Oh, somewhere in this favored land the sun is shining bright;
The band is playing somewhere, and somewhere hearts are light,
And somewhere men are laughing, and somewhere children shout;
But there is no joy in Mudville - mighty Casey has struck out.

Ernest Lawrence Thayer used those words to conclude his famous opus, Casey at the Bat, which was published in the Examiner in 1888. I use them tonight because there is no joy in doucheville, with Varitek at the bat representing the tying run in the ninth inning. Do I even need mention that he struck out rather lamely on a pitch 2 and 1/2 feet out of the strike zone to conclude the threat?

We've come a long way, indeed, since the days when Varitek was the apple of Red Sox Nation's collective eye having stood so bravely against A Rod when he was armored in catching equipment (complete with mask) and A Rod wasn't. Now he is mired in a slump which is so catastrophic that he finally looks as ridiculous on the field as he does off it.

On the plus side, at least Tek is working ever so hard, even on his precious days off, to lift himself out of this slump by his proverbial bootstraps. Of course, to bowdlerize the Sean Connery character from The Rock, losers always whine about trying their best; winners go home and experience coitus with the prom queen. Rest assured, Red Sox Nation, that, with Tek under the watchful tutelage of Dave Madagan, this slump is sure to end soon enough.

Speaking of Madagan, I hope he considers the example of his predecessor closely. After all, former Sox hitting coach Ron Jackson was part of that nightmarish turnaround in 2004. Jackson, more than any other outside influence, was largely credited with the adjustments that turned David Ortiz from a guy with a lot of potential into the Papi we all know and love (but me, apparently). And it was Jackson who was one of those purged from the organization after 2006 and the epic collapse. Maybe Madagan should have rented...

Leaving that aside for the moment, I think it's time we got to the bottom of a serious injustice. According to the build-up to this series, this was supposed to be about bad blood between the teams. Jonathan Papelbon, among others on this pitching staff, vowed retribution for the Devil Rays not disbanding their organization after a pitcher hit Coco Crisp in Fenway without the expressed written consent of the Red Sox. Why is Tampa stubbornly insisting on playing baseball and not simply forfeiting each game?

Perhaps someone in the Red Sox PR office was asleep at the switch. Maybe the Rays didn't get the memo that they were supposed to be pushed around and laughed out of their own stadium in this series. Instead, they've won two games. There haven't been any brawls. How dare they. And to top it off, they continue to help Varitek make a fool of himself.

And as for Papelbon, it's hard to take revenge on an opposing team when you aren't called upon to pitch. Nevertheless, it might be possible that he has already taken revenge. I think we all presume too much when we think Papelbon, with his tragically limited intellectual capacity, knows what revenge is, much less how a man goes about taking same.

But again, the real meathead in this is Francona. I can see that pinch hitting Varitek this evening was a desperate effort to shock his light-hitting catcher into some small measure of offensive production. And Varitek was, apparently, going to come into the game with Wake leaving. But surely there must have been a better option available, as in some bench player who might actually get a hit once in a blue moon? Or maybe not.

Speaking of meatheads, I forget how long it's been since I ripped the CHB. Since he'd spent so much time covering the Celtics (why, I don't know) and I spent so much time ignoring the Celtics, there just didn't seem to be a point. But know that he's back to covering the Sox and coming at Manny with guns blazing, it's time to revist everybody's favorite Boston newspaperman with a room temperature IQ (sorry, Bob Ryan, but you need to do some work to get to room temperature status).

It never gets easy to read a Shaughnessy piece. Buried in the middle of this particular "effort" is a sentence that reads "no one wants to demonize Manny." Was the man born with no sense of irony or did he have to work to lose it? He's ripping Manny for shoving the travelling secretary to the ground (which was kind of beat, but no one is saying exactly what the man may have said to Manny to provoke the normally spaced out slugger into shoving him in the first place. Not that that makes Manny right, just that we could use more info). Doesn't that demonize Manny? Not to mention the headline "This time, Manny being Manny is unacceptable."

And I seem to recall Shaughnessy finding it tremendously risible when Pedro mad-dogged Don Zimmer to the turf in ought four. But apparently that was OK because the old man in question (who is, incidentally, considerably older than the Red Sox travelling secretary) was affiliated with another organization. Or perhaps Zimmer didn't see the incalculable potential of an aspiring cub reporter for the Boston Globe who was still struggling to shake off his uncanny physical resemblance to Dr. Who while Zim managed the Sox?

I also love Shaughnessy calling Manny fans sycophants (not that they aren't). After all, it can be ever so difficult to understand the CHB when he talks, what with the proximity of his lips to Larry Lucchino's derriere and all. That said, I really hope America's Prom Date is enough of a douche to let Manny go to another team because he dropped the travelling secretary with a forearm shiver. Wouldn't that be a grand gesture to the morons in Red Sox Nation?

And in other news, Dan Duquette is being probed by the state ethics commission for selling World Series tickets to the mayor of Pittsfield at face value when he was working to secure a city site for his minor league team to play in Pittsfield. If you're going to get caught for something like this, why not just make it an outright bribe? And I still hate Duquette after all these years, even though he reminds me of a slightly more amusing version of Dan Akroyd from Caddyshack II to his turn as the auto parts mogul in Tommy Boy.

I guess I should clarify a statement from my last post. I never meant to include TheKobraKommander (the reader with whom I've conducted a running debate on the Roger Clemens saga) in with whiners like Simmons and Shaughnessy. At least TheKobraKommander has focused more on the facts of the case as presented in the Mitchell Report and avoided whining and pandering about what Clemens may or may not have done.

Since he went through the trouble of commenting on the post, I figured I'd throw this clarification up tonight.

TheKobraKommander has left a new comment on your post "It's not very often I find myself changing my mind...":

No doubt about the CHB and Simmons. I never said that Clemens doesn't deserve a fair hearing, I've merely said that: 1) The Mitchell Commission has reason to be suspicious and they didn't just pull Clemens' name out of a hat 2) Clemens has put himself in a dangerous legal position by accusing McNamee of lying.

The best thing Clemens could have done was to refuse to speak to the media or anyone about anything; just keep his head down, play ball, and let the truth take care of itself. You never win by playing the media's game, as you yourself seem to admit here.

I kinda like Seau's hat. He looks pretty dapper in them Sunday going to meeting clothes. Besides, it's cold out; don't you know that 90% of body heat is lost through the head?

BTW: can't Brady afford a tie and cufflinks?


The Kobra Kommander

I do think that Clemens may have embarked on a risky venture, but he really had no choice. To borrow an adage from political campaigning, a charge not answered is a charge believed. And if Clemens is telling the truth, he should have very little to fear in a court of law. After all, he ought to be able to buy better lawyers than McNamee can, and it ought to be enough to get by in a civil proceeding.

As for his sentiment that Seau looked good in that sporty little hat, I guess all I can say is that he would think a ridiculous get up like that looked good. I think Al Czervik said it best when he said: "Oh, this is the worst-looking hat I ever saw. What, when you buy a hat like this I bet you get a free bowl of soup, huh?" I, however, cannot extend to Junior Seau the simple sarcastic pleasantry that Al offered the Judge when he saw him wearing the same hat.

As for Brady, there's just something about him that bothers me. He has absolutely no charisma. That's why he doesn't get the national ads that go to Peyton Manning, it has nothing to do with however many B-list actresses he's knocked up or not. There's a reason why he does print ads for Stetson, who knew they were still in business, by the way? He's a pretty boy with the IQ of a turnip and the stage presence of a bad mime in South Station at rush hour. Say what you want about Manning with his "Aw, shucks" Junior Simple mannerisms, but apparently it resonates in red states.

Brady did look like a tool without the tie and cuff links. If you're going to rock an ensemble like Brady was rocking the other day, it has to be complete. A guy in a Savile Row suit without a tie and in a French cuff shirt without cuff links might just as well show up with unshined shoes. I am not much of a fashion plate, myself, but when I take the trouble to dress up, I try not to do things half-assed.

Not that any one in New England necessarily cares, but on this date in history in 1921, the Decatur Staleys relocated to Chicago, where they became the Chicago Bears. I bring this up because I think, given average luck, the Bears will bounce back in a big way next season. Even in spite of my ghastly track record.

Over the last five weeks or so of this past season, the Bears defense started to look like the defense we all came to expect after 2005 and 2006. Nathan Vasher and Charles Tillman ought to be back in form after an injury plagued season. Darwin Walker started to look like the player he could be and not a dead weight in the middle at the end of the year.

Of course there are some problem areas. Most notably, with Kyle Orton as the best QB on the team, it might be time to give up football and look into other career opportunities. Then there is Cedric Benson. I still say he looked a lot better in his last two games before the injury and was on the verge of something good. Plus, after this unfortunate season, Bears fans needn't worry, Benson will not be joining the Pork Chop Express (my fantasy team, I stole the name from Big Trouble in Little China) for the rest of his life.

So, it is January 8, a day of great historical significance in American. True, Elvis was born on this date in 1935, but while I love his music, I harbor no illusions as to the overall importance of a music mega star in the grand scheme of things in American history. With or without Elvis, we'd probably stand in about the same spot historically, I think, at this moment.

I do have some grievances to air with other so-called Elvis fans. There's been a lot of talk going around claiming that Viva Las Vegas is both the best Elvis film and an underrated song. Neither of those statements is accurate. Viva Las Vegas is a beat movie, it's very much like Speedway, but with a prettier co-star and a slightly less ludicrous premise.

I don't see how one could claim that the song is underrated. It is one of the most recognizable Elvis songs, more so even than #1 hits like His Latest Flame, Devil in Disguise, Don't and Fool Such As I among others. If you want to listen to an Elvis song that is genuinely underrated, I would suggest Elvis' versions of Gentle on My Mind, Memphis Tennessee or Snowbird (which are all covers of songs by other artists, but still excellent efforts and better than Viva Las Vegas). Or maybe you could really reach and get I've Lost You or It's Over (not a cover, but it does share the title with that great Roy Orbison song) or The Girl I Never Loved from Clambake, which was a terrible film with two underrated songs on its soundtrack. I could go on all night...

As for Elvis' best film, it's hard to choose one since his films were, in the main, terrible. They're light, frivolous, intellectually dangerous (as the insipid, treacly premises may in fact kill brain cells) and a disgusting waste of the poor man's talent. But I think Jailhouse Rock stands out from the crowd. In fact, I think it's a good film. Each time I watch it, I find myself thinking that if he'd been given different sorts of scripts and overseen by a manager who cared more about the talent than the bottom line, Elvis might have actually been able to act. But that's just me.

The real reason January 8th is important occurred all the way back in 1815. Andrew Jackson stopped a numerically superior force of British regulars led by the Duke of Wellington's brother-in-law at the Battle of New Orleans. Most Americans tend to overlook this battle because it took place after the Treaty of Ghent, which officially concluded the War of 1812, was signed.

It is true that the terms of the treaty called for the United States and the British Empire in North America to restore any territory conquered in the war to its previous owner. That said, if the British, who were still in their expansionist mode, found themselves in possession of a city at the mouth of the Mississippi River after the war, would they really have simply given it back? Or if they were willing to return it, would they have done so for free?

Losing New Orleans would have been a major blow to the American ability to hold the lands of the Louisiana Purchase. Losing control of the mouth of the Mississippi would also have made the westward expansion of the United States a much more difficult task. Now maybe that might have been a good thing from an environmental and human rights perspective, but we probably wouldn't be in a position to debate those merits had Jackson lost.

So we should still mark January 8 on the calendar for that reason, if nothing else. But enough of the history lesson. This is after all a sports blog. And the first battle line of 2008 was drawn between Sedition in Red Sox Nation and Red Sox Nation over the potential election of Jim Rice to the Hall of Fame. And for a change, Sedition in Red Sox Nation prevailed. Jim Rice won't be going into Cooperstown with a mandate. If he gets in, it will be through the charity of the Veteran's Committee. And I can live with that.

I have covered my objections to Jim Rice's induction to the Hall of Fame at length in previous posts, I won't do it again. I will say this, though. It is a victory for common sense that a man will not enter the Hall of Fame with his strongest credential being the fact that baseball people from his era remember him as the most feared hitter. As long as we have more objective criteria and fewer subjective criteria, it's a good thing.

Unless, of course, you happen to be Dan Shaughnessy and feel compelled to punish the world with prolix prose because you happened to have been born without talent, wit or charm. The CHB couldn't resist wrapping the Rice defeat up with the swirling Clemens saga. I wonder whether Clemens and his attorneys just might look up Shaughnessy should he be vindicated in court or in Congress.

Among the many questions I have on reading that piece, I guess I'd start with this: if virtually every player who played in the Rice era feels that he belongs in the Hall of Fame, where is the outrage? Hell, where is the second guy available for a quote after the shameless mouthpiece of Red Sox Nation, Jerry Remy?

And again, on the Clemens side of the argument: how can you justify not voting for Clemens if he is cleared in court or in Congress? If he is not proven under due process to have cheated, it's not the same as Pete Rose who pled guilty to gambling, then finally fully confessed to betting on baseball years later. Clemens deserves to be in the Hall on the strength of his 213 wins and 4 Cy Youngs before Brian McNamee alleges he injected Clemens with anything. A responsible journalist might feel compelled to shoe-horn that in to a column.

So, Christmas is finally over. And it couldn't come soon enough. I must say, I got everything I wanted. Mostly because I didn't really want anything. But there is nothing like a nice simple ambition like that if you don't want to be disappointed.

There are two stories I think need comment, or at least I feel like commenting on, since nobody (at least I hope) really needs to know what I think about anything. First, is a nice positive story that hasn't gotten nearly the attention it deserves. As a frame of reference for how little attention it has gotten, the event took place in 2004 and I just heard about it this afternoon.

In the email I received, was a story. According to it, Denzel Washington was touring a US Army medical facility providing long term critical care to servicemen and women injured in Iraq and Afghanistan. When he was shown the Fisher Houses, in which family members of the wounded men and women can live to stay close to their loved ones, Washington reportedly asked how much a facility like that cost to build. When he received his answer, he took out his checkbook on the spot and wrote a check to cover the cost of construction.

The story, like so many received in so many emails, seemed to good to be true. So I did some checking up on it. And there are some embellishments in it, but it is, in the main, truer than most. Washington did not produce his checkbook on the spot, and the amount of his donation is not known, but he did provide a substantial donation to the charity that constructs Fisher Houses.

It is still refreshing to read about a celebrity actually doing something beyond vaguely criticizing the current administration and trying to forcefeed their political views (if their opinions can be called that fairly). None of us really do enough to support America's military and their dependents at home, myself included. I realize that a lot of us want to do more, but are touching capital for expenses like rent, food and utilities ourselves.

More praise should be heaped on Denzel Washington for his outstanding generosity. Perhaps, as a result, more wealthy Americans could be influenced to follow suit. Far better for them to do the right thing for the wrong reasons than to do nothing at all. No one wants to see Americans killed or wounded, but protesting the war and criticizing the President. Even electing a candidate who will push for a quick withdrawl from Iraq or Afghanistan will only accomplish so much. Even if no more troops are hurt, what will happen to those who have already been maimed? If recent American history tells us anything, it's that the American people will try to forget this as soon as possible.

But this is getting a little too serious for this blog, and dangerously close to the political. There are other, more responsible individuals who ought to be taking care of these matters so I can waste my time and yours ripping Dan Shaughnessy for one of his more pointless columns. Today, the CHB tells us that he's betting this is Jim Rice's year for induction into the MLB Hall of Fame.

Although I don't know why I should have expected anything different from a writer and thinker of his caliber, I'm still a bit surprised that so much ink was spilled on an argument that defeats itself. Or would, if Red Sox Nation were capable of rationally analyzing a situation like this. The real reason, according to the CHB, that Rice ought to be in the Hall of Fame is that he was the most feared hitter in Major League Baseball from 1975-1986.

I have made my views on that subject quite clear. I cannot understand how Jim Rice with his 382 career home runs in a much smaller stadium, hitting in a deeper lineup, playing in the American League can be considered to have been the most feared hitter in baseball when a third baseman for the Phillies hit 548 career home runs between 1976 and 1988. It just doesn't work for me. But let's leave my opinion on that subject aside for a moment.

The argument that Jim Rice was the most feared hitter in baseball from 1975-1986 should have no merit in a Hall of Fame discussion. It is totally, completely and utterly subjective. We are 20 years removed from the era in question, relying on the memory of baseball people and writers who, let's face it, aren't exactly a murder's row in the American intellectual scene, at least not since guys like Grantland Rice and Ring Lardner passed.

And the notion that the Mitchell Report has paved the way for Rice to go to Cooperstown is laughable. If Rice's 382 home runs prior to the steroid era are worthy of induction, then how do we exclude Dale Murphy, Harold Baines and Andre Dawson from consideration for Cooperstown, but roll out the red carpet for Jim Ed? They all hit more home runs. They (with the possible exception of Baines in a few years) played for teams that were worse than any Red Sox team in the Rice era.

I didn't particularly understand the connection between Rice potentially making the cut for the Hall of Fame and the posthumous award being given to the late Larry Whiteside. Larry Whiteside wrote about a lot of sports stories in his career. Simply because he covered baseball in the town in which Rice played doesn't mean an immortal hand or eye has framed this fearful symmetry (with apologies to William Blake).

The real story is that the Jim Rice for Cooperstown movement is little more than a bullying effort by a small-minded pressure group. Red Sox Nation has decided that Jim Rice acquired merits in retirement that other players worked an entire career to earn. And if Rice is voted into Cooperstown it will be because Red Sox Nation had the muscle to accomplish what ought to have been impossible.

Somehow, Red Sox Nation managed to shift gears from loveable (at least in their own twisted world view) losers to despicable bullies in the blink of an eye. Cubs fans haven't been able to guilt (I realize that the Oxford English Dictionary might not include guilt as a verb, but then how many limeys have seen This Old Cub) enough voters into taking Ron Santo into the Hall of Fame. And I hope Red Sox Nation won't be able to bully Rice into Cooperstown, either.

In other news, tomorrow is the 28th of December. It's a day of limited significance. Unless, of course, your a BC fan and you get to watch your team face the Michigan State Spartans in the Peaches and Herb Memorial "Reunited and It Feels So Good" Bowl. Now, there are some who might attribute this hostility as the carping of a disappointed Notre Dame fan.

Trust me, it's not. I know BC fans can't grasp my position with their feble little minds. But it's better to go 3-9 than it is to win the Who Gives A Damn bowl for the 9th year in a row. Yeah, ND hasn't won a bowl since Newt Gingrich was whispering about a fevered dream called the Contract With America. But it's better to lose the Orange, the Fiesta, the Sugar and even the Gator Bowls than it is to win a game that's going to be trounced in the ratings by the Days of Our Lives. And maybe one day, when BC makes it close enough to the big time to play on December 30th, or even, God willing, New Years Eve, BC fans might start to grasp my point.

In a recent comment about my last post, a reader took issue with my criticism of the Red Sox for failing to come back to win more than one game in their final at bat this season. His rationale was that the stat itself was not particularly useful. As he said most teams lose in that situation. Now, I tend to pay surprisingly little attention to what I say from one post to the next, but I'm pretty sure that I said that I expected the Sox to lose much more than they win when they trail after 8, but I could be wrong. Stranger things have happened, like America's prosecutor Fred Thompson turning out to have been a mole undermining his committee's case during the Watergate investigation.

I do, however, believe that it is a relevant stat. The playoffs are an entirely different dynamic than the regular season. Should the Red Sox encounter the Detroit Tigers in an opening round series, for instance, they will face a team with better starting pitching and a deeper offensive lineup. To beat a team that is as good as your squad, you need to be battle-tested. Beating the Tampa Bay Devil Rays, even with Wakefield on the mound doesn't make count.

When you consider the fact that the Red Sox have come back in their last at bat to win a game only once this season and that it was against the Baltimore Orioles and that the game in question was the catalyst for the epic losing streak that cost the manager his job, this Red Sox team ceases to impress. Let's not forget that the travesty in 2004 was built on late inning rallies, prevailing against the odds and Kevin Millar being the single dumbest human being to escape a Darwin award.This current edition of the Boston Red Sox has yet to prove that it has heart, guts, balls or any other anatomical feature that can stand in for constancy, courage or any of the other cardinal virtues in a half-assed metaphor. They just might want to do that before all of the chips are down.

Of course, I suspect that my reader is lashing out at me to exercise his angst that the Celtics have compensated for their lack of success by whoring out the image and likeness of Red Auerbach so that Adidas can throw his face on some special basketball shoes. I think that just clinched the Rookie of the Year and multiple MVP awards for Jeff Green. As though Red weren't suffering enough in his twilight years between Banner 17 gutting the team and adding cheerleaders, now they have to make his stay in the afterlife unpleasant?


But back to Red Sox fans. On Sunday, the guy who comes to me with his Red Sox info (my own personal answer to questions I've never asked) came into my home. Where I sleep. Where I come to play with my toys. And he was sickeningly full of that which makes the grass grow green. The Red Sox game was on, JD Drew was coming to the plate and he hit me with the buzz kill.

He got into the classic Red Sox fan argument position, thrust his chin forward as though he were capable of bringing the pain should the situation require it and said in his big boy voice that if I were to look at the numbers over the course of his career, JD Drew's stats were comparable with A Rod's. On some level, I imagine that they are comparable. In the same way that a kick in the groin is comparable to a steak dinner.

As we live and breathe, Alex Rodriguez is batting .314 with 28 HR and 80 RBI. JD Drew is breathing down his neck with a robust .261 batting average, an awe-inspiring 6 home runs and 33 RBI. I'm not a mathematical genius, but I don't think those statistics are comparable at all, except of course by our old friend the inequality.

Now, I imagine I would be irresponsible if I were to allow the fact that I just used a very small sample size to contrast the performance of two ten year veterans. So here you go, sticklers for statistical accuracy, go to Baseball Reference and tell me their career numbers are comparably in the good way. JD Drew has only just managed to hit more home runs in his entire career than A Rod hit as a member of the Texas Rangers. A Rod has batted in nearly three times as many runs as JD Drew managed to this point. The fact that A Rod has played 800 more games than Drew isn't enough to offset the fact that A Rod has 330 more career home runs than Drew and is only two years older.

Of course, this is a guy who maintains that Jim Rice was the most feared right handed hitter of his era. And he defends his position when one mentions Mike Schmidt by pointing out that Rice had a much higher batting average. Which is true, although it leaves out the fact that Schmidt played in a much bigger ball park against the National League (which was the stronger league at the time) and with a dead spot in the lineup where the pitcher batted. And it also leaves out the fact that Schmidt his 160 more home runs than Rice did in 400 more games. All while playing a much more demanding defensive position and winning Gold Gloves. Jim Rice might belong in a Hall of Fame, but it just isn't the one in Cooperstown.

What bothers me most about my friend tormenting me with his Red Sox absurdities is that he lacks a sense of honesty and even worse irony where the local nine are concerned. JD Drew's numbers might compare favorably with A Rod's when you throw in all kind and manner of qualifiers and modifiers to adjust for the fact that JD Drew has only a slightly smaller chance of becoming the next pope than he does of finishing a season. But qualifying and modifying stats undercuts the argument in the first place. It's like saying that if grasshoppers were armed with automatic weapons, they wouldn't be on the bird's dinner menu.

As for the sense of irony, I seem to remember A Rod as the villain in the il-conceived farce that is Red Sox Nation. I am constantly being told that A Rod is the embodiment of all that is wrong in baseball today and when so inclined, he eats unattended children for a light snack. But it's OK to pay a right fielder $14 million to hit .260 with 6 home runs and 33 RBI because his numbers can be compared to A Rod's? Maybe I'm missing the facility for intellectual dishonesty and mental gymnastics that enables a man to be a Red Sox fan, but I just can't buy it.

Before I sign off, I have to weigh in on the Boston Pops performance this evening. I have a bachelor party, a golf game and a wedding in the next three days, so I don't know when I'll get another chance to post. And if I do get the chance to post in that time, I'm sure that I will be past the point where I can blog coherently. So it's now or never.

I must say, I was colossally disappointed with the concert. From the get-go, I didn't see the point of the whole set up. Why John Cougar Mellencamp? I am not one of the Bill Simmons disciples who found the Sports Guy's cute little epigrams mocking Our Country particularly piquant. I hate the song, but no more or less than any other song appearing in an overexposed commercial campaign. But why is he coming back?

I try to keep my political views distinct from my aesthetic judgements. I don't care that John Cougar Mellencamp has become a darling of the anti-war movement. That doesn't change the inherent merits (or utter lack-thereof) of his music. Mellencamp was a very inferior Midwestern version of Bruce Springsteen, in much the same way as Jon Bon Jovi is a very, very inferior New Jersey knock-off of the Boss. His music was (and is) blue collar, but generic, cliched and without the thinking-man rebel's edge one can find Born to Run, Darkness on the Edge of Town, the River and the rest of Springsteen's music. In short, John Cougar is basically Bill Simmons to Bruce Springsteen's F. Scott Fitzgerald.

But enough on John Cougar. During the fireworks display, there were various recordings played over the loudspeaker system. Rest assured, I am scandalized with that decision on two levels. First, nobody went to the Esplanade or turned their TVs on to see some tool's i-Pod. The damn Boston Pops could have learned/rehearsed 3-4 more songs (or is an orchestra of that eminence confined to using selection to refer to the material they play?), after all it's not like this was an impromptu gig. The Fourth of July happens every year. Right in the same spot on the calendar too, not like Labor Day which skulks its way through that first week of September.

In addition to being scandalized by the fact that the Pops let recorded music be played at their signature concert, I was also deeply disappointed by some of their choices. Kenny Chesney was on the play list, and while he might be elevated in the esteem of New Englanders because he rocks a Red Sox hat from time to time, it doesn't change the fact that his music is shallow and childish even for a country singer. I could have done without the Sesame Street theme as well, but such is life.

Far worse, in the collection of "patriotic" music played throughout the program, the Battle Hymn of the Republic didn't make the cut. Of course very few songs manage to offend the real core of America the way that song does. For Southerners and racists, it calls to mind places like Antietam, Gettysburg, Shiloh, Vicksburg and Appomattox, and God forbid we hurt their feelings. And then the overt religious sentiments of the song offend Massachusetts residents who wear their atheism as a badge of honor. But we did have 3, maybe 4 different George M. Cohan selections. Kind of warms the cockles, doesn't it?

And finally, I found myself wondering what a British soldier might have felt seeing the Middlesex Volunteers march onto the stage at the beginning of the festivities. I'm betting that a member of the Queen's Own Closet Case Grenadiers must wonder why his great-great-great-grandfather lit out running so fast from a rabble like that in Concord. And in case you're wondering, I am, in fact, aware that John Cougar Mellencamp has dropped the Cougar from his stage name, but I'm not going to let him get away with that.

All that, and I didn't even take the CHB to task for acting like he's broken a story on Julio Lugo's offensive struggles.

In my spare time, I've been looking around for a new tool of the week segment. Unfortunately, I haven't been able to find a tool who stood head and shoulders above the run of the mill tools that make up a good 3/4 of the American population. Since it's been well over a week without a tool, I'm giving up for the time being and renaming it the tool of interest segment, or maybe the tool of note segment. I have some time to decide, since I don't need to run one for a while.

To fill the tool void, one need go no further than boston.com, where one can discover strong evidence that the tools among us haven't gone to sleep just yet. There is, after all, Dan Shaughnessy and his never-ending stock of shallow premises, faithful obedience to John Henry and half-assed attempts to be hip.

I know I spend a lot of time attacking Dan Shaughnessy in this blog. To be fair, however, he is a terrible writer with no redeeming vices. He's lazy, opportunistic, a shameless puppet of Red Sox ownership and for some reason has been waging a one man war against Manny Ramirez for some time now. In case you're interested, a redeeming vice would be a good sense of humor, the knack for incorporating an interesting or relevant external reference into his work once in a while or evidence of some effort expended to earn his paycheck.

In this recent effort, he dragged down the 1960s band Procul Harum by dragging their song into this piece of sycophancy (not really a word in common use, but it should be) directed at John Henry. It might seem, for an instant, that the CHB isn't giving his real boss a back rub. But when you look at all his tough talk, it's directed at Henry's partner in his racing endeavor, Jack Roush.

A legitimate columnist would have devoted more than three sentences to the fact that the Red Sox have the highest ticket prices in the land. It's small matter that they could charge more. Just because you can do something, that isn't moral justification for it. But John Henry is one sharp cookie, he reads about commodities and investments at 4 AM. I bet Warren Buffett is cowering in terror in his Omaha empire, just waiting for the day that John Henry becomes America's most renowned investor.

One would think that his status as Henry's mouthpiece would make him less likely to wage a crusade against Manny Ramirez. But then one must remember that Henry's regime has been characterized by a number of hints and hopes that Manny would continue being Manny in some other uniform. Rumors of trades and demands for trades have been floated so often, one no longer pays them much attention. It does seem clear that this team has been trying to make Manny expendable. Why else did they bring in JD Drew?

Consider it for a moment. JD Drew has come to a team at great expense to play the outfield. The team already has Manny Ramirez, Coco Crisp and Wily Mo Pena manning the outfield positions. Depth is an excellent thing to have, but is it a commodity to be purchased at the rate of $70 million over the next five years. One thing is clear, the Red Sox could never dare move Manny without a big name to fill the hole in the lineup and in the fan's hearts.

The real problem with Manny as a baseball player and a man isn't that he's eccentric. Rather, it is that he hasn't shown the proper veneration for Dan Shaughnessy, baseball expert, genius, writer and man. Instead of genuflecting and kissing the CHB's ring as though he were the Pope, Manny hustled even less after the CHB upbraided him for not hustling enough. I'm sure legislators the world over will finally get off their asses and make that a capital crime any day now, but until them, maybe the CHB will learn how to live with disappointment.

This article is a representative sample of the campaign against Manny. It begs the question, what does Manny Ramirez owe to the team, the fans and the media? He is paid to hit, and he does. If he lives in his own world, but produces big offensive numbers he doesn't need to live the way the CHB thinks he ought to. Ironically, a Red Sox outfielder who produced fantastic numbers but enjoyed a stormy relationship with the Boston media was the subject of a vast number of puff pieces written by our fickle friend the CHB.

Manny Ramirez isn't Ted Williams. He's not the player Ted was, not the patriot that Ted was and not the philanthropist that Ted was. But he shows up and hits for power and average, and he drives in runs. Beyond that there is no obligation he must meet. The CHB conveniently mentions that the rest of the team is furious with Manny, but doesn't dare criticize him. Without a player on record, either the CHB is making it all up, or the team is full of gutless frauds. Either way works for me, since a team full of gutless frauds won't win it all and I hate the CHB.

It's amazing to me that he can criticize Manny for shutting it down early last season while signing the return of JD Drew with bated breath. Apparently, Red Sox Nation is dumb enough to believe that this leopard will change his spots. JD Drew is selfish, injury prone fraud and he'll be inserted in the line up on Opening Day. Just wait until Red Sox Nation wakes up to find out that it missed Trot Nixon when Drew plays 100 games and has an even more mysterious injury than the one that felled Manny late last season.

It is entirely possible that this was part of the deal to net Matsuzaka, as many have speculated. And we all know that Daisuke Matsuzaka has already been engraved on the CY Young Award for the American League for the next 12 years. So it's win-win, even if Drew flops in Boston, as illogical as that seems to the man who isn't enamored of the Red Sox. Even if Drew never gets a hit, the Red Sox win twice because Matsuzaka will be the greatest thing ever to come to America.

Perhaps the optimism that surrounds a pitcher that has yet to throw so much as a pitch in North American professional baseball is so shocking to me because I was born a pessimist. Or maybe my hatred of the Red Sox has clouded my capacity for rational thought. Or it's possible that I'm right. Who knows. All I know it that the CHB is own way probably jinxed Matsuzaka in a misguided effort to be cute and folksy by calling him "Elvis Matsuzaka."

And Shaughnessy had to go and ruin one of my predictions. He ran a deathwatch column on a Red Sox alumnus and it wasn't Carl Yastremski. In my post where I introduced the idea, I predicted it would be Carl Yastremski because the only other Red Sox alumnus I could think of who might reasonably stir enough fan interest to excuse the laziness on the part of the CHB was Johnny Pesky. And if it weren't for the pole in right field and the fact that he hangs around the team day in and day out, who would even know him?

Of course, if I even thought about him, I would have immediately gone with Dom DiMaggio. Not so much because he was a star (he was good in center field, but not great), but because of the massive celebrity of his brother Joe. Knowing the CHB and his vanilla writing style and complete lack of creativity, I should have seen this sentence coming:

There were nine kids in the home of the Sicilian immigrants at 2047 Taylor St. in the North Beach section of San Francisco. Dad Giuseppe was a fisherman, mom Rosalie a former schoolteacher, and three of the five boys would become major league baseball players -- one of them rising to the level of American icon, celebrated in literature by Ernest Hemingway and in song by Paul Simon.

Wow, how cool is that. Not only did he have an intern look into DiMaggio's vital records, but he listened to Mrs. Robinson and might have perused The Old Man and the Sea. God help us all.

Ladies and gentlemen, tonight isn't a good night for us here in Cincinnati Kid land. It's Friday night, and I'm updating my blog. I am a giant loser, apparently. Of course, I could have done something interesting. I elected to take it easy, since I overindulged myself last night.

Since it's Friday and I don't have anything better to do, it's time to revisit the Max Mercy Hall of Fame. Tonight, we have a double induction. The Globe's own Dan Shaughnessy and all the way from Chicago, the pride of the Sun Times... Jay Mariotti.

What can I say about Dan Shaughnessy that hasn't already been said by the legion of people who hate him. This site also hosts a blog that tracks the CHB's career and highlights some of his "finer points" as a journalist. I don't know anybody who likes him as a writer. And yet he's paid to write. There is no justice in this world.

A lot of people have noticed that the CHB hasn't writing about the Sox much, until the recent departure of Chris Snow. Most people seem to have enjoyed that respite. The optimists I talked to about this situation had a variety of opinions. Some people thought that the years of antagonism and backstabbing had finally caught up with him and shut him out of the clubhouse. A few even thought that the NY Times might have put pressure on the CHB as an employee of their subsidiary to stop attacking the team in which the Paper of Record owns a 17% stake.

I think the CHB confined his "talents" to puff pieces because he was otherwise occupied. I think Dan Shaughnessy has been leading a double life. Not only is he employed by the Boston Globe to strip mine the simple joy a fan should feel watching a grown man play a child's game, but he is also a Time Lord from the planet Gallifrey defending the space-time continuum from the Daleks. That's right. Dan Shaughnessy, the hero whom you so callously call the CHB is the real identity of Dr. Who.

(Sorry about the formatting, still learning this stuff)

Yeah, it's a bit of a stretch, and I probably vaulted myself into the extreme upper echelon of losers throughout the world with the Dr. Who reference. It is, however, something that doesn't seem to have been done before when someone criticized the CHB. In all likelihood I'm wrong, but I tried. I googled it, and everything. I also tried Yahoo! and came up with nothing. Of course, somewhere there is a record of hits on Dr. Who websites that increased by one on a Friday night. Soon the nerds will emerge from their nerderies to drag me off to join them. All I ask is that you who read this tell the world my story. And try to make me look just a bit cooler than I have managed thus far.

But now he's back, with a vengeance.

I could spend hours combing through his columns to find each and every flaw, but I am colossally lazy and I like to pretend I have a life (even though I already fessed up to staying in and searching for Dr. Who tonight). But this article from this morning's Globe has more than enough of the quirks that have made Dan Shaughnessy a favorite among masochists everywhere.

I hope you got a chance to read it, or to click on the link above. Among the many words/phrases which should be grounds for capital punishment, boffo has to be near the top of the list. If you use a word like boffo, you are a douche. The CHB referred to the pitchers' duel between Schilling and Santana as a boffo pitching match-up. Boffo. In the 21st century. I imagine he wrote that piece, he made his way down to the soda fountain to have a malt with Potsie.

The CHB called the Sox the "Henrymen." With any luck, that odious little nickname won't stick. He also referred to the team's principal owner as "Papa Jack." He also took yet another swipe at Manny Ramirez, reminding us that Manny went hitless as the team was swept by the Twins. "0 for Minnesota" was the CHB's blithe epigram to describe the cleanup hitter's failure to, of all things, clean up. Maybe it's ego on my part, but I think mine was the cleverer split infinitive and all.

There was also the recent gem of a column specifically about the pitcher's duel mentioned above. Aside from the constant references to the 16 inning game between Spahn and Marichal as though he'd been there and the Coffee Talk allusion, the biggest problem with this particular "effort" is the mention of the election in 2004. According to the CHB we must: "never forget that [Curt Schilling] delivered Ohio for Geroge (sic) W. Bush in 2004." The typo was there on Boston.com. Check it out if you don't believe me.

I know Schilling appeared at a rally for the president the night before the votes were cast. I'm sure that the president didn't lose to many votes because Schilling appeared on his behalf. In fact, I'd concede that the appearance may have garnered him a few votes. However, the final margin in Ohio was over 100,000 votes. As a pitcher for a team beat out the Indians for the AL Wild Card, it seems unlikely that Schill brought 50,000+ votes to Bush. It seems like nothing more than a mean-spirited attempt to create animosity toward Schilling among Red Sox fans. For all their failings (and they have many), Red Sox fans seem to recognize that the politics of the individual players have little or nothing to do with their effectiveness of the field. The CHB needs to start acting like a man, or stop writing. Better the latter, but I have learned to live with disappointment.

Jay Mariotti and the CHB go into the Max Mercy Hall of Fame together because they're a lot alike. Both seem to have proprietary rights to the moral high ground in their respective sports markets. Both have personalities which make Marvin the Paranoid Android from The Hitchhikers' Guide to the Galaxy seem like a top of the line sentient being to roll with at cocktail parties. Both have bizarre histories of feuds with the local sports teams (Mariotti vs. the White Sox/Hawk Harrelson, The CHB vs. Theo, Carl Everett and Manny). And nobody I know seems to like either of them (I must admit that I only know a few Chicago fans, but they all hate Mariotti).

For a reasonably accurate sample of Mariotti's writing, you can read this column about the World Cup. This particular sentence (I use that word for lack of a better term) seems like a good place to start: "What the rest of the world calls football, we call soccer, simply because we already have our football and it reflects America's desired macho profile of bleeding, crippling physicality." That is a run-on (and yes, I am aware of the hypocrisy in criticizing another writer when my blog cries out for competent editing). Not only that, but it is preachy, whiny, cliched and devoid of insight.

One run-on is insufficient. The next sentence takes his inelegance a step further: "Our soccer is a fringe sport of moms, kids and diehards, contrary to their football, a life-and-death psychosis that can breed hooliganism, suicide and occasional murder if a player heads a ball into his own net." Another sentence: "To this day, our biggest and best kid athletes play football and kids too small generally play soccer, which could be a metaphor for American life" begs the question who edits his columns and why isn't he/she doing his/her job? Last time I checked, kid isn't an adjective. I'm reasonably sure that nouns aren't supposed to modify other nouns, but then again it's been a while since I last perused the MLA book.

Read the rest of the column at your own risk. Jay Mariotti has achieved the status that every bad college sports writer yearns for in the wee hours of the morning. He's on Around the Horn. His whiny, nasal voice can shout down his fellow disputants. The lions of Chicago sports tremble in their dens at his approach. He is free to pander, to drown readers in strident hyperbole, to wallow in his self-satisfaction like a pig in a sty and to bully his inferiors with impunity. In short, Jay Mariotti is Max Mercy, without the redeeming quality of being a character in a work of fiction.

It is a curious dysfunction in the psyche of a sports fan that makes them want to be set on edge by the people who cover their teams. The CHB and Mariotti command large salaries to browbeat and annoy readers. They're on TV and radio, they have a celebrity status that far exceeds their talents as writers. Then again, we've come a long way since Grantland Rice and Ring Lardner.

Grantland Rice gave us the image of the Four Horsemen of Notre Dame. He drew his imagery from the Bible. The CHB gave us the Curse of the Bambino. His inspiration...New York Times writer George Vescey. Ring Lardner covered the Black Sox. Dan Shaughnessy brought us Jurassic Carl and Theo-gate '05. Yet again, I find myself glad not to be a Sox fan.

P.S. I am not a Dr. Who fan. I got all that stuff from google. I do remember it, as I'm sure is the case with a lot of people who are old enough to remember the dark days before cable came to town. In the Stone Age, you were lucky to get 2, 4, 5, 7, 25, 38 and 56. Finding something good on TV was, at times, almost a miracle. I also remember when V66 showed music videos and it was such a novelty that normal people would sit and watch something like "Careless Whisper" by WHAM and like it. I had a huge crush on the lead singer from 'Til Tuesday because of the video for "Voices Carry." The difference between myself and you is that I admit this stuff. I have nothing to hide, but my true identity.