 Bobby Kielty at Spring Training 2008 – courtesy of Kelly O’Connor/sittingstill.net. |
Randomly:
* Looking for live baseball? Starting tonight the MLB Network will be showing all 12 games of the 2009 Caribbean World Series. Football ended yesterday (no one really counts the Pro-Bowl, do they?) so this will be the natural companion piece to the end of the football season. Bring on the baseball!
* One final note about the Jason Varitek saga: So many writers seem obsessed with the Red Sox “over valuing” Tek, yet I haven’t heard one player, even outside the Red Sox, say that. We might look at Tek and say “He’s a catcher. Anyone trained to BE a catcher can catch in Boston (or anywhere). But if the pitchers on the Red Sox think he’s a difference maker, who are we to say “No, he isn’t?”. Unless you’re out there throwing to the guy, this isn’t really an area where you have any more insight to what he brings to the team than the guys who trust him day after day.
* Add Bobby Kielty to the list of former Sox players from 2007 who have landed safely. Like his teammate Kyle Snyder, Kielty signed a minor-league deal with the New York Mets and received an invite to the Major League Spring Training camp. Bobby had a rough year in 2008 but, hopefully, winning a ring and having the memory of hitting a home run in the World Series helped keep him warm at night. I wish Bobby luck. It might turn out to be a bit of fun, watching the Mets this season.
* Friday is Truck Day for the Red Sox. Due to a schedule that leaves me Fridays to do as I please, I’ll be at Fenway to witness the equipment trucks begin their trip southward. If I’d been working my old, full-time schedule I wouldn’t be going. Last year they planned it best, I think, having the trucks leave on a Saturday. But regardless of when the trucks leave, they ARE leaving and that’s all that matters. And I’ll be there to take pictures of trucks. Don’t everyone get all excited.
* Pitchers and catchers report (for Boston anyway) on February 12th (10 days and three hours from when I was writing this, according to redsox.com). Pitchers and catchers for the Mets report on the 13th and P&C for the Reds on the 14th. My nightmare is almost over. I’ll be high on pitchers and catchers soon enough!
* I had the Cardinals in the Super Bowl. Thus proving, once again, that I have a talent for choosing (outside my wheelhouse of teams I genuinely root for) the loser almost every time. I need to find a way for this to work for me.