Notes from the weekend

Friday: The Sox lost Friday night to the Marlins, in the first of a three game series. It ended their 12 game winning streak, which is a bummer. But their run of 17 games without an error continued. The Sox put newly acquired Jason Johnson on the mound - and he gave up 5 runs in th efirst two innings. I understand that the team didn't arrive in Miami until 4am, so I guess some fatigue is understandable. Intellectually, I know they had to lose eventually, but stilll...

Saturday: Well, first off, I wasn't allowed to watch this game. I hate FOX! They have propietary rights to every game that's played between 1pm and 7pm on Saturdays. If they choose to broadcast it, fantastic (although you're then subjected to those doofuses, Buck and McCarver) However, if they don't broadcast it, it's blacked out except regionally. So this week's game was broadcast by NESN to the locan New England market, and by SUN to the Southern Florida market. Me - I got to watch a bouncing DirectTV logo for four hours. Fortunately, I also have a subscription to Gameday Audio on mlb.com - so I could at least listen to WEEI.

Secondly, I started my first game thread over on the Remy board. No one had stepped up to do it, so I took a deep breath and tried my luck. I hoped my game winning Mojo would help. After all, I was present for the games in Atlanta that kicked off the 12-game streak. And - ta-da - it worked, because the Sox won.

I think their bats must have either missed that late flight from Boston Friday morning, or slept in, because they were basically invisible during Friday night's game. But not so Saturday! Ortiz and Ramirez EACH hit two homers - and Mikey Lowell had THREE doubles! Wow! The Sox won 11-5 - yahoo!

Sunday: So the rules of responsibility for keeping the winning game threads going are complex. You can't start the new one until after midnight, and whoever started the winning thread must start the new one. Some starters are superstitious about changing nothing in their winning thread - they keep the title nearly identical and use the exact same format. I started mine with a picture of our pitcher - Wakefield Saturday and Lester today. I also put in some stats about the pitchers...

Sunday's game started at noon - Florida seems to pick odd start times for their games! We put up hot rookie Jon Lester, and the Marlins countered with their young prospect, Josh Johnson. And once again, our bats came through! 3 solo homers (Ortiz, Youk and Tek), and then some "smallball" to score the go-ahead run in the 8th. Final score: 4-3.

The Sox were amazing in Interleague play - 16-1, the best record this year for any team (oh, sorry, the Twins have the same record). And now it's back to the American League - with four games vs. Tampa Bay and three vs. the Chicago White Sox. It'll be a tough stretch leading up to the All-Star break, but we've also got a chance to distance ourselves from the rest of the division. We're 4 1/2 games ahead of the Yanks right now, and hopefully the Mets will help us out tonight.

All Star Selections: So, the announced the All-Star teams this evening. Here are the teams:

Pos	Player	B/T	Age	Games
1B	David Ortiz, BOS	L/L	30	3
2B	Mark Loretta, BOS	R/R	34	2
3B	Alex Rodriguez, NYY	R/R	30	9
SS	Derek Jeter, NYY	R/R	32	7
C	Ivan Rodriguez, DET	L/R	23	1
OF	Vladimir Guerrero, LAA	R/R	30	7
OF	Manny Ramirez, BOS	R/R	34	8
OF	Ichiro Suzuki, SEA	L/R	32	6

American League Pitchers

				All-Star
Pos	Player	B/T	Age	Games
SP	Mark Buerhle, CWS	L/L	27	3
SP	Jose Contreras, CWS	R/R	34	1
SP	Roy Halladay, TOR	R/R	29	2
SP	Scott Kazmir, TB	L/L	22	1
SP	Mark Redman, KC	L/L	32	1
SP	Kenny Rogers, DET	L/L	41	3
SP	Johan Santana, MIN	L/L	27	2
SP	Barry Zito, OAK	L/L	28	2

				All-Star
Pos	Player	B/T	Age	Games
RP	Bobby Jenks, CWS	R/R	25	1
RP	Jon Papelbon, BOS	R/R	25	1
RP	Mariano Rivera, NYY	R/R	36	6
RP	B.J. Ryan, TOR	L/L	30	2

American League Reserves

				All-Star
Pos	Player	B/T	Age	Games
1B	Paul Konerko, CWS	R/R	30	3
1B	Jim Thome, CWS	L/R	35	5
2B	Robinson Cano, NYY º	L/R	23	1
2B	Jose Lopez, SEA ª	R/R	22	1
3B	Troy Glaus, TOR	R/R	29	4
SS	Miguel Tejada, BAL	R/R	30	4
SS	Michael Young, TEX	R/R	29	3
C	Joe Mauer, MIN	L/R	23	1
OF	Jermaine Dye, CWS	R/R	32	2
OF	Alex Rios, TOR º	R/R	25	1
OF	Gary Matthews, Jr., TEX ª	S/R	31	1
OF	Grady Sizemore, CLE	L/L	23	1
OF	Vernon Wells, TOR	R/R	27

Some interesting omissions: No Varitek - who led the fan voting until almost the end. Guillen named Mauer as back-up - which is really how it should be. Mauer is nearly hitting .400 right now, and really deserving of this honor. Also - no Schilling or Beckett, despite their league-leading records. Guillen claims he consulted with other managers before naming his reserves, and that he tried not to interfere with an pitching rotations. Realistically, he wanted his guys on their.

On the NL side, Nomar was overlooked - as Kruk said, it'll be a shame when he wins the batting title and was not on the All Star team. And, our Bronson was named to his first All Star team - again, very worthy of the honor.

And now, on to Tampa Bay!!