The only thing more humid than a garage in the East Coast summer heat is the room above the garage in the East Coast summer heat. Fortunately for me that's where I'm stayblurb blump bloop* blap**...
*Spell check thinks this word is spelled correctly which just proves it's a communist plot.
**Melting noises. Obviously.
Link time!
The Globe's Peter Abraham has a few pieces of note up at the Extra Bases blog. The first is on the press conference given by John Lackey after Wednesday's loss, a press conference which lasted roughly thirty seconds. Go ahead and read the transcript. I'll wait right here.
Lackey isn't doing himself any favors. He's frustrated, I'm certain, and he's going through some very tough stuff in his personal life, stuff for which he deserves our understanding and support. That said, unless he leaves the team, he still has a job to do and some small part of that job is to answer questions after bad performances on the field. Now lest I'm misunderstood, I honestly don't care whether he's short with the media or not. He doesn't make $82.5 million for his PR skills. But in terms of what is best for John Lackey now and for the remainder of the three and a half years he has left in Boston, well, it might be better for him if he handled things a bit differently.
The second piece by Mr. Abraham is on J.D. Drew, his season, and his production during his tenure with the Red Sox. Drew's awful season has brought the anti-Drew factions out of the woodwork of Red Sox nation, but as Mr. Abraham rightly points out, Drew has been one of the better right fielders in baseball over the course of his four plus seasons. Did the Red Sox get some crazy amazing David Ortiz style bargain when they signed Drew? No, but neither did they get Julio Lugo style ripped off either. Drew has been a very productive player over the past four years, and one of the better players at his position in baseball and he's been paid a market salary to do it. This year is a bit different, unfortunately, but there is still time to turn things around. By my count about a month or so before the July 31st trade deadline.
Aaron Gleeman of Hardball Talk fame has noticed something: Adrian Gonzalez is awesome at baseball. Actually, I do Mr. Gleeman a disservice in that I'm sure he knew that before writing it. I kid. Gonzalez is putting up some eye popping numbers at Fenway, numbers which have grown thanks to not playing in the dream crushing Petco Park in San Diego. It hasn't hurt things that Gonzalez is hitting in the middle of a lineup which at the moment is the highest scoring offense in baseball and the only one so far to reach 400 runs.
SI.com's Tom Verducci has a get-real column on the proposed realignment ideas floating around. He seems to think there won't be any major changes and he sites Commissioner Bud as the main reason. Sadly, he's probably right. About the most radical think Commissioner Bud can do is put you in that car today.
Finally, Nationals Manager Jim Riggleman abruptly walked away from his job today, (John Perrotto of BP and Craig Calcaterra of Hardball Talk have more on that) prompting me to remember the episode of South Park where the townspeople keep shouting "They took yer job!" over and over, whereupon it begins to morph into "Theytukeeerjob!" which changes to "Deetunkerjab!" which ends up something like "Heyhunkhurhob!" I like to think as Riggleman was going out that door for the last time, Nat's GM Mike Rizzo put his arm around Riggleman and said, "Jeyjunkjerjaab!"