Skip Maloney's Boston Red Sox fan blog

Caught my first Boston Red Sox spring training game today on MLB.TV and truth be told, it was a yawner. Ended up 8-4, Yanks; a score that was on the board by the bottom of the fourth inning, rendering the remainder of the broadcast something of an exercise for the announcers, Michael O'Kay and John O'Flaherty (it being St. Patrick's Day, they both added "O"s to the front of their last names.). Having lived in New York for the last 15 years or so, I heard and saw a lot of these two (Flaherty, less. Kay is usually teamed with Paul O'Neill or Al Leiter). Every time the Sox and Yankees got together, I'd be listening to them instead of Joe Castglione and Jerry Remy. Kay and Flaherty are Yankee partisans, of course, but they're also professionals and Michael Kay, in particular, is a first class announcer. He used to do 'color' with John Sterling on New York radio. Sterling is more of an obvious Yankee fan than Kay, with an annoying habit of making routine plays into headline news with phony rhymes. Matsui hits a home run and we hear "A Thrilla from Godzilla." Alex Rodriguez hits a home run and we get "An A-Bomb from A-Rod." And when the Yankees win, he has this annoying habit of saying "The -ah-ah-ah-ah-ah Yankees win."

Continue reading "And so it begins. . .Boston Red Sox vs. New York Yankees"

           Whew! We got that out of the way.

           Papelbon is signed. I’m not sure I would have survived an entire season without a glimpse of him in red socks, doing the Funky Chicken again. If I’m dating myself with the archaic dance, so be it. I’m convinced that if he were in pinstripes and did one of those dances, or any other form of eccentric behavior for which he’s known, on a Yankee mound, George Steinbrenner would go into cardiac arrest.

           Seriously, folks, Papelbon, Pedroia and Ellsbury are signed, and while it settles in as something of a ‘no-brainer’ for the Boston Red Sox, hearing of their contracts led to a collective Red Sox Nation sigh of relief that made surfboarder waves as far south as Charleston, SC. We have faith in Theo and company, it’s just that we breathe easier as, not before, the ink on the contract is drying.

Continue reading "Pap, the Funky Chicken and oh my God, here comes Shakespeare again!"

           The arrest of a Boston Red Sox scout in a Port St. Lucie hotel was stuck at the very bottom of a story by Gordon Edes in the Boston Globe today; a sort of  ‘Oh, and by the way, they arrested a Red Sox scout for ‘lewd and lascivious’ behavior.’ (Not an Edes quote).

Holy Cow. . or Mackerel . .or Guacamole, what was that all about?

So, a little research and there it is in the Globe and Herald and on the MLB Web site - “Red Sox scout . . .arrested.”

They published his name, of course. A mistake I prefer not to make. It is, at the time these reports were published unclear exactly what happened. The citizens that complained about his behavior have their story. The scout has his.

Continue reading "An accusation, a rush to judgement and a Boston Red Sox 'Scouts honor'. . ."

The recent induction of "The Spaceman" Bill Lee to the Boston Red Sox Hall of Fame brought on a flood of memories, which, in addition to putting a smile on my face, brought to mind a rather cogent fact of Red Sox Nation life: We have always LOVED our characters; the stranger the better, it would seem, and Lee would have to rank up there among the strangest.

There were characters like Mo Vaughn, who looked like the side of a large barn, but could scoop up balls around first base like he was a skinny teenager. And he used to wear these enormous necklaces made out of some animal's teeth that were pretty frightening.

And outfielder, Jimmy Piersall (the subject of the film, "Fear Strikes Out"), who played pretty steadily between 1952 and 1958, and was known, thanks to a bipolar disorder, to do very odd things, like climb foul poles, wear a wig, shoot water pistols, and once, in 1952, got into a fistfight with Billy Martin, when he was a Yankee infielder.

Continue reading "The Spaceman, Manny being Manny and the dancing Papelbon"

Pitchers and catchers report today (Thursday). There’ll be physicals on Friday and on Saturday, they’ll take to the field at City of Palms Park in Fort Myers, FL. Position players will report next Wednesday and be a part of the first full-squad workout two days later. Workout portions of this annual routine will actually take place at a nearby minor league facility, but hey. . who’s keeping track?

The Boston Red Sox are back, Jack, and that’s all that counts right now.

That said, there isn’t (nor has there been) very much to say until someone gets out onto the field and starts to play, for as we all know, there have been Very few changes in the Sox lineup and they will take to the 2008 fields of play with virtually the same weapons, albeit a year older, than the ones they wielded when they whooped for joy last October in Colorado.

Continue reading "Roger Clemens meets William Shakespeare"

With all indications that the Boston Red Sox will hit the field in 2008 with the exact same lineup as they did last October, I thought I'd take a look at that 2007 team and see just what the package consisted of.

It was, first of all, a team with a .287 batting average. Ortiz led the pack with his .332 average, which tied him with three others in the major leagues for 7th place. Lowell checked in with a .324 average (14th, overall) and the rookie, Pedroia, rounded out the starting lineup's members of the .300 (or more) club by batting .317 (20th, overall). Those three batters boosted the team average up about 20 points, since the remaining batters averaged out at .269. If the entire team were thought of as a single player in the batting average department, they'd rank 74th in MLB.

Continue reading "If the Boston Red Sox were a 'single' player, how good would they be?"

From a Boston Red Sox fan to the New York Giants and the legions of their fans:

Congratulations! You not only beat the Patriots, you beat them convincingly in one of the best Super Bowl games ever. Have a good time parading down the Canyon of Heroes tomorrow.

Continue reading "Congratulations!!"

Sean Casey, who helped the Tigers win their title in '06, is now a member of the Boston Red Sox, so I went fishing for a performance 'snapshot' of him to see what we were getting for our $800,000.

He broke in with the Indians back in '97, but only played in 6 games. He went on to the Cincinnati Reds and as the 20th century turned into the 21st, he'd managed to elevate his batting average into the 300s for three straight years. He's still a lifetime .300 hitter, though just (.301).

He had a short love affair with the home run ball. Between '99 and '04, right in the middle of his career, he hit 104 of them (17+/year). He's hit 28 of them in the other five years of his career.

 I thought it might be interesting to look at him from the standpoint of where he would 'sit' in the Red Sox roster; in other words, using his performance last year with the Tigers, where would each of his stats place him in the Red Sox roster.

Continue reading "Casey at the Bat"

While one of the major themes surrounding this year's Boston Red Sox team is going to be 'continuity,' with virtually every member of the team back to quest for a third title in five years, there will be some spring training battles that will determine who gets to do what.

There'll be a struggle to determine the team's fifth starter (Jon Lester or Clay Buchholz), which I touched on previously and there'll be an even more striking struggle out at center field as management works at a decision between Coco Crisp and the new kid on the block, Jacoby Ellsbury.

There are pros and cons on each side of the equation. On the surface, Crisp has the experience; 6 major league seasons, four with the Indians and the last two, with the Sox. On the Ellsbury side, you have a rookie who batted .353 playing in about 20% of last year's games. Then, too, he did bat .438 in the World Series (.360 overall in the post-season).

Continue reading "Is Coco 'crisp' enough?"

  With less than a month to go before the Boston Red Sox open up their spring training schedule with two, split-squad exhibition games at Boston College and Northeastern (Feb. 28th), it's time, perhaps to take a quick gander at what's on the near horizon.

   At the core of any team looking to compete effectively in the major leagues is the pitching staff and with Josh Beckett and Dice-K as the Sox' 1-2 punch in the rotation, things are already looking good. Beckett ended up second in last year's Cy Young voting and, of course, went 4-0 in the post-season with a 1.20 ERA. Dice-K (Daisuke Matsuzaka) didn't have the 'super season' that management expected when they paid all those millions; first, just for the right to talk to him and then, with his contract, but he did end up winning 15 games and getting those 201 strikeouts. Expect him to have gotten over his 'cultural' adjustments and improve on that record. Then there's Schilling, who's heading into the proverbial twilight of his career (he's said that he'll retire after this season, but can you say 'Clemens'?). He seems to have figured out how to make adjustments that continue to make him a threat to opposing batters. And knuckleballer Tim Wakefield, who won two more games than Dice-K last year, will be back. Rumors are that he'll play until he's about 65. There'll be a struggle for the fifth position in the rotation with lefty Jon Lester and right-hander Clay Buchholz leading the pack.

Continue reading "Getting closer"