Dan Gould

I got a great blast from the past this morning, courtesy of my brother. The date is May 2nd, 1976. Graig Nettles has just blindsided Bill Lee. Little did we know how it would effect Lee or the Red Sox, but I was plenty ticked off. I always wanted a copy of this pic, and now I have it. Maybe I'll add it to my signature.

It sounds like it isn't just the "high-pressure" but maybe more of it is simply the combination of a large media contingent and a small clubhouse built in the early part of the last century. But the deal wasn't bad just because of his substantial psychological issues but because of how rarely he's stayed healthy and sane for a full season in his entire career.

He'll never put on a Cub uniform again, and I pity whatever team trades for him. Hendry has made a lot of stupid decisions as Cub GM, I can only hope he makes a trade of bad contract for bad contract and gets lucky with whoever he picks up (maybe Vernon Wells? One of the worst contracts, would go well with Soriano and Zambrano, but he's still young and might regain some of his old form with a change of scenery. Plus he's got his own opt-out clause after 2011 - if he hates the NL, maybe he takes advantage of it.)

Well there's the end of the "Joba's been pitching better lately" talk. And who does play-by-play for the M's on TV? I had the MLB.TV running and Jesus, the guy sounded as if a win in this game would clinch the playoffs. Of course it was Junior, and I have to admit I was surprised he got around on a 93 mph heater on the inner half of the plate. With the jet stream in the Bronx, that one might have been out of the New Stadium entirely. So let's presume that the M's will hold on to a 7-0 lead. The Yankee lead would shrink to 4 in the loss column, with the streaking Sox going to KC for 4 and the Yankees heading to Anaheim for three. Is it not reasonable to presume that the loss column deficit could be cut by one (Yankees lose two of three, Sox lose one of four)? That would put them three games back with three to play in the Bronx starting Friday night. An interesting position to be after all that's taken place this season. Normally the Sox don't worry about wild card vs division, they just want to be in and have started resting players once its accomplished or virtually settled. But it seems to me the Yanks really want this division championship. Might be interesting if the Yankees play the regulars more than they wanted to just to ensure the division in the final week. Of course, this could be avoided if the Yankees sweep the Halos and don't get swept in the Bronx. But they've definitely not played as well lately as they were playing, while the Red Sox have really put it all together lately.

Interesting bit in the Globe this morning - when the deal for Billy Wagner went down, the big thing seemed to be that the Red Sox accept that he can't pitch back-to-back days, maybe two out of three but never back-to-back, because he is still rehabbing his elbow and he doesn't want to jeapordize his next contract. Now, he's actually told the Red Sox he can and wants to pitch back-to-back, and they've told him that's great but we don't want to do that. Part of it is Wagner's desire to get a sense of consistency and the other is, after his bad game a few days ago, wanting to get the bad taste out of his mouth with a good game. Now you have to wonder if they're intent is to take Wagner up on his offer when the playoffs come around. Wagner pitching back-to-back days could have a major effect, particularly against the Yankees in the ALCS and Tito has certainly shown a willingness to manage differently in October.

On the topic of Sunday morning fun video, check out this page of Purina pet videos: http://video.yahoo.com/network/100000086?v...amp;l=100000085 The first one is hysterical, a little kitten trying to get the dog to chase her but he's more interested in the bone he's chewing on. There are several other funny videos on the page, too.

I don't know what's harder to believe - that Anastos is 66 now or that he's kept a job in the biggest media market in the country all this time. In his younger days, he'd deliver horrible sounding news teasers with the smarmiest smile imaginable. Put a big grin on your face and say this: At least Sue Simmons could feign seriousness when she read those things.

Grienke is still the man, and its not close. But it would suck extra worse if Sabathia somehow got it because of who he plays for.

How the hell did he ever get into a halfway house before? I'll bet he had even less supervision there, they are lucky he didn't escape then.

I was going to say that the music on the tape should have been the familiar opening to "So What" but Ayler or late 'Trane would be even better.

No, and in fact I'm hoping the Miami contingent can advise me on traffic/parking in that area on weekends. If we make it, it will be for the 9 PM set so we can get home at a reasonable hour.

I don't know Paul, two trombonists? Isn't there a law against that? Seriously though, it is quite a haul from Palm Beach but let me check with the wife, I'd sure like to hear you say hello.

If it hadn't come at the end of a nice streak of success coupled with Texas falling away, I'd still be fucking pissed about the way the Red Sox fucked away last night's game. Its as if Varitek knows that the Red Sox are through with him and want V-Mart to be the primary catcher next year, and he doesn't give a fuck anymore.

Well then we agree they really had to sweep to have a shot. Lots of scoreboard watching in the final two weeks.

And also very stupid. Not Mr. Gibson though. I enjoyed his work.

"... abuse English language grammar in emails."

Hi Norm, Check out his credits page at AMG. Off the top of my head, from that era, Wynton is a great contributor to Hank Mobley's Soul Station and Roll Call and Workout. If you enjoyed Wes' guitar, you might seek out Bags Meets Wes (Milt Jackson on vibes). An all-time favorite Wynton Kelly sideman appearance is on Dizzy Reece's Star Bright - Hank Mobley is also on it, though its slightly before your early 60s time frame. When I started exploring jazz, Wynton Kelly quickly became a "seal of approval" for anything I found that I wasn't sure about. If he was on it, there had to be some good hard boppin' in the grooves.

There are plots of the strike zone from last night that shows how the home plate umpire was not calling the low strike, and was calling a higher strike. So the bottom line is, he wasn't giving that pitch all night long. Yeah, empirically it was a strike but as the old umpire used to say "it ain't nothing til I say what it is" and he hadn't been calling it and he didn't. It really makes it impossible to argue that it had anything to do with the crowd or the Red Sox. Everyone says they want consistency from the ump - well, he gave it to them.

Yeah, he did frame it a bit when he didn't have to. It was borderline, but a strike nonetheless. The thing is, we're conditioned to expect the low strike to be called more than the high strike, and probably balls on the black more also. But umps can blow calls just by blowing calls, not because they are influenced by the fans or the location.

Just heard back from the boss - at the bank's recommendation, the account is frozen and a new account number has been assigned. The woman said that yes, in fact, with the information the boss gave out and some knowledge of the bank system, a withdrawal could have been made on the account. So big thanks to Paps and Aggie for giving the encouragement to go ahead and call the boss directly and tell her my concerns. Otherwise she would not have seen the email I sent until late this afternoon or tonight and if this was a scam, he'd have had a bigger window of opportunity to do his dirty work. And if he contacts us and says he was prevented from making the transfer, we'll tell him the bank told us they can only accept wire transfers from businesses, or from individuals not located in the scam center of the universe.

Well this is where my banking knowledge is deficient and hopefully Jean will find out from the bank if this is a problem. But she didn't give out the account only. "Wire ABA" "Swift Code" and "Direct Deposit" were also a part of her email, with the bank address and the beneficiary name and account number. So I don't know if this information can be used in reverse to initiate a transfer from the account rather than to the account. But better safe than sorry.

Well, as it happened, the boss was reacting to the initial information that the guy could not pay in the usual manner (he didn't ask directly for wire transfer info, so that's a rather passive way for this scam to work) and she sent out the info before our technical person followed up on what info she could glean about the person. And she left to visit her husband in the hospital so she didn't see the emails about him being from Nigeria or my reply. (I'm also thinking that if I am doing this as a scam, I don't indicate I am from Nigeria since that raises flags.) So, I just called the boss and she is calling BoA right now. On the good side, there isn't much to be taken out, if they do successfully access it. I mean, if we were swimming in revenue, I wouldn't be looking for work, I'd be getting a nice sized salary for very minimal work. I'd be surprised if there is more than a few hundred to a thousand bucks in the account right now. At the same time, we've got a large invoice pending with Boeing and they do wire transfers to pay it, so if this really is a problem, then she'll have to get the account number changed and deal with getting Boeing to update their info too. We've had problems before where checks were delayed by about three weeks because Boeing didn't have the account number updated. Thanks for the advice, everybody.

I am a shareholder in a company that sells Aviation English training online. The vast majority of our customers come from various re-sellers we have, such as Boeing and several others. Our website gets traffic and the occasional purchase of a Placement Test and course. We offer Paypal for such customers. This week we found out that someone contacted our technical partner, the company that hosts the course on their learning management system, stating that they wanted to purchase a placement test + a Basic level course, but they have no credit card or paypal. Looking deeper into it, we found that the person had registered for the Demo and gave his address as Nigeria. Now the boss has emailed him information on making a wire transfer of $800 to cover the cost of the course, and now I am worried that they can use the information given to empty the account rather than pay us. Am I over-reacting or have we stumbled on to a new Nigerian scam - express interest in a product, say you can't pay via normal methods like credit cards or paypal, and get the bank information for a wire transfer?

I'll happily go to war with this bullpen over theirs any day of the week. Far deeper and that was before they added Wagner. The Yankees could make it a seven inning game because of Hughes and Rivera. The Red Sox can make them six inning games because they have the arms to get through the seventh, too, and have more than a single option for the eighth.

I thought that Fuentes' bitching and moaning was ridiculous. Not that the calls weren't bad, but the idea that umpires are intimidated at Fenway or something. You can miss a call and its not because you're afraid to go to your car after the game. This isn't AA ball. One thing I didn't really notice was whether the umpire was calling the lower edge of the strike zone tight all night or not. It looks worse if he had called someone out on a low strike earlier than froze on that one. But if he wasn't giving that strike throughout the game, it almost excuses it. Not quite though. It was after all above the lower line of the strike zone box on the screen.