Miss me? I’ve missed all of you. I know, the blog disappeared without a bang, mostly due to the fact that my full time job ate into the time I normally spend ripping and praising the Sox on the intertubes. I promise I’m not writing because the Sox have crawled out of the pseudo-gutter (the Orioles aren’t even a major league team anymore, so fourth place in the AL East really is the gutter). I’m writing because I finally made it back to Fenway.

The Sox are not only a hard ticket, they’re also a hard press credential. But this time I had a friend who was going to be in town the same weekend. So I just picked up the phone, called Manny and voilà! Press pass!

Fenway is one of the coolest stadiums in baseball because of its quirks. I don’t know if the quirks are as entertaining for the press, but I’m going to let you in on a little secret: the players are right next to you and you don’t even know it. The visiting clubhouse is accessible through the concorse. And it’s SMALL. I mean, fricking tiny. Imagine a medium sized studio apartment, add lockers on every wall, and a couch in the middle. Apparently when the MFY come to town, there’s no couch. Honestly, zero furniture.*

From there you go through a small tunnel and emerge to bright sunlight, cameras and a lot of groans. “Shit, you’re not Manny!”. Was it the lack of dreadlocks that gave me away? And despite everybody’s disappointment that you are not the same guy who has 29 career postseason home runs, you’re suddenly standing on the same ground as Williams, Yaz, Pesky and Lugo. It’s a boyhood dream come true. And just as you start to get into the moment Manny comes jogging out, the press goes nuts and it’s mayhem. Well, it was nice while it lasted.

Manny’s official return was even more interesting. I expected one of two results: either a lot of cheering, or a lot of booing. But regardless, I thought we’d see Manny acknowledge the crowd. I had my camera on him. He walked out from the dugout to start the inning, the crowd cheered. He took his warmup swings, he heard some boos. He walked up to the plate, stepped into the box, and swung at the first pitch. The crowd was a little shocked. Cheers or boos, tip your fucking cap to the crowd. Give us that much. But I guess I shouldn’t really be that surprised. That was always Manny, off in his own world. He probably didn’t mean to slight the fans, but he just doesn’t know any better.

And since Doubront managed to do just well enough to let the offense crush the Dodger pitchers, we can’t really complain. Remember, the Sox are now only a single game back of the MFY and Devil Rays, and are 13 games over .500. But if you’re still pissed off at Manny, he tried to make it up to you with that called third strike to end the game. Just Manny being Manny.

* As much as I’d like to tell you it’s because the Sox hate the MFY, it’s actually because they have too many press.