Halfway There

October 29-February 14: 109 days

December 20-February 14: 55 days

As Maddie so excellently put it:

On February 14, some guy will come up to me and say, "Um, hi Maddie, do you know what day it is?" And I'll reply, "Yep! Pitchers and catchers report today!"

Red Sox Random Picture Day

Guess what? Liza got Photoshop for Hanukkah! But she made these before, with Gimp, and anyway, she's gonna stop talking in third person now.

So, after the Sox won, I got the (crazy) idea that I would make a 1024x768 (wallpaper size) image for every single guy on the 25-man roster (plus Buchholz and Wake, 'cause) But then I got lazy and it got repetitive and Yahoo sports took down the photos of the baseball players. But here are five, in the order that I made them.













Also, for a bonus, here's a couple more Sox Photoshoppings.

Bobby "One Swing" Kielty*

Clay Buchholz Blue
Clay Buchholz Red**

Beckett Boot Camp?***

FISTPUMP****

2007/8 Rookies*****


If anyone wants me to make them a custom wallpaper or anything else, just leave a comment or email me or something. Although I probably won't get to it until Friday or sometime over vacation--stupid essays!




*Only I would include the Sox, LotR, and Idina Menzel lyrics in the same piece, huh? Lyrics are "This is the moment/I stand here on my own/This is my right of passage/That somehow leads me home", from her new song Brave. Done in Gimp like a week into November.

**These were/are a commission from SoxxGirl. :)

***After TG from Center Field (arguably the best Red Sox blog out there, check 'er out!) said she just knew that Beckett was imagining those horns strapped to Clay's head and I had a free couple hours on a Friday, so ta-daa. Done in Gimp as well, and don't mind Beckett's foot and butt--I had to make those from scratch. >.> And Gimp doesn't have a very good clone tool.

****An I Can Has Cheezburger?-esque interpretation of the infamous fistpump.

*****I was going to make a blog called "Rookie Nation" and it was going to be about rookies, because they are just awesome as a species, except then I realized that every year's rookies change a lot (and there will never, ever be another Jacoby Ellsbury), and also that Blogger's custom layouts are really, really hard to code.

Post-Hanukkah Baseball Wishlist

In the spirit of a recent post from Ladies..., I've decided to post my own Top 10 Gifts Red Sox Wishlist! Seeing as how Hanukkah's already over, my chances of getting any of these before my birthday (early June, for the record) are approximately zero. Although, if anyone wants to get me a late present, that would be just fine with me! (Yes, they're all from the official MLB Sox store.)

1. Red Sox body pillow: $24. I honestly have wanted one of these obscenely huge body pillows for a long time. This one's 19x54 inches, which is like 13 inches shorter than me/Dustin Pedroia on a bad day. How awesome would that be? It's kind of like my own personal stuffed mini-Pedroia. I can just imagine he's short because he's closer to my age. ;D

2. Red Sox paper lanterns: $19 each. What sunlight? I've got a soxlight!

3. Red Sox fans parking sign: $40. It says, "RED SOX FANS PARKING: YANKEE FANS GO HOME." This would go right over my head, next to my poster of Tek screaming at A-Rod (right before he punches him--this one was courtesy of the Globe a couple years back).

4. Womens' Red Sox jersey: $60. Why do I STILL not have one of these?

5. Big B shirt: $30. It's men's. What do I care? It's awesome, and "cut smaller than most tees" so I guess it'd fit me okay.

6. Baseball seam big B bracelet: $12. I've wanted to have one of these for a while. I never wear bracelets in general, but this one, I would wear.

7. The awesomest t-shirt ever made, ever: $20. I. WANT NEED. THIS. NOW.

8. 2007 Facsimile Autographed Baseball: $8. I don't care if it's fake, it looks like it has all the guys' signatures on it. And it's $8, too.

9. 2007 Red Sox Monopoly: $35. I mean, really. Wasn't this specially made for me or something?

10. Autographed Celebratory World Champions Picture: $4,000. If I had a whole lot of extra money, I would definitely buy this one. No questions asked.

Oh, and a bonus gift: I'd love Jacoby Ellsbury for Hanukkah. ;D

Softball?

I still haven't been on. Ugh. I've mostly just been obsessing in my own little one-track mind about Jacoby and how awesome it would be if I met someone exactly like him but, uh, 10 years younger... anyway. Heh.

But here's a number for ya: 8. That is, the number of days in Hanukkah. And the eighth (final) night was tonight--I got a softball and a softball mitt. Actually, it looks exactly like a baseball mitt, so I'm not sure if there's even any difference. But they're for me to use when I start playing softball in the spring! I never wanted to try softball until about a month ago, when I decided I'd love to.

So I got a glove about an hour ago, and it's awesome. I've already started chewing on the leather, Clay-style.



I also got a softball. It really is a lot bigger than a baseball, and also a lot yellower. It has raised--red--seams, so I really want to try and throw it overhand a bit and try out a knuckleball. (Good luck to me, right? Heh.) I'd also like to learn to pitch softball, seeing as how my reflexes are terrible (so I'd be a bad infielder) and I don't like objects flying at me (hence why I quit soccer, and also why I'd be a bad infielder or catcher), so I'd just figured I'd be an outfielder... but I guess a pitcher would be cool, too! I also have a certain thing for outfielders and pitchers... as you may have noticed by the amount of Jacobys, Mannys, Mosses (not Randy, Brandon), Clays, Lesters, and Paps in my obsessions.

So yeah. I'm generally not into softball... but I'll do anything to have a link to baseball right now. I'm so pathetically un-baseball-supplemented that I've taken re-watching (again and again) videos of games throughout the season. The offseason isn't as great, since the only Sox news now is whether Lester or Jacoby will leave for Santana (out of the two, I'd prefer the Lester/Coco package, but I'm just biased), or if we'll even get Santana again. I'll worry myself to death if I spend too much time looking at that stuff.

So. Happy Hanukkah and merry pre-Christmas?

Well I haven't been around.

Instead, I've been constantly refreshing any authority on baseball news since the GM meetings ended.

Oh, and mourning the fact that Jacoby fired his old agent for that spawn of Satan who is/was, at the time of The Betrayal*, Johnny Damon's agent, as well as that of A-Rod (plus Dice-K and 'Tek, though): Scott Boras. He's up there with A-Snob and Barry Bonds as my top 3 least favorite baseball-related people.

Not much else to say, except to mention my Soxy Hanukkah presents: two books about baseball, as well as Baseball Mogul '08, which looks awesome. If this sort of present-ing goes on, I'll be equipped to last at least until January.

Also, a funny quote from Jacoby: "I am just trying to stay in shape and be ready for spring. I am actually taking yoga classes, to keep stress off my joints. It's great. You have these big strong guys and little old ladies all doing it--it's not just sitting on your butt, stretching. I am telling you, yoga is tough." My mom is really into yoga--she's been trying for a while to get me to start up, which I'm not really enthusiastic about, but it's a great description.


*With capital letters.

Not Sox, and Not Numbers?

Tyler Clippard, a pitching prospect with the Yankees the Nationals...




...looks like...



E.T.

OH MY EXPLETIVE.

So I was out for the afternoon.

I came home at around 7:30 and, of course, dashed up to see any updates on the Santana trades. I checked my default for news, Extra Bases, and saw only an earlier update on Gagne's arbitration offer. I breathed a sigh of relief. Then I decided, just to be on the safe side, to check the Sox' official site.

Then I screamed.

When I saw the headline "Report: Ellsbury offered for Santana", I full-out screamed. Not a scream of excitement, or joy, or anything else. It was a mixture of terror and full-out-freak-out. My nightmare about Phil Hughes being added to the Yankees' offer had come true: while the Yankees raised the stakes, the Sox anted up and added Ellsbury.

I know it's pathetic, but I think I'm going to hurl.

I've been a big baseball fan since '03, just before I turned 10, when my brother started little league. But I wasn't completely immersed--obsessed--until late August, when I watched games nightly for two weeks with my grandfathe, who was a catcher through his college years, and probably knows more about the strategies behind baseball than anyone I know. My family was spending the two weeks with my grandparents on the Cape. I got 100% sucked into it, whereas since '04 I have watched games more or less just to see if they won or not.

A couple days after we returned home, I went with my dad, brother, and a friend to Fenway. It was September 2, the day after Clay Buchholz threw his no-hitter. That was also the day Jacoby hit his first major league home run. I was so happy, and when I got home, I was flipping through that program thing and realized he was "pretty cute". Honestly, that's what I thought. So I looked him up on Google, since I'd only really heard of him when he came up in late June. I wanted to "know" him more.

I pretty much fell in love with him.

Not real love, obviously, but he was my immediate favorite. His looks helped, of course, but I loved that he was so young. He was nearly a decade older than I was (well, is nearly a decade older than I am), but he was so young compared to my previous favorites--Manny, Lowell, and he was younger than even Papelbon--that I understood more what he felt like; we both emerged into the Majors around the same time.

As he played throughout September and posted such amazing statistics, I (who has always loved the idea of baseball being centered around numbers) was completely enthralled. And when he played so spectacularly in the postseason, I loved it. I had been thinking, sort of casually, about what I'd like to do with my life--and I decided I either wanted to be a reporter on the Sox or work with the players as some sort of coach. I wanted to interact with the players, and not just because of my baseball-crush on Jacoby, although that did definitely help. I was so deeply in love with baseball that I was like a giddy girl with her first serious boyfriend: already framing the rest of my life around it.

When Theo told the Twins a week or so ago that he was untouchable, I thought, Of course, why would you ever trade him? He's the future of the Red Sox. He doesn't have much experience in the majors, but he's played so well his entire life that you can't NOT expect him to be a great player. I still think that. But apparently, Theo doesn't.

Pitching wins championships. But players like Jacoby win fans' affection. Honestly, it sounds shallow, but if Jacoby is traded--I won't be as emotionally into baseball. Into the Sox. And I've become so dependent on it--on baseball--since August that I have no idea how that would work out.

There are other players. There are other good-looking center fielders. There are other prospects. They will be closer and closer to my age for the next ten years. But there will never, ever be another Jacoby Ellsbury for me.

So please, Theo. Santana would help us win. But so will Ellsbury. Santana is a free agent at the end of 2008. If he just stays with the Twins for next season, we can outbid the Yankees and have Santana, Ellsbury, AND Lester, and maybe Coco as well.

Please. For the sake of a little girl's happiness, please, Mr. Epstein. Don't trade him.

Magglio Ordóñez Scares Me

Does this man frighten anyone else to the point where they are quaking in their shoes (or slippers, as the case may be, such as in my case at the moment)?

All stats are 2007 (regular season, duh).


.363
Batting average. (Insert enormous shudder here)

.595
Slugging percentage.

1.029
OPS (on base percentage plus slugging).

139
RBIs.

54
Doubles.


But there's more to what makes him so scary than big numbers (I'm still stuck on that .363). I saw him play at a Tigers-Sox game in May and we were in the right field bleachers, so I got to see him play in the field up close*. He made some great catches. But the most amazing part of his performance that day was the way he fed off of the crowd. It sounds kind of weird, but he took the same kind of support or whatever it was from the boos at Fenway as anyone else would take from fans chanting their name at home.

Anyway. Just thought I'd put this out there, since there's nothing else to post, really, until the Santana deals are done. I'm actually too scared to write about it.




*Incidentally, the star of the show that day was Eric Hinske. Video here.

"This Year in Baseball" Numbers

MLB's This Year in Baseball awards' voting ends December 5. Go vote for Pedroia as RotY, Buchholz for best one-game performance, and Drew for Best Postsesaon Moment. There are Sox-related options in every category except for Best Regular Season Moment (I think).

For each option in each category, they have some numbers about each. I compiled all the most impressive stats for Sox-related options into a list, organized by player. All stats are regular-season.


JOSH BECKETT:

194:40
Strikeout-to-walk ratio.

1.14
Walks and hits per inning pitched.


JONATHAN PAPELBON:

12.96
Strikeouts per 9 innings pitched.

0.77
Walks and hits per inning pitched.


HIDEKI OKAJIMA:

.202
Opponents' batting average.


CLAY BUCHHOLZ

73
Strikes thrown. (Sept. 1, 2007 only)

115
Pitches thrown. (Sept. 1, 2007 only)

98
Most pitches thrown per game (in 2007) prior to September 1.


Sigh... isn't it February yet?