Nothing ever comes easy at the Metrodome. Brad Penny, who got the 99th win of his career, certainly earned this one. Most pitchers get a drink of water or go over scouting reports in between innings. Not Penny, he thew up in a trash can. They called it a sinus infection, which either means he was hungover (going for 99 wins does not mean you should drink 99 beers the night before) or hanging out with H1N1E6.

It turns out Penny wasn’t the problem though. He pitched remarkably well, sinus infection or not. The Sox doubled up the Twinkies in the hit column, but still only won by a single run thanks to Paps’ longball-itis (it’s a different strain of the sinus infection) and Carlos Gomez’s two spectacular catches. Maybe Jacoby can learn something from Gomez: the wall is your friend, not your enemy. If anybody had a right to be afraid of the wall, it’s Gomez. He needed stitches prior to the game because he couldn’t make it through a revolving door.

Oh, and here’s a quick note to Major League Baseball: red hats are hideous. When they look terrible on the RED Sox, who are they supposed to look good on? The Marlins with their black and turquoise uniforms? The Dodgers whose motto is “Think Blue”? The MFY? Please don’t use our veterans as an excuse to sell ugly hats, that’s just an insult to them. For once I wish George Steinbrenner was still coherent. Do you think he ever would have allowed a Yankee team to wear red hats? That’s what I thought.