Game 27

Final Score:

Boston Red Sox 9, Cleveland Indians 5

Apparently I am not blessed with the gift of prophecy. This fact makes me quite happy.

The bats seem to have awoken - conveniently timed, of course, now that the standings in the AL East are nice and close. It also seems that sticking Bill Mueller back in his old eighth spot in the lineup has improved his average. I kinda like him there anyway; now he's kinda like that delayed surprise after you think you've made it through the hard part of the lineup. I'm still trying to decide if someone should just put B.K. Kim (gotta love how illiterate Boston sports fans are - we'll nickname a guy by using his initials, then tack his last name on anyway) out of his misery, or if he just had a bad outing. I have heard it suggested that the whole secret to Kim's magic is his delivery - once hitters get used to the weird stuff he does when he's throwing the ball, they've got him nailed.

I just took part in a poll on redsox.com that asked who the fans thought should be the MVP for April. Out of the 56417 people who had voted so far, about 45% had voted for Manny (the choices were Ortiz, Schilling, Ramirez, Varitek and Foulke). These results surprised me a bit - I picked Foulke, but I wonder how much of that is a result of my gratitude that the bullpen this year is so much better than it was last year and that Foulke is like unto a saving machine. That said, Manny has been doing crazy things like hustling and offering to give up part of his salary to help the Sox keep Pedro - things that are impressive for any rich athlete, but seem like evidence of a complete personality change for someone like Manny. There's that whole hitting thing too - apparently Ramirez was a major player in keeping the team in runs in April. I could revise my thinking on this one.

Battle of the aces tonight and I should *actually* be around to listen to it. Joy of joys.

Yankees continue to suck, kids.