I really just wanted an excuse to post this picture of Reynolds

That’s my good friend Joseph P. Reynolds. He’s graduated from his Live Journal and started a new blog called The Ski Bum Winter. Basically he’s back in Utah for a third straight winter and he’s writing about what it’s like to wait tables, get stoned and shred gnar…nice…I’m excited to see where he goes with this because to be quite honest if marketed to the right crowd this has book potential, that is if you like stories about wrapping your moms Christmas presents in Maxim covers, failing and succeeding with women and general self deprecation. He also got a job last winter writing about life in Park City by making fun of Mormons in his application. Sometimes I can’t believe it but I will always be proud to call this r-tard my one of my best friends.
(The Ski Bum Winter)

In other news

Behold the power of Simmons…in one of his recent Page 2 columns BSG said that he all he wanted from his readers was for them to subscribe to his podcast on itunes. After about two weeks he’s in the top 25 most downloaded itunes. In fact today he’s at #14, just ahead of the Flight of the Concords podcast and trailing behind some free iphone ringtones podcast.

Speaking of ringtones…I can’t wait until we can all officially agree on the fact that ringtones are retarded. Are there any ringtones that you should be allowed to download if you are over the age of 18 (aside from the Super Mario Brothers theme of course)? No there are not. At some point having a song as your ringtone has to become embarrassing. Sure you can get away with it in high school and college but have fun at work when you forget to put your phone on vibrate and all of a sudden Katy Perry is serenading the office.

Not to be a complainer but I’m also growing tiresome of Facebook. Sure I like to be able to stay in touch with my friends and since I haven’t signed on to AIM in two years it has moments. But I don’t want anything to do with your applications. Awesome you scored 80% on a Disney movie quiz…I don’t give a shit, please let me creepily look at peoples profiles in peace. Oh and status updates are everything that is evil and wrong in this world. Oh it’s a Tuesday and you can’t wait to get out of work…no f’n way I can’t believe it, what an earth shattering revelation. I think from now on whenever I do any kind of links post I’m going to post the dumbest f’n Facebook status update I can find. Only the names will have been changed to protect the not-so-innocent.

Today’s winner… Flower Child is “Nature is a language, can’t you read?”

I know there isn’t one human on the face of the earth that cares but I won my fantasy league with one of the worst lineups possible. But at least now the fantasy stats of Larry Fitzgerald will be going to Disney World.

Oh and Christmas rules because I finally got a Sox Pack, and yes I’m going to the Patriots Day game. Is there a cooler regular season game in all of sports than the Marathon Monday 10am start? Ok those outdoor hockey games are kind of sweet but I’m excited either way.

Now if you’ll excuse me there is a Band of Brothers Marathon today. Sorry I went to a DIII school and I don’t care about the non-BCS bowls.

Oh Well at Least the Celtics are on Fire

Links featuring…the Yankees spending spree, say it ain’t so Tex and you just got Rondo’d.

The Yankees will pay a 26.9 million dollar Luxury tax this season. The only other team that will have to pay luxury tax this season is Detroit. Both failed to make the playoffs last season…so when will teams learn that signing as many big name free agents to huge contracts isn’t the best route to the playoffs…see Rockies, Colorado and Rays, Tampa Bay. To be fair the Sox paid 13.9 million for being over the cap a couple years ago.
(ESPN)

And that’s going to go up because unless there is some kind of Rafael Furcal thing going on here the Yankees just landed Mark Teixeira for 8 years 180 million…nice…at least that will put an end to all the Manny to the Yankees rumors. Seriously though the Yankees have committed over 400 million to three players…that is ridiculous. I think I know where to get some of that money that the automakers need. Apparently the Yankees missed the whole people that bought houses they couldn’t afford and are now defaulting and losing said houses memo. I will excited to see one of those comparison charts that espn or si run showing how many good teams you could field with the Yankees payroll.

I have to admit when I heard that the Yankees signed him I was pretty deflated I think he would have been a great signing for the Sox. He really would have helped to fill the void that is left by Manny. No matter how much we might say they don’t miss him we do and weei’s phones will be ringing off the hook in May if the team is struggling to score runs. With that said the Sox are still in good shape. They’ll get Mike Lowell back healthy, Youk won’t have to move back to third, they have the reigning MVP, top flight pitching and they don’t have 400 million invested in three guys. If I could have one Christmas wish it would be for those three signings to turn out like Carl Pavano and AJ Burnett. I really feel like we’ve got a good shot at two out of three.
(Extra Bases)

ps – I read a great comment on Deadspin today in regards to Teixeira signing with NY. It read something along the lines of ‘No way I am learning how to spell his name now’. I thought that was great.

Luckily my depression over the Teixeira signing was quickly swept away thanks to the Celtics.

The Celtics are…well you get the point. The Green captured their 19th straight win tonight cruising to a 110-91 victory over the 76ers. This is one of those times where the scheduling really works out well for the league and TV because now the C’s put their streak on the line against the Lakers in a Christmas day Finals rematch. I wonder how many storylines they’ve gone through with Kobe for Christmas day, there were at least two Shaq-Kobe games now this year we have the Celtics-Lakers rivalry renewed – Kobe is like the Detroit Lions on Thanksgiving, you know except he’s actually good.

That should be a monster game and speaking of monster games you know who’s playing monster games right now…yup…my guy Rajon Rondo. Rondo scored a team high 18 (tied with KG) against the 76ers and this season he’s averaging 11.3 points, 5 boards and 7.5 assists. I think it goes without saying that the Rondo trade was one of the best moves Danny Ainge has made, but maybe more important and more overlooked is the fact that while trying to bring KG and Ray Allen to Boston he refused to deal Rondo. I love this guy, it’s almost unhealthy…almost.
(Hoops World)

It’s no secret that I’m a big fan of Bill Simmons and thanks (I would imagine) to his recent tiff with the WWL he’s started a Sports Guy Unplugged blog. It takes a little digging but you can find some of his old BSG posts that he put up a few months ago. I do hope he’ll write some non-espn stuff for this site. I’ve always liked most of the things he writes for Page 2 but sometimes its like Sports Guy-lite. I realize that he draws ire from a lot of people because he talks about Boston so much but you have to appreciate that he’s tried to stay true to himself as a sports fan. For some reason the whole Simmons-ESPN thing reminds me of the Cartoon Wars episode of South Park. Eventually we’ll find out that Simmons is really a group of Manatees that move balls with pop culture references, athletes, teams and point spreads across a big tank and drop them in an idea bin thus creating his column. It will all end with someone telling the head of ESPN that he has to cancel Simmons column because it’s offensive while another person tells him either it’s all ok or nothing is ok.
(Sports Guy Unplugged)

Some More Links

Another somewhat fresh batch of links…today it’s G38, the year in photos part one, Jeddy Ballgame, the most annoying Christmas song ever and yes the world really is going to hell.

Disclaimer – this was hastily put together.

Curt Schilling is setting himself up quite nicely to be the next Jerry Remy/Tommy/Lyndon Byers-type guy in Boston. Someone who played here, then joined the media in some capacity and has become as much of a Boston homer as the rest of us. Of course Schilling would probably fall closer to Tommy then any of the other guys because they both did a lot more winning. Schilling can be annoying sometimes but all in all I think he’s been great for Boston and the Red Sox. He’s one of the most unique athletes when it comes to the media and now that he’s moved 38 Pitches to weei.com I don’t think it’s too far fetched to think he could become a regular fixture on the radio if this was his final season in the big leagues.

His recent post on 38 Pitches speaks to this. He basically writes everything you hope to believe about the players you follow as a fan. He talks about how much he loved playing here and how much he treasured the experience of playing in Boston and helping change Red Sox fans from lovable losers to the hated nation we are today. He’s right people hate the Sox and their fans because they’ve been winning and for the most part people in Massachusetts are a-holes to strangers. I don’t think we’re quite on the level of Philly fans but I wouldn’t want to be a fan of a visiting team coming here. I’m not bragging about that, I’m just saying it happens.

Back to Schill, his post about Boston being the best is partially a call to Mark Teixeira saying that he should sign with the Sox for the ability to play here, unless another team blows him away with a way bigger offer. It also seems to be a little bit of a ploy to try and entice the team into bringing him back for another season, which really wouldn’t surprise me at all if they brought him back and let him sit out until June or July.

Here are a couple excerpts that I particularly enjoyed and of course the link.

On what the Red Sox season means to fans.

“Think Packer football, Cowboy football, Yankee baseball, Penn State football, ‘Bama football, all rolled into one.”

“to suit up in this uniform, take the field as a member of this team and play for these fans, there’s nothing like it in my 23 years of professional baseball to compare it to. Nothing.”

I know people think he’s a windbag, and he kind of is, I will always owe him my gratitude for October 2004.

And I always loved the fact that he had that Ford commercial where he said he was hitch hiking and when asked where he was going he responded with – “Boston, I’ve got an 86 year curse to break”- and then he actually fulfilled that…awesome.
(38 Pitches)

The year in photos, and they are some gnarly ones at that. My favorites – the first picture which I thought was some Michael Bay CGI shit, the one of the guy flying the fixed wing jet pack and the dude from Conan the Barbarian with the skull and flaming horns on his head…CRUM!
(Boston.com)

Wait so the Braves signed Rafael Furcal right? No they didn’t, he’s staying with the Dodgers now. What is going on here? Can the Red Sox just sign Teixeira already!
(Yahoo!)

Interesting story about Jed Lowrie from WEEI, I don’t think many people realized how bad Lowrie was hurt at the end of the year, which killed his performance from the left side of the plate. On the bright side he proved to be a solid fielder, he doesn’t get to every ball but he makes plays on the balls that he gets to and prior to the injury he showed that he can hit from both sides of the plate, especially right handed. Now he’s in AZ working out with Pedroia and Jacoby Ellsbury to get ready for 2009. I’m not going to lie I’m pretty excited about those three guys going into the season. On a side note the last Red Sox middle infielder to play the end of the season with an injured wrist won the MVP the next year…yep, that’d be Pedroia.
(WEEI.com)

I’m all for the whole Christmas spirit thing and ugly sweater parties and whatnot but so help me God if I hear this Mariah Carey song one more time. But at least Nick Cannon is hilarious or so i'm told.
(YouTube)

Maybe the most depressing thing I’ve ever heard regarding the current state of the United States

This is a true story…the following events happened during the final round of Stump Trivia the other night.

The top three highest selling People magazines featured cover stories on 9/11, the death of JFK Jr. and Princess Diana’s death. Now based on that information if I asked you what cover story sold the fourth most mags, this happened in 2008, what would you say?

Has to be the election of Barack Obama right? Whichever side of the fence you’re on we all have to agree that for better or worse, love him or hate him his election in November is an historic and culturally significant moment. And if 9/11, JFK Jr. and Princess Di are 1-3 Obama has to be fourth. It can’t be the time Britney Spears shaved her head or something retarded like that right?

Nope you’re wrong too. It was the birth of Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie’s twins. Good, way to go America. Let’s recap – 9/11, JFK Jr. and Princess Di, all major moments in history worthy of you clearing the shelves of the corner news for a People magazine. First black president, not so much…hold on BRAD PITT AND ANGELINA JOLIE WENT TO FRANCE AND HAD A PAIR OF FETUSES…JESUS CHRIST MONKEY BALLS!

I know its People magazine, which in and of itself represents the downfall of western civilization but still, come on humanity.
(Huffington Post)

Daily (sort of) Links

Links from the past week or so… the economy is ok for the Yankees, the Sox new digs and UMass Hoops? Really? What is this 1995?

Yankees breaking the bank this offseason picking up CC Sabathia for seven years at 160 million, they also signed AJ Burnett with a five year 82 million dollar deal and traded for Mike Cameron. The Yankees will now have three of the five highest paid players in baseball on their roster. Right Brian Cashman take shots at the Red Sox for using John Henry’s plane to go to Japan while trying to get Dice-K. I know that the Red Sox aren’t some scrappy team that doesn’t have high paid players, some Sox fans are a little delusional about that but let’s not kid ourselves the Red Sox, Yankees and Mets clearly have the ability to spend whatever they want on players.
(NY Post)

(ESPN)

The Yankees have also reportedly offered a four year 66 million dollar deal to D-Lowe. They really aren’t messing around this offseason. Granted they’re breaking the bank to bring in the best available free agent pitchers it will be interesting to see if that strategy works out for them. It hasn’t really worked out that well in the past…see Brown, Kevin and Pavano, Carl. I’m sure they’ll be back in the hunt this year but the AL East is going to be a lot more interesting with the Rays, Sox and Yankees, I’ll also be interested in seeing what the Blue Jays do now after losing Burnett. The Jays always seem to make decent moves they just can’t quite put it together.

Meanwhile in Red Sox Nation…

His holiness Peter Gammons reported last week that the Sox were interested in acquiring John Smoltz. According to MLB.com the Red Sox will more likely add a second tier free agent pitcher like Smoltz rather than make a run at Derek Lowe. First off, doesn’t it seem a little weird that D-Lowe is being considered one of the best available pitchers? Sure he was an integral part of the 2004 World Series but that was four years ago.

With that said Lowe is a horse, he went 14-11 in 34 starts with a 3.24 ERA last year but Lowe has also pitched at least 182 innings in each of the last seven seasons only dropping below 200 innings twice while averaging 33.5 starts since being made into a full time starter in 2002. Whoever gets Lowe will be getting a quality guy who can certainly eat up some innings but the Red Sox don’t need a number one or number two starter, let me rephrase the Red Sox don’t need to give a guy that would be the team’s number four starter, ace or number two money, which is why Smoltz would be a perfect fit for the Sox.

Smoltz would fill the role that the Red Sox had set up for Schilling/Bartolo Colon last season. He would be a great guy to have there to bolster the rotation during the second half. Plus Tito likes to give Beckett some time during the season to recuperate before the playoffs, I could see him giving Beckett and Lester a little time off over the summer and Smoltz would fit in perfectly.
(MLB.com)

The other night NESN interviewed Theo at the winter meetings and he talked about teams want to win the offseason. He talked about how the Red Sox are focused on having a good offseason but the team’s main focus in winning during the season. Sure he said this before the Yankees started signing every free agent on the market that just because a team, but it was interesting to hear him talk about how it’s important to get your team ready for the upcoming season but to also have a plan in place for the future. The Red Sox have clearly shown their commitment to winning over the long haul by trying to develop their minor league players and signing guys like Pedroia to long term deals. Over the last 8 years the Yankees model of signing big name free agents has not been as effective as other methods of crafting a team. Hopefully the Red Sox balance of free agent signings and player development will continue to be successful, especially now that you add in the Devil Rays incredible rise. The AL East is going to be a war of attrition in 2009.

Some fans are up in arms about the Red Sox not picking up any of the big name free agent pitchers while others are furious about the new Sox unis. Not going to lie, I don’t mind them. The new road uniforms are pretty cool, they have a late 70’s/80’s feel to them and I like the hanging Sox logo being featured more prominently. People freaked out and thought the team was ditching the B logo for the Sox logo on the new hats but thankfully those are just alternate hats.
(Uniwatch)

Mayne Street is awesome. I just watched these for the first time yesterday and after watching one episode I immediately had to watch the other nine. Kenny Mayne is hilarious, his demeanor and delivery is perfect and I can’t wait for episode ten. Even if you don’t think it’s good watch episode nine solely for the cameo at the end. If you don’t laugh at that you don’t have a pulse or like viral videos
(Mayne Street)

The Angels offered Mark Teixeira an 8-year deal reported to be worth at least 160 million. I still think the Sox would be better off with Teixeira than any of the free agent (err…Yankees’) pitchers.
(LA Times)

Manny Ramirez is considering retirement. Now I know this is very unlikely but remember when I said that Red Sox fans will be glad to not be a part of the circus that is Manny during the offseason? Well yes we’re glad. It is funny that after Manny carried the Dodgers into the playoffs he’s been an afterthought compared to C.C. and Burnett. You’d think if Scott Boras is creating markets for Tek he’d be able to get a decent offer for Man-Ram. This will probably workout well for the Dodgers in the end. Last year the A-Rod opted out of his contract with the Yankees hoping to cash in with another monster deal. When it didn’t happen he went back to the Yankees for a lot less than was expected. We could see the same with Manny if he doesn’t get the huge deal he was looking for he’ll probably end up back in LA, where he will be miserable by July, for a much shorter deal than what he originally wanted.
(Boston Herald)


But obviously the Yankees have expressed interest in Manny…and why they wouldn’t.

Okie to run Honolulu Marathon...apparently he was intrigued by the Boston Marathon during last year’s Patriots Day game.
(Boston.com)(via Deadspin)

Also UMass beat Kansas yesterday 61-60…I’m going to see if I can find my Lou Roe jersey.
(Boston.com)

Can anyone beat the Celtics?
(Boston Globe)

One final note – to everyone that got Red Sox tickets yesterday, specifically Sox Pax, then immediately put them on Craigslist…I hope all the bad things in the world happen to you and no one else…seriously I spent five and a half hours in the virtual waiting room on two computers and didn’t get any tickets. Sweet I can’t wait to shell out 80 bucks for bleacher seats to a Sox-Royals game. Stick to selling your Hinder tickets...assbags.

Surf's Up

Here’s a few more links and some of my semi-coherent ramblings about them. Among the links…Army’s badass new uni’s, big news on the Varitek front, J-Taz, more C’s and I BELIEVE IN HARVEY DENT!

On Saturday Army debuted the coolest f’ing uniforms I’ve ever seen. For the 109th Army-Navy game Nike decided to unveil their new style uniforms. I don’t really care about the new uniforms other than what they looked like. Army rocked digi camouflage helmets (awesome) with digi camo pants, black jerseys with camo numbers and “Duty. Honor. Country.” In camo on the back of the jersey. I know I sound a little ridiculous getting so excited about camo uniforms but you know how I feel about ‘live free or die’ Mike Timlin’s camo glove. This is about 50 times cooler. I will be looking on the internet for merchandise related to these BAMF’ing jerseys.
(Yahoo.com)

Rangers trade Laird to Tigers - I wonder if the Sox will pursue Taylor Teagarden now or if the Rangers will still be interested in moving him. It will be interesting to see what the Red Sox do with the catching situation after Tek declined arbitration. Can’t say I’m too surprised but the Tigers trading for Laird shrinks the market that Scott Boras was counting on to drive the price of Varitek up, so I think it’s more likely now that he’ll be back in Boston for another year. Which, like I’ve said before, is something that I would like to see. Tek’s impact goes beyond his .220 batting average.
(ESPN.com)

Tony Mazz brought up some interesting points on his Boston.com blog last week about the Sox signing Junici Tazawa and what it might mean for their pursuit of Mark Teixeira. Via boston.com – “Look at it this way: If and when the Red Sox sign a prominent free agent this offseason -- Mark Teixeira, anyone? -- that maneuver would require the Sox to forfeit a first-round selection in next year’s amateur draft.”
According to Mazz the Sox essentially signed the 22-year old Japanese prospect to be the draft pick they would lose in signing someone like Teixeira. If this is the case then I would expect to hear news that the Sox are making a serious run at Teixeira in the coming days at the winter meetings in Vegas. We’ll be closely monitoring this situation.
(Boston.com)

The Celts have won 12 straight and are playing some inspired basketball. The guys over at Red’s Army point out that the C’s and Lakers, who will meet on Christmas day, are a combined 37-4 and like some sort of eclipse or comet every 20 years the Celtics and Lakers rise to the top of the basketball world and battle for supremacy. Can’t wait for that game on Christmas day.
(Red's Army)

With the Dark Knight coming out tomorrow I have to recommend both Batman Year One and Batman the Long Halloween. I read both of these graphic novels over the summer while anxiously awaiting the release of the movie and they are excellent. I’ve always been a comic fan, I’m not a die hard, I’ve never been to Comic Con but I’ve probably practiced Wolverines berserker attack once or twice. Anyway, Year One was used as a guideline for Batman Begins, which is one of my favorite movies, while the Long Halloween was used as a guideline for the Dark Knight. The Long Halloween details the transformation of Harvey Dent becoming Two-Face and continues the development of Batman’s character. It’s very well written and since I’m not an intense comic fan I’d have to recommend it to anyone that enjoys a book with pictures in it.
(Amazon.com)

More Links...

Here’s another batch of links. On tap today, boxing, T&R, I love Rondo and yes even some B’s ked.

Although boxing has been losing chunks of ground to MMA for the last couple of year the sport still manages to come up with one or two marquee fights every year. De La Hoya-Pacquiao should be one of them. According to Kevin Lole of Yahoo Sports Canada last year’s fight between Oscar De La Hoya and Floyd Mayweather sold a record 2.44 million pay-per-view units and generated in excess of $134 million in PPV receipts alone. Pretty impressive when you figure that casual fans don’t know who the heavyweight champ is. A large portion of boxing’s success, or failure for that matter, comes from its ability to market and sell fights. Thanks to HBO’s 24-7 series the sport has been able to keep its head above water showcasing guys like Mayweather, Pacquiao and love him or hate him, Ricky Hatton. With that said I’ve seen enough Johnny gym rats wearing affliction t-shirts two know MMA is still stronger, but it will be interesting to see if boxing can continue to claw towards a resurgence. (Yahoo!)

Toucher and Rich have moved to the 6-10 morning drive time slot on BCN. I wasn’t a big fan until a couple of years ago when they had their 300+ pound mascot/resident r-tard sit on Santa’s lap at a mall. It was one of the funniest things I’ve ever heard. If I can find a video from the NECN newscast that it ran on I’ll put it up but for now you’ll have to settle for their website. They are responsible for the famed Chili Guy who can be seen outside Fenway and or the Garden. Those two things right there make them the best morning show in Boston. No offense to Opie and Anthony but I’m glad BCN made this move. (WBCN)

Remember when I said I’d pay attention to the Bruins this year? No, you probably don’t and that’s fine but I have been paying attention. And so have a lot of other people because they are playing awesome right now. (Boston.com)

The guys over at Red’s Army share my affinity for Rajon Rondo. I love their comments on how the national media and other bloggers haven’t quite caught on to Rondo’s abilities yet. Clearly he’s not the offensive threat that some of the other guards around the league are but he’s in a perfect situation for his skill set. He’s got three premier scorers so all he has to do is get them the ball and play defense, which he does exceptionally well as shown by his alleged fastest triple double in NBA history (link to red’s army post). No doubt he will need to improve his shooting ability down the road. Eventually when (gasp) the Big three are done Rondo will need to become more of a scorer, but for now I’ll take his stat line. He’s averaging 10.2 PPG, 4.7 boards and 7.7 assists, so call it 10, 5 and 8. He’s also averaging 31 minutes per game. (Red's Army via Barstool Sports)

The Internet's Not Going to Surf It Self Buddy

As anyone who’s ever read this blog knows I am awful at updating. Sure I’ll go for a couple weeks with a lot of post but then I don’t write anything for a month and a half, that’s weak sauce. I always want to post more and hopefully this idea will lead to more posts.

I’m going to try and get a daily, or at least a couple times a week, links post. I’m not going to just post five links and bounce. I like to ramble so the rambling descriptions of the links should work…right?

Chances are this will last like a week but we’ll see what we can do.

I have no idea why I didn’t mention this last night but Petey inked a new deal! 6 years 40+ million. Locking up the MVP for the foreseeable future, sounds good to me. I’m not sure about the specifics of baseball players contracts but I believe he’d be eligible for arbitration in a season or two and if he continues to play the way he has and improve he could have gotten a huge number from arbitration. Good to see Petey sign for 6 years because he wants to play for a team that is committed to winning. It takes players with that mentality to help build winning teams.
(Boston.com)

Schilling's officially moved to weei. 38 Pitches, aka the greatest blog in the history of the world (of Warcraft) is now at weei.com. - I can't wait till his game studio starts pumping out MMORPGs so I can get XP with my party using team speak.
(WEEI.com)

2009 will bring us a new football league. The UFL will start playing in the fall of 2009 despite not knowing where they’ll have teams yet. The good news they might have a team in Hartford...by the way you can vote for the names of these future franchises can we make sure if they have a team in Hartford it’s the Whalers? Please? ‘Hartford, the Whale, they only beat Vancouver once, maybe twice in a lifetime.’
(UFL - from Deadspin)

Rajon Rondo had a huge game Wednesday night. Picked a pretty good time for his first career triple double after Indy smoked the C’s and was coming off of a huge win over the Lakers. I love Rondo.
(Hoops World)

Former Celtic Rodney Rodgers was in an accident which left him paralyzed. I always like Rodney, even though he left for the Nets. Cleary though life is a lot more rooting for a jersey.
(News Observer - from Deadspin)

I just saw a commercial for the NPPL Professional Paintball video game. I don’t know how I feel about it, I kind of want to get it but it also makes me feel like I should be pounding mountain dews and staying up until 3am playing. Remember the good old days when you’d go on a mountain dew binge to play video games? Damn kids and their Red Bull. Anyway I’m in the process of searching for a good Paintball blog to read. PBNation is obviously the message board of choice but this blogs not too bad.
(Pain4Glory)

Just because I feel like being that guy I’m going to throw in a movie quote/monologue of the day(s). Since I already threw in a Kevin Smith movie quote I might as well add another.

“You know him too? [John Hughes] that fucking guy. Made this flick "16 Candles" right? Not bad it's got tits in it, but no bush. Of course Ebert over here don't give a shit about that stuff cause he's all in love with this John Hughes guy and rents every one of his movies. Fucking "Breakfast Club" all these stupid kids actually show up to detention, fucking "Weird Science" where this one chick wants to take off her gear and get down, but aw, no she don't cause it's a PG movie, and then there's "Pretty In Pink" which I can't watch with this tubby bitch anymore, because every time we get to the part where the red head hooks up with her dream guy, he starts sobbin' like a eight-year-old with a skinned knee and shit. And nothing is worse then watching a fat man weep.”

~Dogma (from imdb.com)

A Bunch of Random Incoherent Thoughts

I’m working on a few things but as usual I haven’t posted in a while so I figured I’d drop by and get a couple of ideas out. Not that anyone’s going to read them but hey it’s better than straight up talking to myself…or is it?

Moving on…

The 2009 Baseball Hall of Fame ballot is out, which means it’s about time for me to write my obligatory “why Jim Rice should be in the Hall of Fame” post. Oh it’s coming, bigger and better for 09 too. It’s Rice’s last year to get in on the ballot before he goes to the veterans committee.

Here's the list of guys ballot

Harold Baines
Jay Bell
Bert Blyleven
David Cone
Andre Dawson
Ron Gant
Mark Grace
Rickey Henderson
Tommy John
Don Mattingly
Mark McGwire
Jack Morris
Dale Murphy
Jesse Orosco
Dave Parker
Dan Plesac
Tim Raines
Jim Rice
Lee Smith
Alan Trammell
Greg Vaughn
Mo Vaughn
Matt Williams


Let’s face it this is a great year for Rice to get in, probably his best shot, hopefully it will finally happen this year.

I’ve been working on something about Jason Varitek and whether he’ll stay or go but I’m not quite there yet. I want him to stay, I know he didn’t have a great year but I’d much rather have him stick around for another year while the team tries to develop a young catcher then let him go.

Offering him arbitration was a solid idea, if he accepts whatever deal he gets through arbitration it will be a definite win for the Sox and it gives Tek a season to get himself back on track. And if the doesn’t go with arbitration the Sox will at least get a couple of compensatory picks, with the way they’ve drafted the last few years I wouldn’t mind a couple of extra draft picks.

Overall I’d like Tek to stay but can you really blame him if he leaves? It’s probably his last chance at a somewhat sizable contract and if he hits .220 again I can see fans starting to turn on their beloved captain.

Hopefully he’ll take arbitration and both sides can have a strong 2009 season but if he goes let’s not turn on him. I think one of the reason Boston fans get so much flak from other fans around the nation is because of how fickle we can be with our support of players. Sure there are guys we stick with through thick and thin but sometimes we’re quick to change our minds.

This happens a lot when guys leave town or hold out for more money. Some players warrant our distain. Namely Johnny Damon, f him, but we have a history of selling players out for leaving. You never want to see guys bail out on your teams but be reasonable. Unless they bail for the Yankees, Jets, Steelers or Canadians then they can rot in hell for all I care.

More to come on Varitek, it’s a weird situation, especially because his agent is a super d-bag.

A couple of other quick thoughts…

Curt Schilling’s moving from 38 Pitches to weei.com – I’m liking weei’s focus on the web. They have a large fan base that listens on the web and they’ve become a powerful source for sports news and opinion in Boston, now they are making a strong bid at becoming the top source for Boston sports news on the web.

They’ve scooped up a couple of great Boston media types, like Rob Bradford, and added the always interesting musing of the blogosphere’s Luke Skywalker, Will Leitch. Smart moves by weei in my opinion.

As for Schilling…he’s always interesting, he might be kind of a windbag and I’m not a huge fan of his uber-right wingness but to each his own. The guy says what he feels, which people either love or hate. I for one think it’s really interesting to get insight from perspective of a professional athlete. Plus I’m all about taking things with a grain of salt so I think that helps me enjoy it.

There’s a ton of other stuff going on but I wanted to at least post something.

more to come…