Tossing Batting Practice…..while wondering what exactly Joe Torre's resume and cover letter will look like when it appears on Monster this week…

A happy Christmas in October to Sox fans around the region, I know I rushed down to open the presents that awaited me from the NY Daily News, the Post, Newsday, and even the Times.
It’s become an annual tradition, and one that I’ve grown very fond of in recent years.

It’s nice to see Mystique and Aura are still just dancers in a nightclub.
When the Stadium starts rocking, I always get nervous, but there’s no better feeling than seeing the life get sucked out of the joint when Captain Gasbag bounces into a rally-killing double play. Jeter deserves a lot of blame, but hell likely escape it.
I think A-Rod should opt out of the deal, but he’s enough of a student of the history of the game to want to stay and win with the Yanks.

Eric Wedge certainly had the Midas touch in this series, but leaving Perez in to face A-Rod could have turned out to be a disaster. I did call the meaningless middle inning home run, I just assumed it would be with the Yanks up 5-0, and a curtain call would be following.

If given the opportunity to bat 27 times with a runner on base, I guarantee I could muster one hit, and likely at least one RBI. I will not dispute this.

I hope Troy O’Leary and John Valentin have prominent roles in pregame activities in this series with the Indians, its too bad Denny Galehouse isn’t around anymore.
The really creepy looking girl that popped up in the ad space of his baseball reference page was extremely disconcerting.

After all the pain and suffering I went through with Circuit City over my giant TV, this summer and the fact it took so long to fix, I feel fortunate now. Because after shutting it down for two months it has been a clutch playoff performer this weekend, and will hopefully remain so the remainder of October.
Almost like giving Curt Schilling two months off in June and July and reaping the benefits in October.

It will go down as a dominating performance, but those seven shutout innings sure looked like smoke and mirrors for Schill, whose fastball looked like it couldn't break a pane of glass all afternoon, but had the Angels overmatched like the little leaguers who faced Danny Almonte.

I do not condone the pimping of homeruns, but Jered Weaver needs to win something before he can call out Ramirez and Ortiz for admiring their tee shots. He got what he deserved as far as I'm concerned.

So my Tivo listed 60 minutes as being on for an hour ad a half on Sunday, I was confused to say the least, feeling like I missed the first part of the "yo mamma's so stupid" joke.

I am from the Northeast so to me college football exists as something to watch on Saturday when there’s nothing else to do, and is not the life and death endeavor it is in other parts of the country, but with that said I saw plenty of it this weekend.

The Florida/LSU game was tremendous, I have decided I must attend a night game at LSU before I die. I have always loathed Florida going back to the Spurrier days, mainly because I was an FSU guy thanks to Charlie Ward and Warrick Dunn being awesome in College Football’s National Championship for Sega, but with that said, I have a hard time rooting against Tim Tebow. I don’t know why, he seems kind of like an arrogant jerk, but he makes big plays. I guess it must be the left handed quarterback thing, I’m always a sucker for them.

Someone, please dear God beat Ohio St. twice, so I do not have to suffer watching the Big 10 on TV again this year. I made it through a grand total of 3 plays before vowing not to switch back.

Kudos to Jim Harbaugh for the upset win, but what the hell was up with Versus declaring the player of the game before it was over, while still in doubt. In case you weren’t aware they named a USC DB as the player of the game, only to see him get beat on the 4th and 20 and the game winning TD.

Whatever the opposite of pumped and jacked is, that’s me over the loss for USC, anytime Pete Carroll is prominently involved in the BCS I’m more excited to follow, but now we’re headed for a bunch of one loss teams campaigning for the two spots.
LSU isn’t going unbeaten and neither is Cal.

I laugh at the prospect of BC being unbeaten, and they’ll be summarily trounced in Blacksburg in two weeks, if they don’t gag away this weekend in South Bend.

I’m openly rooting for Cincinnati as this year’s Rutgers, watch out for them though, everywhere Brian Kelly has gone he’s been a winner. Two National Titles at D II, and then took a 1-10 team and made them MAC champions in less than three years. So it’s no surprise to those who have followed him that he’s winning now.

I did manage to watch a good portion of the Celtics preseason tilt with the Raptors Saturday night (yes I’m single and loving it at the moment) I'm excited for this team, but will reserve more judgement and analysis when baseball is over)
One highluight about the new fan interest was me and a diehard hoops friend disecting the Celtics potential offensive sets, with beer bottles, mugs, and shot glasses at a bar the other night.

Not much to say about the Pats I think Manny's "you know you're a bad man" speech sort of covers the 34-17 win just enough.
But I think Randall Gay may have pissed off Belichick in going for the TD in the last minute, especially after he went out of his way not to run the score up bu running it up the middle on fourth down.

I was a glistening 0-4 in my LDS predictions, and aim to keep that streak going for the Championship series round.
Indians in 6.
I think they are riding the team of destiny thing. They have a deep and relentless lineup that’s clearly not afraid to hit with two outs. Plus their pitching is solid too. I can’t see Manny and Ortiz being as hot as they were against Anaheim which means someone else has to step up, and who knows if anyone will.

Diamondbacks in 7.
The Rockies have been phenomenal, but they have to lose sometime right? The D-Backs hit like an American league team, and have decent pitching and a solid bullpen. I’m also very much not looking forward to the possibility of the Rox in the WS if the Sox get there, because their lefthanded pitching could really neutralize the Sox for an entire series.