Maybe God's Warming up to me...

So...anyone that knows me well, realizes how awesome I am. However, sadly enough, those poor souls whom have not had the good fortune to get to know me beyond the occasional transaction, may be lacking the insight into my true being. A gaze into the stained-glass window that is my life, showing my inner most frailties...and how God hates me...

It is well documented. God has never really liked me. Just a few examples from my storied youth:

1. The time during High School baseball when I lost the game single handedly by throwing the ball away like a moron (I was always a much better hitter than a fielder)
2. I started working at the Thompson Country Club Golf Course in the fifth grade & managed to save enough money to buy my first car all on my own when I got my license...& then totalled it later that year...
3. I once qualified for the finals of the Massachusetts Junior Amateur Golf Championship...& then promtly shot a crowd pleasing 103 to take myself right out of it in the first round...
   
4. Somehow putting the thought in my head that I shouldn't dump Jen so I could have my shot with Jane Metzinger...
   
5. Worse yet...making me date Jen for 3+ years in the first place...& never letting me get past first base
   
6. Having Gloria Mayfield actually call home to ask why I wanted out of chorus (I had forged a letter from my mother to get myself out of it)
   
7. Or the time when I got my finger stuck in the grocery market conveyer belt (yeah....it hurt)

Yeah...God likes to f*ck with me. Takes some more recent events:

1. Every year, my "loving" wife leaves me, right around the time of my birthday, for 2 weeks to volunteer at a place where at least one of their un-paid volunteers cry every year...and can never understand why it bothers me to practically not see her for two weeks, as I come home every day from my miserable job to an empty house & another night of loneliness while she is off having fun in the city...
2. How he let's me have these great rounds of golf...when nobody's with me...I always play great when I am all alone on the golf course...(notice the "alone" theme)
3. We finally get a home equity loan in order to build an addition to the house (which we thought would be the hard part), but then we couldn't find a 10x10 room for less than $70,000
4. I finally picked up my new Titleist driver after 3+ weeks of waiting for the specially ordered shaft (when they told me it would take one), & they put the wrong shaft in it...
   

However, things may be picking up...

Sometimes God throws you a little bone here & there. The latest example beingng the other day, when I was attempting to put my new soft top onto my Wrangler. I was in a race against time to get the new top on before it started to rain. He did throw a few hurdles my way...first the dealership gave me the wrong screws for the brackets. Upon going back to the dealership, they only had two of the correct ones. So I took those to just get the top going. Now off to Sears to buy the #40 Torx head bit needed to install the screws. Got it. Now to work...Then the #40 Torx head bit that the manual said to use didn't fit. I then went back to Sears to buy a new (& correct) #30 Torx head, brought it home...& the bit didn't fit my wratchet. You guessed it...back to Sears to buy a wratchet to fit the bit.

After all of this, I finally managed to get the top on just as the first sprinkles were beginning to fall...

Who's better than me?!?

So that got me thinking...maybe things are looking up!?! Not only did the top that I had just installed only cost me $200 (retails @ $1500+), but God didn't smite me on this day as has been tradition. This is awesome...maybe I'm off of the universe's black-list. That would be awesome!

My life is pretty awesome! I have good friends, a decent job, a decent golf game, my kitchen is finally being renovated (taking out that damn wall between the two rooms), & I'm pretty damn good-looking to boot!

Plus...here's the mini-cherry, on top of the regular cherry, on top of the sundae of awesomeness that is my life...I get to go home every day to this...

Sometimes it takes something as simple as the rain holding off for a few minutes to make you remember how awesome your life is...

Tito pisses me off so damn much...

If you take a second & think about those fabled Major League Baseball teams which all fans can recall with fondness, you will find one thing in common with each of them. They all had core group of starters. All of the great teams had an every-day starter for every possition, and then a group of non-starting reserve players who would come in to play off of the bench or fill in for a start on occassion in order to give the actual starter a day off to releax & recooperate.

Take for example the '86 Red Sox. I guarantee any fan can ramble off the names of the starting line-up from that season without a second thought:

• 1B: Bill Buckner
• 2B: Marty Barett
• SS: Spike Owen
• 3B: Wade Boggs
• C: Rich Gedman
• LF: Jim Rice
• CF: Dave Henderson
• RF: Dwight Evans
  

The team normally has reserve players to cover every possition, but as the starters are better qualified or more accomplished players, the reserve players are just that...in reserve. There just in case they are needed. I mean, I was a big fan of Mike Greenwell. He may have played the wall better than most others that have graced the turf in front of the Green Monster , but Jim Rice was better. Therefore, Rice was the starter.

All throughout sports, from little league to college, kids strive to be the better player at whichever possition they play, in whatever sport they participate in, because of that one simple rule. The better players get to start the games & end-up getting more playing time.

But apparently Terry Francona (aka: "Tito")knows better than everyone else throughout history. Tito likes to platoon his players. So rather than having the core, stable defense behind the pitcher, Tito alternates players every game. He has done so for the entirty of his tenure as Red Sox Manager. It is a horrible magerial style. Regardless of the team's success over the past few years, he is a horrible manager. He has made some horrible managing decisions since taking the helm (with some more questionable than Grady Little's decision in the deciding game 7 of the 2003 ALCS to not remove Pedro Martínez after seven strong innings, when he began to show signs of tiring...costing us the game & the season)


Can someone please explain to me what Terry Francona is thinking about doing his platooning crap, again, with Youkilis & JT Snow? How can he justify not starting JT Snow, a 15 year (give or take) veteran with 6 gold glove awards & who has been a starting first baseman for his entire career? JT Snow is arguably the best defensive first baseman in the majors & he has played in less than half of the games this season! Didn't Theo Epstein state that he made these infield pick-ups to boost the defense that had been weak in previous years?

Tito did the same damn thing in 2004 after Theo traded for Doug Mientkiewicz, another gold glove winning first baseman who was (at the time) the best defensive first baseman in the American League. Even after his mid-season acquisition, both Kevin Millar & Dave McCarty played in more games than Mientkiewicz.

Sidenote: Thank God that Millar is not on the Red Sox anymore

I don't understand how someone how someone with Snow's resume, who has been starting day in & day out for teams that have been competitive more than the Red Sox have over the past decade (although it pains me to think of the Sox as not being competitive) is not good enough for Tito...and also make you question his managerial capabilities...at least in my eyes.

Tito's problem is that he plays favorites, his favorites, regardless of their abilities, short-comings, or amount of errors made. Take for example, the blundering Mark Belhorn. Quite possibly the worst defensive second baseman to ever dawn a professional uniform. Tito played Belhorn loyally for 128 games at second base. To the contrary, Pokey Reese, yet another gold glove winning player that the club had acquired to strengthen the defense at second base, played in only 34 games.

Maybe Francona just has something against Gold Glove winning players...

And now, some Red Sox trivia for my faithful readers:

Founded: 1899, as the Buffalo franchise in the minor Western League. Moved to Boston when that league became the major American League in 1901.

Team Name: Boston Red Sox (see "Nicknames before Red Sox"below)

Current ownership: John Henry and Tom Werner and Larry Lucchino, who paid $660 million and assumed $400 million in debt, in February 2002. The purchase includes Fenway Park and 82 percent of NESN. The purchase price set a record for a major league baseball franchise.

Current payroll: For 2005, payroll was about $123.5 million, over $80 million less than that of the New York Yankees. For 2004, payroll was about $127 million, $57 million shy of the New York Yankees. In both of these years, the Red Sox had the second-highest total payroll in MLB. (NOTE: The numbers cited are actually the payroll of the team at the start of the each seaons. Payrolls can change due to mid-season personnel changes, including trades, promotion of minor league players, waiver, etc.)

Home ballpark: Fenway Park (April 20, 1912 - Present), Braves Field (1929 - 1932 Sundays, 1915 - 1916 World Series), Huntington Avenue Grounds (1901-1911). Fenway is the oldest ballpark in baseball. The Red Sox ownership group has recently committed to keeping the team at Fenway for years to come; plans are already under way for the first ballpark centennial celebration in MLB history in 2012.

Logo design: Two hanging red socks with white heels and toes, over a white baseball surrounded by the words Boston and Red Sox. The word "Boston" is in navy blue outlined in red, the words "Red Sox" are in red outlined in navy blue, and the entire logo is surrounded by a thick red circle. Recently the team has begun phasing in a new logo that removes the outline, text and baseball, leaving only the pair of red socks.

Theme Song: None officially, but several "unofficial" theme songs exist:

• played after each victory at Fenway Park: "Dirty Water" by The Standells.
• played after "Dirty Water" and for rallies during a game: The Dropkick Murphys' 2004 rewrite of "Tessie." The original "Tessie" was a Broadway tune, which Boston fans adopted during the 1903 World Series and sang regularly until 1916.

Championships and Pennants:

Playoff appearances (18): 1903, 1904, 1912, 1915, 1916, 1918, 1946, 1967, 1975, 1986, 1988, 1990, 1995, 1998, 1999, 2003, 2004, 2005