Fascination Place

Today the Red Sox traded Manny Ramirez to the Dodgers. It’s actually a 3-way trade, also involving the Pirates, which works out like this:

1. The Red Sox trade Manny Ramirez (LF, age 36) to the Dodgers.
2. The Pirates trade Jason Bay (LF, age 29) to the Red Sox.
3. The Dodgers trade Andy LaRoche (3B, age 24) and Bryan Morris (SP, age 21) to the Pirates.
4. The Red Sox also trade Craig Hansen (RP, age 24) and Brandon Moss (OF, age 24) to the Pirates.
5. Plus the Red Sox send $7M in cash to the Dodgers to cover the rest of Manny’s 2008 salary.

Overall I think this is a good trade for the Dodgers and Pirates. For the Red Sox, I think it’s not a good trade, but I think it’s not a bad one either given their stocked farm system, financial means, and the strange circumstances of the trade itself.

I don’t have a lot to say about the Dodgers and Pirates ends of the trade: The Dodgers traded a prospect they clearly had little confidence in plus a low-level pitcher for one of the best available hitters, and they don’t even have to pay him! Assuming the Diamondbacks don’t counter with their own trade, the Dodgers could be the favorites to win the NL West now. The Pirates had a pretty barren farm system and anything their new GM can inject into it is going to help. The Pirates are a long way from contending, and while it’s fun to wonder whether they could have gotten more for Xavier Nady and Damaso Marte (and they probably could have), in their position I think that’s splitting hairs. Until they acquire some impact players - probably through the draft - they’re just trying to rebuild the organization.

The deal is a very interesting one from the Red Sox’ end. Reportedly Manny has been agitating to get out of Boston, saying he’d waive his no-trade clause if the Sox would decline their options to pick up his contract for 2009 and 2010 (at $20M per year). Why has he been agitating to get out? I have no idea, and I can’t tell whether anyone else does, either. Is he fed up with Boston? With Red Sox management? Is he feuding with other players? Did he just decide he’s done what he can do in Boston and he’d feel more comfortable playing for another team? Or did he just want to have his options declined so he can try to sign one more long-term deal, which might possibly net him even more money over the length of the deal? Beats me.

But Boston has apparently been very good to Manny, both in fan support for him and in management bending over backwards to accommodate his foibles. In other towns, on other teams, Manny could have ended up as Barry Bonds of the American League, a moody, private player who runs his team the way he wants to. Instead Manny was a star on a team of stars, which won two World Series during his tenure. If he caught some flak for “Manny being Manny” from time to time, I know the memories I have of him tend to involve him hitting home runs, or running on the field with a big smile on his face. Manny’s antics - such as they were - don’t come close to stacking up against those of Bill Lee, or Wade Boggs, or Ted Williams.

Assuming Manny was the driving force behind the trade, I think it’s to the Red Sox’ credit that they worked to accommodate his departure as well as they did his presence, trading him to a contending team in a deal which isn’t truly to their benefit, as they traded two prospects and cash along with him in order to get a player who’s younger, and maybe as good, but that’s hardly guaranteed.

Jason Bay is a good player, he hits a ton and seems to have a decent defensive reputation (Manny was not a good fielder). He’s also a lot cheaper, being signed for $7.5M next year, and of course he’s 7 years younger. In 2008, he might be as valuable as Manny. We’ll see. In 2009, he could provide similar value for a lot less money, which means the Sox will be players in the free agent market this off-season, not to mention having some money to throw around to help acquire players in trade.

And who did the Sox give up? Hansen is starting to look more suspect than prospect, and relief pitchers tend to be fungible anyway. Moss is a bit more of a loss, although he’s not looking like a star in the making.

Overall, I think this deal is a lose for the Red Sox, but not a large one. It’s too bad to see Manny head out this way, but in a way it seems fitting given his sometimes-baffling tenure with the team. Bay should be a solid addition for the next year-plus, and ought to help us win this year. The big win for the Sox is that Manny’s intermittent injuries are now the Dodgers’ problem, and they don’t have to figure out what to do when he gets hurt, since they don’t have a DH slot to place him in. Bay isn’t an iron man, but he’s also not 36 years old; I expect Manny to get more fragile over the next couple of years.

I’d have been happy to have kept Manny for this year, though. He’s still an asset, and one more run at the brass ring with this Red Sox team would have been fun to watch. Ah, well. I hope playing for the Dodgers gives him what he’s looking for, whatever that is.

The days have been just flying by, lately! I realized this weekend that I never wrote an entry about last weekend, partly because I’d been busy catching up on posting photos from my Dad’s visit!

The bittersweet part of last weekend was going to two Red Sox/Athletics games, which I’d been excited about since this is a rare year in which my Red Sox visited Oakland twice in the same season. Unfortunately, we ended up seeing two games of a three-game sweep by the A’s, with the Sox losing 8-3 on Friday, and then 3-0 on Saturday. The Saturday game was almost very exciting as Justin Duchscherer came two baserunners away from pitching a perfect game. But he hit Jason Varitek leading off the 6th, and David Ortiz singled in the 7th. Huston Street replaced Duchscherer for the 9th, and that was it. Bummer. On television we watched the A’s finish the sweep by winning 6-3 on Sunday. Alas.

On the bright side, the Sox have gone 4-2 since then, and they still have the second-best record in the American League (behind the Rays, who seem to finally be capitalizing on their substantial talent base).

Sunday we also had Subrata and Susan over for the day. We hadn’t heard from them for a few days and we’d figured they might be going stir crazy waiting for their child to arrive. (As I wrote over this past weekend, he arrived last Thursday.) We met at The Counter for lunch and then came back and played Magic (Subrata and me) and dominoes (all four of us) for the afternoon, winding up having dinner at Marie Callender’s.

The Magic session was interesting, my second time really playing Shadowmoor. We played a sealed deck game. Subrata had two viable builds from his cards, while I thought I had three or even four, but part-way through one game I realized I just didn’t have the right mix of stuff to make a white-blue deck work; it kept wanting to be write-green. So I did that instead and it worked quite well, better than the black-red deck did. The red-green version might have worked, too, but I didn’t try that. Anyway, it does feel like Shadowmoor is a slower format than Lorwyn or Time Spiral were. But since I enjoy creature-based decks, that’s not really a bad thing.

This weekend as I said we went to the hospital to visit Subrata, Susan and Ajay on Friday evening. Saturday we went out and did some shopping, including buying a new cat bush (half-height cat tree) for the downstairs. Even though it’s nearly identical to the old one, the cats still had to sniff it all over. But it seems to have passed muster!

I also went by a sale at Illusive Comics, an area store which I hadn’t visited before. (Well, I might have visited them years ago under their previous incarnation and previous owners, but I honestly don’t remember.) The owners are very enthusiastic, which is a great thing in anyone doing small retail! I’ll probably go back every so often, even though my I already have a regular shop I patronize (Comics Conspiracy). As most stores today do, Illusive seems to be focusing on new books and paperback collections. Unfortunately I’m an outlier among comics fans: the main thing that brings me back to a shop is a good and constantly-changing back issue selection, and the comics retailing biz has moved away from back issues over the last 15 years. And every store has pretty much the same set of paperback collections, so you don’t really need to go to multiple stores for those.

Anyway. Comics retailing is hard enough without listening to me moan about how comics shops aren’t like they were back when I was a teenager, so enough about that.

We spent a good chunk of Saturday doing chores around the house: We did a whole bunch of long-awaited cleaning, throwing away the little things which stack up on bookshelves and in the garage and in nooks and crannies elsewhere. I put up a bike hanger so we could reclaim some floor space by hanging Debbi’s bike above mine. Now Debbi wants to hang the step ladder and our spare folding chairs, so that may be another project soon! Debbi fixed up the shadowbox with my old Mardi Gras beads and coins, and it looks great!

Sunday we had a quieter day. I spent a lot of the afternoon and evening up in the study paying bills, putting together some Magic decks, and doing some cleaning up (though not nearly enough). We also cooked dinner and watched Sunday night baseball.

So that about covers it. We have some more projects to take care of around the house (for instance, replace the long-broken kitchen dispose-all), and I hope we can get a bunch of it taken care of this summer. It ought to keep us busy!

Meanwhile, happy June, everyone!

Sign heralding the upcoming new Apple Store in Boston evokes the look of Fenway Park’s Green Monster. Neat!

(via Daring Fireball, even if Gruber is a sourpuss when it comes to Boston sports.)

So a month or so ago I bought some tickets to some baseball games, including to today’s Red Sox vs. A’s game, which was supposed to start at 7:35. But, uh, a few weeks later I received a phone call and a postcard informing me that the game had been moved to a 12:35 start time. You’ll notice that today is a Wednesday. Gah. To be fair, the time was moved so the Sox could fly back to the east coast before midnight. Fair enough. Fortunately, both Debbi and I were able to take the day off to go to the game. Whew! I only went to one ballgame all last year, and I want to make a better showing this year.

Debbi pointed out that we might have better luck parking at the Millbrae BART station with its huge parking garage than in the east bay, plus afterwards we could go to the excellent Brother’s Deli for dinner. Sold! So we drove up and caught BART to the Coliseum. Along the way we met a fellow who was in from Boston and was going to catch the game himself. Nice guy, we chatted about the Sox and gave him some advice on getting a ticket (which mostly consisted of “where the good seats are” and “where the ticket office is”).

We got there in plenty of time and found our seats in the second deck basically right behind home plate. In fact, we had a view like this:

It was a light and cloudy morning…

I do enjoy my ballpark food, but along with rising ticket prices, park food is getting more expensive, too. The Coliseum features Round Table Pizza, which I enjoy pretty well for chain pizza, but their pizzas seem to be getting smaller even as they get more expensive. So I may be switching to sausages soon.

The A’s are in a rebuilding period now, having traded Dan Haren and Nick Swisher in the off-season, so they’re not going to be very good (although not as bad as the Giants). Consequently, the stadium attendance resembled 1999, when I first moved here, when Red Sox fans seemed to outnumber A’s fans. Here’s a sample. Keep in mind that the Sox’ colors are red and dark blue, while the A’s colors are green and gold:

Sox fans are red, Sox fans are blue…

The game got under way just a couple of minutes late, and it was a pretty exciting game! Jon Lester - cancer survivor and World Series hero - pitched for the Sox, while the great but oft-injured Rich Harden pitched for the A’s. The Sox kept collecting baserunners, but just couldn’t bring them across the plate, and at the end of the 6th inning the game was still scoreless. (The ump’s strike zone seemed to be ridiculously wide, which had something to do with it.)

But Harden had been pulled at the start of the 6th, and the top of the 7th began with Kevin Youkilis rapping out a double (quite a heads-up play as he was running all the way and just barely beat the throw), and David Ortiz followed with a home run to right field. The Sox added 2 more in the 8th off 5 consecutive singles (4 to shallow left field), and Jason Varitek capped the scoring with a home run in the 9th. Meanwhile Lester cruised through 6-2/3 innings, and two relievers closed out the game, as the Red Sox held the A’s to 4 hits and shut them out 5-0.

The forecast was for rain today, but we never got more than a light drizzle - hardly even noticeable - and it was cool and pleasant. It also turned out to be “foul ball day” as dozens of the things peppered the infield stands, including this one which came right back at us as I was taking this photo, landing a few rows in front of us:

Low bridge!

We were also amused that whenever the A’s brought in a reliever, the infielders and outfielders would each gather and stand around chatting. I guess they were just killing some dead time like anyone does, but I rarely see it happen so regularly.

“Do you think that curveball makes his butt look big?”

That photo’s also great because of the Sox baserunner in the background working out a problem with his laces during the dead time.

All-in-all a great day at the park, and the Sox are now 3-1 on the season. We headed out to BART and took the train back to our car, looking forward to our dinner plans… only to find that Brother’s Deli closed sometime late last year! What a bummer! They’d moved from Burlingame a few years ago and although their new digs were nicer, they seemed to have a lot of trouble attracting customers, and I guess it caught up to them. Parking around downtown Millbrae could be a challenge sometimes, too. Alas, I’ll need to find somewhere new to order meat blintzes. I’m going to miss them.

Hard to believe that our bonus day off is over already! Back to work tomorrow. Fortunately it’s only for a 2-day week…!

Yesterday was opening day of baseball season. Yeah yeah, there was a game on Sunday, and the Red Sox and A’s played a two game series in Japan last week, but most teams opened the season yesterday. And thanks to that Japanese series, the Sox and A’s play the other two games of their season-opening “series” in Oakland this week.

The first of the two games was tonight, and I certainly was coming home to watch it; even with the Red Sox being the defending world champions, I don’t get to watch enough Red Sox baseball out here.

I came home around 6:40 and threw the TV onto the baseball channel just for the heck of it while I prepared dinner. After a minute I realized all I was hearing was crowd noise, so I went out to look at the TV, and realized that they were showing the entire pre-game ceremony without commentary or commercials! So they introduced the Red Sox, and introduced the A’s, and held a moment of silence for Joe Kennedy, who passed away due to heart disease last November, followed by the national anthem. I was impressed, it was almost like being there for opening night.

The game itself was excellent, with Sox pitching holding the A’s to only 3 hits, and A’s defense holding the Sox to only 2 runs despite 9 hits, and the Sox prevailed 2-1. There was even a botched call at the plate (giving the Sox a run) and a botched home run call (taking one away from the Sox).

The long dark time is over - baseball’s back!

The really fun thing about the World Series for me was watching the Red Sox’ young players have their own “coming out party”. While the veterans on the club (Manny Ramirez, David Ortiz, Curt Schilling, Josh Beckett, and World Series MVP Mike Lowell) all had fine series, the younger players were equally impressive:

• Jacoby Ellsbury (CF, rookie, age 23) went from playing in AA to hitting 438/500/688 in the World Series, with 4 doubles and a stolen base. It would be a stretch to say that he won Game 3 all by himself, but he was certainly the highlight of the game.
• Dustin Pedroia (2B, rookie, age 23) hit 278/350/500 with a double and a home run. The potential 2007 Rookie of the Year was even better in the ALCS.
• Kevin Youkilis (1B, age 28) actually was a rookie back in 2004, but didn’t play in the 2004 World Series. He only batted 222/417/444 in the World Series and missed out on most of the games in Colorado because of the lack of a DH, but he was a total monster in the ALCS, batting 500/576/929 (!) with 3 (!!!) home runs. He also went the whole 2007 regular season without committing an error (and then committed 3 in the playoffs). He’ll probably never be a star, but he’s put to rest speculation that the “Greek God of Walks” wouldn’t be very valuable because of a lack of power. He might have a better career than John Kruk did, even if he is already 28.
• Jon Lester (SP, age 23) came all the way back from chemotherapy for cancer to pitch 5.2 shutout innings and become the winning pitcher in the series clincher. He’ll likely be the Red Sox’ 4th or 5th starter next year, assuming either or both of Curt Schilling and Tim Wakefield head elsewhere.
• Jonathan Papelbon (RP, age 26) didn’t allow a run in the Series and saved 3 games.
• Daisuke Matsuzaka (SP, rookie, age 26) isn’t a true rookie, as he was a big free agent pickup from Japan last off-season, but he was nearly the Sox’ “forgotten star” as he faded down the stretch, possibly because he threw more innings in 2007 than he ever had in Japan and just got tired. But he picked up his game in the ALCS and World Series, throwing two good games and getting a key base hit in Game 3 of the World Series. Japanese players often seem to do better in their second year in the Majors, so I fully expect Matsuzaka will be better next year than he was this year. Other than fatigue, I think there’s nothing to worry about here.

I love seeing young players do well, and it’s additionally encouraging that the Sox have a solid core of young players to build around for the next 2-3 years (if not longer). This doesn’t even count other “under-30-somethings” on the roster, like Beckett, Clay Buchholz, and Manny Delcarmen.

The Red Sox’ future is already here, and it just won a World Series.

Amazing - the Red Sox have won the World Series again!

It seems like only yesterday that they won for the first time in my lifetime. They went into a rebuilding phase after that, so I didn’t imagine they’d win it all again so soon, yet here they are on top of the heap once more!

Wow.

Heading into the playoffs I thought either the Red Sox or Indians would go to the World Series, and probably steamroller the NL champion, and I was right as the Sox swept the Rockies, winning two blowouts and two one-run games. Mike Lowell won the MVP award, although there was plenty of credit to go around: Nearly every Sox hitter had a great Series, and some were simply insanely great.

Truth to tell, it was a pretty boring postseason: Only 5 of 7 series were sweeps, and only 1 went the distance, as the Sox overcame a 3-1 deficit to beat the Indians in the ALCS in what was a pretty good series, but the Indians’ pitching collapsed in the last three games.

What really made the Sox’ team click this month? Well, I think the Sox managed to rest their tired and injured players in September and fielded a healthy team which was hitting on all cylinders in the playoffs: David Ortiz’ bad knee didn’t hinder him, Daisuke Matsuzaka and Hideki Okajima got some rest and were good enough to help (Okajima faded in the Series, though), and even Jon Lester pitched a great game tonight in the clincher. With a strong pitching staff and an overpowering offense, only Cleveland really had a team which could stand up to them.

So I guess the Sox are now the new Evil Empire, having won more championships in this century than any other team (a mark they also held in the 20th century until 1937 when the Yankees passed them). And despite Curt Schilling and Mike Lowell heading to free agency, they still seem well-positioned to contend for several more years, with plenty of young talent on the roster. And they have the financial resources to take big risks on big free agents without compromising the core of the team - a luxury few other teams can afford.

So it’s a nifty end to a nifty season. It feels a little anticlimactic because the Sox have been a leading contender since April, and only the Yankees’ late-season run at the division title and the ALCS really added much drama. Still, it’s nice to come out and win as favorites rather than as long-suffering underdogs. It made this a championship to enjoy rather than claw our eyes out in anticipation (as 2004 was at times).

Looking forward to next year!

Tonight the Red Sox completed their improbable comeback to win the ALCS, beating the Cleveland Indians 4 games to 3, after being down 3-1 a few days ago. I didn’t think they could do it, so color me amazed.

Now they’ll face the equally-improbable Colorado Rockies, who are going to their first World Series in team history, and who made it through an amazing winning streak to close the season before dumping the Phillies and Diamondbacks in two sweeps.

Go Sox!

(P.S.: If the Sox win the Series, they’ll have the most championships of any team in this century. That’s a distinction they held early in the last century, too, winning 5 of the first 15 World Series. The Yankees passed them when they won their sixth World Series in 1937.)

Insanely busy lately.

I have a little list of things to do for my house. One of these - refinancing my mortgage - should be pretty easy and is already underway. Other things are going to take more effort and thought: Putting in new windows, replacing the kitchen dispose-all, figuring out what’s up with one of the lights in the master bathroom… that sort of thing.

Meanwhile work is hopping lately. Lots of meetings and design and planning for a bunch of different projects, and meanwhile I’m ripping code apart and putting it back together. It’s a pretty lively time, but it’s keeping me plenty busy.

I was having trouble sleeping earlier this week, which I almost never do. I’m a heavy sleeper, and usually find it very easy to fall asleep, but the latter point was failing me Sunday and Monday night. I got over it on Tuesday, but it left me pretty tired for the rest of the week. I still managed to get up early for my morning bike ride on Tuesday and Thursday, though.

And to top it off, Debbi had a rough day today, and I was feeling stressed on her behalf. She always tells me not to be stressed like this, because it doesn’t do any good. But I do worry about things. If you know me, you probably think of me as a pretty laid-back person, but sometimes I get really wound up when I’m juggling too many tasks, or things I feel not-well-suited to deal with.

It’s not all work and stress, though: The new Magic expansion, Lorwyn, is nearly out, and the card list has been posted. Also, TCGPlayer has Lorwyn set up in their practice booster draft engine.

Better yet, the baseball playoffs have started. My Red Sox dominated their first game (the first round is all best-of-five series), and the Indians beat the Yankees. I’ll root for one of these two to win the World Series - the Sox are my team, and the Tribe are my grandfather’s team. I’m more indifferent to the National League, where the Rockies won the first 2 games against the Phillies (making one of my cow-orkers happy, and another not so much), and the Diamondbacks won the first 2 against the Cubs (sorry RJ). I think all of the American League teams are better than any of the National League teams (well, maybe not the Angels), and generally more interesting teams to boot. I kind of like the Diamondbacks, though, since they’ve reinvented themselves the last few years as a team of exciting young players, and I think they’re doing a lot of things right.

Anyway.

Admittedly my seasonal affective disorder might have something to do with my feelings of stress. I’ll get through it.

Especially if the Red Sox keep winning. Or, failing that, the Yankees keep losing.

Time to check in with how everyone’s doing in the Major Leagues, much as I did after the first week of the season. Take a look at the All-Star Break standings, and read on:

The Good:

• Can anyone catch the Red Sox? With a 10-game cushion, it seems unlikely, although it’s never wise to entirely count out the Yankees. The Sox have had their troubles - J.D. Drew has been awful, Curt Schilling is hurt - but they’re still in a comfortable place.
• The Tigers, Indians, Angels and Mariners are within 2.5 games of each other, and only 3 of them can go to the playoffs. I expect the Mariners will get exposed as the season goes on, but the other three are genuinely good teams.
• The class of the National League is, uhh… no one. The NL looks like a strong, balanced league this year. The Padres have the best record (also by a nose), but there are eight teams within 6 games of them, including 3 in their own division - that’s more than half the league within easy striking distance, and only four of them can make the playoffs. I figure the Brewers will still win the Central, and the other three teams will come from the Mets, Braves, Padres and Dodgers - I think I’d pick the Braves to be the odd-team-out at this point.

The Bad:

As I said before, I think it’s a lot harder to overcome a bad start than to lose a good one, and halfway through the season that means the bad teams are just about out of it now:

• The Nationals are bad. We knew that. Let’s move on.
• The Astros are on their way down, after a decade of success and a World Series appearance. It may be a few years before they return to contention, but their fans have to be pretty happy with what they’ve gotten in the recent past - except for the lack of a title.
• I wonder if the Reds know what they’re doing? They threw away Felipe Lopez and Austin Kearns last year and now have a middling offense and bad pitching.
• And then there are the Giants, which consist of 42-year-old Barry Bonds and his pursuit of the career home run record, and… uh… Barry Zito’s large contract, and… Matt Morris is having a pretty good year, and… geez… But seriously, like the Astros, the Giants are paying the price for years of excellence and a World Series appearance (which they, too, didn’t win), but the Giants’ flameout is going to be more dramatic and probably more prolonged. The Rockies don’t suck this year, so the Giants are going to finish last in their division, and despite the team signing GM Brian Sabean to a 2-year extension, it wouldn’t surprise me if he doesn’t survive the off-season.

The Rest:

• The Phillies overcame their 1-5 start and are now at .500. They’re not a good team, though: Their offense is good and their pitching is bad, and they tossed Brett Myers into the bullpen for no good reason and then he got hurt. The Phils have been directionless for years, and I don’t see that changing anytime soon.
• Up-and-coming teams? They’re already here: I think the Brewers are probably going to win their divison, the Diamondbacks are probably a year or two away, and the Indians need to figure out the rest of their rotation to have staying power. But all three are contending right now, and all of them could continue to do so into the fall.

I think the Wild Card sucks a lot of drama out of the season (even if it was partly responsible for the Red Sox winning it all in 2004), but there are enough good teams this year that there could still be some great races into September. Really, no one looks like a clear favorite to go to the World Series - even the Red Sox look great mainly by comparison with the rest of their division.