The Official Thread of the 2006 Boston Red Sox

[Westfield Eagle]

Didn't agree with the decision to lift Wakefield after the 8th (even after 107 pitches), but Tavarez' pathetic performance didn't matter in the end.

Question: Does Youkilis bat 2nd when Crisp comes back or does he bat around 7th to give the bottom of the lineup some punch?

[Haunted]

Question: Does Youkilis bat 2nd when Crisp comes back or does he bat around 7th to give the bottom of the lineup some punch?
I'd say drop him. He'll see better pitches there, and will help break up the lineup.

[Blackout]

I think batting Youk 2nd is great, and have been debating it with people all week. Coco is a pure leadoff guy, and with Youk's OBP, the table will be set for papi and Manny. Then hit Lowell/Trot/ Loretta/Tek/AG (I suppose you can flip Tek and Loretta, but I think Loretta is more valuable there than Tek is).

[Haunted]

I think batting Youk 2nd is great, and have been debating it with people all week. Coco is a pure leadoff guy, and with Youk's OBP, the table will be set for papi and Manny. Then hit Lowell/Trot/ Loretta/Tek/AG (I suppose you can flip Tek and Loretta, but I think Loretta is more valuable there than Tek is).
I like having Trot hit 5th. From 3rd on, they go lefty-righty-lefty-righty-switch (Papi, Manny, Trot, Lowell, Tek). Helps prevent other teams from using matchups to a degree (although I feel that's totally overblown). Tek always hit better later in the lineup. Now that I think about it, I'd keep Youks from hitting in front of AG. They know they can walk someone to get to AG (who is a near automatic out). Youkilis is too good a hitter to waste there. Or am I overthinking this?

[Westfield Eagle]

They know they can walk someone to get to AG (who is a near automatic out). Youkilis is too good a hitter to waste there. Or am I overthinking this?

I don't think they'd intentionally walk Youkilis, but I understand what you mean. I like to see the best guys get the most AB's, but having Varitek bat 7th (not Youkilis) could also break up the lineup.

1. Crisp
2. Youkilis
3. Ortiz
4. Ramirez
5. Nixon
6. Lowell
7. Varitek
8. Loretta
9. Gonzalez

I think Loretta can bat 2nd, 6th, or 8th. He is a professional hitter. Lowell and Varitek could be switched.

Positions 1,3,4,5, and 9 should be set in stone as far as I'm concerned.

[Blackout]

WE, I agree with your lineup against righties. I am guessing it's assumed the lineup is jumbled a bit vs. lefties, although I am leaning towards rather seeing Trot just play vs. lefties anywyas.

[Gollywobbler]

No, I don't normally post here, because I generally don't care about Boston baseball.

That said: Lo, and Jake said..."Go Sox." (http://i27.photobucket.com/albums/c200/eaziecheeze/DSCN0124.jpg)

(he's watching tonight's Sox-Rays game)
Nice job; you're certainly raising him right! :D

[Haunted]

WE, I agree with your lineup against righties. I am guessing it's assumed the lineup is jumbled a bit vs. lefties, although I am leaning towards rather seeing Trot just play vs. lefties anywyas.
The way he's been hitting, (and Wily Mo) I agree.

[HEFan4Life]

I think batting Youk 2nd is great, and have been debating it with people all week. Coco is a pure leadoff guy, and with Youk's OBP, the table will be set for papi and Manny. Then hit Lowell/Trot/ Loretta/Tek/AG (I suppose you can flip Tek and Loretta, but I think Loretta is more valuable there than Tek is).


I agree with batting Youk second, but I disagree that coco is a pure leadoff guy. Other than Ortiz he has been the best at driving in runners from scoring percentage over the last two years (even better than Manny!) and he has some pop. He is fast so he is the "typical" leadoff type of player, but in reality he may be best suited in the 6/7 spot. His speed down there could help too, you dont need a ton of speed to score on an ortiz/manny home run, but speed could help scoring on a Lowell/Loretta/Agon double off the monster. I expect something more like this however:

Crisp
Loretta
Papi
Manny
Nixon
V-tek
Lowell
Youkilis
A-gon

[Haunted]

Sox ... on FM in Boston? link (http://www.insidethemonster.com/)

92.9 to change formats, and broadcast the Red Sox, and BC. Not sure when this will actually happen.

[Murray]

Sox ... on FM in Boston? link (http://www.insidethemonster.com/)

92.9 to change formats, and broadcast the Red Sox, and BC. Not sure when this will actually happen.
If it's true it is great news. Those nitwits who cater to the lowest common denominator and have a signal that can't be heard after sundown are finally getting a dose of their own medicine.

It's also good news for college hockey. WEEI relegated college sports to the bottom of the dumpster. Most BC games were aired on two small AM channels that, literally, couldn't be picked up in the BC parking lot.

[Rolevio]

Sox ... on FM in Boston? link (http://www.insidethemonster.com/)

92.9 to change formats, and broadcast the Red Sox, and BC. Not sure when this will actually happen.

If I remember right (and I rarely do) WEEI's contract ends after this season, and the new deal will include the Red Sox buying an ownership stake in WBOS.

I couldn't be happier, besides hating WEEI, I can't pick it up on my radio at work, so I have to go by ESPN's gamecast for afternoon games.

[Rolevio]

Looked it up and it will be for next spring. Apparently WCRB is going under, and WBOS will move it's current format over to 102.5FM, and 92.9FM will be an all new sports channel.

http://www.bostonradiowatch.com/

[Blackout]

A great piece on Fenway today in the New York Times. Read and weep CAH:

The temples of sport are hallowed by time
Christopher Clarey

BOSTON I haven't made it to Augusta National Golf Club to watch the Masters. I haven't trekked to King Fahd International Stadium in Riyadh to beat the desert heat under its spectacular canopy. I have yet to see Manchester United at Old Trafford or a match at New Wembley (then again, nobody has).

But in nearly 20 years of tracking the bouncing balls, reverberating scandals and fluctuating fortunes of the globe's games, I have managed to work my way into a fair number of world sport's secular and not-so-secular temples. Last week, I walked through the turnstiles and the dimly lit concourses and back into one of my brick-covered favorites: Fenway Park, home to the Boston Red Sox since 1912.

Fenway's enduring appeal has a lot to do with enduring. In a nation increasingly awash in retro baseball stadiums, it is the real deal: a cozy, quirky place whose quirks, like its towering, 37-foot, or 11.3-meter, left-field wall, actually had a valid architectural reason for existing apart from the desire to stir warm, fuzzy and exploitable feelings about a supposedly simpler time.

The difference between Fenway and its imitators is the difference between an antique and an antique reproduction, and if ticket prices are among the highest in major league baseball, that is probably a price worth paying to sit in the smallest, most genuinely atmospheric stadium in the major leagues: one that happily has yet to trade its original name for a corporate sponsor. And shouldn't antiques cost more than reproductions anyway?

Once the Red Sox owners abandoned their benighted plan to build a new Fenway with all the bells and whistles and none of the history, there has been plenty of profit-minded tinkering in the old, no longer musty ball yard. There are now seats atop the Green Monster; now dining tables with panoramic views in the right-field bleachers. But the core of the emerald-tinted place remains with its solid oak seats, zigzagging outfield fence, manual scoreboard and obstructed views behind the pillars, which certainly seem much quainter to those whose views are unobstructed.
The club's current ownership - which, in the interest of full disclosure, includes The New York Times Company, owner of the International Herald Tribune - finally figured out what too many owners have failed to grasp in the mercenary sports world. With the right general manager, you can rebuild a team in a hurry, but it takes so much longer to rebuild a deep connection between a public and its place of pilgrimage.

Just ask Juventus officials, who altered the pilgrimage route 15 years ago but still haven't persuaded the Turinese to make a ritual of the trek to their often empty Stadio delle Alpi.

Arsenal executives are understandably excited about their shiny new 60,000-seat Emirates Stadium, which is set to open in London next season. But the thousands of fans with deep-seated connections to Highbury will not get quite the same high from visiting the apartment complex that will replace their beloved stadium, even if the garden square in the residential facility will feature stone paths designed to echo the demolished field's chalk lines.
Sports nostalgia without the sports seems quite beside the point.
Listen to Red Sox fans, and they'll talk about "going to Fenway" more than they'll talk about going to see the Red Sox. When I went to Fenway with my friend Doug Robie and his father and three brothers, the Robie clan seemed to take as much delight in the view as they did in the game. It is the stadium and the memories, pleasant or unpleasant, generated within it that has the emotional resonance. In a world of salary caps and free agency, the infielders and outfielders are going to turn over on a too regular basis, but there is something deeply reassuring in limiting the profound change to the lineup.
True, Boston is a particularly traditional part of the world, one where terms like "development" are close to dirty words. In developing countries that are proud to be developing, the idea of abandoning an old stadium to build something glittering and bold often sounds irresistible.

As too many an Asian capital shows, the rush to modernize can strip a place of its soul, and sports venues are part of a patrimony, too, just like covered markets and shop houses.

This is not a plea for no progress. It is still a definite buzz to spend an evening in the Stade de France in Paris, which was built for the 1998 World Cup that Zinedine Zidane and France, with perfect timing, won. Who didn't get chills as they sat in the new Olympic Stadium in Athens under Santiago Calatrava's grand roof and watched the opening ceremony of the Summer Games in 2004? Who can doubt that the new Allianz Arena in Munich will be a glowing success at this summer's World Cup?

But as I sift through the memories of a career, the sports temples that have left the deepest impression have been the ones with the surplus of ghosts; the spots where you can feel something stirring even if you might be the only one in the seats or on the fairway.

Places like St. Andrews or Muirfield or Prestwick; places like Santiago Bernabéu in Madrid or the Mestalla in Valencia; places like Lansdowne Road in Dublin or the long, winding downhill course in Wengen, Switzerland.
One of my rituals upon arriving at Wimbledon is to walk into Centre Court on the weekend before the tournament opens and spend a few minutes staring out at that pristine green rectangle, thinking back on the Lavers and Samprases. One of my rituals before leaving Wimbledon after the men's singles final is to do the same thing.

Give me something cramped with character instead of something with more leg room, plenty of parking and a shortage of echoes. Give me renovation instead of demolition. Give me respect for the past instead of blind faith in the future.

Give me Fenway and all its quirks on a surprisingly warm April night instead of a cheaper seat somewhere else with no risk of an obstructed view.

[Haunted]

A great piece on Fenway today in the New York Times. Read and weep CAH:
Not a bad read, but they need to fire all their editors and get ones that speak English.

[Haunted]

And Manny hits #200 in a Red Sox uniform, his 1st of the year.

NESN flashed a stat that Manny is only the 4th Major Leaguer to hit 200 home runs for 2 different teams. Jimmy Foxx, Mike Maguire ;) , Rafael Palmeiro, and now Manny. Take out the 2 cheaters, and that means Manny's the 1st non-steroid riddled player to do it since Jimmy Foxx.

Don't ever trade Manny. Ever.

[Westfield Eagle]

Don't ever trade Manny. Ever.

That ship has sailed. Nobody would take the contract. How many years left does he have anyway?

[Haunted]

That ship has sailed. Nobody would take the contract. How many years left does he have anyway?
2 after this I believe

[BCeagle]

What a turn around, Youkilis had a chance to put the game away with bases loaded. Now Becket has given up 2 HR's to make it 6-5 bottom of 8th with 1 out. Sox were leading 6-2.

Another Jay HR, tied 6-6 with only 1 out, man on 1st. Timlin gave up the tieing HR to Glaus.

[Haunted]

What a turn around, Youkilis had a chance to put the game away with bases loaded. Now Becket has given up 2 HR's to make it 6-5 bottom of 8th with 1 out. Sox were leading 6-2.
Make that a tie game. :rolleyes: