Has anyone done as much to damage basball as one Donald Fehr....it's hard to dispute the facts.  Thankfully and mercifully it looks like Fehr's reign will be be over before the start of the 2010 baseball season.

  Sure players will say they have gone from an average salary of 209,000 thousand a year to just over 3 million a year, but that has not been a good thing, as the divide between the have's and the have not's have widened every year under Fehr's watch.  Teams like the Royals, and Pirates among many others have failed to compete in decades because of the steep players salaries that rise every year for no good reason.

  Oh yea, there is one other issue that will be the by-line on Fehr's resume, he fought tooth and nail to not have players tested and punished for steroids.  People will blame Bud Selig, and he does play a role in the escalation of steriod use in baseball, but as the head of the MLBPA, Fehr had the power to get the players on board with some type of testing early on.  It is hard to argue that Fehr was not at the very least complicite in assisting the steroid's era in baseball, and he allowed to go on for far too long.

If only Nick Green could consistantly catch and throw....cuz this guys sure comes through with runners in scoring position.

 Have you ever seen so many fans relieved to see a STARTING pitcher go on the DL.  I hope you all took a mental snapshot of Dice on friday....because the next time he pitches for the Red Sox will be in spring training 2010....................

 I wonder what the REAL answer is behind David Ortiz's slow start is.....lack of "hitting fuel"....or the fact that he may be 36 or 37....not 33....

  A .258 average on June 22...hardly impressive for a guy that makes 14 million...and that was supposed to be an "extra" bat for the Sox offense.....p.s. he oftens finds himself out of games....Mike Lowell recovering from major off season hip surgery has missed only four games all year......the 14 million dollar man misses on average 2 games a WEEK....thanks again for this steaming pile of crap Scott Boras....

 How huge did Beckett come up in Saturday's complete game victory versus the Braves .....the bullpen was gassed from the night before ....in a game lost by Dice-L....and they were on a mini-losing streak....it was ala Curt Schilling.....

  How stupid did the umps look last thurday when they called a game that was 2-1 with four innings left to played.....had this game been played by the Yankees in Yankee Stadium, they would have waited all night to finish...especially if the Yanks were trailing.......

 How many more games can the Red Sox piss away ?  It seems the Sox are doing everything in thier power to keep the Yanks and Rays in the American League East race.  The Sox continue to run the 100 million dollar flop out every five days, and seems they are expecting different results, pure insanity to be sure.  The only thing that has been different about Dice-L starts, is he seems to be getting worse each start.  Maybe the Sox should suit up in WBC uniforms when Dice-L takes the mound.

  Last nights start was perhaps the worst, beacuse it was against a light hitting below .500 National League club, and the start came at home.  Dice-L's line last night, four innings, six earned runs and four walks.  A grosser that gross performance, but what did we really expect.  Going into last night's game there where whispers that Dice-L was pitching for his spot in the rotation.  If that was Dice-L dipping deep, than it is worse than the Sox know with this colossal waste of time, space and money.

  Everyone points to Dice's 33 wins in two plus years in Major League baseball.  However we all know what we see with our eyes, this piece of crap does not pass the smell test, and he never really has.  Dice-L is a selfish piece of imported trash, who has never embraced the right brand of basball, American baseball.  I know Japan has improved such American inventions as cars and radio's, however they have not improved America's pastime, a point this worthless pile of crap needs to learn.

  The Sox and all of baseball need to learn a lesson, when Scott (SATAN) Boras and one of his clients comes a calling, SCREEN THE EFFING CALL.  Between Dice-L and JD RALLY KILLER DONKEY HOLE DREW, the Sox spent 170 million dollars on these two monumental let downs in the fall of 2006.  Drew has never hit above .285 and Dice has never pitched 200 innings.  The irony about Dice-L was that he wanted to be a Yankee and the Yankees wanted him.  How sweet would it have been if the Yanks had won the bid for this worthless pile of crap.  It seems sometimes that even when the Sox beat the Yanks, they don't really win. 

 Here is a riddle for you this morning.....when is a pop fly not a pop fly ??....answer...when it's a pop fly in the new Yankee Stadium....where it's called an upper deck homerun.

    I am sick of all the talk about how great the Yanks are, I get they are good top to bottom....but hey shouldn't they be...they outspent the Sox 458 million to 12 million last offseason....and thier total payroll is 80 million clear of every team in baseball.  It should not be a "shock" that they are good...it should be expected.  With all that being being said, the Yankees are clearly the better team, and that's why this current SIX game WIN streak versus them to start the 2009 campaign is SO sweet.

  The Yankees found out last night, that come-from-behind wins are hard to do against

A. Teams with great pitching...and an even greater bullpen

B. It's harder to come back against teams when the infield fly rule does not always result in a homerun for them.

  It was vintage Josh Beckett last night as he roughed up the Yankees for six innings of shutout one hit baseball.  Beckett was the man last night, and the Yankees were his woman....he had his way with them every way a pitcher could dominate another team.  Beckett carved up the Yankee line-up with complete domination, and had them off balanced all night.  It was certainly nice to see, especially since the other pitching match ups in this series tend to favor the FORT KNOX BOMBERS.  On this night though, Beckett was clearly the best pitcher on the planet.

  On the other side of the rubber, Yankees 85 million dollar Red Sox killer, looked pretty human.  A.J. Burnett did his best Dice-K last night as he walked five batters in just 2.2 innings of work...YIKES.  Burnett was tagged for five runs and five walks, and five hits in his short night of work.  For the season, Burnett has been knocked around to the tune of 11 runs in just 7 innings pitched versus the Sox.

  The MISSING IN ACTION Red Sox offense made an appearance last night, as they errupted for seven runs on nine hits.  The Sox were also given seven free passes last night, which greatly enhanced thier ability to move baserunners.  Even David Ortiz got in the act as he typically does against the Yanks, with his go head 2 run homer to dead centerfield in the second inning.  Speaking of Yankee killers, how about Jason Bay and his .524 average versus the Yanks this year. There is no quicker way to endure yourself to Red Sox Nation than to excel against the hated Yankees.

Well a day after Jon Lester made the Texas Rangers look silly, Dice-L made them look like the 27 Yankees.  The good news of the day was that Dice-L made it the longest in any game he has pitched for the Red Sox, he saves his better stuff for the WBC.

  It was fairly obvious early on that it was going to be a long long day for the Red Sox and Dice as he gave up a 1st inning homerun to new Red Sox killer Micheal Young.  The Sox trailed the entire rest of the game, as Dice pitched poorly and was very ineffective all day.  The Rangers knocked Dice around all afternoon, and tagged him for 10 hits and five earned runs in just 5 2/3 innings of work.  One thing is for sure, the Red Sox have now found thier #5 starter. 

  The offense was pretty borish today, again stymied by the vaunted Texas Rangers and pitcher Vincente Padillia.  The same Padillia that did not make out of the third inning versus the Yanks last week.  Today he looked an ace, holding the Sox to four hits and three lousy runs.  To say the very least the Sox have a very Helter Skelter offense, consistancy would not be the word used to describe this bunch.

  So now the Sox are once again looking up the New York Yankees, and if by design, they are coming to town to face the Sox.  The Sox will face two of the Yankees ace's in Fenway, as they counter with Brad Penny and Tim Wakefield and Josh Beckett.  On paper this series looks to be tilted the Yankees way.  Could be a long week at Fenway, good thing Theo has good seats, he can view the player he passed up close and personal. 

Really, as I have said many times before, you can't ever blame Julio Lugo, he should have never been in the game in the first place.  It was not Lugo who filled out the Red Sox line up card yesterday, it was manager Terry Francona.  I'm sure Tito looked at Brad Penny's fly ball to ground ball ratio, and he assumed last night would be a good time to get Lugo in a game.  You know what they say about assuming, both the Red Sox and thier win streak found out the hard way at the hands of Francona's assumption.

  If you look at Penny's line last night, it was just as impressive as the winning pitcher Kevin Millwood's, with one noteable exception, Millwood had defense behind him to help his cause.  All Penny had was a shortstop with ZERO range, and that range led to the continuation of two innings, that led to five earned runs.  You know what they say, you can never give a good hitting club more than three outs, most of the time you will pay, and the Sox surely paid for those sins last night.  For Penny, it was a sorry ending to a night where he probably had his most electric stuff as a Red Sox.  He allowed only one cheap hit thru his first four innings, and he was cruising before Lugo failed to knock down a VERY VERY routine ball.  The Red Sox broadcast team thought at the very least he should have knocked it down and held the runners in check.  You know who else thought it, Brad Penny, as he was visibly ********** at Lugo's inability to remotely do his job.

  I read alot about how great the Sox are on the Boston Globe.  They proclaim every day, we are looking at the class of the American League, a divsion winner or at the very least a wild card team.  Somehow though I don't buy it, it does not pass the smell test, and neither do the boys from Beantown.  They have two shortstops that can't make the most routine of plays, a DH that is deader than deadiest road kill, a number two starter so erratic he has only won back-to-back games once since last September, a closer with a whip approaching 2 runners per inning, a right fielder who is more injured that Paris Hilton is on her back, and the guy backing him up is even worse.  The Sox are alot closer to imploding than they are of going on a great run.  The clock is ticking, and the season continues to move forward, and somewhere along the line, we will revisit all these games the Sox have given away, and how games lost in April, May and June are just as important as September.

Well it's not much fun watching a Dice K outing, and last night was no exception.  The only good news was, he limited his damage, and you only had to watch him pitch five innings.  Of course Dice was lucky enough to hand over the lead to the lock down Red Sox bullpen.

  Dice looked a little better this time around....not much better though.  He only allowed one earned run, however he faced only 21 batters in his five frames and allowed nine of them to reach base, hardly impressive numbers.  It was the typical Dice K high wire start, always one pitch away from complete and total disaster.  For Dice it was his first victory of the season.  Not bad, it's June and a 10 million dollar pitcher has his first win of the year.  Sounds alot like a Yankee's free agent production.

  The offense was good last night, not great.  They scattered five runs around on nine hits, however the deal was sealed in the top of the 6th inning when the Tigers walked in two Red Sox batters.  Jason Bay continues to be Bay Being Bay, as he went yard for the 16th time this season.  The new batting order is 2-0, maybe Mr. 500 Terry Francona was onto something when he made the switch on Sunday.  Jason Varitek continues his offense prowess as he collected another multi-hit night, and the under acheiving Jd Rally Killer Drew also collected two hits.  True to form though, he left bases loaded again last night, his MLB leading 159th time he has done that this season.

  The bullpen was especially good last night, until the 9th inning.  Before the Sox bullpen got to Jonathan Papelbon, they allowed ZERO Tiger base runners of any kind.  Closer Jonathan Papelbon was again very shakey, as usually the case in a non-save situation.  Papelbon gave up three consecutive singles to start the 9th.  In a game the Sox lead by 4, he allowed the tying run to come to the plate three times in a row.  Of course after throwing a ton of pitches, Papelbon struck out the side.  So after having almost a week off, Papelbon will need at least a day off to recover from last nights outing.

  The back story of the 2009 season continues to be the pitiful hitting of David Ortiz. Ortiz did a have a weakly hit single that went the other way, but in his four other at bats, he was overmatched, and was struck out three times.  One has to wonder how much longer the Sox can go with Ortiz in any capacity at all.  Most MLB teams don't have a guy batting sixth hitting .186.

The 2009 Boston Red have become a crappy mediocre version of the teams they used to resemble.  With each and every day....MORON GM Theo Epstein looks like a bigger dope than he normally does each season.  Theo passed on Mark Teixeria, when it was clear last season the Sox were a team that tended to struggle offensively.  The end result is this....Teixeria has more homers than JD RALLY KILLER Drew, Big Papi, and Julio Lugo combined.  To make matters worse...Teixeria also have driven in more runs than all three combined.  For the record the Sox have about 38 million or so invested in the that trifecta of crap, this season.

  Today the Sox were done in by UBER stud Ramon Rameriz, however thier bats did them in long before he stepped on the rubber.  The Sox hitters could only manage four hits and 8 total base runners for the ENTIRE game.  They had runners on early versus Tallett, however the familier scene of leaving runners on became common place today.

  So again, a team that came in struggling, is dominating the Sox, the Jays had lost nine in a row before the Bean Town Bandits came to town.  Another continuing trend is the Sox stinking on wheat on the road.  Last week the Sox could do no wrong verus the Jays, this week however it is a different story.  Another crap lining to todays loss is that the Sox wasted another good outing by a starting pitcher.  They have had seldom few good starts by thier pitching staff, so it is a SUPREME disappointment to piss one away.

  Super coward Jon Lester takes the mound tommorrow for the Sox, and he looks to end thier two game slide.  I can't wait for his post game comments after he blows the game with a six or seven earned run effort.

POST SCRIPT- HOW BAD HAS BEEN WITH DAVID ORTIZ....IT'S WORSE THAN YOU CAN IMAGINE...IN THE LAST 8 GAMES...ORTIZ...HAS A ******** .064 BATTING AVERAGE TO GO ALONG WITH HIS SEASON AVERAGE OF .189. ORTIZ HAS TWO HITS IN HIS LAST 33 PLATE APPEARANCES....HE HAS ALSO WALKED TWICE....BUT STRUCK OUT AN AMAZING 13 TIMES....

Well as ugly as it was this week versus the Twins....and it was quite ugly....the Sox managed to split the series.  Today Josh Beckett's good twin showed up...and showed why when he is on...he is as good as anyone in the game today.  The offense today was provided by Jason Varitek...and the formula of turning the game over to the pen with a lead worked like a charm.

  For the second time in a week Tek went yard in the same game twice....I thought I was Marty in the time machine and it was 2005 or something.  Thats about it for the offense today...even Jacoby Ellsbury's bat went silent as his three week hit streak came to a close.  Also in the not getting a hit department, J.D. DONKEY HOLE Drew concluded this series with three games at the three spot with ZERO hits and r.b.i.'s.  So the three spot continues to be the great abyss for the Red Sox.

  So now the Sox travel to Toronto...where they will face the Jays for the second time in a week.  If there was ever a team that needed a home stand it's the Jays...as the went 0 for thier entire road trip.  Hopefully the Sox and the vaunted back of thier rotation can keep a lid on the Jays.  In the good news department, the Sox will not face Roy Halladay in this series.

 I wonder just how big of a D-BAG Theo Epstein feels like right about now......everyone the Sox passed on...are having good years....somehow...they did not have enough money to throw at Mark Teixeria....how's that working out.....Marky Mark has 14 dingers and almost 40 r.b.i.'s....meanwhile Big Papi has one dinger off a guy who now works at Wal-mart.  I wonder how much money and prospects it will take to fix the Sox ailing offense ?

Ps. Theo, not sure if you knew this or not.....but Gary Sheffield was available for the small fee of only 400k or so....and I think he has 5 homers and 17 r.b.i.'s in just 86 @ bats......