September 11, 2009 09:45 PM

The Red Sox and Rays will proceed no further and will be made up Sunday at noon, and the 1:35 game already scheduled for that day will be played at 5 p.m. When this game resumes, the Rays will have the bases loaded with one out in the first inning.

Starter Jon Lester was victimized for the second time this season. He pitched five innings in June against the Florida Marlins before that game was postponed because of rain.

***

Game postponed
Posted by Adam Kilgore, Globe Staff September 11, 2009 09:45 PM

The Red Sox and Rays will proceed no further and will be made up Sunday at noon, and the 1:35 game already scheduled for that day will be played at 5 p.m. When this game resumes, it will restart from the beginning, NOT with the bases loaded and one out.

Starter Jon Lester was victimized for the second time this season. He pitched five innings in June against the Florida Marlins before that game was postponed because of rain.

The "restart from the beginning" post is correct.

G140: Rays at Red Sox, PPD

Rays    -
Red Sox - 

9:45 PM: Tonight's game has been postponed and will be played at noon on Sunday. What happened tonight will be erased from the books. But here it is:

Bartlett (csbbbf) line drive single to left. Crawford (bcb) ground ball single into center, Bartlett to second. Longorias (cbcbfbff) fly out to Ellsbury in left-center. Zobrist (cb) dribbler down third base line for a single, Lowell had no play, bases loaded. Burrell (b - TARP

7:29 PM: Rain delay after only 13 minutes of play. Very smart to begin this one. Tampa has the bases loaded with one out -- Bartlett single to left, Crawford single to center, Longoria F8, Zobrist infield single to third -- and a 1-0 count on Pat Burrell. Lester has thrown 24 pitches.

James Shields (4.02, 113 ERA+) / Jon Lester (3.44, 138 ERA+)

Many thanks to Ish for his hosting of threads in my absence.

So with 23 games to play:

AL East 
9 GB, MFY Magic #: 14

Wild Card
2 GA, Red Sox Magic #: 22

BP has the odds of the Yankees winning the East at 99.66%. They will forever own the biggest choke in playoff history -- why not tack on some regular season ignominy, too?

Starting .... now!

Orioles/Yankees at 7 and Mariners/Rangers at 8.

Today in Baseball History

1907 - White Sox Doc White's AL record of 65.1 innings pitched without issuing a walk ends.

1912 - Eddie Collins steals six bases as Philadelphia A's beat the Tigers 9-7. Collins will steal six bases again on September 22.

1918 - The Red Sox beat the Cubs 2-1 at Fenway park, winning the World Series in six games.

1964 - Angels reliever Bob Lee fractures his right hand punching a heckling sailor in Boston.

1974 - The Mets lose to the Cardinals 4-3 in 25 innings at Shea Stadium. The Mets' 103 plate appearances is the only time a team has ever topped 100 PA in one game (the Cards had 99). The game ends at 3:13 AM.

1995 - The Yankees record no assists in a 4-0 win in Cleveland. It's the third no-assist game in AL history, and the fourth overall.

2001 - Former minor league players Marty Boryczewski (Cantor Fitzgerald/WTC 1) and Brent Woodall (Keefe, Bruyette & Woods/WTC 2) are killed in the terrorist attacks.

On my to-read list: The Ground Truth by John Farmer, Senior Counsel to the 9/11 Commission.

Farmer:

I was shocked at how different the truth was from the way it was described. ... The [NORAD air defense] tapes told a radically different story from what had been told to us and the public ... [A]t some level of the government ... there was an agreement not to tell the truth about what happened.

Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, the publisher, states: "Farmer builds the inescapably convincing case that the official version [is] almost entirely untrue ..."

However, it is also important to realize that there is no "official story" of what happened eight years ago. For example, NORAD has given at least seven different versions of the military's response before and during the hijackings.

Any actual investigation of 9/11 would be the first, but most people -- despite the "Never Forget!" bumper stickers -- no longer care (or never cared in the first place), considering how stories like this are published with some frequency and immediately ignored.

Please spend some time with the Complete 9/11 Timeline at the amazing History Commons website.

Matsuzaka In North Carolina - A Report

Daisuke Matsuzaka made what might is likely his final minor league start of the year on Wednesday night for Salem (A) in a playoff game against Winston-Salem (White Sox).

JoS Senior A-Ball Correspondent SoSock filed this report:

6.2 IP, 3 H, 1 R, 1 BB, 7 K, 1 HBP

He got the Win, final score 7-2. Threw 89 pitches total, although our paper doesn't separate strikes [Globe says 61]. The one run came in the 1st. [SoSock was unsure if the run was unearned; the short Globe report says it was, but the paper links to the box score, which has it as an earned run.]

His stuff was good. He threw in the 88-92 mph range with the fastball all night. But the offspeed was what he was obviously concentrating on, and it was breaking wickedly as the game went on. All of the Ks came after the 1st two innings. Two of the three hits were in the 1st and 2nd innings. Typical Dice. In his last inning he struck one out, gave up his 3rd hit, then struck out the last guy he faced before leaving to as big an ovation as the paltry 3,000 people there could muster.

Unofficial stuff - It was extremely cool seeing him up close like that. We were right up against the dugout, and they're not huge dugouts. So every time he came in after an inning he was passing about eight feet in front of us. He nodded to the cheering crowd every time, but was all business. As he left after 6.2, he took the ball with him and threw it into the crowd. He stuck around for the rest of that inning and the top of the next before walking down the 3rd baseline between the top and bottom half.

He stopped to chat with a couple of the Salem pitchers who were warming up "in the pen". The pen at Ernie Shore is just two mounds in foul territory between the baseline and the seats. There has to be a "guard" protecting the catchers' backs just like in our LL games. Then he disappeared around the clubhouse, following the little footpath beside and behind it to the maintenance area behind, where I'm sure there was a comfortable ride waiting beside the big bus.

Much like when I saw him in Baltimore a couple of years ago, there was more Red Sox paraphernalia than there was Dash [Winston-Salem Dash, the home team]. Of course, even the home town fans here don't often buy the stuff. I myself have a ton of the old Warthogs stuff [the team's name from 1995 to 2008], but have yet to warm up to the new name and haven't bought a thing. Regardless, the cheers were decidedly in favor of the visitors. All in all - a memorable experience!

Cool fact: 1918 Red Sox World Series hero George Whiteman managed the Winston-Salem Twins in the 1929 Piedmont League.

I Caught A Foul Ball!

I caught a foul ball at a Pacific Coast League playoff game in Albuquerque, New Mexico, on Wednesday night. It was the first foul ball of my life! It came off the bat of Memphis Redbirds second baseman Jarrett Hoffpauir in the top of the fifth.

Then, in the top of the sixth, as it began raining, we saw the home team Isotopes turn a triple play! Eric Stults began the sixth by walking Brian Barden and giving up a single to Mark Shorey. With runners on first and second, Matt Pagnozzi grounded to shortstop Chin-Lung Hu near second base.

Hu tagged Barden, who was slow off the bag (we had moved back under cover, but I believe the ball was semi-lined and Hu played it on a short hop, so Barden was wary of straying too far off second), stepped on second to force Shorey and threw to first for the third out! There was a bit of confusion, but the umpires eventually got the play sorted out correctly.

A few minutes later, a huge clap of thunder scared the absolute shit out of most of the players -- I've never heard an actual bomb go off, but I'll bet it sounds a lot like that thunder -- and the grounds crew raced for the tarp. It was 8:52.

Having gone on two long hikes earlier in the day and knowing we had to get up at about 5:30 AM for our first flight on Thursday, we headed back to the hotel -- and got thoroughly soaked in the driving, windy, cold rain trying to find our car. I assumed the game was called, but now that we are home, I see that it was played to completion after a 2:21 delay. No more than 100 fans stayed to the end. Memphis won game one of the PCL's American Conference Finals 6-2.

Memphis Redbirds      - 220 010 010 - 6 12  1
Albuquerque Isoptopes - 000 000 200 - 2  3  0

Redbirds starter Jaime Garcia, in only his fifth AAA start, retired the first 13 Albuquerque batters (including striking out five of the first six) before an infield single by Jamie Hoffmann in the fifth.

A foul ball, a triple play and a perfect game was perhaps too much to ask for!

Off-Day Outtakes: Rolling Stones - Some Girls

Some Girls is easily my second favourite Stones album, after Exile On Main Street.

A lot of Stones studio recordings from the late 70s circulate on a dizzying amount of overlapping collections, which are cobbled together with little rhyme or reason.

I have gathered the outtakes I have of the album's 10 songs. I'm hesitant to say this set is complete -- especially since I found a few late additions a couple of weekends ago (and some take #s are missing) -- but it's close.

Disc 1
Miss You II                     11:44
Miss You III                     7:27
Miss You IV                      9:24
When The Whip Comes Down I       9:55
When The Whip Comes Down II      7:23
When The Whip Comes Down III    10:31
Just My Imagination I or II      2:45
Just My Imagination III          7:12
Just My Imagination IV           6:51

Disc 2
Some Girls I                     6:29
Some Girls II                    5:14
Lies I                           3:41
Lies II                          4:14
Lies III                         3:49
Far Away Eyes I                  4:36
Far Away Eyes II                 5:33
Respectable I                    3:52
Respectable III                  3:49
Before They Make Me Run I        4:34
Before They Make Me Run IV       3:18
Beast Of Burden I                5:05
Shattered I                      3:23
Shattered II                     3:46
  
Bonus:
Miss You (8-Track/+ :52)         5:40
Far Away Eyes (Single/- :47)     3:37
Beast Of Burden (8-Track/+ :46)  5:11
Shattered (Single/- 1:08)        2:39

The last four are different edits of the LP tracks, which were either released as 45s or included on 8-track. I have noted the approximate differences in time.

G139: Orioles at Red Sox, 7 PM

Jason Berken (6.07, 76 ERA+) / Paul Byrd (7.56, 63 ERA+)

Gamethread at Ish's blog.

Friday's thread -- Rays at Fenway -- will be here!

New Mexico

UPDATED!

If you wanna know what we are doing in New Mexico, check out Laura's blog and her travel journal posts: one, two, three, four and five.

There will probably be one more to come (plus pictures, later). We are back home on Thursday night.

G138: Red Sox 10, Orioles 0

Orioles - 000 000 000 -  0  5  0
Red Sox - 314 001 10x - 10 11  0

A Six Dong Night against the Birds: Dustin Pedroia and Kevin Youkilis in the first inning, Alex Gonzalez in the second, J.D. Drew and Pedroia in the third, and David Ortiz in the seventh.

On the hill: Buchholz (7-3-0-1-5, 106) and Michael Bowden (2-2-0-0-1, 27).

Also: The Yankees beat the Rays 3-2 and the Rangers beat Cleveland 10-5. The Red Sox's WC lead remains at two games and they trail New York by nine in the East.

David Hernandez (4.54, 102 ERA+) / Clay Buchholz (4.40, 108 ERA+)

Game Thread at Ish's blog.

Red Sox Not Making Me Wish I Could Watch Their Games While On Vacation

Travel Observation #20: Hotels, motels and casitas that proudly claim to offer their guests a high-speed wireless internet connection are quite often wholly unable to actually deliver on that promise.

While in New Mexico, 95% of my Red Sox news has come in the form of a final score only. So I know that they have pissed away any chance they might have once possessed to win the East. The Yankees now lead the division by nine fookin' games. Boston holds a 2.5-game lead over the Rangers for the Wild Card. Which, I suppose, is really all I need to know.

For now, MLBTV remains a possibility for tomorrow night's game against Baltimore. And we discovered tonight that the Albuquerque Isotopes -- the Marlins' AAA team -- begin the Pacific Coast League playoffs at home Wednesday night against the Memphis Redbirds. Albuquerque is the city from which we are leaving early Thursday morning, so we may see some minor league ball before heading home.

G137: White Sox 5, Red Sox 1

Red Sox   - 100 000 000 - 1  8  0
White Sox - 003 000 02x - 5  8  0

G136: Red Sox 6, White Sox 1

Red Sox   - 000 210 003 - 6 10  0
White Sox - 000 000 010 - 1  6  0

Jon Lester / John Danks

Game Thread at Ish's blog.