a700hitter

Just crushing Francis and he is the best that they have.

Unbelievable start! Beckett strikes out the side looking overpowering throwing blue smoke. Pedroia leads off with a HR. The last Red Sox to hit a HR in his first AB I think was Jose Santiago in 1967. Pedroia and Youkilis are on fire. Let's hope the weather hold out.

Yes, many times. In 1975 there were probably two rainouts and in 1986, game 7 was rained out

Are they waiting for the rain before they start?

The endorsements always diminish after retirement. When is the last time you saw a Bo Jackson commercial. Joe will fast become yesterdays news. He'll miss that $5 million and he'll regret having walked away from his dream job-- his identity. What a schmuck. He reacted emotionally, like a petulant child. Goodbye Joe.

Since there are no extra days off besides the travel days, he'd have to start both games 4 and 7 on short rest.

Now, he has no $5 million job and his endorsements will dry up a year sooner. He doesn't have to worry about the sword hanging over his head.

Torre will be quite surprised when his endorsements and speaking engagements start to dry up, because he is now a non-entity that he is no longer the Yankee manager. He's nothing without the Yankees. They owed him nothing. It was the other way around. He owed it to the Yankees to go out with some dignity instead of as an ungrateful whiner. Buck Showalter, who had a much shorter but very popular stint as Yankee manager, made appearance on Seinfeld and Saturday Night Live etc. What appearances has he made since leaving the Yankees? The same will happen to the arrogant Mr. Torre.

Yes, injury would be the one and only reason to sit him down.

Ortiz doesn't sit in October..ever, unless he can't play due to injury. Just having him in the order makes pitchers quake. Teams prepare their game plan around him. He is not judged on whether he is hot or not. He is an upper echelon SuperStar insane hitter that can wreck an opposing teams pitching. This lineup has two superstars-- Ortiz and Manny. Everyone else is somewhere between good and very very good, maybe even excellent. You don't sit down one of your superstars in a big game. Unfortunately, Youk and Lowell will have to split the time. Whether Lowell sits will depend on how Drew is doing. If Drew is hot, he'll provide enough protection for Manny.

Anyone connected with the 2004 team has a lifetime of admiration from me, but had it not been for the 2006 embarrassment engineered by a bungling FO that was more interested in power struggles than building a winning team, I don't think you would have seen the investment in the 2007 team that started in the Winter and has continued throughout the season with the acquisition of Gagne. Those bold moves I believe were directly attributable to John Henry stepping forward. Granted that some of those moves have not borne fruit. Theo to his credit took responsibilty for 2006. He made no excuses about retooling, etc. He called them what they were: bad moves and mistakes. He has rebounded nicely. If we win another World Championship, hopefully this time the FO will think more about continuing to build the franchise than fighting over the spoils of victory. As for Youkilis, he is beloved by the fans, but he is a .260-.280 hitting first baseman/ third baseman with limited power (but who could tell after the Coke Bottle shot), but he has nerves of steel and balls the size of melons. He's a great value right now, but they should probably consider trading him while his value is high and before he starts asking for Superstar $. That may not be for a year or two, but he would be a very valuable trading chip. As for Pedroia, he has the one thing that scouts can't see or evaluate, the heart of a 6'5" warrior in a 5'5" body.

You gotta love Millar throwing out the first pitch. You know that he must have had the guys loose before the game. I miss that nut.

He is very talented, and right now he is hot. There is no reason to crack on him. He gets a mulligan for the regular season. If he stays healthy, he should be better next year. This was a year of adjustments and personal family problems.

If they let Lowell walk, they had better have a deal in place for ARod. I think lowell is a pretty smart cookie and he knows that Fenway and this roster is made for him to perform well. He's healthy, no bad knees or anything and he's only 33. If he takes a two year deal from Boston with an option and he does well, he'll still have plenty of teams offering him multi-year deals afterward. If he goes someplace else that doesn't have a good offensive supporting cast and maybe in a pitcher's park, his performance could become very mediocre and after the extra year of the deal he could find that his market value has fallen.

What is the under/over on Beckett dropping the F bomb in his acceptance.

Ortiz and manny are go to be called the little guys after tonight.

Youk and Pedroia are animals!!!

Man of the year.

Wedge pissed me off after game 3 for cracking on his hitters for not having made adjustments against Beckett. I thought that was really low rent. That ******* had probably less than 300 major league ABs and he's telling them how to hit f***ing Beckett.