I Scream. You Scream.

Marge Simpson was right: Titles are hard. If you can come up with a good Red Sox themed ice cream name though, Hood ice cream will award you with coupons for free ice cream for a year.

Win a Date with Jim Rice.

In honor of Jim Rice being called to Cooperstown on July 26, RCN will be holding a Jim Rice appreciation contest. The winner will receive two plane tickets to Florida, two nights in a hotel, tickets to a spring training game and lunch with Jim Rice. The contest is open to all and can be entered by sending a self-addressed (and since the winner will be telephoned--phone number listed) postcard before the end of February to:

Attn: RCN - Jim Rice Spring Training Contest
956 Massachusetts Avenue
Arlington, MA 02476

Pitch Man.

I am a sucker for all things Papelbon. I can understand how he would annoy the crap out of fans for other teams but I love the idiot dearly. This season he'd been doing his damnedest to sell Dunkin' Donuts' products and the latest promotion he's lent his likeness to is called Bases Loaded.

Basically, you enter the code from your cold Dunkin' Donuts' drink and watch the character take a couple of hacks against computer Jonathan Papelbon (you could also swing against Joba Chamberlain but given my affinity for Paps, why would I do that?)

The game is highly amusing if only for the little videos that go along with it. There's the ridiculously stiff reading of the introduction material and the wonderfully hammy presser after he strikes you out or you get a hit (the getting a hit one is better than the striking you out one.) Also, for someone who could just ask his wife for acting advice Papelbon is far out shown in the acting department by Chamberlain.

Anyway, if the idea of iced coffee gives you the willies or, like me, you haven't stepped into a Dunkin's in years the code to enter for free is: 33FYVD3JHR99. You can enter it up to three times per day.

Tickets! Anybody Need Tickets?

If you haven't been able to get tickets yet there are some other options.

1. If you don't mind the flight to Canada, tickets for the Red Sox games in Toronto on April 5 and 6, will be available to Red Sox fans before they are available to the general public.

-Seriously, if I were a Jays fan I imagine that would annoy the hell out of me.

2. If you happen to live in south Florida, are going to be there for spring training, or happen to know someone else who fits those categories, on February 26 the Boys and Girls Club of Lee county will be sponsoring the 3rd Annual Evening with the Red Sox. Part of the event will be an auctioning of the fabulous prize of: 4 green monster tickets to a Sox/Yankees game, airfare, accommodation, and a VIP tour of Fenway.

-I'm thinking of dispatching the 'rents to procure this for me. It's only like a four hour drive from where they live. I don't know what I would do with the airfare and I can see it quickly getting out of my price range but whatever. I've done some stupid things for the Sox.

and lastly,

3. If you don't want to spend the kind of money that would require, the Exeter Area Chamber of Commerce is holding the Ultimate Sports Ticket Raffle. The prize is a pair of Red Sox tickets, a pair of Patriots tickets, a pair of Celtics tickets, a pair of Bruins tickets, four tickets to a University of New Hampshire hockey game, and a limo to two of the games.

-It's a lot of tickets. But if you've only spent $10 on the entry, then you could skip all of the games besides the Red Sox game.

A Musical Interlude

Not entirely baseball related but perhaps something to keep your spirits up.

The Dropkick Murphys are out promoting their latest album The Meanest of Times and one of their stops was at MLB in New York. The interview doesn't really say anything interesting, at all. It does, however, mention a contest. I love contests and so I thought I would pass it along.

The prize is a guitar (or possibly two guitars.) MLB seems to think that there are two guitars to be won but the website says that you can win one guitar. It's a situation that could be easily cleared up by reading the rules but we've already discussed that (plus, I can't find the contest rules on the website anyway.) One of the guitars, which is why it was worth a mention, has the Sox logo on it.