As you may, or more likely, may not have noticed, Dirty Watah has a new Papi-inspired logo. With the second half of the season just around the corner I thought it as good a time as any to unveil the new masterpiece.

Also, the side bar now has the next Sox game, who they’re playing, and when. Hey, it’s a slow news day.

Yes, I watched the 77th all-star game last night. I contemplated writing something about it, but realized that I was practically bored by the whole thing. Instead, I’ll leave the quips to a professional. In case you’re too lazy to click the link, here are a few excerpts:

• Not to second guess NL skipper, Phil “I look like one of the inmates on PRISON BREAK” Garner, but he had the tying run on second with two outs and sent Carlos Lee, a .290 hitter to the plate while Normar Garciaparra, who has the league’s leading average and after the 7th is batting over .400 is left sitting on the bench.
• There’s a new nerd statistic called WPA (Winning Performance After) which measures how clutch each player’s performance is to his team. Nomar Garciaparra’s is through the roof. Guess who has one of the lowest in all of baseball. Yep. All-Star A-Rod.
• It was fun seeing the two Yankees on the left side of the infield and two Red Sox on the right. And Big Papi played a damn good first base.
• Just when you thought Fox coverage couldn’t get any more repugnant than that insipid animated baseball, they unveil the “Shoulders, knees, and toes” nursery rhyme. KIDS AREN’T WATCHING!! The game is on at 10 at night. Commercials are for FLOMAX to shrink enlarged prostates. Treat fans with at least a modicum of respect.
• Congratulations to AL skipper, Ozzie Guillan for going the entire All-Star week without calling anyone a fag. And kudos to Joe Buck for not asking what he thought of the Tony Awards.

(picture of Fenway from maps.google.com)

Happy All-Star Break!

When I moved to the SF Bay area, I started listening to Giants games. Besides having my favorite radio broadcaster other than Joe and Jerry (Jon Miller, I mean you), they had a catcher named Yorvit Torrealba. Having never followed the NL before, I had no idea who he was. Somehow, I was convinced that his name was Torii Alba, and Yorvit was an adjective similar to svelte (hey, for a catcher, Torreabla is pretty slim). I kept telling my roommate (a die-hard Giants fan) about the catcher Alba, and I couldn’t figure out why he kept laughing at me. Eventually, he explained, and Torreabla became the first member of the Jerry Trupiano All-Name All-Stars.

If you listen to the Sox on radio, you know that Trupe loves players with interesting names. He’s always talking about his All-Religious team (with Ryan Church, Jesus Colome) or his All-First-Name team (Ted Lilly, B.J. Ryan). And this year, you can hear the glee in his voice anytime he gets to mention Dan Uggla of the Marlins.

So in honor of Trupe, and the upcoming All-Star game, I give you the All-Name team. Can you imagine Trupe calling a game by this team? If the rumors are correct, he’ll be needing a job next year…

C Yorvit Torrealba

1B Prince Fielder

2B Dan Uggla

SS Yuniesky Betancourt

3B Corey Koskie

LF Quinton McCracken

CF Coco Crisp

RF Wily Mo Pena

SP Boof Bonser

RP Jorge Julio

RP Kiko Calero

RP Emiliano Fruto

Give me a second, I need to catch my breath. If I tried to write coherent sentences right now they would probably sound more like something you’d read in a homeless person’s schizophrenic newspaper. So I’m going to stay simple in describing today’s game.

By the numbers:

• 19 innings
• 16 pitchers used (8 for each team)
• 570 pitches thrown (271 – Red Sox, 299 – OzzieSox)
• 24 position players used
• 2 blown saves by the Red Sox
• 1 Red Sox loss

Things I expected today:

• Schilling to shut down the Ozzie’s merry men to the tune of 2 runs in 6 innings
• Contreras to manage to weasel his way out of yet another loss (we have a new member of the f-ing lucky club!)
• Rudy Seanez to shit the bed

Things I didn’t expect today:

• Papelbon to blow a save
• Timlin to blow a second save of the game
• Julian Tavarez pitching 4 (four!) innings of shutout baseball (Yes, that’s right, I was pissed off at Timlin and happy for Tavarez. What kind of opposite world are we living in?)
• The D-Rays to come back from a 0-5 deficit to beat the MFYs
• For the game to be long enough that I could wake up, listen to 5 hours of baseball, go out and get lunch, come back 45 minutes later and still listen to another half hour of baseball

I’m spent. Hooray all star break.

Back at the start of the season, eighty something games ago, all Sox fans were psyched about having “two aces” and an amazing rotation. Then, I think we would all have ranked the rotation as such:

1. Schilling
2. Beckett
3. Wakefield
4. Wells
5. Clement

What a half a season will do. Despite acquiring his team leading 11th win yesterday, Josh Beckett is not looking like the Schilling version 2.0 that everyone was expecting. You could even make an argument that right now, he’s the third best ex-Marlin on the team (behind Doubles and A-Gon). OK, that’s a bit of a stretch, but giving up another trifecta of home runs and leaving the bases loaded with nobody out in the 7th is not the modus operandi of an anchor in the rotation. If not for the 2-out hitting of Belli, Cora and who else, Big Papi (#31), and the amazing bullpen work of Lopez (yes, you read that right) and Hansen, Beckett would be just another pitcher who gives up 5 ER in 6 innings and gets a loss. So, I now present you with the updated rotation going into the second-half of the season:

1. Schilling
2. Wakefield
3. Lester
4. Beckett
5. Whatever arm isn’t good enough to pitch for another team that we can pick up on the waiver.

Today we go for the sweep. Please Schilling, shove it to Ozzie for not putting you on the all-star team. Because making one Ozzie with a microphone shut up is about equivalent to 55,000 New Yorkers.

Great win for the Red Sox tonight. Big Papi set a Sox record by hitting his 30th home run before the all star break. And for some reason, even though we can’t hit 95% of left handed pitching, “all star” Mark Buehrle is becoming our bitch. Not too shabby.

Lester also got his fourth win tonight, and I’m convinced now that he really is the anti-Derek Lowe. He loads the bases twice and pulls a Houdini act both times to get out of it (relatively) unscathed. Even though he’s a year younger than me and is already a successful major league pitcher, I can at least take solace in the fact that unlike him, I still have all my hair.

Now if you read this blog, you probably know that I’m not exactly Jerry Trupiano’s biggest cheerleader. But today I was subjected to the Chicago White Sox’s broadcast team for a half an inning as I drove home from work. Ed Farmar and Chris Singleton shouldn’t be able to broadcast for Santa Monica Community College, much less a major league team. Of their many, many problems, the biggest is that they concurrently announce two games: the one on the field and the one in their fantasy world.

When Ed and Chris weren’t talking on top of each other they would describe the plays they would like to see as if they were currently happening. So if the BoSox had a runner on first, they might say “ground ball the shortstop who steps on second and throws to first for the double play…would be really nice around now. Ball 2 is outside.” Infuriating would be an understatement. Oh yeah, and to top it off they’re total homers.

I guess when Ozzie Guillen is your manager, your play-by-play announcers aren’t the mouths you care about.

(picture of Fenway from google maps)

The Sox signed Moises (Tejada) and passed on Jesus (Montero). If we didn’t already know that Theo’s a Jew, we would now.

In honor of that, and the upcoming All-Star game, I present you with the All-Jew team:

C Moe Berg

1B Hank Greenberg

2B Jimmie Reese

SS Sid Gordon

3B Kevin Youkilis

RF Shawn Green

CF Adam Stern

LF Gabe Kapler

P Sandy Koufax

I’m sorry, this story is just too good to pass up. Basically, if I were to meet Big Papi in a bar, I always figured he’d act exactly like this. He never disappoints. Anyway, here’s the story:

After yet another monster night, David Ortiz, fresh out of the shower, looked to the chair next to him and saw a stack of $20 bills.

“Is that my money?” Ortiz, a little confused, asked multiple times.

Coco Crisp finally came over and solved the mystery, grabbing the stack of bills and putting them in his wallet. Ortiz then busted out laughing and told reporters, “You know how I knew that wasn’t my money?”

He then opened a container filled with $100 bills and bellowed out, “This is how I roll!”

Following today’s game (nice 2-HR game for Papi btw) on Yahoo made me realize that you can really get a feel for a team from their mugshots. For example, on the Sox we have:

Really? I get to play?

Once you finish your homework, you boys can go out and play.

Guys, guys, stop making me laugh. Hold on…I can keep a straight face, really.

However, other teams are not as lucky. Take the Devil Rays for example.

Parle vous francais?

The lady said if I smile nice for the camera, I get candy.

I will end you.

Dude, what was in those brownies?

Do you want to be my friend?

What are you maggots doing? Ten-hut!

Yeeeee-huck. Red Sox, that’s like the color of my neck.

I think I’ll stay away from that clubhouse.

Dear Jason,

You seem like a pretty nice guy. Becoming a major league pitcher despite a lot of hardship and all that crap. Here’s what I think is the issue. You watch this rookie come up, and he keeps loading the bases and then weaseling his way out of it, and suddenly you think you’re David Blaine too. You’re not. When you load the bases, people get hits. Usually lots of them. Hell, sometimes people STEAL HOME off you. And by the fourth inning you’ve throw about 90 pitches and your defense is bored out of their minds.

You have what we like to call “Tim Wakefield disease.” You take a long time, throw a lot of pitches, and get no run support. Even with all of that, it’s time to sack up or turn in your jersey. Because when Julian Tavarez pitches 2 more shutout innings than you, you shouldn’t be pitching higher than AA.

-Matt

P.S. Thank Mike Lowell for trying to start a triple play for you. A line drive is not an “infield fly.”