Give That Man a Hug

To celebrate the absolute absurdity and beauty of baseball, vote for your favorite Sox hairstyle.

Obviously Johnny Damon is in a rough spot right now. But, I'm glad to see he still has a sense of humor about it all:

"It's awful," Damon said. "I'm having the worst series of my life right now. But you know what, maybe it's a blessing in disguise. Maybe it will turn around real good. Not getting that bunt down, most of Boston wanted to have me hung -- and I wanted to help them out."

Maybe scoring the winning run last night will give him the jump start he needs. Or maybe it'll be the sweet hug from Dougie Mientkiewicz. Either way, my confidence in Damon is as high as ever - he will come through for them.

And the work of Tim Wakefield and Terry Francona certainly deserves this spotlight. I'm not sure who told David Ortiz he should steal second last night (was it Francona or Big Papi himself?), but I still maintain it was a brilliant, unexpected move. The man was safe.

Some birthday analysis for you: Yesterday was Doug Mirabelli's birthday and today is Keith Foulke's. Trot Nixon and Jason Varitek were born exactly two years apart. Dave Roberts was born the day after Manny Ramirez in the same year - 1972. Don't tell me this all doesn't mean something.

One more quote from Roger Angell's The Summer Game (with some necessary modifications):

Reasonable hope cannot be constructed out of such a sad pile of feathers [the '67 Sox], but the lifelong Red Sox fan is not a reasonable woman. In her is the perpetual memory of a dozen seasons when the best of hopes went for nothing, so why is she not to believe that the worst of prospects may suddenly reward her fealty?...I have studied the diehard Boston fan for many summers. I have seen the tiny, mineral-hard gleam of hope in her eye as she pumps gas under the blighted elms of a New Hampshire village or sells a pair of moccasins to a tourist in the balsam-smelling dimness of her Down East store, listening the while to the unceasing ribbon of bad news by radio from Fenway Park. Inside her head, I am sure, there is a perpetual accompanying broadcast of painful and maddening import - a lifetime's amalgam of ill-digested sports headlines, between-innings commercials, and Fenway Park bleacher cries... (pp. 174-75).

...of "We believe!"