Better than a thumb up your bum?

Mike:
I know it's tough to pry ourselves away from yestahday's discussion of drug use, prostate stimulation and when or if the twain shall meet, but, you know, the Sox just reached a preliminary agreement with Joel Pineiro.

 

---

Doug:
Yep, 1 year, 4 mil, with an option year incentive based on the numbah of games he appears in.

 

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Mike:
It's amazing that 5 years of steady decline as a pitcher will get you that many quatloos in this mahket.

 

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Doug:
I like the move, frankly. Reminds me of Theo circa 2003: Low downside, reasonable cost, big time upside.

 

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Mike:
Yeah, well, the Mariner's apparatchiks are happy as hell to see him go. They think he may have peaked on the juice and is toast without it.

 

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Doug:
Schilling likes the move. And Dave Pinto writes, "Pineiro faced just 295 batters as a reliever, but did very well, allowing a .205 batting average, a .301 OBA and a .309 slugging percentage. If he comes anywhere close to that for the Red Sox, he'll do just fine."

 

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Mike:
Yeah, but Schilling also likes Bush and is waiting for the Christian rapture, and as for ubah baseball bloggah Pinto, well, ever since he went on that curling binge, I've been circumspect regahding his punditry.

 

---

Doug:
Well, you know what they say: In Theo We Trust. Except, of course, when we don't trust him and think he's ruining our summah.

 

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Mike:
Speaking of ruined summahs, did you see the Spankees are about to unload their Johnson?

 

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Doug:
What a shame. No more skinny bad backed dead beat dad redneck in pinstripes to kick around any more.

 

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Mike:
First they purge themselves of Sheffield and now Johnson. Holy fuck it looks like Cashman finally got his package from Amazon with the Moneyball book.

 

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Doug:
Well not so fast as they're about to sign Minkalphabet. I know he's one of "The 25," but, wow, the numbers just don't support that move.

 

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Mike:
Atta boy, Cashman! Minky can't hit, can't run, and is coming off majah back surgery. That's the kind Yankee move we cherish.

 

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Comments

[Natalie]

I love the fact that the characters are quoting commenters. Another breach of the fourth wall! Awesome...

I am cautiously optimistic about the Pineiro move. I was more alarmed by the footnote to the Globe article which seems to suggest the JD Drew move is still close to completion. Say it ain't so!

[Harwich Rich]

Just that image of Jason and the thumb gave me nightmares. The Horror...The Horror.

[Bob]

My prostate is absolutely tingling at the prospect of My Ball Minky becoming part of (what will be) "Manson Family Row."

It's like Murderer's Row, but all the members hit like girls.

[Bob]

Manson Family Row:

Juice-ambi: The drugged-up Tex Watson.
A-Rod: Linda Kasabian (goes along for the ride but can't perform under pressure)
Jeter: Bobby Beausoleil (the pretty boy)
Damon: Susan Atkins (the traitor)
Matsui: Mary Brunner (the ugly one)
Bernie Williams: Bruce Davis (the older guy who keeps hanging around)

[h.b.]

That Manson bit is positively brilliant.

[louclinton]

//That Manson bit is positively brilliant.//

True, but those of us who even remotely get it are teed up for a dirt nap in the near future, time being a bitch and all.

The Pineiro signing is classic Theo:

Tavarez, Williamson, Halama, Remlinger.

The price for pitching dross is getting up there, no? 4 mil for a post steriod .500 pitcher.

Truck day inches ever closer...

lc

[h.b.]

Lou you're so right about the implication that anyone getting the Manson reference/joke is going to be a bit long in the tooth.

I was a kid, 6th grade or so, when that Manson TV docu-drama Helter-Skelter came out and I was immediately obsessed with it. My aunt had the book it was based on and I grabbed that and devoured it.

Needless to say, it scared the bejeebus out of me.

Man, growing up in the 70s, between the Manson trial, the Boston busing riots, Watergate, Saigon, the '75 series, the '78 season, Son of Sam, disco, the gas rationing, OPEC, etc etc, either toughened the hell out of you or turned you completely nuts.

Still unsure exactly where I ended up.

[Natalie]

Interesting to bring up Manson in the context of the '07 Yanks...according to Wikipedia, he is up for parole this year.... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Manson

[Rob in CT]

Being self-referential is something normally frowned upon, but I admit I was snarfing my Dunkin Decaf reading the title and opening frame of today's installment. Dang, that was really good.

And I agree with Col. Kurtz.

and re: Jason... "What are they gonna say about him? What are they gonna say? That he was a kind man? That he was a wise man? That he had plans? That he had wisdom? Bullshit man!"

[louclinton]

//growing up in the 70s//

Thanks for the depressive reference, h.b.,since I grew up in the 50's and early 60's. In fact, I was born in the Truman Administration (1). You could look it up...

Interesting infomercial on Annie Liebovitz on PBS last night with grainy footage from the nascent Rolling Stone mag (speaking of feeling my age).

lc

[Natalie]

Awesome reference, Rob in CT! One of my all-time favorite movies (because the novella on which its based is the best ever written IMHO):

"I'm not afraid to surf this place, I'll surf this whole fucking place!"

[Kaz]

Sadly, all today's youth know about Charlie Manson is that he helped Cartman's uncle break out of jail and the cops have it out for him even though he seems like a nice guy...

[Rob in CT]

Nat - all kudos go to Harwich Rich. I do share your love for that movie, esp. the full redux with the French Plantationers' scenes. You're referring to the Conrad book, yes?

Lt. Col. Kilgore was a trip.

Kilgore: Smell that? You smell that?
Lance: What?
Kilgore: Napalm, son. Nothing in the world smells like that.
[kneels]
Kilgore: I love the smell of napalm in the morning. You know, one time we had a hill bombed, for 12 hours. When it was all over, I walked up. We didn't find one of 'em, not one stinkin' dink body. The smell, you know that gasoline smell, the whole hill. Smelled like... victory. Someday this war's gonna end...

[Natalie]

Yep, Heart of Darkness, the most perfect novella ever written. I mean, how staggering is it that it was written in English, Conrad's third language (after Polish and French) which he learned aboard a merchant marine ship...as an adult! I mean:

"Mr. Kurtz lacked restraint in the gratification of his various lusts...There was something wanting in him--some small matter which, when the pressing need arose, could not be found under his magnificent eloquence. Whether he knew of this deficiency himself I can't say. I think the knowledge came to him at last--only at the very last. But the wilderness found him out early, and had taken vengeance for the fantastic invasion. I think it had whispered to him things about himself which he did not know, things of which he had no conception till he took counsel with this great solitude--and the whisper had proved irresistibly fascinating. It echoed loudly within him because he was hollow at the core..."

I get chills reading that kind of prose.

Okay, sorry for the tangent. Back to our originally scheduled programming!

[Follower of Tito]

//the gas rationing, OPEC, etc etc//:

You know, h.b., I hadn't thought about it that in a while, but that summer was right around the time I got me driver's license, and my mom and all the people she worked with would pay me to sit in line on their day (remember the odd and even days?) and fill their car and additional gas tanks (we kept two 5 gallons cans in ther garage as a hedge). Man, did I listen to a bunch of AM radio (either Sox day games or Pop music)...ah, the memories of impending geopolitical collapse

[yazbread]

I was going to mention early this a.m. that the Manson reference probably sent most of the board rushing off to Wikipedia. I remember the murders vividly - I was 12 at the time (50 looms next month as well as an AARP membership). The movie 'Helter Skelter' is one of Steve Railsback's strongest performances (if you have never seen 'The Stunt Man', check it out, esp. if you are a Peter O'Toole fan). For fans of Apocalypse Now, the documentary 'Heart of Darkness' is a great watch, the recut version was so-so, added a little, but not much.

Lou - I am not ready for a dirt nap, but I will admit that I have to change the text size to read this comment board.

Dr. Kaz - you are probably experiencing the final indignity of a Ph.D. program right now. No funding, but given that you are doing revisions, your school is probably hitting you for 'dissertation credits' or some similar BS this semester. One final attempt to squeeze some money out of you. Phone calls from the alumni association soon to follow.

[Jason O.]

Manson family you say? Fine...Sharon Tate would tell you that they got the job done.

Squeaky Fromme was a chambered round away from getting President Ford. (Dressed as a nun, a nice touch)

although the analogy falls through when looking at leadership...Chuck was much more creative, bold and audacious than Torre. Torre would have used one person for the entire killing spree and left the rest of the family on the bench, massively reducing the family's effectiveness.

[mikeya2k1]

as a regular listener of wfan i heard, not to long ago Mike francsessa say that if the Red sox unload Manny that the yankees get better standing pat.this does bare out as truth cause MbM kills the yanks. my question then is... do the Sox improve by Randy going to the national league

[h.b.]

Going back to Aug 10th, 1969 (the night of the Labianca murders and one day after the Tate murders) this was how things stood in the AL:

Team Name                        G    W    L    T   PCT    GB    RS   RA
Baltimore Orioles              113   79   34    0  .699     -   564  353
Detroit Tigers                 112   64   48    0  .571  14.5   493  413
Boston Red Sox                 113   60   53    0  .531  19.0   532  525
Washington Senators            116   59   57    0  .509  21.5   489  479
New York Yankees               115   57   57    1  .500  22.5   418  430
Cleveland Indians              116   48   68    0  .414  32.5   429  523

[mikeya2k1]

mark loretta signs a one year deal with houston... good luck to ya marky mark

[Jason O.]

We're sliding back to January baseball discussions...I'm going back to thoughts of peyote and Gina Gershon's left thumb.

[h.b.]

I'm sticking with the smack. And for my thumber, I'm going to go with Helena Bonham Carter in the heroin junky doctor character, Theresa, she played in two episodes of Miami Vice.

[Bob]

//Manson family you say? Fine...Sharon Tate would tell you that they got the job done.//

Actually, JO, Charie wanted his little group of killers to go to all the homes on Cielo and kill everyone in them.

Like the Skankees, they were all tuckered out after the regular season...uh...Tate house.

H.B. I went to college in Los Angeles, and had the creepy pleasure of going to the Tate House a couple times on the anniversary of the murders. Yikes, that was pretty damn weird.

The original house was torn down in the mid-90s and replaced with a monsterous McMansion.

Trent Reznor lived in the original house for a couple of years, and 9 Inch Nails did a video in the living room. Reznor still has the "Pig" door.

Yes, I'm obsessed with this shite.

[Bob]

BTW, if anyone is interested in this Manson stuff, here are a couple of in-depth sites (some graphic, bloody content):

http://users.adelphia.net/~mansonmurders/index.htm

http://www.charliemanson.com/links.htm

[Rob in CT]

In a similar vein, referred briefly to by someone above, I was in NYC for the summer between junior and senior years of college in 1977. What a Fn trip. The blackout, Studio 54, and the Son of Sam. It seems almost quaint to discuss now, but damn, nobody but NOBODY went out on the streets alone that summer until Davis Berkowitz was safely behind bars. The only thing scarier was seeing a bunch of dudes in short-shorts inhaling blow off some young thing's quim on a table in Studio 54. Bejebuss, what a summer!

Oh the stories us old-timers could tell!

[Jason O.]

Yup, HBC's got that delicate blend of beauty and prurience.

Miami Vice is one of the very few TV shows that holds up with the passage of time.

[Bob]

It's been over an hour since anybody commented?

Don't tell me you're all on those Manson sites looking at vivid crime photos.

Tsk, tsk.

[h.b.]

Naw, I skipped that gore in favor of Helena BC sites... you know she is cast as Bellatrix Lestrange in the next Harry Potter!

OMFG. Awesometastic.

[Bob]

Really?! Very cool. Bellatrix may be the single most loathsome character in the series.

[Aaron]

I am getting so much flak from my Mariners fan coworkers today. The general consensus out here in Rainland is that the Sox are insane for paying $4 mil for their worst pitcher. There is also a palpable sense of relief that he won't be back. When fan of a team as unremittingly awful as the Mariners are glad to see someone go, that's a bad sign.

I'm getting increasingly tired of this particular Theo schtick. He got lucky once with Arroyo, but the "pull the pitcher off the scrap heap" routine has delivered increasingly poor returns ever since.

[mikeya2k1]

i duno aaron kyle snyder wasnt that bad

[Aaron]

Snyder had his moments, but overall he was 4-5 with a 6+ ERA after we picked him up. (And we also didn't pay him four million dollars, either.)

[Edgy Reggie]

That Manson stuff is strangeola, but oddly appropriate. I mean, that massacre at Fenway last August was absolutely gruesome. A horrific bloodbath to say the least.

[h.b.]

Ah, but, Edgy, if last August, a regular season 'massacre' that, when all was said in done, still found the Yanks sitting at home in late October in 2006 was Masonesque, then, pray tell, what does one compare the Sox 2004 ALCS back from 0-3 rout of the Yankees to?

Jamestown? Little Big Horn? Nanjing? My Lai?

[Bob]

Hmmm, '04 comeback against the Skankees. How about this:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrei_Chikatilo

[Jason O.]

Is it weird that I now feel ashamed that when I was in college (early 90's) that I would have thrown myself in front of a car for Anna Nicole Smith?

[miketc]

Yaz,

Thanks for refreshing my mind about "Hearts of Darkness," but strange thing: Netflix doesn't carry it!

It's been on my "wanna see" list since it came out.

[Edgy Reggie]

h.b.
I don't think of the 2004 ALCS as a massacre, considering the Sox at one point were facing certain death themselves, and the final tally was four games to three.

More like an incredible reversal of fortune. Think of it as someone facing their most feared adversary, their demise minutes away (9th inning, game four), but are able to somehow make an amazing escape, and with determination, luck, and a refusal to die, are eventually able to turn the tables, in a never before seen fashion (4 straight after being down, 3-0), resulting in the death of said adversary, that just a short time ago was poised to deliver the death blow to them.

Uh, if you can come up with an actual event that mirrors this scenario, I'd be happy to read about it.

[Bob]

Well, Edgy, how about this:

William Isaac Purvis was sentenced to be hanged in Mississippi in 1894 for a murder which, it was subsequently proved, he did not commit. At his hanging the knot came undone and he fell to the ground unhurt. The sheriff, as was his duty, retied the knot and was proceeding to hang him up for the second time when the crowd, which had up to that time been hostile to the condemned man, became violent in his favor and threatened to attack the sheriff if the proceeding were "unjustly" continued. Purvis was taken back to jail, pardoned, and later, when his innocence had been fully established, voted five thousand dollars by the State of Mississippi "for services rendered."

[Edgy Reggie]

Heh, excellent analogy Bob. Did you pluck that little gem off the top of your head? I'll remember the tale of William Isaac Purvis.

The earlier discussion of Charlie Manson brought back memories of a phone call I got back in the mid-eighties, from one of my brothers who lives in California, whose name btw, is Bob.

Bob got into a little trouble back then for cultivating huge fields of Indica marijuana (a potent strain) in a remote area of the Sierra-Nevada mountains. It was quite a lucrative operation. As I recall, he had a dozen or so illegal Mexicans working for him on the "farm". He'd been doing this for several years, but his luck ran out. The crop was already harvested, but the trouble started when Five-0 searched his warehouse, apparently on a tip from a disgruntled employee. He didn't really get caught with too much of the dope, having moved most of it, and was actually charged with income tax evasion. He had a hard time explaining how he could afford two homes, 4 or 5 vehicles, have about half a mil. in a safe, and uh, no discernible source of income.

After fucking around with bail and appeals and so on, he had to do some time. He was sent to San Quentin, a maximum security prison, to be processed, and would then be assigned to a minimum security facility (first offense, non-violent) to serve his sentence (2 years).

So the first day he's at San Quentin being processed, there's some sort of commotion and then a lockdown. Seems that somebody had tried to stab Charles Manson, who was in San Quentin at the time, in the face with a pencil, in the prison library, apparently intent on gouging him in the eyes. Bob called me a day or two after this took place and kind of matter-of-factly, told me what had happened. I remember being slightly aghast, but telling him it sounded like a nice place, being facetious of course. I think I remember thinking I was glad it was him that was in there, and not me.

Kind of funny, looking back at it. Anyway, no big deal. Just thought I'd share this little tidbit here. It's not too often Charley Manson gets into the conversation on a baseball site, although I'm gathering Soxaholic isn't your average, run of the mill baseball site.