After the Game.

Confession: Before this season, I never really paid all that much attention to Adrian Beltre; he was out on the West Coast so, really, who cares? Nobody. That's who. I will also admit that now I am pretty close to head-over-heels for him. It's not just the glove or the arm or the self-check at first base, which is amusing; nope, the thing that I've come to love most about Adrian Beltre is that he's like a spring. He builds up so much tension in his body when he's getting ready to hit that when he opts not to swing, he's got to release it somehow and so he does this little hopping thing. It makes me laugh.

I would love it if they brought Beltre back; I doubt that they will but I suppose that you never know. The Angels need a third baseman and Beltre's been rumored to be a West Coast guy. The West Coast thing might be overblown, though, because the Beltres have put their Los Angeles area pad on the market. They're some serious digs. If he did land in Anaheim, he could always pull it off the market, $19.8 million won't be easy to move.

On to the Tenth.

Things we learned from Ken Burns' Tenth Inning:

1. For all that his father meant to him, Petey is a mama's boy.

2. I never really put much thought into it but Joe Torre is kind of likable; Don Zimmer, on the other hand, remains a troll.

3. I'd forgotten how much fun it was to watch Ken Griffey Jr. play.

4. Barry Bonds can be a sympathetic character.

5. I can totally recognize Mike Lowell in profile. During one of the Barry Bonds segments, there was a photograph of, I assume, of a National League All-Star team but I didn't notice Barry (Please don't kill me, Mr. Bonds.) until they zoomed in on him because I only had eyes for Mike Lowell. Also, besides Rod Barajas, who knew that Barajas played for the Diamondbacks in 2001?

6. Even knowing what's coming, 2003 remains gut-wrenchingly awful to watch.

7. 2004 remains utterly fantastic.

Sigh.

"Every little girl knows about love. It is only her capacity to suffer because of it that increases." --Francoise Sagan.

I feel like I've been holding my breath (waiting, waiting, waiting for the other shoe to drop), and now, small consolation though it may be, at least I can breathe. From the beginning, getting to the playoffs wasn't projected to be an easy task (being a bridge year and all) and the fact that they managed to go through all that they went through and were still in it until the last week of September is impressive.

Bummed? Yeah. Heart broken? Sure, a little bit. Angry? Not at all. What else could they possibly have done? This ragtag bunch played with a lot of determination and I really don't want to say heart (because, as you know, all you really need is heart and since they didn't win they can't possibly have heart). They made things interesting and it was fun while it lasted; mind you, not a traditional sense of fun, it was more of a pace around like a tiger at an old timey zoo, glowery sort of fun but fun nonetheless.

So, thank you boys. It was a nice party.

Visions of Sugar Plums.

"THESE are the times that try men's souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands by it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman. Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph. What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly: it is dearness only that gives every thing its value." --Thomas Paine

Perhaps it was the fact that three out of the last six games have ended around 1:30 in morning but I've spent the past day and a half envisioning a ninety-eight win season (if you're going to day dream, then you might as well dream big) and somehow it seemed feasible. In my scenario, ninety-eight wins at least got you the wild card--even if New York also won all of it's remaining games (with the exception of their games against the Sox because somebody has to lose) they would have finished with ninety-eight wins as well but Boston would win the season series by one. Leave it to John Lackey (and undoubtedly Don Orsillo's concerned voice) though to suck the fun right out of the room. But then there was a glimmer of hope and it grew into a flame and then to a bonfire only to be cruelly snuffed out.

After a tough, emotionally draining day, I went into the game hoping only to be entertained and ultimately I was; disappointed but entertained. So I guess it's back to the drawing board to figure a new way into the play-offs (the current front runner is that a highly contagious, non-lethal flu might run rampant through New York's clubhouse forcing them to have to forfeit the rest of their games since they're all in the bathroom yakking) because like it or not, I'm in it for the long haul--if I can't not watch pointless games in Seattle, it doesn't seem likely that I'll be able to turn off the games that start before ten.

Also, I've taken to rooting for the Giants (mostly because I've also decided that I dislike Heath Bell) but I'm extremely glad that I was wrong about Adrian Beltre and the offense that the Sox were going to get this season; watching San Fransisco try to string together a couple of hits may be the most painful experience imaginable. As I sit here, they're down by two to Milwaukee and it's probably an insurmountable deficit. Just thought I'd share.

And if there are any Revolutionary War veterans who are offended by the misappropriation of Thomas Paine: apologies.

I Can Quit Anytime I Want.

Part of me wishes that they'd just put this ridiculous season out of it's misery: declare it a lost cause and forfeit the rest of the season; take the hit financially by returning the sold tickets and just move on. Send Scutaro to get his shoulder repaired because every time someone grounds out to short, it looks as if he would prefer to run the ball over to first base rather than throw it. Adrian Beltre is hobbling around. JD Drew is, undoubtedly, beat up in some manner. Send them all home and be done with it. Think of it Theo: Think of where you'd get to pick in the draft if your record was 76-86. You know that you want to do it.

And the other part of me thinks that someone (preferably the Yankees, always the Yankees) is in for a Mets-ian collapse. And she is killing me.

The Return.

There's a jazz tune from New Orleans, that I'm quite fond of, called No, It Ain't My Fault. The lyric (at least the way I've heard it in the past) is pretty simple:

Nooooooooo, it ain't my fault.
Nooooooooo, it ain't my fault.
Nooooooooo, it ain't my fault.
My fault, my fault, it ain't my fault.

Depending on the severity of the situation, it may not be the most mature approach to resolving an issue, but who doesn't want to just pass the buck occasionally?

The answer is, apparently, Manny Ramirez. On his return visit to Boston this summer, Manny is rejecting the Let the good times roll (I'm not going to attempt the French spelling) attitude and instead issuing a mea culpa for the way he behaved in 2008.

The interesting thing might be (I'm not sure about this, I really do my best to avoid them) that for the first time since Manny came to Boston, the media might not have a vendetta against him. A fat lot of good it does him now. At least we'll likely be spared incredibly offensive, uncomfortable, jackass-ish, jokes from Tom Caron. When the Dodgers were in town, Caron repeatedly (two or three times in the same broadcast) joked along the lines of: You're Manny is so dumb, he doesn't even recognize that he's in Fenway. Ha ha ha! Wait. That's not funny. [Aside: Don't get me started on NESN and the crappy product they regularly put out--Seriously? You can't time a commercial break?--but Tom Caron genuinely pissed me off with those comments. I don't remember the last time I watched a pre/post game show.]

In the end, though, I don't think that it matters too much one way or the other; not because there's no actual apology there or because I doubt his sincerity. I just don't think that the crowd has much energy left to devote a lot of it to reacting to Manny. Maybe I'm wrong, maybe my irrelevant assessment from June was off-track but even as a die-hard Manny defender, his return gets a meh from me.