They're winning but I'm concerned

Well, it's late June and my Red Sox are in first place but my pre-2004 worries are coming back. If it weren't for J.D. Drew and a somewhat steady pitching staff I doubt that first place would even be on the radar screen. I watched both games on ESPN this week and it was clear that not having Big Papi even in the lineup, let alone 100%, could have made a huge difference against Herren on Monday. What last night showed me is that Randy Johnson has become a smarter pitcher than he was before. However, his velocity and slider location are more in the average range and that's what hurt him last night. Tim Wakefield is fun to watch. There are, what? maybe three pitchers who currently throw the knuckler? When Wakefield retires I wonder if we'll ever see the knuckle ball again. He made their hitters look silly, almost like a bugs bunny routine trying to swat the "slow-ball".

Back to the point, the Red Sox are in trouble. They have a decent makeshift lineup and their pitching has been mostly reliable (though the bull-pen is sketchy), BUT, without Dice-K, Schilling, Ortiz, and Buckholtz this team is going to struggle. If they can't win on the road consistently they will not make the Wild Card, let alone win the AL East. The most pleasant surprise this season has been watching Jacoby Elsbury - he already owns the rookie record for steals by a Red Sox player and I see him possibly joining the 30/30 club (the last Red Sox player to do that was Tommy Harper I believe, back in the 1970's). He has great instincts on picking up where the pitcher is going from the stretch. The fact that the Red Sox aren't the team I always knew (slow, slower, and slowest but could hit home runs) is in many ways a lot of fun. I don't feel as nostalgic for the days of Fisk, Lynn, Rice, Remy, Burleson, Hobson, Scott, Evans and whatever farm hand they used on the mound. Speed opens up so many possibilities and creates the opportunity to manufacture runs if your big hitters aren't doing it for you. Having Crisp and Lugo is also a plus since both have good speed (though Lugo needs to hit better, my word, his paycheck is not deserved).

With all that in mind I can see the Sox being competitive, but I suspect that if Ortiz doesn't make it back and if Dice-K is really injured it will not be another repeat of an AL title.

Manny - summer and silly Washington area fans

Well, Manny Ramirez has reached and surpassed the 500 homer threshold. I didn't like him much when he was in Cleveland since he killed the Sox in the playoffs, however, he's become something altogether different from those days. Joe Morgan on ESPN loves Manny - it's fun to listen to Morgan do color/commentary instead of Tim McCarver (cannot stand the man, plus the fact that he's a HUGE anti-Red Sox commentator - he had to eat so much crow when the Sox came back in 2004 over the Yankees). Manny did it in the Red Sox's second home, Camden Yards, with their favorite punching bag providing the fun. I watched all of the games and it is still amusing to me to see the huge amount of Sox fans in the seats in Oriole Park (official name of the baseball field). I went to Memorial Stadium when I first moved to the DC area and I found myself and maybe three others in the whole place who had Sox paraphernalia on. Nowadays the reverse is true, where there are so few O's fans you have to really look hard to find black and orange (horrible colors) apparel on someone not hawking it to someone else.

I get a kick out of listening to Jim Palmer talk about the Red Sox, he's really a big fan of how they do baseball and not a fan of the current Orioles (or for the past six years it seems) crew they've got going. That's my impression from listening to him this past weekend, even when the O's won on Monday night (let's see, lose three straight and then win one, yeah, that'll keep you in last place). Palmer is so nostalgic for the "Oriole Way", too bad that the team hasn't had a winning season since, um, was Clinton president then?
Washington area fans spend so much time on the Redskins here that they miss out on baseball and other diversions. I've never seen such homers in my life. Oh, wait, that's right, I have, but that's for another time. DC United has won four championships in the past 12 years, the Redskins have made the playoffs three times in the same time frame. Do Washington fans even know that? I highly doubt it. When it comes to baseball Washington fans are ambivalent at best (I'd venture slightly retarded at times) which is unfortunate because the Nationals are a decent mediocre team. Kinda like Houston really, nice ballpark but the product between the lines will lose more than win but are gamers mostly. With a huge potential fan base the Nationals are poised to become a 2nd tier team (up from bleacher bench seats) - they'll not get much higher until they start trading for pitching and start building some good support minor league teams. The Washington Post does some fair coverage of the Nats but I get the impression they're waiting for the prom queen to take off her brassiere and prance around center field. The cynicism in regards to the nationals is really annoying. The Post or the Times will do everything possible to have kids over the Redskins and the Nats are acknowledged as a strange relative even though their stadium is better, is better situated, and has better food.

Summer is here again and my oldest just finished his second soccer season. I have high hopes for him and I am trying not to be the pyscho dad (which is doubly hard since I'm now an assistant coach). He's going to soccer camp this summer (I hope he has a blast). My youngest is already out of school and so I've got figure out what he can do, maybe I'll sign him up for tots practice this fall. The hot weather arrived yesterday and the obligatory thunderstorm struck as well (some poor woman got killed by a tree yesterday). DC gets so hot during the summer - the only other place I've been to where it's hotter is the Gulf Coast where the sweat streams out of your body like water fountain. I'm hoping that it will cool off a little bit this summer - another hot summer will kill my $$$ (which I have almost zero anyways). I look forward to a fun summer and maybe I can keep losing weight, but that's for another time.