This is looking good.
EDIT: It's official.
Welcome back, big guy. $8 million,
with five more in performance bonuses and “weight clauses.” I think that's fair. And Schilling has gone on record saying he intends to "show
up in the best shape of my life, work my ass off in [spring training] to make sure no kid
gloves are needed ... shock
the shit out of people, win a 4th ring, beat Josh in the CY voting by 1 ... and Lord willing walk away healthy."
Sounds like a plan.
We’re gonna
need six starters next season, and it would’ve be really silly to let the guy walk
away over a few million. He can still pitch. It's a good price. And he loves to talk,
which, on balance, is a good thing, especially when it comes to tutoring the Lesters and Buchholzes of the team. And should we make it to the post-season
again — and I damn well expect to — there’s no one besides Beckett I’d
rather have on the mound.
And now let’s get Tito the
raise he so richly deserves.
One
potential stumbling block, however: might there be language in his contract
voiding the deal if he loses a bet to his boss?
I seem to remember him making a little
wager with Lucchino at the beginning of the season that he could quit
chewing tobacco.
Well, the
fact that his used
wad of bubblegum and chaw is showing up on eBay would suggest he
didn’t keep up his end of the bargain.
Two
questions: a) how does anyone get ahold of such a thing? b) how in the hell is
bidding already up to $100? Yikes.
In other
news....
I got an
e-mail the other day from a guy who’d uploaded a cell phone video to YouTube of
Papelbon throwing the last pitch of the World Series. It was taped off of his
TV screen. And it was about 15 seconds long — eight of which, he wrote, “were
of my roommate and I celebrating.”
So it’s safe to say he was a bit
nonplussed when he got an e-mail from YouTube notifying him that “we have
removed or disabled access to the following material as a result of a
third-party notification by MLB Advanced Media claiming that this material is
infringing.”
As the fan wrote, with great
understatement, “this seems a little extreme.”
So, with
the caveat that these clips probably won’t be up for very long, here are Manny
on Leno and Big Papi on Conan in case you missed them Friday night. Both are great. Manny, in
particular, is amazing. He really does himself a disservice by not doing
more interviews. Everyone knows that Ortiz is loveable guy. Too few
people realize how funny and charming our cleanup hitter is.