August

First, the good news. The Sox played .667 ball in August, going 18-9, while playing five series on the road, and only four in Fenway. In those five road series, they went 4-0-1. It was really the first time all year they played well, consistently well, on the road. And the August numbers were especially impressive, considering that they played pretty much the entire month without Mike Lowell (In the few games before he actually went on the DL, Lowell did very little at the plate.), and JD Drew, who played half a month, but like Lowell, didn’t really contribute much in that time. Not to mention the absence of Julio Lugo (Having Lowrie in the lineup may have actually been a net gain.); Papi still apparently hurting, and not performing up to prior years; and Manny gone west. Of course Jason Bay had a huge month, batting .358, knocking in 29 runs, and scoring 22. So then imagine how the Sox could do in September, with a healthy lineup. Right now, they’re 22 games above .500, and have a three-game lead for the wild card spot. Another month like this past month, and they’ll be playing come October.

But playing well with a banged up lineup is also the bad news. Because among the walking wounded is Josh Beckett, and even if the Sox can make it to the post-season, they’re not going anywhere without a healthy Beckett. Think of last year’s ALCS. Sure, the Sox ended up pounding the Indians into submission for those final two games at Fenway. But they never would have made it back to Fenway without Beckett. With a loss in game five, there would have been no games six or seven, no World Series, and no championship for 2007. And the bar has been raised since 2004. Yes, it’s nice to make the post-season, but how satisfying was 2005? And while it might give us some solace, and some hope for the future, to think that this team of youngsters made it to the post-season without any healthy superstars, in the end, that’s nothing more than another way of saying, “Wait till next year.”

So right now, entering September, priority one is a healthy Beckett. Assuming Beckett can finish the season strong, number two on the wish list is a healthy Lowell. Over the past few years, Lowell has meant as much to the team as anyone, other than Papi. Now I know we’ve only got about two-thirds of a healthy Papi, but even at that reduced strength, he’s still going to mess up opposing pitchers. And number three would be, in my estimation, a consistent performance from the bull-pen. That’s asking a lot, in light of all the ups and downs this year. But most everyone out there is healthy, and all of them have performed well at times, even if not all the time. But given those three things, OK, we can be ready for another October, even if we’d still be playing away at either LA or Tampa. So August was better than July; way better. Can September be better still? If so, we’ll worry about October when we get there.

Jason being Manny

John wanted a posting about Manny – an update about his numbers since he had donned a Dodgers uniform earlier this month. So here they are: in his twenty-two games as a Dodger, Manny has batted .380, with an on-base percentage of .480. He’s knocked in 22 runs, scored 12, and hit 6 home runs. His RBI pace has him finishing well above 100 for the season, just as he has in 12 of the past 14 seasons. He remains an RBI machine.

But here’s a more interesting statistic. In the 22 games since Jason Bay has replaced Manny in left field, the Sox have gone 15-7, while playing 13 of those 22 games on the road. That’s a .681 pace, far better than they’ve played in any other month this year, again remarkable because they’ve played on the road more than half of this month, and entering August were well below .500 on the road. In fact, if they had played .500 ball on the road all year, they would now be 25 games above .500, well on their way to the post-season. Not that Manny hasn’t been good for the Dodgers, but they continue to play only .500 ball, and are losing ground to the Diamondbacks in the weakest division in baseball.

At first glance it looks like Jason Bay hasn’t had Manny-esqe numbers, but a closer look reveals that his production may have been just as valuable. He’s batted .385 this past month. He’s knocked in 18 runs, and scored 20, while hitting 4 home runs. But that translates to 34 runs produced in the month, six more than Manny produced for the Dodgers. Of course Bay has better bats behind him in Boston’s lineup, hence more chances to score if he gets on base; but runs are runs. And that doesn’t even take into account the defensive improvement. Yesterday was a good example of that: Bay made a great running catch up against the left field wall, which helped the Sox keep the score even until Lowrie knocked in the winning run in the 11^th inning.

So as much as we loved Manny, and as much as he meant to the Sox in the post-season runs during 2004 and 2007, baseball remains a team game. And a Jason Bay who actually wants to play, and isn’t intimidated by Fenway’s atmosphere, can actually help his team more than a future hall of famer who, for whatever reason, decided he no longer really wanted to play for the Sox. So I wish Manny well in Dodger blue, but I’m pulling harder for Jason now, and hope he gets to win a ring or two before he hangs up his cleats.

Dickens and Dombey

I hated Dickens when I was a kid. I hated him because they forced us to read him in school. I hated him because his books were so long; because his sentences were so long. The stories were set in nineteenth century London, which could have been ancient Mesopotamia for all I cared. None of the characters seemed to resemble anyone I knew. Who cared what happened to David Copperfield?

Late in life, after I fell under the influence of Harold Bloom, I returned to Dickens. The reintroduction came through Great Expectations, which the boys had to read in Ms. Barrett’s sophomore year English class. As I recall, the boys and I all read it at about the same time. I followed that with Bleak House, which Bloom declares to be the definitive canonical novel, and then I was hooked. I went back to Dickens’ beginnings, read Pickwick, and have tried to work my way through the rest of his work, in rough chronological order.

For me at least, there is a tempo to reading Dickens. It often takes time to get fully involved, because you have to meet dozens of characters, and work through a number of often disconnected sub-plots. Finally, the story begins to fit together, and Dickens being a master of moving his readers from one chapter to the next, the pace of reading picks up. I’m drawn in as I feel more and more compelled to figure out what will happen to Esther, or Florence, or Pip. Soon, I have trouble putting the book down, and all the other reading gets neglected; I find myself submerged in Dickens’ world. Finally, once I can see where we’re headed, often about seventy pages from the end, I slow way down, and try to draw as much enjoyment as possible from the remaining chapters. Despite the length of these novels, I am always sorry when I’m done; I regret having no more to read.

I just finished Dombey & Son, thought by some to be Dickens’ first great novel. As always, it was astonishingly full of life, with its enormous variety of characters - rich and poor, virtuous and sinister, old and young, tragic and comic. The combination of melodrama, social criticism, comic relief and psychological insight is perhaps unmatched anywhere else in literature. Tolstoy, for example, is full of life, but there are few laughs in Anna Karenina. Dickens also, despite the passage of time, and the cultural differences, seems to portray humankind with more realism, more accuracy than almost anyone other than Shakespeare. His portrayal of Edith Dombey, beautiful but poor, paraded through life by an ambitious and calculating mother, who resents having been sold at auction to the richest bidder, and who then comes to hate her affluent and successful husband, is more powerful and moving and, again, more realistic, than all the polemic literature of today, most of which is simply boring, tedious, and intrusively didactic.

Dombey doesn’t yet represent the mature Dickens of Great Expectations, for even though he has to kill off a few favorite characters, it ends happily for most. (It reminded me in ways of Pickwick, Dickens’ first novel, which didn’t even start as a novel, but only as a collection of stories, but coalesced into a novel around the character of Sam Weller, the valet. Sam appears first as a caricature, like most of the other characters in those silly stories. But gradually, Sam comes to life; he becomes human on the page. And as Sam grows into a real character, his creator comes alive as a novelist. By the end of the book, not only Sam, but Pickwick and many others have come to life, and the story is no longer silly, but genuine and moving. Dickens has come into his own.) One of the reflections of Dickens’ growth is that he begins Dombey with the central plot and theme of the story, so you needn’t wait two hundred pages to know where you’re actually headed, but at the same time, begins to expand his narrative orbit, bringing in a host of other characters, and plots, without ever straying far from the central theme. And really, the final chapters of this book were as moving as anything I’d read in a long long time.

I can’t overlook Dickens’ unparalleled command of the language. His vocabulary is enormous; his syntax is complex, yet elegant; his imagery and metaphors fresh, often startling. It’s tough to go slowly in a book of 900 pages, but when I did slow down, when for one reason or another, I tried to read carefully and closely, as if I were reading a poem of only a few stanzas, I was always rewarded. I wrote earlier this week how no songwriter will ever match Dylan’s lyrical imagery, but the gulf between Dickens and today’s writers is so wide, it’s almost as if they’re from different civilizations. Unfortunately, the passage of time has not improved our civilization in this respect; on the contrary, it has become less expressive, less imaginative, less creative, dumber. Far dumber. I know that that we have moved from the textual media to the visual media; I know that we are more expressive in new and different ways, other than language. But really, can pictures on cell phones and video clips on YouTube capture and convey the same complexities and subtleties of life that are found on Dickens pages? Every time I hear some kid, or some politician, or some journalist, use the term ‘sad’, to describe human tragedy, or ‘mean’ to characterize some heinous evil, I want to go have electroshock treatments. Take me away! (Franny says she wants to go away also!)

I never read more than one Dickens in a year, but even at that pace, by now I’ve read most of his books; there are only a few more to go, before I have to start over. But by then, I’ll be ready to read about Pip again, and Estella, and Jaggers. (We all liked Jaggers the lawyer, even though Barrett said he was incomplete as a man, what with his odd relationship with the maid, Molly, a former client.) And if you care at all about any of this, be sure to put Dombey on your list as one of the essential Dickens novels. It’s really not to be missed.

Inflation and Malt Whisky - A Disturbing Trend

I understand we’re in inflationary times, despite what the Fed may be telling us. And everyone knows how prices have skyrocketed at the gas pump. But how come there has been more attention paid to this totally alarming economic indicator – the rise in the price of malt whisky? I stopped by White House yesterday, and had a most disturbing conversation with my man Ben. Where do we start?

How about Bruichladdich, which is rapidly becoming so pricey that Ben may no longer stock it after the first of the year. The ten-year old, entry level Laddie, is expected to climb into the upper 60s. The fifteen year-old, long their flagship whisky, and a wonderful buy when it sold for around $55, will soon approach $100 a bottle. The twenty, which I enjoyed with G at our recent visit to Keen’s, is already $160 on the shelf, soon to pass into the stratosphere. Now I know oil is expensive at over $110 a barrel, but a barrel holds 42 gallons of oil, which according to my calculations is about the same as 211 bottles of malt. So if we had to buy malts by the barrel, at the prevailing retail price, we’d be paying over $20,000 a barrel. Are you kidding me?

Here are a couple more examples: Macallan 15 will soon be $75 on the shelf; Balvenie is bringing out a 17 year old, finished in Rum casks – sounds great, except for the fact that it will cost $130 a bottle; most of the fancy Ardbegs are already more than $100, and HP18 is going up to somewhere north of $75. How about paying $60 for Macallan 12, which is an enjoyable whisky, but nothing special, considering that the sherry sweetness comes close to overpowering the underlying malt flavor. Macallan 12 is fine for when you’re at some restaurant that stocks a half-dozen of the most generic and available whiskies, and all you really want is a glass of anything. Now I don’t know whether this inflationary trend is a reflection of the weakness of the dollar, or just old-fashioned supply and demand, with lots of new Asian entrepreneurs driving prices up by leaps and bounds. I’ll ask Rico to weigh in on that topic; after all he’s the commodities man. But regardless of the reason, it’s putting s serious crimp on our ability to enjoy malts.

Not that there aren’t good tasting, moderately priced whiskies any more. One can still enjoy Aberlour 12, rich and flavorful and smooth, for under $40. Laphroaig 10 has a ton of flavor and character, even though it has a bite. Matter of fact, some folks like the bite, and prefer the 10 to the 15, which is silky smooth and much softer. But if we’re limited to 10s and 12s, there are far fewer malts that we’re going to find satisfying. Yesterday, in anticipation of these price increases, I bought a bottle of Macallan 10. We drank it last winter when we went snowshoeing, but really, any whisky tastes good when you’re out in the woods and the cold. And I had a glass last night with a Romeo & Juliet, which made the malt taste smooth and satisfying. But today, without the taste of tobacco in my mouth, it’s a tad bit harsh. More than that, it lacks the depth and character of the older Macallans; remember that I’ve been drinking the magnificent 17, which I picked up last year very reasonably at a tasting. So yes, the ten will be much more affordable than the 17, but am I going to enjoy it as much? Hardly.

Here’s a thought. We were out the other night with Dan & Randy – new place at Village Gate called Good Luck. They’re serving classic cocktails, which have resurfaced all over Boston, but haven’t really come back in Rochester, at least not yet. When I told the owner how much I liked that idea, and when he then shared his recipe for Manhattans – Sazarec Rye and Punt e Mes for the vermouth - and when I then raved about that recipe, he brought us all a tasting sized sample. Excellent. And fun. So perhaps instead of drinking only malts, I’ll branch out and enjoy a cocktail or two instead. Why not? There’s every bit as much variety in cocktails as there is in malts. And there’s all the fun of mixing and shaking, and trying different recipes. And we won’t have to spend $100 a bottle for the booze. At least not for a year or two.

Dylan Redux

We saw Dylan last night at Canandaigua. It’s hard to imagine a more beautiful venue, with the sun setting behind the stage; the light lingering in the evening sky for the first half of the concert; a chill in the August night. When Andy was here last weekend, we spoke about the recent movie “I’m not There”, and how Dylan, the songwriter and performer, appears to be his own artistic creation. Just as the autobiographical author creates a character, who purports to represent himself in the book, but who is not really the same thing as the author, and who then, in a sense, is a fictional character – Proust’s Marcel, for example - Dylan himself is a character in his own artistic body of work, that he continues to create almost fifty years after we first met him.

The voice is gone; it’s been going for some time now, but this was no Tony Bennett concert. Tangled Up in Blue seemed more a poetry reading – Dylan reciting the lyrics in a growl over a quiet musical arrangement. Or it’s All Right Ma, with the lyrics coming so fast, and the band so overpowering, that unfortunately it was often hard to follow, even though we’ve only heard the song a few thousand times in the forty-plus years since it was first recorded. Not surprisingly, the crowd shared the most love for songs from the epochal albums – Highway 61, and Memphis Blues. I was especially pleased to hear Love Minus Zero, perhaps one of Dylan’s most beautiful songs ever. But that was followed shortly by Masters of War, which becomes angrier and darker, if that’s even possible, as the years pass, and as Dylan’s arrangement becomes ever more ominous.

But that’s the amazing thing about Dylan – as he reinvents himself, he reinvents his music. In fact Memphis Blues changed midway during last night’s performance. After an instrumental break, the phrasing, and even the melody for the last few verses were entirely different, a sing-song arrangement which seemed oddly incongruent with the song’s lyrics. No matter. I’m also amazed at his ability to perform an incredible variety of songs, none of which is simple or formulaic. How does he even remember the lyrics to all this music? I wonder if Shakespeare late in life could recite Romeo and Juliet as if he’d just written it. And speaking of Shakespeare, on the way home from Canandaigua we listened to Tambourine Man, and I thought about how that song could never again be written; how we’ll never hear anyone write lyrics anything close to that. Its imagery, and especially its language, are largely lost to us now, as our common vocabulary has shrunk so. There are barely any writers left alive who could pen those lyrics, let alone songwriters. And as the years pass, our facility with the English language becomes so diminished that even our artistic expression is becoming hopelessly common and weak.

The show ended predictably, with the now anthemic Rolling Stone and Watchtower. I’d like to see him build up toward the apocalypse throughout the show, ending with Hard Rain, and Desolation Row, and then Watchtower; Dylan was always so good at foretelling the apocalypse. But then, would everyone feel so good as they walked to their cars? Would the evening really have been so satisfying? Dylan reminds me of the great jazz performers. Every time you see them, it’s new. Every performance is different. And age doesn’t diminish the artistic achievement. If he’s coming to a venue near you, go see him. Again and again.

Living on the Edge

We traveled through the Finger Lakes yesterday with Andy and Peggy, and I have to tell you, we were living on the edge – right on the edge. We drank water without any ice at all; at one point Andy had a bottle of cherry juice; and we had a couple pieces of pie at Bob and Ruth’s in Naples. Pecan and Banana Cream. Andy had wanted to put his feet into Keuka Lake, but instead of that, he settled for just washing his face in the lake. On the edge of the lake as I recall.

The best part of all was the Hammondsport Art Fair, where every kind of craft object and useless chotchke was on sale. For a while, I thought Andy and I might have to run away, but we managed to herd the gals toward the car, and escaped before anyone bought a single useless piece of junk. What does everyone do with all that junk they buy at these craft fairs? Other than resell them a year later in a garage sale. Still, there were hundreds of people crowding the town square, eating strawberry shortcake, and browsing through the dozens of booths, all bursting with original art works. Or stacking dolls with pictures of cats on them. I might have liked to pick up a couple of those, but really, we didn’t have time.

Most of the day was devoted to gastronomic excess, starting with the aforementioned pies in Naples, and continuing with a generous sampling of Dr. Frank’s wines, high above the western shore of Keuka Lake. After that tasting, I was permitted only a single glass of beer at the Village Tavern in Hammondsport. Which was too bad, because they have not only a great selection of beers, but a not too bad assortment of whiskies as well. Still, I was driving, and notwithstanding the fact that we spent the day living on the edge, I agreed not to overindulge in the consumption of alcoholic beverages. I looked for ionized water at the Village Tavern, but fortunately, it wasn’t on the menu.

After circling Keuka, and that episode of face washing, we found ourselves in Canandaigua at the Wine and Culinary Center. I had my second New York State locally brewed beer of the day, this one a Middle Ages Swallow Wit, a very enjoyable wheat beer brewed in our old home town. We tasted their smoked trout, and I was perhaps tooting my own horn a bit too much, but I considered it far below our family standards for smoked fish. And lastly, we ate at the Inn on the Lake, overlooking Canandaigua Lake at sunset, a beautiful setting, and a fitting end to the day, despite perhaps the worst service we had experienced in years, rivaling the kind of inattention one suffers when flying on a commercial airline these days.

It wasn’t quite the end, however, as everyone except me had to eat a gigantic ice cream dip top on the walk back to car. That took everyone else over the edge actually, and rendered them speechless, almost unconscious, for the drive back home. I managed to stay awake for the drive, and avoided running into any wild animals, but had to drink a Highland Park all by myself when we got home, as everyone else immediately retired for the night. But that’s how it is when you live on the edge. Next time we’ll bring bottles of ionized water, and have the dip tops before dinner.

Football Season

My football tickets arrived in today's mail. It was the second time in a month that I bought something no one wants any more. First, I bought a Buick. Now I know it's the hottest car in China. Respect for anyone who drives a Buick. But in the U.S.? Not that I don't like the car -- It's real comfortable; its rides real nice; gets pretty good gas mileage; and it has an XM radio. I can listen to jazz or blues or disco music uninterrupted. But I'm like the last guy in the states to buy a GM car. I was half expecting the factory to close after we made the deal.

But even though the Buick is old fashioned, out-of-date, whatever, it still performs the function for which it was designed and built. Not so for these football tickets I just bought. Why would anyone pay real money to see the second worst team in all of Division I-A? What enjoyment is to be had sitting and waiting for the Orange to fall 30 points behind, so we can then leave early? That's the self imposed mercy rule we have for Cuse football games. We always watch the first half, at least we do that for the two or three games we attend annually. But once the second half starts, when they fall thirty points behind, we're out. Sometimes they play well, say against a mediocre Division II team, and we're only talking about the first quarter here. But somewhere in the second or third quarter, there is usually a two minute span where they give up a couple quick touchdowns, often aided by a turnover or two, and then fall hopelessly behind. In ways, that's a relief. Those games are easier than the games when the D plays well, and keeps the score close, let's say six points heading into the fourth quarter, and then the offense gives up the ball deep in its own end, and now we've wasted the entire day, not just the first thirty five minutes of play.

When half time comes, there will be some ceremony to honor a team from a generation ago. Old guys will walk slowly out to the fifty yard line to receive a plaque or a framed photograph; the video screens will show plays no one sees any more, long touchdown runs, or bowl victories, or just completed passes. And I'll sit there, and tell stories about when Floyd Little single-handedly beat Penn State; or when Michael Owens ran in for a two-point conversion, giving Cuse a last second win over West Virginia and Major Harris. Or when Dardar returned the opening kickoff for a touchdown against Florida, and the noise in the dome was deafening all day, as Cuse never let up, and the crowd never sat down. And there wasn't a single empty seat anywhere. Now there are fewer fans in their seats than at most basketball games. And there's rarely anything to cheer about.

My boys wouldn't let me give up the seats. They were their Grandpa's seats, and the memories, the nostalgia, are apparently worth more than the cost of another year's tickets. I probably haven't gone to more than three games, if that, in any of the past five years. But for the time being, I'm hanging on to my season's tickets, and I'm still sitting in section 130. Not that I have any expectations for the coming year. Not that I'm looking forward to much of anything besides the visit to Kitty Hoynes. And yes, I'll probably drive the Buick on my way to these games. What could be more fitting?

Treading Water and Wishful Thinking

June ended with the Sox fifteen games above .500, right on pace for the post-season, but July showed no improvement. Not only were they failing to make any progress, not gaining ground toward that elusive .600 mark that seems to define post season play, they were losing ground, to the Rays, to the Angels, to all the other teams fighting for the wild card. Things really seemed to fall apart after the all star break, with the Sox going 4-8, while Manny was throwing a fit of some kind. The nadir was reached in a six game home stand with the Yankees and Angels, the Sox winning only one of those games. Of course, I picked exactly that time to make our family pilgrimage to Fenway. We had fun visiting John, and eating and drinking fabulous stuff for two days, but still we had to see them lose to the Angels of Anaheim 7-5, in a game where they stranded runners in scoring position in almost every late inning. Wasted opportunities.

But after the trade for Jason Bay, and Manny’s departure for the west coast, the Sox played pretty well on a ten game road trip. For the first time all year, they had pitching and hitting on the road, not just for a single game, but for three series in a row. Although they played the White Sox even, I took heart from the last game of that series, when after failing to get a hit for the first six plus innings, they broke through late, and salvaged a split, thanks in large part to a great outing by Beckett. It reminded me in ways of Game Five of the ALCS. We need those dominant performances from Beckett – as well as Lester and Dice – games where the pitchers keep things close until the bats can come alive. And we need to keep winning on the road. The team is still seven games under .500 on the road, and it’s hard to picture them having any success in September, or in the post-season, if there is to be post-season, without being able to win on the road. I know last year the Sox had the home field advantage throughout, but remember in 2004 that they were the wild card, and had to beat the Angels and the Yankees by winning away.

Another source of insecurity is the woeful performance of the bullpen. Huge leads have been vaporized the last couple nights, even though the Sox managed to take two from Texas. And yes, we know that Texas has a tough lineup -- but squandering a ten-run lead, and allowing an eight-run deficit to be cut in half in the blink of an eye – that hardly leaves one with any kind of comfort level. Pap can still get the job done, and most nights Okajima is still able to hold onto leads. But if the starters don’t get to the eighth, or if Pap and Oki need a night off, it’s totally hold-your-breath time.

Mike was at the park tonight, watching Lester close down the Rangers through seven. Not only that, but he sat in the owners’ box. Mike’s had a hell of a summer, hitting his own home run at H&K, and now getting VIP treatment courtesy of his friend Kyle. I need a seat in the owners’ box. And a tour of the monster seats. And a chance to watch Youk up close, while he’s taking batting practice. Is Youk on fire or what? So we’re putting these items on the wish list – a decent road record, a more consistent showing from the bullpen, and a seat in the owners’ box, perhaps for the opening game of the World Series. Is that too much to ask for?

Torre Loves Manny

There’s a clip on mlb.com of Manny arriving in LA, being escorted around first by the owners, then Tommy Lasorda, and lastly by Joe Torre. It’s one thing to see Lasorda greeting Manny, and another thing entirely to see Torre and Manny sharing the love. Forget about the incongruity of seeing two old adversaries arm in arm, two icons of baseball’s greatest rivalry now teaming up together. The bigger question is, who’s better than Torre at managing a mercurial and often outsized ego like Manny’s?

With his arm around Manny, Torre introduces him to the kids in the Dodgers’ clubhouse, Manny needing no introduction to the veterans. At one point, conversation turns to Manny’s new number – 99. Torre explains, “That’s how many RBIs he’ll have from now until the end of the season.” At his current pace, that’s probably not too far off the mark, as Manny has nine RBIs in his first seven games wearing Dodger blue.

So Joe loves Manny, and from where he sits, what’s not to love? LA has the best team ERA in the NL, having allowed the fewest runs so far this year. But the Dodgers’ batting average is a paltry .258. They are 13^th in the NL in runs, and RBIs, and 15^th in home runs. That’s 15^th, even including the four homers Manny’s hit in his first seven games. The Dodgers are playing .500 ball, but are only a half-game out of first place in the NL West, in the loss column. Plus, they’re playing .500 in one-run games, so it seems to me that a home run here and there, a couple timely extra-base hits, and the Dodgers should be able to pull ahead of the Diamondbacks and see some October play.

Meanwhile, the Sox took their second series in a row, winning two out of three in KC. I know that the Royals are lousy, but all year long the Sox have been dropping road series to lousy teams. By my rough count they have won only six of nineteen road series this year, and are playing seven games under .500 as they head into Chicago for a four-game series with the White Sox. So forget about the Rays, and the Yankees; the real test is whether the Sox can win on the road over the last month and a half of 2008. If so, maybe they’ll get to meet the Angels once again in October, but they’ll have to play without the guy who owns K-Rod. He’ll be wearing 99 for the Dodgers.

Manny's Honeymoon

Manny arrived in LA over the weekend one game into the Dodgers' series with the Diamondbacks, an NL West division rival. In his first three games wearing Dodger blue, Manny hit .615, homered twice, and drove in five runs. I’m glad he was dealt to a National League team.

I’ve read all the press about his departure – the Herald – the Globe – and I’ve listened to all the geniuses at ESPN weigh in on this topic. As I said in the last posting, what’s done is done, and the only question is how the Sox will perform in the next two months. Will the trade enhance team chemistry, and if so, enough to make up for the loss of the game’s most consistent right handed hitter? Will teams pitch around Papi now that Manny no longer has his back? Will the defense improve? That one is easy to answer – Drew, Crisp, Ellsbury and Bay probably cover more ground in the outfield than any other group in either league.

Meanwhile, not only did Manny tear up the Diamondback pitchers, he made nice with the LA media, and entertained everyone in a lighthearted press conference shortly after arriving. (You can see it on mlb.com.) For me the nicest touch was the absence of acrimony. Manny made a point of interrupting one of his answers to, “thanks all the fans in Boston… I love you guys. You guys been there for me in the up and down….” He’s right about that. Even at the end, when Manny had become a distraction, had refused to play game one against the Yankees, had pouted for no apparent reason, the Nation remained largely loyal. Sure there was some dissension, but Manny had produced when it counted, and I think most fans remembered that, and appreciated that. Plus, he’s wearing Dodger blue. In the same press conference he talks about how, at eight years old, he wore a Dodger uniform for his first little league team. And probably, despite the abandonment of Brooklyn over 50 years ago, there remain New Yorkers who continue to love the Dodgers, not just for how they played, but also for what they did for society. Now let’s just hope Manny makes a home for himself in LA, that he enjoys the sunny climate, and doesn’t long to return to Washington Heights.

And I’d also like to see Manny continue his assault on the record books. I’d like to see him play until his 40s, and continue to drive in runs. Jut do it in the National League. The other thing I’d like to see is the Sox start winning on the road. Tonight they’re in Kansas City, playing another of these doormat teams that have give them trouble all season. And they can’t seem to score any runs. I know what you’re thinking, but what’s the point? Someone else will just need to step up to the plate.

Gone

Manny’s gone, just like the Coke bottles. There’s been all kinds of press all week about Manny’s departure. First his discontent, then the public airing of differences, then the rumors, then the trade, and finally the post-mortem. Was it good for the team? Can they ever replace Manny’s spot in the line-up? How does everyone feel about this in the clubhouse? I’ve waxed eloquent on many occasions about Manny’s batting prowess – how he’s one of the top RBI producers in the history of the game – how his numbers can reach rarified heights if he keeps playing for another five years or so. And in years past, I’ve often complained about front office decisions which let good players slip away. Why we never resigned Orlando Cabrera after he helped win the first World series in 86 years. But I’m not going to criticize anyone on this trade. Manny obviously wanted to go, and although he had expressed discontent in the past, it had never before seemed to interfere with either his play or the team. This time, more was going on. You can sense that in the other players’ comments; in the suggestion that the front office solicited certain players’ input. And I’m not even going to suggest we look back, or think about what might have been with the lethal combo of Manny and Papi still in the lineup. Instead, it’s just like the deal of the cards. There’s no sense bemoaning what happened. Let’s just play what we’re dealt.

Meanwhile, we were in Fenway last Monday to see the Sox lose the first game of three to the Angels. It was a game they should have won, even with Dice-K blowing up for one inning, and staking the Angels to a lead. Four innings the Sox left runners in scoring position. There were a couple bad breaks – Lowrie lining the ball hard with two men on base, but hitting it right to the shortstop. Manny got doubled off second. Lowell doing the same in one of the late innings, hitting it right at the left fielder. But there were far too many missed opportunities; too few timely hits.

What I noticed for the first time that night was that the Coke bottles are gone. How did that happen? And how come it happened so silently, so secretively? The Coke bottles had become something of a good luck charm, sitting high above the monster. In 2004, Millar had a game where he hit three home runs, the last of them off one of the Coke bottles. In 2007, Game Seven of the ALCS, after the Sox had blown the game open in the eighth inning, Youk punctuated the victory, put an exclamation point on the pennant, by hitting the Coke bottle off Jensen Lewis. Of course, it occasionally backfired, when some visiting batter would do this, but mostly, it always seemed to me like the Sox were the ones who hit the Coke bottles. Hard to think of two Boston icons disappearing in one season.

Jason Bay endeared himself to the Fenway faithful last night, by scoring both of Boston’s runs in a 2-1 win. And the second run, the walk-off run in the bottom of the twelfth, resulted from Bay running hard on a fly ball off the monster, and ending up on third base. A triple. I noticed that Bay is wearing 44. That’s the number they gave Cabrera when he replaced Nomar in 2004. I think if we get KG to come back to the park and toss out the first pitch, wearing that ring that Russell promised him, or at least a championship T, we can get some of the good karma we need for these next two months. Is that a good plan, or what?