Living in some tall cotton

The scale of how great these times are for Boston/New England sports fans are, (diehards, not pink hatters. I hate that I have to specify) championship sports teams and all, but you know things are huge where a beat writer changing papers is big news. Tony Massarotti has left the Boston Herald and is now anchoring the online coverage for the Boston Globe, primarily the same thing that Gordon Edes did before he left the paper. My friends and I were talking about how great it is that he is now with the Globe and makes the current staff of writers there perhaps their greatest, ever. Something that I have thought of though is that this move really gives Rob Bradford a nice bump at the Herald. Bradford deserves it without question, I have been reading him consistently since he wrote for the Providence Journal and had a terrific blog on their website.
The thing about this is that in not many sports cities are the scribes of a team or personalities that cover it, almost as big of stars as the players. Think about it though, who would you say has bigger stars, the Pittsburgh Pirates or the Globe's sports staff? In New England anyway, it's definitely a toss up.
On to some random shots:

~ Game four of the International League playoffs between Scranton Wilkes/Barre and Pawtucket features a pitching match up of Bartolo Colon and Phil Hughes. Colon has a better record and a much lower ERA (Hughes is above 5). I will now pause while Yankee fans swallow their tongues trying to say "We made the right move by not trading for Johan" over and over and over again.

~ Tim Wakefield tonight is making his 499th appearance for the Red Sox, second most in the history of the team for a pitcher only behind Bob "Steamer" Stanley, whom nobody will catch. Interestingly enough though is that Mike Timlin is third on the Red Sox list of pitching appearances with 388. What are the chances of getting to 400? Probably slim, but you never know, I'd love to see him come back next year and try to get the all time major league appearances record. Gamers and gentlemen like Timlin don't come around every season.

~ The Red Sox could pull to within just a game and a half of the Tampa Bay Rays tonight with a victory in Texas after Troy Percival blew a save today in the 13th inning by surrendering a grand slam to Greg "I used to only bat over .200 against the Red Sox" Zaun. You knew this run was coming for Boston, next week's series though is "Hu-yuge" in the words of Chris "Mad-Dog" Russo. Three games to decide first place, at the Fens and the Sox have their three best going, (Dice, Lester and Beckett) against three mediocre (Jackson, Kazmir and Sonnastine). I will preview this series in my next post.

Sterling Pingree