Kill the Rally Monkey.

*Signed*: Red Sox Nation

PS: And go Indians–kill the Bronx Bastards!

Woohoo!!!

Thanks, Orioles!

Yankees suck!

P.S. This is the first time Boston has won the American Leage East since 1995, and it breaks a string of nine consecutive Yankees division titles.

UPDATE: And the Cubs are NL Central champs!

P.P.S. I can say this without risking a jinx now, right? BOSTON’S MAGIC NUMBER IS ZERO!!! :)

I must say, though, I don’t think the Red Sox should be stealing the White Sox’s song:

BOSTON (AP) — Jonathan Papelbon danced barefoot in the infield. Daisuke Matsuzaka smiled and bowed to a group surrounding him. And the sound system played “Don’t Stop Believin’.”

Huh? Anyway, the article continues:

Ecstatic fans joined in to savor Boston’s first division title in 12 years — and the end of the New York Yankees’ long run on top.

More than an hour after the Red Sox beat Minnesota 5-2, the Yankees lost at Baltimore to make it official. Moments later, Boston players popped champagne corks in the clubhouse while a few thousand fans left at Fenway Park let loose, the echoes of their cheers spreading through the mostly empty stadium.

“I pulled my hamstring jumping off the couch,” said manager Terry Francona, who watched the end of the Yankees game in his office with general manager Theo Epstein and owners John Henry and Tom Werner. “It’s fun to see grown men act like little kids.”

With Boston’s win, New York’s loss and Cleveland’s 5-3 victory over Kansas City, the AL playoff pairings were set: The Los Angeles Angels will open at Boston, and the wild-card Yankees will start at Cleveland.

Beat the Angels!!

Lest I invoke a jinx or hex of some kind (the "curse of the Brendino"?), I’m not going to mention any baseball-related terms that rhyme with "tragic lumber." However, the Red Sox won yesterday to stretch their AL East lead over the Yankees to 3 games, with each team having 4 games left to play. (Ahem, you do the math.)

In some ways, this divisional "race" is academic. No matter the outcome, both teams are going to the playoffs — one as the AL East champ, the other as the wild card — and since two teams from the same division can’t meet in the opening round, we could be building toward another epic ALCS clash regardless. However, as a Boston fan, I would be much happier if it’s the Sox who are the champs and the Yanks the chumps wild-card winners. Not only does it mean home-field advantage in a possible ALCS meeting, but it’s a matter of pride: as I wrote previously, "We broke the Curse in 2004, and in the process we humiliated the Yankees in historic back-from-3-0 fashion, but we still
haven’t beaten them in the division race — that is to say, been better
than them over the course of the entire regular season — since, like,
forever." So… GO SAWX!

P.S. My Uncle Scott calls me "Brendino," if anybody is wondering where on earth that came from.

*The ball which was (un)fortunate enough to be the record-breaking 756th hit out of a ballpark by Barry Bonds will be branded with an asterisk.  The ball is headed to Cooperstown.

In other Bonds-related news, the team on which he has played for more than a dozen seasons has decided to cut its ties with him.  Here is an interesting post trying to figure out who might actually want the steroid-tainted-home-run-king.

I won’t post a gigantic number this time, nor will I add to the curse Brendan believed I may have started.

I’ll just say this: the Sox are in the playoffs!!!!  The first team to clinch a playoff berth in the Majors, Boston’s magic number to clinch the AL East now sits at 6.

Ugh: "The Yankees have shaved 13 games off the Red Sox lead since May 29, and now sit just 1.5 back after a 2-1 win over the Orioles."

Boston’s magic number is 9, where it’s been stuck ever since Josh’s oversized post on Saturday. (Not that I’m blaming you, Josh. Maybe I’m the one who jinxed it, by moving your giant number "after the jump.") Meanwhile, the Yankees’ magic number, which was 20 on Saturday, is now 12 after four straight Yankee wins and four straight Red Sox losses. As I said: Ugh.

After a 10-1 drubbing of the Bronx Bastards…

The magic number for Boston to clinch the AL East is…

(more…)

With regard to Erwin-gate*, NRO’s Victor David Hanson says UC Irvine Law School should re-hire Chemerinsky. (Hat tip: InstaPundit.)

Personally, I think they should re-hire him, and then re-fire him, just for kicks. It’ll be like George Steinbrenner and Billy Martin for the ivory-tower set. Fun times all around!

Speaking of which, it’s now mid-September, which means it’s time for this purported baseball fan, i.e. me, to start actually paying attention to my Red Sox. (I know, I know: bandwagon, etc. But dammit, 162 games is too long. My A.D.D. can’t handle it. Hence my tendency to "tune in" sometime in September.) Conveniently enough, there’s a Red Sox-Yankees series this weekend to get me back into the swing of things. As Mgoblog says, "Your Hate Makes You Strong." (That reminds me: Michigan sucks!!)

The series is at Fenway, and really, Boston mostly just needs to avoid suffering another sweep. The Yankees have been on quite a roll lately, but the Sox are still 5 1/2 games up in the AL East, their biggest lead this late in the season since 1986, so even, say, losing two of three to the Bronx Bastards would leave Boston with a reasonably comfortable 4.5-game cushion with 12 games to go (13 for the Yankees) when the series — the last Boston vs. New Yawk showdown of the regular season — is over. On the flip side, winning two of three would mean a 6.5-game lead, and a Red Sox sweep would give the good guys a virtually insurmountable lead of 8 1/2 games — and would put the Yankees back in danger of not getting the wild card. So that’d be nice.

Anyway, GO SAWX! We broke the Curse in 2004, and in the process we humiliated the Yankees in historic back-from-3-0 fashion, but we still haven’t beaten them in the division race — that is to say, been better than them over the course of the entire regular season — since, like, forever. So let’s wrap that up this weekend, shall we?

P.S. Boston’s magic number is 11. Each win this weekend reduces it by 2.

* A.k.a. L’Affaire Chemerinsky. (Hat tip: Glenn, again.)

Third Baseman for the Bronx B*stards hurts his ankle and had to leave yesterday’s game against Seattle.  Also leaving the game due to injury was their pitcher Wang, who now is tied with a MLB-leading 17 wins on the season.

Pardon my Boston sensibilities while I snigger at the loss (at least temporarily) of two of the B*stards’ key players.  ::snigger::

In spite of our disheartening loss last night at the hands of the Bronx B*stards, a quick calculation shows that the Magic Number for the Sox to clinch the AL East is

24

Just an update from your friendly neighborhood Red Sox fan.

I guess Brendan isn’t the only Domer to find his way to East Tennessee to start his way up the professional ladder. Jeff Samardzjia had his second strong outing in a row for the Tennessee Smokies on Sunday, posting a win in 6 1/3 innings, giving up four hits.

That is all.

Since Brendan appears to be having too much fun hanging out with the fam, I’ll go ahead and post a link to this news bit about former ND wide receiver Jeff Samardzjia.

As most ND sports fans know, he chose to head to the professional baseball route instead of the NFL, and so far, so good.

The Cubs farmhand has recently been added to the Double A, Southern League affiliate of the Cubs, the Tennessee Smokies. In other words, it’s the local hometown team in these parts. I meant to post this earlier this week after it happened, but just got around to it now. Sorry for the delay.

Samardzjia threw six strong innings, only giving up one run on six hits to the Montgomery Biscuits. I suspect that he’s likely to make his way to Iowa next year, and will probably get rushed along to the bigs as soon as possible, so that his career can come to a crashing halt due to injury like Kerry Wood and Mark Prior’s have. It’s just the nature of the Cubs organization.

“Barry Bonds setting the home-run record is the equivalent of a car winning the Kentucky Derby.” –Casey

Barry Bonds just hit his record-breaking 756th career home run off Mike Bacsik. It was caught by a fan in a New York Mets jersey. Details to come.

UPDATE: Here it is with the crappy ESPN2 call:

The Fox Sports call is much better:

source file

And here’s the radio call.

P.S. Here’s a longer, but lower quality, version of the Fox Sports clip. It’s a saved copy of the streaming video that I watched live via Internet as it happened, so it’s a bit herky-jerky as the clip buffered and stuff. But it shows much more of the reaction after the home run.

source file

And here’s an audio clip of my reaction — I was using WireTap Pro to record both the Mac’s audio track and the sounds in the room (via the computer’s microphone), so you can hear the Fox call and hear me say, “Whoa! Whoa! … He did it!”

source file

UPDATE 2: Here are some photos:

Warning: contains vulgarity.

I figured it was timely. :)