For those who missed ‘em, here’s a 7-minute video clip of the Red Sox’s four consecutive home runs as they happened last night:

If you want to see just the home runs, here’s a 53-second clip.

I feel lucky to have watched history unfold live. It was the first baseball game I’ve watched all season. I picked a good night to tune in!

Last Wednesday evening, I blogged about the special Bud Light bottles with Sabres logos on them that are being sold in western New York in honor of Buffalo’s playoff drive. I learned about this from Bfloblog (which wrote, “The fact people would change their beer because there’s a Sabres logo on the bottle is a bit frightening. The fact it is considered news is terrifying.”) and thought it was rather amusing, which is why I blogged about it. Alas, I hadn’t gone beer shopping while in Buffalo the previous weekend, and I didn’t know about the bottles then, so I didn’t expect I’d have the chance to drink from one of them while watching a Sabres game. And I certainly didn’t expect that my blog post would earn me any freebies.

But, lo and behold, the next day in ConLaw, one of my classmates clandestinely handed me the the bottle you that see photographed above (posed next to Toby, our one Buffalo-area-native pet). This classmate, who shall remain nameless because I’m not sure whether alcohol trafficking in class violates the Honor Code :), had been in Buffalo the previous weekend, and had bought some of the special Sabres-branded Bud Lights and brought them back to South Bend. He then saw my blog post, and decided to give me one of them.

This is amusing on several levels. One, my blog got me free beer. Two, it took less than 18 hours for a blog post about beer to translate into actual beer. Three, a fellow law student brought in beer and gave it to me in class. I can honestly say that’s the first time, at any level of school, that I’ve had alcohol smuggled to me in the classroom. And it happened a month before graduation. I think my education is now officially complete. :)

Anyway, I have yet to actually drink the beer. I figure I should save it for when I’m watching the Sabres play. I was going to drink it during Game 5 of the Islanders series, but then I wasn’t really in the mood for beer, so I decided to hold off. I would consider saving it until the Stanley Cup finals (knock on wood furiously), but by then we’ll be living in Knoxville, and moving a bottle of Bud Light from Indiana to Tennessee seems a little excessive. Besides, if the Sabres make it to the finals and get within a game of winning the Cup, Becky and I are totally going to drive up to B’lo, just to be in the city when they (again, knock on wood furiously) win… so I can buy another Buffaslug Light then, if I want. (Then again, once I’m in Buffalo, at Pearl Street or someplace similar, why would I drink Bud Light?) Anyway, perhaps I’ll drink this bottle during Game 1 of the Rangers series.

Speaking of which, the schedule for the Sabres-Rangers series hasn’t been officially announced yet, but Newsday reports that NBC has said it will televise Game 2 on Saturday, which probably means Game 1 is on Thursday. (Hat tip: Sabres Insider.) In any event, the first two games will be in Buffalo, as well as games 5 and 7, if necessary.

One thing’s for sure: if they win this series, the Sabres won’t just be in the Eastern Conference finals, and halfway to their first-ever Stanley Cup. They’ll also be the undisputed New York state champions. ;)

P.S. Here’s a picture of Toby defending the beer from Sasha’s advances:

That exchange resulted in a brief staring contest…

…followed by an uneasy truce:

Toby’s defensiveness is understandable. Sasha is a Coyotes fan.

I had to laugh at the current top search-engine phrases that are leading people to my site:

Heh. Some of these people may want to check out my Babes, Boobs & Sex category. :) Though I’m afraid the ones looking for “alyssa milano nude” will be disappointed regardless.

Former Russian President Boris Yeltsin has died, Russian news agencies report.

Visit CNN for the latest.

Heh:

I pulled my last all-nighter on Wednesday. It was one of those special nights where, to stay awake, I gradually forced myself into less and less comfortable positions, moving from my bed to the couch to a hard plastic chair to, finally, the floor. Even on my scratchy old carpet that hasn’t been vacuumed for months, I nearly went down for the count - only the thought of never again having to subject myself to this torture kept me going.

Now that I can count my remaining days of class on one hand, I’ve started itemizing these college experiences into “good riddance!” and “gone so soon?” groups. Those all-nighters, blue books, insufferable summer internships and mornings spent hugging the toilet? Parting is such sweet sorrow. But blissfully warm night games at the Coliseum, chicken nugget Tuesdays at EVK and any game involving red Solo cups? I hardly knew thee.

That’s from a highly entertaining Daily Trojan column by Derek Peters about “The DT’s very sexy mailbag.” Good stuff.

Per the wishes of our esteemed leader, I have taken the role of Commissioner of the Irish Trojan Baseball League on Yahoo! Sports.

I currently have the league set up as a straight roto league AL and NL, with a maximum of 16 teams (this can go up to 20 if there’s interest)

Here’s the link to the league’s homepage. I’m going to close registrations for the league at 12:01 am on Friday, April 27. I’ll set the automatic draft to run on Saturday night, so you can configure your lineups on Sunday for league play starting on Monday, April 30.

So, in order to avoid some unwanted troll playing in the IrishTrojan League, I’m going to ask that you email me at my commissioner’s address, irishtrojanbaseball AT yahoo DOT com. In your email, if you would please note who you are in the Bloysphere, I’d appreciate it.

Cheers, and good luck!

Oh yeah, and BTW, when you’ve sent the email to get the league password, please leave a comment saying you’ve done so. That way I have a way to double check that everyone who wants in has been sent the password.

Barry Bonds’s controversial pursuit of Hank Aaron’s career home-run record is getting closer and closer to the finish line. He hit his 740th home run today, and is on pace to reach 755 sometime in July.

In other baseball news, the Red Sox are playing the Yankees at the Fenway Park right now, looking for their first series sweep over the Yanks since 1990. And they’re trying to finish it off with Japenese sensation Daisuke Matsuzaka, a.k.a. “Dice-K,” on the mound. The Yankees led 3-0, but now it’s tied 3-3 after three consecutive solo home runs by Manny Ramirez, J.D. Drew and Mike Lowell.

UPDATE: Four in a row!! That’s the first time in Red Sox history that’s ever happened. 4-3!

P.S. It’s only the fifth time in Major League Baseball history that a team has hit back-to-back-to-back-to-back home runs. The most recent time it happened was actually just last year, when the Dodgers hit four straight HRs on seven pitches in the bottom of the ninth inning to tie the game — with the division title on the line, no less. (They won the game in the 10th inning, and went to the playoffs as the wild card team.) You can see video highlights of that amazing game here. Incredibly, J.D. Drew was one of the Dodgers to homer consecutively in that game, and he was one of the Red Sox to homer consecutively tonight.

Prior to last year, nobody had gone back-to-back-to-back in 42 years.

This time around, the four home runs happened in ten pitches. Jason Varitek got the last one. And all four were surrendered by Chase Wright — which is only the second time in MLB history that one pitcher has given up four straight homers. (The Angels’ Paul Foytack was the first to earn that dubious distinction, against the Indians in 1963. The third straight HR against Foytack was hit by Tito Francona, father of Red Sox manager Terry Francona — whose 48th birthday is today.)

The Yankees let Wright pitch out the inning; he struck out Wily Mo Pena to end the inning. That makes Wright the first pitcher in MLB history ever allowed to face another batter after giving up four straight home runs. (According to baseball-almanac.com, Jack Spring replaced Paul Foytack immediately after the fourth consecutive homer.) And, looking at it another way, it makes Wily Mo Pena the first player in MLB history ever to be struck out by a guy who just gave up four straight home runs. :) But the Yankees have now made a pitching change as the fourth inning gets underway.

UPDATE 2: The Yankees lead, 5-4, at seventh-inning stretch time. Would the Red Sox be the first team ever to hit four straight HRs in a losing effort? I’m not sure. I’m trying to figure it out now.

UPDATE 3: No, they wouldn’t — the Milwaukee Braves lost 10-8 to the Cincinnati Reds despite getting four straight homers in the seventh inning on June 8, 1961. (The Braves were the first team ever to go back-to-back-to-back-to-back.)

But anyway, the Red Sox have retaken the lead, 7-5, so for the moment, it’s a moot point. (Knock on wood.)

P.P.S. Here are the five back-to-back-to-back-to-back games in MLB history:

June 8, 1961: Reds 10, Braves 8 - Braves get 4 consecutive home runs in top 7th (Eddie Mathews, Hank Aaron, Joe Adcock and Frank Thomas)

July 31, 1963: Indians 9, Angels 5 - Indians get 4 consecutive home runs in bottom 6th (Woodie Held, Pedro Ramos, Tito Francona, Larry Brown)

May 2, 1964: Twins 7, Athletics 3 - Twins get 4 consecutive home runs in top 11th (Tony Oliva, Bob Allison, Jimmie Hall, Harmon Killebrew)

September 18, 2006: Dodgers 11, Padres 10 - Dodgers get 4 consecutive home runs in bottom 9th (Jeff Kent, J.D. Drew, Russell Martin and Marlon Anderson)

April 22, 2007: Red Sox vs. Yankees (in progress) - Red Sox get 4 consecutive home runs in bottom 3rd (Manny Ramirez, J.D. Drew, Mike Lowell and Jason Varitek)

Weird how they’re all bunched together in the early 60’s and mid 00’s.

UPDATE 3: More detail about those previous games here.

It’s now 7-6 Boston midway through the eighth.

UPDATE 4: Red Sox win!

It seems Karl Rove had a rather confrontational encounter with Sheryl Crow and Inconvenient Truth producer Laurie David at the White House Correspondents Dinner last night. Like a bunch of third-graders, all participants in the snit claim that somebody else started it.

But nevermind global warming-fueled hissy fits, the real news from the dinner is that Sanjaya Malakar was there (as People magazine’s guest), and New York governor Eliot Spitzer got his autograph! Is this a tacit acknowledgement by Gov. Spitzer that he, too, only succeeded because the electorate decided to “vote for the worst“? ;)

Speaking of which, the erstwhile Sanjaya-backers at VFTW have decided to endorse Phil Stacey this week. Though Sanjaya claims they had nothing to do with his success — it was his own genuine fan base, not the “haters,” that kept him alive. Riiiight. Regardless, don’t cry for Sanjaya. It seems that Britney Spears wants to hitch her wagon to his star. Heh. Hooray for Hollywood!

UPDATE: Reggie Bush was there, too, as a guest of Condi Rice.

There’s a new Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix international trailer out!

(Hat tip: Andrew Leyden.) It’s on YouTube, so I don’t know how long it’ll be up before it gets yanked by the powers-that-be. Watch it while you still can!

UPDATE: Doesn’t seem like they’re cracking down, since there are a whole bunch of copies up on YouTube.

I’m not sure where Becky and I will be in mid-August — we have ambitions of possibly travelling overseas after the bar exam, depending on how our budget looks — but if we’re in the States, I fully intend to drag our butts to Milwaukee from August 17-19 for the Milwaukee Irish Fest. Because, man, look at the list of performers! Not only does it include both Tommy Makem and the Barra MacNeils, two of my all-time favorites, but there are just a ton of other big names there too, like Leahy, Aoife Clancy, Gaelic Storm, etc. Totally awesome. (If only Great Big Sea wasn’t going to be in Scotland that weekend, maybe they’d be coming too!) Seriously, if you live anywhere near Milwaukee and you enjoy Irish/Celtic/folk music, mark those dates on your calendar and plan on going, because it should be an amazing festival!!

“Jenn Sterger Urged To Use Less Passive Voice, More Pictures of Her Boobs.”

During our trip to Buffalo last weekend, we had a great time visiting with Shannon, P.J., Barb, Weston, Casey, a couple of Casey’s Ph.D. friends, and the Bfloblog guys. But with all due respect to all of them, in terms of raw entertainment value, they just can’t match Casey’s octopus or Shannon and P.J.’s baby. :) Here are some video clips of those two — first Pericles, then Logan:

Sorry it took so long to get those online. Incidentally, my photo gallery of the trip, including the Sabres game, is here.

Al Gore’s former aides are reportedly prepping for a possible presidential run by the ex-veep.

I said it was a “very good crowd” at today’s Blue-Gold Game, and I wasn’t kidding: attendance was listed at 51,852. In the words of Her Loyal Sons, “52,000!!! That’s 50,000 more than an Illinois Spring Game draws. … If you had 26 Illinois Spring Games, you would just barely match the attendance of one ND Spring Game. That’s badass.” Heh. The attendance shattered last year’s Notre Dame record of 41,279, which itself shattered the old record of 35,675 in 1981. (Though to be honest, I don’t know how they get such a exact number, since the entry procedures at the student gate appeared way too disorganized for any sort of accurate head count to be happening.)

In terms of attendance, though, Notre Dame’s got nothing on Alabama. More than 92,000 fans showed up for the Crimson Tide’s spring game to see Nick Saban’s debut, and several thousand more were turned away. Crazy Alabamans.

Anyway, back to the Blue-Gold Game. ‘Twas a relatively unexciting affair, ultimately won by Gold, 10-6. Lou Holtz was the honorary coach for the Gold team, and after the game, he got a Gatorade bath. “You don’t throw Gatorade on a guy at 70 years old in a spring game when it’s not expected,” he said later. “I could have had a heart attack and sued Notre Dame for a lot of money.” Heh!

None of the quartet of quarterbacks competing for the starting job — Jimmy Clausen, Evan Sharpley, Demetrius Jones and Zach Frazer — particularly shined, though according to Charlie Weis, “none of the four…played themselves out of contention.”

Irish Insights has many more, well, insights into what happened on the field. Personally, I left in the third quarter; I’m just not enough of a recruiting/player development nerd to get really excited about a scrimmage, especially with all the injury-prevention rules that make the action on the field somewhat lame (automatic fair catches on punts and kickoffs, a “sack” is declared whenever the quarterback is touched by a defender, etc.). But it was definitely fun to go. I think my favorite moment was when a sizeable group of students chanted — I kid you not — “Goooo Irish / Beeeeat Irish / Suck it, Irish! / Go, Irish, Go!” Heh.

Last night’s “Final Tailgater” 30 Days Party, hosted by Neil of Domer Law Blog fame, was fun too, as was this morning’s tailgate in the stadium lot, hosted by Chris and his parents and Amanda (and Amanda’s dog). I’ll post some photos from the tailgate and the game shortly.

UPDATE: My photos are here.

Note to self: when having a house party, do not invite all of MySpace.

In other news, I freakin’ love British people and their wonderfully British ways of saying things. “I wouldn’t say she was off her face, but she was quite merry”? LOL!