Linky Goodness

CHICAGO (IL) –- I love me some random links:

— Remember the name: Lars Anderson. He is a 20 year old, power hitting 1B for the Portland Sea Dogs, a Red Sox AA farm team. He sure doesn’t sound like any 20 year old I’ve ever known in this interview with David Laurilla from Baseball Prospectus:

http://www.baseballprospectus.com/article.php?articleid=7940

— As a lifelong Red Sox fan, part of me hated to see Manny Ramirez go. Here’s a link to a pictorial tribute to Manualito on the Red Sox Sons of Sam Horn fan site:

http://sonsofsamhorn.net/index.php?showtopic=34769

— Then when I read this in the Boston Globe, I said to myself “screw ‘em, good riddance”:

http://www.boston.com/sports/baseball/redsox/articles/2008/08/02/ramxedrez_lobbied_to_stay/

That’s right: Manny had super slime Scott Boras call the Sox an hour after the deal was done to say Manny wanted to stay and wouldn’t be a problem for the rest of the season if they would waive his options for 2009 and 2010. Translation: Manny was intentionally dogging it his last few weeks in a Sox uni.

— Dodgers skipper Joe Torre is still waiting for Manny to cut his dreads, 2 weeks after the big goofball promised Joe that he was gonna lose ‘em:

http://www.boston.com/sports/baseball/redsox/extras/extra_bases/2008/08/manny_and_joes.html

— As NESN’s Don Orsillo put it “You’re not in Pittsburgh any more Jason Bay.” In his first start as the “replacement” for Manny in LF, here is how Bay was welcomed by fans to The Fens:

http://boston.redsox.mlb.com/media/video.jsp?mid=200808023238726&c_id=bos

— Is there any dumber statistic in all of sports than that of “run support” (how many runs his team scores when he throws) for a pitcher? Like the pitcher has some control over that? Or maybe it’s that his teammates try harder for him than they do for the other guys?

I bring this up because recently acquired Spankees pitcher Sidney Ponson was averaging something like 8 tallies per start in “run support” since being acquired by the New Yawkers. Like that stat is supposed to mean something beyond pure sh*t luck? The Sawx have always lit up Ponson like a Christmas tree and his start vs. them was no different, as he fell about 6 runs short of his average, while they scored 9 times.

— I was kinda torn when former Dayton Flyer hurler Jerry Blevins came in to pitch for Oakland vs. the Sox a while back. I wanted the kid to do well, but didn’t want the Carmines to lose because of his effort. He did and they didn’t, so from my vantage point at least, everybody wins. Blevins is sporting an 0.66 ERA which will keep him in the big leagues for a long time with the Athletics if he can keep that up.

— Thanks to the Swampettes, as my birthday present from them was that I got to be in the CF stands at US Cellular watching the Sawx play the Sox on Monday night with the ES. White Sox lefty John Danks had a perfect game going for 6+ innings until the Sawx finally woke up and broke up his effort. Thanks, girls!

— In case you missed it, here is an article and picture of the “Montauk Monster” that washed up on the shore of that Long Island village recently:

http://www.newsday.com/news/columnists/ny-lijoy0801,0,5138315.column

Whatever it is, it sure is fugly. I wonder if my old apartment-mate Ed Igoe, a Montauk native, had anything to do with this.

— Speaking of fugly, how about the supposed Bigfoot body that was found in northern Georgia:

http://bittenandbound.com/2008/08/13/bigfoot-found-in-georgia/

If you ask me, it looks like Chewbacca just lost a relative.

— Bobby Orr, on his injury-shortened career, according to Joe Fitzgerald of the Boston Herald:

Speaking to a crowd in West Roxbury one night, he responded to a woman who suggested it was “a tragedy” that injuries effectively ended his career at the age of 28.

“If I could go back right now and do it all over again, believe me, I wouldn’t change one thing.”

That’s it “From the Swamp.”
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