Water Water Everywhere: My Saturday Getting Rained On

I hate rain. I hate rain and water and storms and puddles. I hate that this season, my 'game bag' also known as my purse that I take to Sox games has officially become my 'rainy game bag,' and includes a poncho, an umbrella, a towel for drying my seat, and plastic bags to put all my wet garb in. I hate that more than half of the games I've gone to this season have included rain delays.

So of course, I had tickets for Sunday's game. Good seats, too! Eleven rows from the visitor's dugout... and I got them at a discount. $90 seats that cost me $65 because they came from my best friend's cousin who knew a month in advance that she could not use them. That's why we got hit by a hurricane.

Driving to the train station, seeing the water literally just pouring off of buildings, finding out that one of the stations that I need to pass through was closed due to flooding... yeah, there was nothing about Saturday that made me think we were getting those games in. There was a huge part of me that just prayed they'd cancel because I'm tired of sitting in the rain, but my dedication would not allow me to not go.

The Red Sox allowed game two ticket holders to come into Fenway for the last two innings of game one. We got to go in early and sing along to Sweet Caroline and dance to Dirty Water (there was PLENTY of it, by the way) and still got to see game two. As a disclaimer, we didn't stay all the way through game two. Once it hit rain delay, I was convinced there was no way they were getting the rest of the game in. I was wrong... but I still justify my decision. If I never have to wear my poncho again, it'll be too soon.

I hate you, rain. I hate you, Hurricane/Tropical Storm Irene. I hope everyone out there is safe, and for my friends who lost power this weekend, hope you get it back in time for the Yankees series that starts tonight.... or better yet, skip tonight and wait for Beckett tomorrow.

Delayed: We Know What To Blame

Makes me miss Manny D.

Josh Beckett: Making Everyone In His Own Image?

I don't even remember exactly how it happened, but I managed to stumble onto this piece from Out In Center Field... and I nearly spit out my soda laughing so hard.

I for one, would be insanely, delusionally thrilled if all of a sudden, we staged our own Star Wars: Attack of the Clones sequel, with all the Clones being Beckett clones... except these clones will pitch, win games, talk with a southern accent, and generally be badass.

There are few things that I dislike about Beckett. His inability to admit when he pitched badly is one of them... I cannot, off the top of my head, think of another one. I noticed that recently about Lester, but for some reason, it was more precious when Lester did it. I think his quote was "I don't think I pitched as badly as the box score shows." It was something like that. He still needs work. Beckett would have said "I was throwing the ball really well today. They just hit my pitches." I've heard him say things along these lines many times before. He will continue to say it in the future. I do hope that Jon doesn't quite reach that level of arrogance. It works for Josh, but it would make me shake my head sadly at Jon.

I like the facial hair. Facial hair is something that I appreciate on baseball players and rock stars alike. Not too many professions boast people with wacky facial hair, but baseball players and rockers can still pull it off. I don't think it looks ridiculous on Jon OR Josh, but I do acknowledge that Josh uses it as a method to define his non-existant chin. He doesn't have a chin. I will fight you to the death on this (Ok, not so much). So he uses the facial hair as a way to give the illusion of a chin. Jon has a chin. I've seen it. If I look to my left, there's a picture of Jon with a clearly defined chin. He doesn't need the facial hair, but I still think it works for him. Look, if you want to change your image from cancer survivor to badass, you've got to have some wicked facial hair (See: Lowell, Michael Averett). It can be wicked disturbing or wicked awesome, it just has to be wicked. This is the one area where I think Josh had a smaller impact on Jon than Mikey did. But I could be wrong. Wicked facial hair : put a check mark next to Jon for that.

The wardrobe... yeah, it's pretty obvious that Jon and Josh have been going shopping together, or trading clothes... or maybe Jon is just stealing Josh's stuff when he's not looking. I don't really have a problem with it. It's a little silly, but I think it works for the badass image that Josh is going for (and obviously if Josh is going for something, so is Jon). Black clothing with odd or silly designs? Check. I much MUCH prefer this look to some of the silly button-up shirts I've seen Josh in. I'm glad he's not infecting people with THAT fashion sense.

The necklaces? Josh swears by them. I read that a long while back. Maybe that's where he gets his power from. I don't know. What I do know is that he did hand them out to his teammates (all part of the assimilation project?) Whether they decided to wear them or not was seemingly up to Josh.

I don't care that Jon is from Tacoma, WA... I love southern accents, and I will never complain when I hear someone talk with a southern accent, even if it is completely unwarranted. Even when he just tosses in an occassional 'y'all,' I can't help but grin. Love it. Good work, Joshua! He can make them ALL talk in southern accents for all I care. You know what? Maybe he should buy them all cowboy hats and make them... ok, yeah, my mind is taking this too far. I'm going to stop.

So if Josh wants to make a not-so-mini-me out of Jon, I'm ok with that. They can be the scariest twins in the league. We can have a bona fide ace from both sides of the mound. I do not see anything wrong with this! But seriously, Josh needs to leave Fetus alone. There's no way I can look at him as a badass, no matter how hard I try. I just end up grinning and thinking of cookies.

Rainout last night found me sitting at Fenway for over two hours, waiting for the rain to stop... which I knew it wouldn't. If I hadn't gone, the rain would have stopped on time. If I left before the official announcement (despite seeing the Twins folks go out to the bullpen and collect their stuff a half an hour before the announcement - a sure sign that there will be no game), they would have started ten minutes after I left. No, with my luck, I had to sit in the rain. Today looks a little better, weatherwise, so hopefully Tim gives me something to cheer about.

PS - I didn't do a write-up about Fetus's Patriot's Day start, but I want to point out how wonderful he did. 5 1/3... only giving up one run. Couldn't have asked for more... especially since it was still a close game when he came out of it. It became laughable after the fact, but it was close at the time. Poor Radhames Liz, he of the 60-something ERA... they sent him back down to the minors after the game.

Joel Piniero: Couldn't pitch like that for us.

He did not pitch well. I need everyone to understand that point clearly. Joel Piniero is not a good pitcher. He's not even half as good as our boys made him look yesterday afternoon.

I was at this game. Sitting through the absurd hour-long rain delay when there was NO RAIN. It rained about 20 minutes before the game was scheduled to start. The following hour of sitting in sunshine with the tarp on the field was beyond annoying. Maybe it was another way for the front office to make more profits off of beer and hot dogs, and OH what a sales day they had. A rain delay AND extra innings? That's the type of baseball day that Larry Lucchino fantasizes about from his delightful lake-view house in hell. That's right folks, Larry Lucchino is the devil, and that lake is the infamous lake of fire.*

*Disclaimer - I have no firsthand knowledge that Larry Lucchino is the devil, nor do I have knowledge of where he actually lives. For all I know, he's a very nice man, but he LOOKS evil.

Joel faced 26 batters. He struck out one, and walked one. He threw first pitch strikes to 16 of them. Only 16 out of 26! Fifteen of our players has at-bats that were less than three pitches. We certainly did our best to make his return to Fenway a grand one.

My mother accurately predicted before the game that it would go 13 innings. Of course I believe her when she says these things. I recall a certain game between Boston and Chicago right before the ASB in 2005. We played 19 innings. Guess who predicted that one? That's right. Mom did. She wanted to leave at the end of the 10th, and to be perfectly honest I was with her on that. We were at the park all day. So no, we did not see Asshat hit the walk-off, but we also didn't witness the miseries that were the 11th and 12th innings. I hear those were brutal.

Binky did a great. He got himself into a little trouble in the 6th, but it should have been easy enough for the hitters to make up for his mistakes. Too bad they all wanted to make Piniero look good. They should not get paychecks this week for making Piniero look good. Shame on you, Red Sox!

For God's sake, it was JOEL PINIERO! He WANTS people to hit off of him. See?!