We'll always cherish those memories of Manny rubbing the scalp of Julian Tavarez, of his rolling his throws to first, and his exhortations to infielders on where to throw the ball.

David Scott (h/t Boston Sports Media) has some news about the Globe's Gordon Edes, whose coverage I've always enjoyed (yet whose "Paw-tucket" pronounciation seems off for a native Bay Stater) and a successor (the previously mentioned Heidi Watney) for Tina Cervasio at NESN:

Multiple sources have confirmed to Scott’s Shots that Boston Globe writer, Gordon Edes, has agreed “in principle” to a job with Yahoo! Sports as a national baseball writer. Edes, according to sources, is committed to going to Yahoo!, but was still hoping to be part of the buyout offer at the Globe that recently lured Jackie MacMullan off the masthead.

The specifics of how Edes will leave - either through the buyout or simply by switching teams - are still being ironed out, according to sources.

Multiple Monday night phone and email messages from Shots to Edes were not returned as of posting time (near 1 a.m. Tuesday). (The differentiation could be important because if Edes leaves through the buyout, there may be legal limitations on whether a new body could be inserted into his place.)

In other baseball news:

-- the ProJo's Jim Donaldson, who, in the past, has rapped the Sox at every occasion, seems newly enraptured.

N4N played Curt in a Car while driving home from yesterday's utterly sweet 6-5 comeback win by the Sox over the Rangers. Landing via cell on WEEI, I expressed my appreciation for the versatile Jed Lowrie and wondered aloud if the time might be coming to make him a fixture on the Boston nine.

Julio Lugo, as I pointed out, has shown a propensity of late for hitting weak grounders into double plays.

Someone was listening, apparently:

Julio Lugo went 4-for-4 with a walk and an RBI as the Red Sox scored at least five runs for the ninth straight game. They finished with 12 hits and 11 walks.

Yes, Boston won today, 8-3, and things are good.

But can Lugo sustain it, proving that he was the player Theo Epstein thought he was?

I'm willing to be convinced. For now, though, it's still hard to figure why, out of Orlando Cabrera, Rent-a-Wreck, and Alex Gonzalez, we held onto Lugie.

The 2008 season remains very young, but this is clear:

-- Manny Ramirez is the most comfortable he's ever been playing for Boston.

-- Manny is increasingly conscious of his legacy, so he got into extra great shape in the off-season.

-- Having a happy Manny being himself, doing what he does best (as with last night's win), is something special to savor this year.  

We know the Evils are counting on a bigger revenue stream with the new place, but the curse might continue to be on the other foot.

NY Post, via Dirt Dogs:

A devilish Boston fan working on a concrete crew at the $1.3 billion stadium covertly buried a Red Sox T-shirt under what will become the visiting team's locker room to jinx the Yanks, two construction workers told The Post yesterday.

"In August, a Red Sox T-shirt was poured in a slab in the visitor's clubhouse. It's the curse of the Yankees," one worker said. "Nobody knows about it. It's in the floors, it's buried."

The workers say they now fear that they unwittingly helped hex their beloved Bronx Bombers.

"I don't want to be responsible for sinking the franchise," said a second worker, who witnessed the sabotage. "I respect the stadium."

The Post has withheld their identities because they are not authorized to speak to media.

This latest hex is above and beyond any typical ritual - like wearing a lucky shirt or hat - that fans typically do to boost their luck.

"It sounds a little unprecedented to me," said Tim Wiles, director of research at the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum in Cooperstown.

N4N had been wondering how early the line started forming for the limited number of day-of-the-game tickets available for today's Sox home opener.

The Boston Globe reports from Lansdowne Street:

Julian Crandall, 29, of Providence is a newcomer to Fenway stakeouts, but it is an experience he will surely repeat, he said.

"The way I look at it, there's 10 million people in New England who want to come. Anyone can do it, you just have to have the willpower," said Crandall, who was about 35th in line, along with four of his friends, a few of whom are familiar with the experience.

"We came the morning of last year, and we were at least 500 people back," said Crandall's friend Gina Reitano, the logo of her Sox hat blinking almost in time with the Citgo sign behind her. "We came for the whole experience this year."

Reitano, 39, Crandall, and their friends arrived at about 10:30 yesterday morning, Reitano said.

Sean Comau of Boston has camped out for Opening Day tickets the past five years. This year, he arrived at 6:30 a.m. yesterday, and was first in line.

When asked how he planned to pass the time, Comau, 24, said he would sleep a while.

"It's really rough [when you don't sleep] when you hit the fourth inning you get a little drowsy."

Barring an act of divine intervention, I don't expect to physically be there (metaphysically is something else), my first miss in three years, but it will be good for the Sox to get back to Fenway, 96 years old and still a beauty. Word is that some Sox enthusiasts will gather at Nick-a-Nee's for the proceedings.

Take it away, John Updike, from his classic Hub Fans Bid Kid Adieu:

Fenway Park, in Boston, is a lyric little bandbox of a ballpark. Everything is painted green and seems in curiously sharp focus, like the inside of an old-fashioned peeping-type Easter egg. It was built in 1912 and rebuilt in 1934, and offers, as do most Boston artifacts, a compromise between Man's Euclidean determinations and Nature's beguiling irregularities. Its right field is one of the deepest in the American League, while its left field is the shortest; the high left-field wall, three hundred and fifteen feet from home plate along the foul line, virtually thrusts its surface at right-handed hitters. On the afternoon of Wednesday, September 28th, as I took a seat behind third base, a uniformed groundkeeper was treading the top of this wall, picking batting-practice home runs out of the screen, like a mushroom gatherer seen in Wordsworthian perspective on the verge of a cliff.

The PawSox opened strong last night, winning 3-0, thanks to a sparkling performance by Bartolo Colon. It was great to see an enthusiastic throng of fans turn out to support the AAA team during their opening game.

With Red Sox tickets harder to get than ever, more and more fans are turning to teams like the PawSox and the Portland Sea Dogs. (As an added bonus, the Red Sox' 2004 and 2007 World Series trophies will be on display in Pawtucket before and during Sunday's game.)

While Colon might soon be bound for Boston, the PawSox -- thanks to prospects like Jed Lowrie, Craig Hansen, and Brandon Moss, and veterans such as Bobby Kielty -- will remain a good team to watch this season. Best of all, ticket prices top out at ... wait for it ... a whopping $10!

Welcome back to my periodic quick update on things Sox-related.

-- We already miss Tina Cervasio [left], but a former California beauty queen is reportedly the frontrunner to replace her.

-- Kudos to the ever-scrappy Youk!, who has set the MLB record for consecutive error-less games at first base.

-- My Boston Phoenix colleague Mike Miliard offers a look at Sox proto-stathead Bill James. A brief excerpt:

How much time each week would you say you spend not thinking about baseball?
Not thinking about baseball? I would answer this way: the only time in my life that I ever go an hour without thinking about baseball is at, like, a really good movie. And if it’s not such a good movie, my mind will wander back to baseball.

Well, that’s good for us Red Sox fans. Looking forward, what are the promises and the challenges you see in the coming season?
Keeping the starting rotation healthy is gonna be a huge thing. We have young pitchers coming along. But nonetheless, I think everyone would tell you we would have been happier coming into the season if we’d been able to make the pitching deeper — getting the young pitching in position to help, but also keeping the pressure off them, so they can develop, is going to be a huge balancing act. It’s going to be really tough to keep both of those objectives in mind all the time.

But you’re optimistic we can at least make a good run at a world series repeat?
Hopefully we’ll have a decent season.

Saying that it's not easy being the manager of the Red Sox may be the understatement of the year. Yet Terry Francona manages to make it look easy.

That's why I was disappointed to see that he didn't place well in some apparently highly scientific rating of baseball managers, from yesterday's NYT. On the plus side, the piece used funny facial illustrations to illustrate the strategems of various managers.

Allow me to quote from Chad Finn's Tito evaluation in the Maple Street Press Red Sox 2008 Annual, which I think is quite a bit closer to the mark:

He's just the second manager in franchise history to win two championships. He's 22-9 in the post-season (a .710 winning percentage, tops in MLB history) and a spotless 8-0 in the World Series. He's outwitted the more famous likes of Tony La Russa, Joe Torre, and Mike Sciosia (twice) in the playoffs. And he's accomplished all of this while defty navigating a carnivorous media, a fanbase that universally bleats "What's Fran-coma doing?!?" upon the arrival of a two-game losing streak, and a clubhouse that has more distinctive personalities from diverse cultural backgrounds than you'd find at a UN meeting. It seems obvious from this box seat: Terry Francona is the best manager in the game, and everyone else is playing for the wild card.

Curt Schilling is known as a Republican booster who may harbor future political ambitions, so I was surprised that he rose to Barack Obama's defense when Schilling chatted with WEEI's Gerry Callahan this morning. (Then again, Callahan makes some conservatives seem positively liberal by comparison.)

In short, Callahan was scorning Obama over the Reverend Wright stuff. Schilling responded by saying it was past time to move on, and that there's a qualitative difference between the candidate making comments and someone he knows having done so. Callahan, of course, didn't buy it. Still, it was interesting to hear this perspective coming from a dyed-in-the-wool conservative such as Curt.

The season has started in a strange way, bursting out of the end of March with the Sox' games in Japan. The usual slowly building anticipation, joined by the preseason previews, has run headlong into the beginning of things. Still, it was pretty great to find a few games on ESPN while channel-surfing last night, so here we go, and the Sox resume regular season action tonight in Oakland.

If you want the best Red Sox preview available, run, don't walk, to get a copy of the Maple Street Press Red Sox 2008 Annual, published by a small press on the South Shore of Massachusetts. It's an authoritative work, with a broad scope, and available for the first time this year in local supermarkets. It's a bargain for $12.99 and will well prepare you for the season ahead.

Seth Mnookin's essay about Overfeeding the Monsters has already been mentioned here.

Some of the other highlights include:

-- Chad Finn writing about the 2008 Sox.

-- Gordon Edes on the World Champion 2007 Sox.

-- Pawtucket's own Steve Mastroyin on the Sox' offense.

This kind of stuff, along with a look at Boston's AL competition, might be expected in this kind of publication. The thing that sets the Maple Street Annual apart is an additional series of accessible yet informed and incisive articles on more esoteric subjects:

-- Mark A. Brown offering a historic comparison of the post-season dominance of Josh Beckett.

-- Mark Armour on Anatomy of a Collapse: the 1978 Red Sox Re-Examined.

-- Vince Gennaro on The Economics of Building a Red Sox Dynasty.

Plus, a whole lot more.

My most memorable baseball memory -- as with many enthusiasts -- is that of attending my first professional game. Dad and I sat way in the upper deck at Shea Stadium, not long after the Miracle season of 1969, and it was incredibly exciting. We seemed to be up in the stratosphere, yet the grass, far below, had that lustrous green that signifies baseball, and the whole experience was enthralling. It might be a bit of apocrypha, yet I recall Tommie Agee stealing home.

That's why I will always retain some fond feelings for Shea, not the most beautiful venue for baseball, which is due to be taken apart after this season. Yesterday's New York Times had a succinct eight-page baseball preview (Murray Chass picks the Sox to win the AL East) focused mostly on how this will mark the last seasons for Shea and for Yankee Stadium.

At Shea Stadium, five dollars sometimes covers the cost of a seat way at the top of the upper deck but not the Sherpa to lug the oxygen tanks. The view is comparable to that from the ubiquitous low-flying planes, whose passengers, if so inclined, could reach out the window and take a bite from your Italian sausage. Buying another one would involve navigating a concourse roughly the width of a coffee table and sidestepping the bathroom line that started forming five innings earlier.

By any objective standard, Shea is bleak and outdated. It has not aged, shall we say, gracefully, its imperfections and architectural shortcomings growing more prominent over the years, particularly as glorious baseball-only parks have sprouted around the country. Those flaws are now magnified by Citi Field, the Mets’ new home in 2009, whose beatific presence beyond Shea’s right-center-field fence prompted Ron Darling, the SportsNet New York analyst and former Met, to make this comparison: “It’s like driving a VW bus with a Maserati in the lot.”

Yankee Stadium, of course, has a much richer history, even if the dopes at Sons of Sam Horn call it "the toilet," because of its large and somewhat bland quality. I've seen a few games there over the years. The best was when Tim Wakefield and Randy Johnson squared off in a pitchers' duel on September 11, 2005, when Wakefield, I believe, set a career high in Ks, but got beat (the Sox lost, 1-0), when Jason Giambi hit a homer over the short porch in right.

Building a new stadium, and a more lucrative revenue stream, seems in keeping with the character of the Yankees. I'll take Fenway any day.

And even Rich Gossage can't help himself in memorializing the House that Ruth Built:

Gossage pitched there before and after the [ 1974-75] renovation, and in retirement he has seen games from the stands. Gossage is a big man — 6 feet 3 inches, 217 pounds — but the corridors and leg room are limiting for all sizes.

“There’s lines a mile long for bathrooms and everything,” Gossage said. “You’re going to get to see a lot more baseball and see it a lot better way.”

Yet whenever Gossage starts to sound like a pitchman for the new Yankee Stadium, he softens and betrays some nostalgia for the old place. It may be that way all season for fans who have watched history — and players who have made it — for so many golden summers.

“It’s something they had to do,” Gossage said. “It’s necessary, it’s just a shame. It’s not going to be the same, I can tell you that.”

Around the time when the Sox won the World Series in 2004, we heard a growing series of gripes about "pink hats" and other new (and not-so-serious) fans who had taken up the team since doing so was newly fashionable.

Nothing succeeds like success, so the team's second WS triumph in four years has made tough tickets even more difficult to obtain. And while it was charming to see some traditional Japanese dances as part of the pre-game ceremony before yesterday's season opener in Tokyo, the corporate advertising adorning the uniforms -- EMC for the Sox, Pepsi for the A's -- reinforces how this tour was mostly about the money.

For we fanatics, baseball remains a beautiful thing. Yet as with tickets, the Sox' success poses certain challenges.

Like Art Martone, I recommend Seth Mnookin's take on the perils of Sox success, originally published in the excellent Maple Street Press Red Sox 2008 Annual, entitled, "Overfeeding the Monsters: Entitlement and the Continuing Evolution of Red Sox Nation":

I went to my first Yankees-Red Sox game in the late ’70s, back in the days when Jim Rice viewed a base-on-balls as an affront to his manhood and Fenway Park still had its neuroses-inducing troughs. Over the several decades, I discovered a multitude of reasons to hate the Yankees: they were from New York, they had unceremoniously stomped on the collective heart of Red Sox Nation too many times to count, and their fans were obnoxious, self-entitled, uninformed, drunken louts. In contrast were the Red Sox’s partisans. I took pride in the fact that we were a stoic, loyal, and intelligent bunch. It was an important part of my identity at the time.Those descriptions, like all stereotypes, stuck because they had more than a bit of truth to them. Which is why I worry about our–that is, Red Sox Nation–current collective identity. In the years following the ‘04 World Championship run, I’ve had more than one non-Bostonian complain about Sox fans and how they were assuming the sort of Yankees-esque sense of entitlement I’d grown up despising. I argue with these malcontents, of course, and point to SoSH, and the impressive number of stat heads and literati that follow Ye Olde Town Team.

But emails from those “Red Sox fan for decade,” as well as more than a few of the callers to ‘EEI, and yes, some of us knights of the keyboard have made these defenses more halfhearted as of late. There are times when it seems as if an immensely unappealing, I-deserve-what-I-want-and-I-deserve- it-right-now myopia has replaced the Calvinistic resignation that RSN personified for so many long years. To take but one example: a Worcester Telegram columnist actually put his name to a piece that detailed the “many bad decisions since [the World Series] - letting Pedro Martinez and Johnny Damon escape to New York…Matt Clement, Rudy Seanez and Julian Tavarez, and the long-term contract for puzzling Josh Beckett, for starters.” (The headline on that gem: “Epstein to blame for Boston’s downsizing.”) As any sentient being can tell you, Josh Beckett, at $10 mil per, has to be one of the biggest bargains in the game. Pedro Martinez, who played in five games last year while collecting his $13 million paycheck, is not.

UPDATE: SOX WIN

Powered by the offense of Brandon Moss, who tied the game with a ninth-inning HR, and Manny Ramirez, who clocked a go-ahead double, the Sox win the season opener, 6-5, in 10 innings, over the A's.

---

Although not exactly a morning person, N4N rose at 5:30 am today to turn on NESN and find the Boston Globe's Gordon Edes expressing sympathy for us early risers back in New England. Dice-K was shaky at the outset, but settled down, notching six Ks (and five walks) in a few innings of work. Last I heard, a Brandon Moss single, following a two-run Manny two-bagger, put the Sox on top, 3-2, but even at this early hour, there's still a lot of baseball to go.

I was at Fenway for the May 2006 game -- Johnny Damon's first appearance there as a Yankee -- when Doug Mirabelli made his "miraculous" return. Well, while Wake is probably sad to see his battery-mate go, it's not exactly news that the Sox need an upgrade in their backup catcher. If only we could get "Salty."

Boston.com via Dirt Dogs:

FORT MYERS, Fla. - Who knows whether the Sox will stick with Kevin Cash as their backup/Tim Wakefield catcher, but for now he appears to be the man.

The Sox haven't yet announced it, but they've released Doug Mirabelli. The veteran, who has been with the Sox since 2001, was scratched in favor of Dusty Brown for today's game. Cash has been effective in catching Wakefield and the team must have figured the younger Cash, who have scrapped for playing time in Pawtucket, would be a suitable replacement considering both catchers hit about the same.

A few of the dopes at Sons of Sam Horn are taking to task the media tales of woe being spread about the balky back of Josh Beckett. Gcapalbo writes:

So, here we are just 48 hours since Beckett pulled a muscle in his back during a meaningless spring training start, the MRI is negative on any trouble with the structure of his spine, and he's a little sore.

If you'd like to leave your radio and television switched off and not read the newspaper for a few days, I'll save you some time and aggravation and summarize:

a) The Red Sox can't field a rotation. To add to Schilling's shoulder woes, Beckett is clearly a 'question mark' for the first half of the season. Wakefield is too old, Lester and Buchholz are too young. (Perhaps Matsuzaka will be too tired from those middle of the night feedings as well and the Gyroball won't drop either). We've got nothing, except Julian Tavarez. (Did I mention that Bartolo Colon never misses a meal?)

b) Theo and his minions sit grimly around the office at the minor league facility slapping themselves on the forehead in anguish exclaiming "I KNEW we should have GOT SANTANA!" Never mind the $137.5 million dollars+ to sign him, the two or three or more years of dead money on the end of that contract after his arm has fallen off, or the emptied Red Sox farm system-- boy, did we screw up!

c) There's a conspiracy to not send Beckett to Japan (Can't find a place to put the shot in!) Probably Theo's decided he's one of the 'bad apples' who would do nothing other than complain and ruin the team for the first month of the season-- so best to not let him get on the plane.

d) Clearly, the season is lost, and it's not even April!

This bit of perspective, knock on fiberboard, is well-placed.

Yet the human body is a mysterious thing. Rhode Island's own Rocco Baldelli, whose promising career has been cast in uncertainty because of a nagging and mysterious series of injuries knows this better than most, as the ProJo's Joe McDonald recently reported.

“I’ve been tested for everything under the sun, the whole gamut, trying to find the stem of what all these problems are that I’m having. I can tell you I don’t have MS, there’s no chance. … I know it sounds bad when I’m denying specific things.”

But while he knows what it’s not, he’s still not sure exactly what it is.

“I can’t say that I have X, Y and Z,” he said. “I had mixed results in my tests and for me to try to explain what I have, I just can’t do it with a quote in the newspaper. There’s no way for me to say what I have, because as far as exactly the problem I’m having, I don’t know."

Thanks to the ProJo's Art Martone, who was kind enough to link on his blog to my story this week on the increasingly tough quest for Sox tickets, I learned that John Henry doesn't detect a problem with this issue.

As Michael Silverman reports today in the Boston Herald:

Even with this year’s Fenway Park [map] renovations expected to increase capacity to 38,888, Fenway will continue to be the smallest stadium in the majors as well as having the most expensive ticket prices on average. Henry said that there has been no public backlash with regard to the average working person getting squeezed out by wealthier patrons.

“No we don’t,” Henry said of hearing such potential complaints. “(Fans) know we are determined to spend the dollars to field the kind of team they want to see on a day-to-day basis. Baseball fans here are 162-gamers. They may only attend a handful of games each year at Fenway, but they know we are doing our best to spend their monies wisely. We are able to field championship teams solely because of our fans.”

Apparently, Henry may not have seen this thread at SOSH (or maybe, since the discussion died out within a few days, it's not considered a big deal).

Anyway, it's fair to say that many people in the Sox organization are very aware of the growing unhappiness among fans on the squeeze on tickets.

Back in 2005, Sox PR impresario Charles Steinberg, now with the Dodgers, told me his biggest concern was whether Sox fans were getting squeezed.

More recently, Sox spokeswoman Goodenow, responding to questions via e-mail, focused on describing how the team strives to ensure “that the maximum number of unique fans receive the ability to purchase tickets and experience baseball at Fenway Park.”

The team, which has added a few thousand seats in recent years, is exploring options for more seats, she says.

Goodenow says the team aggressively enforces ticket-buying limits during online sales. Plus, it offers random drawings for some of its most popular offerings, including games with the Yankees and seats in the Monster and roof-deck sections.

The Red Sox have opted out of an agreement struck last year in which Major League Baseball Advanced Media, which controls online ticket sales for all 30 MLB teams, agreed to have StubHub become the official ticket reseller for Major League Baseball. StubHub says it has already signed up the Yankees, the Mets, and the Cubs, and it expects most of the teams to participate.

I learned about the Sox' decision as I was reporting a story for this week's Phoenix, about the growing difficulty of landing face value tickets for Fenway Park. When many Sox fans got meager returns, if anything, during the team's January 26 online ticket sale, StubHub became a focal point of criticism in a thread on Sons of Sam Horn.

Sox spokeswoman Susan Goodenow would only say this in explaining the team's decision to me, via e-mail, last Saturday:

“We are exploring all options with the secondary-ticket market with an eye toward taking a walk-before-we-run approach. We expect to reach clarity on the issue within the next week or so.”

Asked whether the Sox are considering using Patriots-style tactics with fans who resell tickets on StubHub, Goodenow would only repeat that the team is "exploring all options."

It's entirely possible, as I write in my story, that concerns about frustrated fans may have influenced the Red Sox' decision.

As it stands, thousands of Sox tickets for the 2008 season can still be found on various Web sites, including StubHub, whose top-selling category is baseball tickets, and where the hyper-popular Sox are listed first among the MLB offerings.

We’re not likely to hear the Red Sox state it so plainly, but the organization’s decision to opt out of the MLB-StubHub relationship reflects a delicate calculus, a consequence of the team’s success under the ownership that bought the franchise in 2002.

Because the Henry-Werner-Lucchino troika has emphatically staked its claim as the guardians of Fenway Park — the heart of Red Sox Nation — it faces the challenge of maximizing the team’s profits while preserving the sense that Average Joes can still get into the place.

As Glenn Stout, the author of more than 50 baseball books, including co-author of Red Sox Century (Houghton Mifflin, 2000), notes, the question of whether StubHub is good for Sox supporters is kind of beside the point. The precious nature of Sox tickets, he says, “is a product of how a lot of things have changed down at Fenway Park, in Major League Baseball,” and in professional sports.

The Red Sox will keep drawing as long as the team is winning. But if the fan base feels it is being excluded and taken for granted, there could be fallout.

Stout notes that fans’ connection with the Sox “is an emotional one that often flies in the face of logic.” If these diehards step back and start thinking about the amount of time and money they’re devoting to the team, “That’s not a good thing for the Red Sox as an entity, and it’s not a good thing for the Red Sox as a business.”

Kudos + congrats to the even-keeled Sox manager:

FORT MYERS, Fla. - With two World Series titles behind him and a clubhouse full of players always ready to sing his praises, manager Terry Francona has reached an agreement on a three-year, $12 million contract extension with the Red Sox that takes him through the 2011 season.

The Sox have the option to add two more years, bringing the potential total value of the package to $20 million, or an average of $4 million a year. The two option years must be exercised together after the 2011 season. If the options are not exercised, Francona receives a $750,000 buyout, guaranteeing him an average payout of $4 million over the three years.

The $4 million mark is a significant one, placing Francona just behind Joe Torre of the Dodgers (a reported 3 years, $13 million) at the highest level of the managerial salary scale.

"It was important for Tito to be recognized as one of the top two or three managers in the game," said Francona's agent, Pat Rooney, of negotiations that concluded Saturday night, with general manager Theo Epstein informing the players of Francona's new deal before yesterday morning's workout.

It became clear yesterday that Curt Schilling isn't very happy about the Sox' non-surgical mandate regarding his ongoing attempt to recover from arm/shoulder problems. While spring training should be about hope and expectation, this has Curt contemplating the end of the line.

I know some folks consider Schilling a blowhard and don't like him or his politics. If you ask me, he's come up aces for the Sox whenever we've needed him in a big situation.

As someone with the good fortune to be at Fenway for his 20th win in 2004 (followed by the filming of the Drew-runs-across-the-field scene for Fever Pitch), and his 200th career victory (2006, as I recall), I wish the big guy only the best.

The good news, via Boston Dirt Dogs:

Truckin'

(Boston.com Photo / Steve Silva)

It's Truck Day. The Most Wonderful Time of the Year.

The Much Anticipated Truck Day Photo Gallery

What did the wise man once say?

You can never have enough pitching.

The skinny on Curt:

Red Sox pitcher Curt Schilling will not be ready for the start of spring training because of shoulder issues, and is engaged in a dispute with the club over whether he needs surgery, according to sources with direct knowledge of the matter. Furthermore, the sources said the Red Sox attempted to void his $8 million contract for 2008.

Schilling's shoulder woes are more serious than the ones that caused the club to shut him down for seven weeks last season. His availability for the start of the season is in question, and surgery would call into question whether he will pitch in 2008.

Schilling recently went to see Dr. Craig Morgan, who performed his shoulder surgery in 1995. Morgan, citing HIPAA regulations, referred all questions to Schilling, who when reached via e-mail by the Globe's Amalie Benjamin today wrote only "I cannot comment right now on any of this, sorry!". Red Sox general manager Theo Epstein e-mailed a "no comment" when asked about Schilling's condition. But it is believed Morgan is recommending Schilling have surgery, while the club is recommending another course.

-- Former Sox ace Pedro Martinez and HOFer Juan Marichal -- who once smacked John Roseboro with a baseball bat -- were hanging out at a cock fight and it was caught on YouTube.

-- Pugnacious Brendan Donnelly, who has signed with the Indians, pitched at least the last three seasons without a ligament in his elbow.

-- Hyper-devout New York Yankees' fan Rudy Giuliani has been immortalized in a Topps baseball card that, thanks to superimposition, shows him celebrating, on-field, the Sox' 2007 World Series win.

Good thing he got out before Romney.

This damp February post-Super Tuesday day seems like a perfect time to look ahead to ... wait for it ... baseball!

-- Aspiring Dirt Dog Bobby Kielty, who helped to nail the WS win over the Rockies, has re-upped with a one-year deal with the Sox.

-- Gordon Edes has spring training storylines:

Buck up, Binky. The Super Bowl is yesterday's news. The sun is shining in Fort Myers, where the temperature is headed toward 85, Jon Lester and some other young lads are already there working out, and the official start of camp for the Red Sox, defending World Series champs, is a week from Wednesday.

-- And the state Senate has passed a resolution, sponsored by the aforementioned Senator Pichardo, urging Major League Baseball to retire uniform number 21 in honor of the late, great Roberto Clemente.

“Roberto Clemente truly paved the way for Latinos in Major League Baseball,” said Senator Pichardo. “Not only was Clemente one of the greatest players of his generation, but he was also a humanitarian who dedicated his life to helping the less fortunate. Much like Jackie Robinson, Clemente helped to change the face of baseball and he deserves to be honored by having his jersey number 21 retired by Major League Baseball.”

 

Born in Puerto Rico in 1934, Clemente played right field for the Pittsburgh Pirates for 18 years from 1955 to 1972, before dying tragically in a plane crash while delivering aid to earthquake victims in Nicaragua.

 

Clemente became the first Latino player to be admitted to the Baseball Hall of Fame and Major League Baseball annually honors a player who has dedicated himself to volunteer work with the Roberto Clemente Award. Clemente was also awarded the Congressional Gold Medal for his lifetime of humanitarian service and was posthumously awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2002.

Not for Nothing, but N4N knows next to nothing about football. That caveat in place, my prediction: Patriots, 28-16.

The really great thing about the Super Bowl, however, is how is it signifies the approach of what really matters -- baseball!

I was pleasantly surprised to learn, via the sports section of today's ProJo, that Johan Santana is being dealt to the Mets. Sure, he's a great pitcher, but this is the best of both worlds: we kept him away from the Yankees, and we keep such exciting young ballplayers as Jacoby Ellsbury, Jon Lester, and Clay Buchholz, as well as Lowrie and Masterson.

In other Sox news, Tina Cervasio is leaving NESN to land a job closer to her husband in New Jersey. Cervasio proved to be a good sideline reporter, and we'll miss her.

The downside of being a fan of the ascendant franchise in baseball is how everybody wants to jump on board (and the ticket brokers still want to corner the market). In recent years, I'd taken solace in how, if you paid attention to when tickets went on sale and exhibited some patience, you'd make out okay. Yesterday, though, when the Sox did their annual late-January tix drop, I couldn't penetrate the virtual waiting room until past 10 pm (after more than 12 hours online), and the selection was pretty paltry by then. For the average fan, this is a pretty frustrating situation.

From the top minor league squad of the Red Sox.

On Saturday, January 19th [11 am-2 pm] you are invited to the 31st Annual Pawtucket Red Sox Hot Stove League Party.

 

This exclusive social gathering – for you, our valued fan – begins our countdown to spring training and Opening Night at McCoy (April 3rd vs. Indianapolis by the way).  The festivities will be held from 11:00 am – 2:00 pm. Please enter the ballpark through the entry tower in left field.

 

The 2008 Hot Stove Party will once again be held inside the hallowed confines of the McCoy Clubhouse and batting tunnels. No RSVP is necessary and please feel free to bring family and friends.

     

PawSox manager Ron Johnson will give fans a preview of what the 2008 club will look like. Several PawSox players and top Red Sox prospects like INF Jed Lowrie, RHP Justin Masterson, RHP Michael Bowden, OF Jonathan Van Every, catcher Dusty Brown and others are expected to attend the party and will be available for photos and autographs. 

  

Fans in attendance will have the chance to purchase tickets as the Box Office at McCoy will be open for walk-up business. Food and drink will be served, baseball talk will fill the air, and the latest in PawSox merchandise will be available inside the Team Store.

I wasn't troubled by the game calls of Glenn Geffner last year nearly as much as some Sox fans (though I was sad to see Jerry Trupiano go), but he's gone (h/t Dirt Dogs). No big surprise here, since the departed Dr. Charles Steinberg was considered his rabbi.

Meanwhile, as Dirt Dogs report, just 26 days until pitchers and catchers.

It might be cold and snowy in Rhode Island today, but here's something of interest to the baseball fans out there. N4N passed by Fenway Park during a visit to Boston last week, and I had the chance to admire a new sign that the Red Sox have installed in the parking lot across the street on Brookline Avenue.

The Sox organization has done a characteristically impressive job with the update: the new baseball-shaped sign not only rotates, unlike the one it replaced, it has the proper retro look to blend in seamlessly and has been joined by an oversized bat, as well as the somewhat less charming, but unsurprising electronic message board.

Take a peek (photo by Bruce "the Squirrel" Allen):

Signing Doug Mirabelli makes for a cheap insurance policy, but I've maintained that getting a stronger backup catcher should be an off-season priority for the Sox. Jason Varitek has proved durable, and his handling of the pitchers is invaluable. Jorge Posada offers another example of an aging backstop who performs at a high level. But you never know when an injury might strike (the results were pretty disastrous in 2006), and we don't want to see Belli in day-to-day use. Getting Salty may be too much to ask for, but I would think that Theo and his crew remain on the case.

Sad, sad, sad.

You know how we feel.

From Boston.com:

Former Red Sox outfielder Jim Rice did not gain election to the Hall of Fame today. This was Rice's 14th and next-to-last season of eligibility on the writers' ballot.

Her finished just 14 votes shy, gaining 72.2 percent of the vote. Seventy-five percent is required for election to the Hall.

Goose Gossage was the only player to gain election, becoming only the fifth relief pitcher to do so on his ninth try on the ballot.

Highlights from a Peter Gammons's chat today at boston.com:

Manny Ramirez:

Manny rented a house in the Phoenix area and has become a maniacal workout warrior in Tempe Arizona at the Athletes' Performance Institute (API). From what I've heard from people at API, Manny is getting himself into phenomenal shape. And having watched those workouts, I can tell you, they are extremely difficult.

What's up with the Santana deal?

Santana is probably the best pitcher of this generation. He's young and he's a great athlete who should be able to last another 10 years, but the more I've thought about the Santana deal, the more I'm convinced it's not a great idea. Whether it's the Ellsbury deal or the Lester deal, the Sox would still be giving up three young players and I don't discount the importance that Lowrie will play in the next couple of years. Theo has rebuilt the RS farm system in a very short time and changed the culture. And I think that culture is really important. The baseball people with the Yankees feel the same about what Brian Cashman has done and would prefer not to make a Santana deal. There are days when I really believe that the Red Sox and Yankees wake up and hoping somehow the Mets can find 4 or 5 good prospects in the organization and make the trade, but right now, that's highly unlikely.

How are things with Theo and Larry?

I think the relationship is very good now. Larry has immense respect for Theo and his work ethic. And I think some of the issues that existed probably were better dealt with by the brief rupture in their relationship.

Is this the year for Jim Rice?

I don't think so. I voted for him, but it's been interesting that there have been people like Rob Neyer who are so obsessed with degrading Rice's career. The fact that he retired as early as he did clearly has cost him because of the 382 home runs. But for him to be in the top 5 in MVP balloting 6 times in 12 years, to me, speaks more about his career than the fact that his career OPS is the same as Ellis Burks.

Dan Shaughnessy predicts that the New Year will be kind to former Red Sox slugger Jim Rice.

Rich Gossage and Rice should top this year's ballot, gathering the necessary 75 percent of the vote. There would be nice symmetry in the sight of this duo walking through the gates of the Hall together. Rice and Gossage were two of the central figures of the 1978 pennant race and it would be appropriate to see them enshrined on the 30th anniversary of the great race.

Adding to the 1978 Boston-New York theme, the late Larry Whiteside, pioneer of African-American baseball writers and a man who wrote thousands of words about Rice and Gossage, will be awarded the J.G. Taylor Spink Award posthumously when the hardball world gathers in Cooperstown, N.Y., next summer.

Not everyone agrees with me on Rice's chances. It's a risky prediction, given that Rice as recently as 1999 received only 29.4 percent of the vote and actually went backward last year.

But Rice has three things going for him: 1) His vote total has been north of 60 percent in recent years and Sox historian Dick Bresciani has boosted Rice's candidacy with a convincing public relations campaign; 2) The more we talk about steroids, the better Rice's numbers look; 3) There are no new candidates to overwhelm the voters.

Does Jim Ed deserve it?

He was a dominant power hitter before steroids polluted the game and skewed the numbers. Rice hit 46 homers in a season back when it meant something - before 50 became the province of guys like Brady Anderson and Luis Gonzalez. People who played and watched major league baseball from 1975-86 know that Rice was the most feared hitter of his day. Managers thought about intentionally walking him when he came to the plate with the bases loaded. He played hard and he played hurt. His managers loved him. Opponents feared him.

On the flip side, Rice is a power hitter who failed to reach 400 homers and broke down physically while in his mid-30s. Defense was not part of his game and his postseason numbers are weak. It's not fair to claim he's been kept out of the Hall because he was uncooperative (downright rude, usually) with the media. Eddie Murray was far more difficult with the press and he cruised into Cooperstown, as did silent Steve Carlton.

Rice has been forced to wait because he is a marginal candidate - which is no disgrace when we're talking about the Hall of Fame. A lot of great players don't get a sniff of the Hall. Take a look at the careers of Andre Dawson (438 homers), Harold Baines, and Dale Murphy. None of them has gotten as close as Rice.

N4N thinks Rice should be in the Hall, mainly because he was one of the dominant players of his era. And who knows how the 1975 World Series might have turned out had Rice not been injured and out of the lineup at the time.

Earlier this year, in April, the ProJo's typically on-the-mark Joe McDonald wrote what I consider an unusually harsh story about an appearance by Rice at the Kirkbrae Country Club in Lincoln. Topped by the headline "Rice bites the hand that fed him at welcoming," the story -- which included the sportwriter's scolding about Rice's "inappropriate comments" -- fed into the former outfielder's playing-days' reputation as a surly guy.

I wasn't there, so I can't say for sure, but it seems that Rice, like a lot of ballplayers, is not the most articulate guy in the world, and that more than anything, he was trying to encourage young ballplayers to work hard and dedicate themselves to their careers.

Here's how some of it came out:

There are a lot of people in baseball who share [Ben] Mondor's belief that Rice's accomplishments on the field deserve a plaque in Cooperstown. Rice, on the other hand, didn't help his cause yesterday during the annual PawSox Welcome Home Luncheon at Kirkbrae Country Club.

The event honoring Rice was going along smoothly until he imploded, basically telling the sellout crowd of more than 400, including the PawSox' players, that greed and cheating (not steroids) are good for furthering your baseball career.

During a Q & A session with former teammate and Red Sox broadcaster Bob Montgomery, Rice told some impressive stories about his career, including his time in Pawtucket. He had the crowd riveted with his tales, and Montgomery was quick to point out some extraordinary statistics, including when Rice played in all 163 games for the Red Sox during the 1978 season. The last one was the infamous tie-breaker game against the Yankees when Bucky Dent hit his deciding home run.

Toward the end of the 25-minute sitdown with Montgomery, Rice made more than a few inappropriate comments in a strange Jekyll and Hyde episode.

Montgomery asked Rice what his brightest moment was as a major-leaguer, and he answered by telling the audience it was helping the Red Sox reach the World Series in 1975 as a rookie. He was then asked if he had any advice for the PawSox' players, and he went on a six-minute rant, with a swagger that suddenly emerged.

"You have to trust yourself, he said. "You've got to work twice as hard, and to me, if I was one of the players right now, I would be a selfish player.

He began to explain that today's players take spring training for granted because of all the amenities and state-of-the-art equipment. Rice said he saw some things during this year's spring training that he didn't like. He said if he was playing today he wouldn't be sitting in his room watching television; he would be at the ballpark taking batting practice.

"This is my 36th year of marriage to the same woman," he said. "If I had to do it all over ag