Al Lopez Ghost (old)

And in fairness to the ownership group, it should be mentioned that the Sox have the highest payroll in the division.

What is not broken should not be fixed.

You remember correctly. The Sox didn't want Ventura and made sure that there was no contest between their offer and what the market would bear. I also don't ever remember Ventura having a bad attitude. He broke his ass to get back into shape after that ankle fracture. Hey YASNY, I'm still waiting on the Aaron Rowand 18 homers you wrote about last December or January. You stepped out, so if ARow comes through, you called it.

The Red Sox have designated BD for assignment. They got caught in a severe pitching shortage, and recalled Frank Castillo. Meaning they still have a severe pitching shortage. They even used David McCartey, the old Twins prospect first baseman/outfielder as a lefty short man yesterday in an 8 to 5 game. He turned it into a 10 to 5 game quickly.

Bench Frank and make Timo the DH, obviously. You just have to spot start Timo. Until Rowand shows he can't hit - and I think he can - Timo is the 4th guy only.

The Sox web site has a new release describing this. It offers seats to six particular games for $160. The seats are Lower Deck reserved, and the release says the seats have a significant discount off the regular per ticket service charge. The games are: Thurs 4/22 vs NY Fri 5/14 vs Twinkies Sun 6/13 vs Braves Fri 7/9 vs Seattle Sat 8/21 vs Bosox Wed 9/22 vs Twinkies (Sox clinch the division day!) In addition, the first 100 fans who order 4 or more seats get an autographed baseball from the new Senor, Ozzie Guillen. You can order via phone 312-674-5247 or 5249, or at the box office.

Sooner or later Ozzie will call for a double steal with Konerko on third. Hope for a bad throw.

You can't get too excited about this. If and when it happens, ok, pop the champagne, but it seems to me every free agent who ever left here was "close" to a deal during his walkaway year.

And that's a Reds winner!

you gotta give Shoney credit for hanging in there, and feel ok about him next week. Cubs down to their last 3 outs, bottom of 8th, 5-3

Cubs are 6 outs away from 1 and 2, losing 5 to 3.

Baseball Rope-a-dope.

Martha Stewart enjoying the game - I'd have thought she'd be sitting in the pen.

It would be nice if Willie found some baseball related task that he is good at.

50 pitches already - Cottsy may make a return to the house that Ruth built today.

It reminds me of what Tampa Bay has - by the way, Joe Mauer already blew one of his tires out on it. Injury bug biting in Minnie.

Clement had a sucky spring training - keep it going, Matty!

If Koch is the closer, it's sink or sink. I think you have to go to Marte. By the way Koch shot his mouth off in the paper today, saying that the best way to get Eric Chavez out is three pitches down the middle of the plate, because he'll swing right through them. Billy, get somebody out consistently before you start popping off.

The key thing for me is that they played hard, like it mattered to them. This was not always noticable last year under the steady hand of you know who.

Paulie had been running on either the previous pitch or the one before that, and the pitch was fouled off. So while he no longer had the element of surprise in his favor, he had the element of shock in his favor. I'm glad to see it though, because it has to geek the team up and give the pitcher something else to think about. You know, Greg Luzinski once stoled home for the Sox.

Remember that if we hadn't traded Foulke for Koch, we still wouldn't have had Foulke this year - he'd have signed as a free agent somewhere else. We sure wouldn't have given him what he got in Boston. That being said, Koch being here is a problem, because we're gonna use him, and he's gonna suck.

It's a long season, and ya gotta trust it. Just play with heart, boys, and you'll be playing in mid October.

Alumni cutdown day - the Brewers sent down Jeff Leifer and Mark Johnson yesterday.

It seems to me that whenever one of our higher paid players leaves, there's never any money "freed up".