Two out of three, anyway, and in the process they hit five home runs off Josh Beckett and pushed the Sox to 7.5 games back. The Yanks now have eight players with at least 15 home runs.
Everything can change in the playoffs, of course. But this doesn’t look like the Sox’s year, does it?
Jamaica, 1999
I recently found in a kitchen drawer an old disposable camera with some undeveloped film. Turned out to be from a trip to Jamaica I took a decade ago. The trip came at a rough time for me, and I think this photo was an attempt at being optimistic.
That said, it’s your zen.
TGN: There are blue whales off Santa Barbara. Blue whales!
Blue whales lunge-feed vertically on half-inch krill. An occasional fin surfaces in the distance. Humpback whales interact with passengers by slapping pectoral fins and revealing their flukes, often in unison.
“They have a real interest in whale watchers,” [boat operator] Curto said of the humpback whales. “And I find that the more the whale watchers react to the whale, the more the whale will react to the whale watchers.”
TBN: They’re in danger of being hit by ships….
Known collisions involving blue whales — the smaller, quicker humpback whales are less vulnerable — occur at a rate of less than one per year, but scientists believe the number of actual ship strikes to be much higher. And because of present conditions, some fear a repeat of 2007, when krill appeared in the shipping lanes for weeks, and at least four blue whales were struck and killed in the channel.
There’s a solution…but the whales need a little help from the government.
I’m fascinated by the “most e-mailed” sections of newspaper websites, because they usually reveal a gap between what editors find important and what readers find interesting.
Here, for example, is the most e-mailed story from the Los Angeles Times’ site.
My brother and I have an ongoing debate about the merits of Alfonso Soriano, the former Yankees second baseman who now plays left field for the Cubs. It’s a pretty savage debate. My brother likes cheap thrills home runs, which Soriano hit a lot of, while I prefer the subtler, more artistic aspects of the game. Plus, Soriano struck out about 1000 times a season.
So when the Yankees traded Soriano to Texas in the 2004 deal that brought them A-Rod, I was A-okay with that. My brother, not so much. He’s still griping.
The Rangers traded Soriano to the Nats, and then in 2007 he signed with the Cubs for eight years and about $136 million. Currently, he stinks.
So I recently met a woman from Chicago who’s a big Cubbies fan and we were talking baseball while riding in a taxi from the airport and she told me this pretty good story about Soriano.
She was at a Cubs game with a friend of hers, an attractive woman, and they were sitting behind the Cubs dugout when a team employee walked up to her friend.
Alfonso Soriano had seen the friend in the stands and wondered if he could get her number, the Cubs lackey (you have to feel sorry for the guy) told her.
Flattered, she thought, Why not?, and jotted down her cell number.
An inning or so later—which is to say, in the middle of the game—her phone rang. It was Soriano calling from the dugout.
A true baseball fan–I love this woman—she was so appalled at Soriano’s lack of dedication to the task at hand (winning) that she turned him down.
Could you imagine Derek Jeter doing that? No. And that’s why Derek Jeter is the captain of the Yankees and Alfonso Soriano has played for four teams in five years. Regardless, it’s a pretty good story.
Bad guys versus good guys at Fenway.
Both teams are coming into the weekend series hot. The Sox just swept the Blue Jays, while the Yankees took two of three from Oakland and are 25-8 since the All-Star break . New York leads Boston by 6.5 games in the standings. The Sox would be happy to take two out of three, but a sweep would be much more helpful.
Will it happen? Hmmm. Tonight features Andy Pettitte, who has been lights-out, as they say, since the All-Star game, and Tim Brad Penny, who has been lit up.
Then again, the Yankees are returning from a West Coast trip, so they might be a little tired, and playing in Fenway, where they usually get pounded.
One of the nice things about this season for Yankees fans has been that the likeability factor of the two teams has been reversed. The Yankees, often seen as a cold and imperious group, have become fun, thanks in large part to a bunch of homegrown talent and the jovial presence of former Oakland A Nick Swisher, who also happens to have 20 homers.
Meanwhile, the Sox are struggling under the weight of steroids and lies and also feature some of baseball’s most unlikeable players, such as Kevin Youkilis and J.D. Drew.
Youkilis in 2007, before his beard made him look even uglier
Meanwhile, the Yankees are featuring a bunch of players who are just having great seasons: Mark Texeira, Derek Jeter (love that he’s hitting .330), Johnny Damon (who’s now surpassed his Red Sox numbers), Phil Hughes, Mariano Rivera (31 straight saves!), Robinson Cano…
Right now, everything is clicking for the Bronx Bombers. The pressure’s on Boston.
In the Globe, Sage Stossell has some fun with Harvard’s new clothing line. And why not?
Meanwhile, some Harvard students lament that an expensive line of Evelyn Waugh-esque men’s clothing doesn’t really represent the Harvard that they attend—or want to attend.
“I’m not white, I’m not a male, and I don’t want to feel I don’t belong at Harvard.”
The Globe also reports that more semi-retired political hacks have found a soft landing at the Kennedy School.
In another example of the Globe’s editorial decline, the paper describes one of them, Stephanie Cutter, as a former adviser to Barack Obama, when her far more relevant identity is as a long-term aide to Ted Kennedy, whom the K-School surely hopes will be a major source of funding in the near future. (The paper didn’t seem to know who Desiree Goodwin is, either.)
Sloppy, sloppy Globe.
(Full disclosure: Cutter once essentially lied about me in the New York Times—I say “essentially” because she deliberately came as close to lying as she could without actually doing so—which, yes, still irritates me. I can’t help it: I’m a Scorpio.* We have long memories.)
Meanwhile, Harvard has appointed a new executive v-p, Katherine Lapp, to replace the departing Ed Forst. Since 2007 Lapp has been executive v-p for business operations for the University of California.
Hmmm. So…no apparent knowledge of Harvard. And Harvard is replacing a guy who bailed on his job after one year with a woman who’s bailing on her job…after two years.
Harvard Mag also reports…
…from 2002 to 2007, she was executive director and chief executive officer of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority…
…which, I can assure you, is not a compliment: the MTA is a disaster in every aspect of its operations. But perhaps Lapp will have better luck making the trains run on time in Cambridge than she did in New York.
The good news for Harvard is that it is still winning the perception/reality game: US News ranks it #1, tied with Princeton, in its ranking of the best colleges.
On the other hand, the American Council of Trustees and Alumni issued a competing ranking system in which it gave Harvard a “D.”
“Will they be able to come out writing a coherent paragraph or doing basic math?” [council president Anne] Neal said. “What we’ve found is that the higher the tuition, the higher the chance students will be left to themselves to determine the nature of their education.”
If that is indeed a correlation, rather than a coincidence, that is fascinating and raises all sorts of interesting questions.
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*Scorpios are the most intense, profound, powerful characters in the zodiac. Even when they appear self-controlled and calm there is a seething intensity of emotional energy under the placid exterior….
A funny story about a dysfunctional team.
A depressing story about a dysfunctional culture in which murderers are hailed as heroes.
Watch how the attack dogs at Fox present Barney Frank’s response to a protester who compared Obama to the Nazis—by ignoring deleting the fact that she compared Obama to the Nazis.
I mean, one shouldn’t be surprised by Fox, but this might be a new low.