BOO-HOO!

The Red Sox lost on a rare obstruction call last night. It's not like an umpire made a bad call or a baseball hit a pebble and hopped over a fielder. No. the Red Sox lost because their catcher, Jarrod Saltalamacchia made a very bad throw and Will Middleton, the third baseman, impeded the progress of a runner and was called for an obstruction. The call was correct.
I am NOT rooting for the Sox, obviously, and I was happy that St Louis won, but I felt no derision toward Boston for what amounted to an inadvertent play. What changed my attitude was reading the comments of Red Sox fans on ESPN. They ranged from "The call was wrong," "He wasn't in his way," It was the runner's fault," and "He wasn't trying to block him," all the way to, "Jim Joyce is a terrible ump and made up the call just so Boston would lose."
Even one of the Boston players got into the act. Jake Peavy said, "I cannot believe you make that call from home plate." Actually, it was third base ump Jim Joyce who made the call. Home plate umpire, Dana DeMuth simply signaled safe and pointed to third, indicating that the obstruction call overruled the call at the plate. I'm waiting to hear owner Larry Lucchino blame this on the Yankees, somehow. 



***AROUND THE HORN***
## St. Louis likes to claim they are MLB's best baseball city and they're right. If you don't include New York...or Chicago...or Los Angeles...or even Detroit. Detroit? Well, when you have a city that's bankrupt, that is never called 'beautiful', or is not considered a vacation paradise, yet fills the stands and cheers the team even when they lose,  then they have my vote.
## The NY Daily News runs a feature every fall called, "Keep 'em or Dump 'em."  The player with the highest percentage of "Keep 'em" votes was Alphonso Soriano with 93%.  The  "Dump 'em" category was led by Joba Chamberlain, with 93% also. Hal Steinbrenner also got into the "Dump 'em" category with 54% saying he should go. Good luck with that one. The one baseball axiom that has NEVER changed is, "You can't fire the owner."
## A study conducted by Bloomberg News (whoever they are), rate the NY Yankees as the most valuable MLB franchise at $3.28 Billion. That's Billion. Ironically, the least valuable is the Tampa Bay Rays at $530 Million. That's Million. In line with this report is a comment from Phil Mushnick of the NY Post. "Good news: The Yankees are holding the line on ticket prices, maintaining them at unaffordable."

## As Vod has so aptly pointed out, Tim McCarver keeps proving that this IS the time to retire, in fact, it may actually have been last year. I love his front-running tactics. During one at-bat last night. a pitcher threw a ball that was called a strike. "A good call," intoned McCarver, "Right on the corner."  Replays showed the pitch clearly outside. Did McCarver comment on that? Nope! Later, a pitch inside was called a ball. "Close, but the pitch was definitely inside." says McCarver. Again, replays showed the call was wrong, But Tim was too busy focusing on his next mistake to mention it.
##  I read where Nick Saban, head coach of the Alabama Crimson Tide, has suspended the sale of block seating privileges for some students, because he was unhappy that some of them were leaving the game early. What!? How does he get away with this? If students were rowdy or disruptive, I could understand his unhappiness, but even then, he shouldn't have the right to arbitrarily block them from buying tickets. Shouldn't he be concentrating on the game instead of clocking the departure time of some of the students? The stadium has a capacity of 102,000 and yet he was still able to pick out who left the game early. If there is any justice in the world, one of those students will have a parent who is a lawyer and Saban will find himself in court. It's really beginning to look like the title "Head Coach" really means "University President."
## Understatement of the year: "It’s important for receivers to catch passes thrown right at them." - Jesse Palmer

***THEY SAID IT***
"Ron Artest renaming himself Metta World Peace is like Mahatma Gandhi asking that we call him by his nickname, Spike."  -- Phil Mushnick

"If A-Rod did take PEDs, after the circus he has created, it sure seems hard to think he doesn’t deserve the entire 211-game suspension, if not more. Indeed, it seems to match the number of lawyers he has working on this matter."  -- Tom Harvey, NY Daily News
"I'm getting a little weary of questions about whether Creighton can handle the physicality of the Big East. Creighton played in a league with Wichita State, a group slightly more physical than the Romanian kick-boxing team."  -- Brad Dickson
"David Ortiz played  first base last night in the World Series So after the controversy about Jon Lester, this will make Big Papi the second Boston player with a possible foreign substance on his hand – his glove."  -- Janice Hough
"I’m not saying St. Louis baseball fans have gotten spoiled. But they call errors Cardinal sins"  -- RJ Currie
"Tiger Woods’ agent threatened legal action after Golf Channel commentator Brandel Chamblee accused the golfer of cheating.“Where were you four years ago?” said Elin Nordegren"  -- Dwight Perry
"Ex-Oregon tight end Colt Lyerla was arrested on cocaine charges: “Teammates suspected something was up when he was on the line: He tried to snort it."  -- Alan Ray
"Advil was named the official pain reliever of the NHL: “This is the second-most lucrative endorsement deal, next to being the official bail bondsman of the NFL"  -- Brad Dickson
"Roger Goodell says he wants NFL teams in both London and L.A. “but it doesn’t matter which one is first.” And London and L.A. are thinking “You take the Jaguars, no, after you, no, after you….”  -- Janice Hough
"Jesse Palmer is the master of the silly gridiron terminology. "I like the way he runs north and south” (formerly known as straight ahead.)"  --  Phil Mushnick

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