Quickie

Some real quick nuggets:

• Should have blogged the game last night. Joba went 6 with 3 runs and 5 Ks, which was good, but he also had 4 BBs, which was not so good, not to mention a wild pitch that let a run score and a slider that slid all the way behind Youkilis’ thigh. All in all not a bad outing.
• Rivera pitched two strong innings for the win while Papelbon got walked off by rookie Brett Gardner. He’s really fast.
• Jose Molina has made several perfect throws to take guys out at second and third this past week or so. He has an impressive throw out rate, about 50/50 on bases stolen/guys thrown out.
• A-Rod tied the Mick for career home runs.
• Boston lost its sixth straight one run game.
• Joe Morgan was at the top of his moronic, self-loving game. Or maybe I mean he was at the bottom. Whatever; he was notably unbearable, even for him. He and Jon Miller continue to impress by messing up players’ names, confusing them with managers, etc.
• You know the irrepressible fear that I get whenever Kyle Farnsworth comes in with a lead smaller than 12 runs? I get the feeling that Red Sox fans are starting to feel the same way about Hideki Okajima (the guy who, if you listen to Miller and Morgan’s hyperboles, never ever looks at the plate before he pitches. We’re talking from when he walks out of the bullpen to when he leaves. Never looks. Yes, he jerks his head in a funny way. We get it.)
• Why is A-Rod’s divorce first page news on ESPN? I love ESPN but I’m starting to lose faith in them.
• I know I’m picking on the Red Sox a lot in this post when there are equally annoying or bad things about the Yankees. I’ll get to them later.
• Did you hear about the kid at Purdue who got in trouble for bringing a book to work about the Ku Klux Klan? Not just any book, but one about how the students of Notre Dame battled the Klan in the 1920s; not a book glorifying the Klan! Just by bringing the book to work he was accused of “harassing behavior” towards his black co-workers. He was ordered to not bring the book to work anymore or he might get fired. By the way, he was working for Purdue. An American university punishing a student worker for reading a book they carry in their own library!
• The latest GOP plan to “trap” Obama into a flip-flopper role is symptomatic of the disease that is the electoral season. Obama is clearly a flip-flopper; we all know it and he’s shameless about it. But guess what: they all are! Democrats, Republicans, anyone who wants to get elected is! They do it every cycle! Do we learn nothing! McCain’s camp is trying to trap Obama into either a) admitting that he is going to ignore the realities on the ground Iraq and stick to his 16 month plan no matter what, which will expose him as being someone who ignores facts and is unable to change, or b) changing his position on his withdrawal plan so he can be labeled a flip-flopper. Obama and his cronies must be spending time figuring out how to avoid this trap. I wish them luck. The McCain cronies must have spent a bunch of time figuring out how to lay the trap. Is this really what these people are spending all their time on? This is how we win elections in this country?
• Senators are expending so many resources, using so many people who are supposed to be smart on their campaign. Senators themselves are, theoretically, also smart. We could have all these people using their collective brain juices on solving the real problems this country is having as opposed to creating problems for their counterpart blowhards. As such, upon declaring their candidacy for the presidency, senators should be forced to resign their positions in Congress. This will not only allow their constituents to retain a representative who is actually serving them, but it will also make certain senators (and congressmen and governors, for that matter) think twice about opening campaigns that everyone knows are doomed from the beginning but are just for the publicity (see: Huckabee, Mike and Paul, Ron). They can run again later if they want but for the duration their constituents need people who are paying attention to them and not personal endeavors.