BATTER UP: BOSTON RED SOX

Counting down the seconds till Opening Day when life begins anew involves providing a "starting nine" for all the major-league teams. Presenting: The Boston Red Sox, guaranteed gyroball-free.

1. The Curse of the Idiots: The Spaceman, Bill Lee, coined that prescient phrase in the 2006 "20-something anniversary edition" of his seminal memoir The Wrong Stuff. The Spaceman was responding to Johnny Damon joining the Yankees, but within weeks of that writing, the Red Sox dropped pitcher Bronson Arroyo.
   
   Lee, as usual, has a point in there somewhere. The Idiots were what kept the Sawx from being too much like the Yankees, and helped make the club at least midly tolerable in October of '03 and '04 (well, that and the fact it was playing the Yankees).
   
   Essentially, the Red Sox have fallen into the classic trap of the Democratic Party -- trying to defeat their enemy by being more like their enemy, but with a smaller war chest. Take it away, Springsteen: They're goin' down, down, down, down, down...
2. But we love Big Papi: Self-loathing and a nostalgia for 1980s baseball may dictate a preference for little fast singles hitters over big, fat guys who hit home runs (I fit the latter description, if by home runs you mean "doubles that should have been triples" and "long foul balls"), but Red Sox DH David Ortiz (pictured) is a treat to watch. By the way, how many people that when Ortiz set a club record with 54 homers last season, the previous mark didn't belong to Ted Williams or Jim Rice?
3. OK, the Sawx are probably not going down: It's nice to imagine the Red Sox pitching staff being ravaged by arm problems again and eggshell-soft J.D. Drew missing much of the season after one of those mishaps that could only happen to a ballplayer, like slipping on a wet floor while sleepwalking or shutting the car door on his hand on the way to the bank. It's probably won't happen. The Sawx pitching can't be as bad as it was last year, and adding Drew in right and Julio Lugo at shortstop should help Boston improve on last season's 820 runs, which was pedestrian by Fenway standards, especially with Big Papi and Manny Ramirez hitting 3-4.
4. What's Japanese for junior cougar? It was a bit of stir in Japan when the Red Sox's new right-hander, Daisuke (Dice K) Matsuzaka, began dating his TV personality wife, Tomoyo (pictured), when he was 19 and she was 24.
   
   By the way, knowing that entering 柴田 倫世 into a Google Image Search will turn up more pictures of Ms. Matsuzaka does not qualify you as bilingual.
5. Like Dice K's former league, will it have a team called the Ham Fighters? The chance may never come again to do this, so let's wish good fortune to the organizers of the Israel Baseball League, which is slated to begin play this summer.
   
   Israel is trying to put together a team for the 2009 World Baseball Classic that would include several active major leaguers, including Red Sox first baseman Kevin Youkilis, who's Jewish, not Greek as is commonly believed. Now the bad news: the team is being put together by much-loathed former Red Sox GM Dan Duquette.
6. Speaking of Youkilis: That's pretty much what Red Sox fans say about the Jays' Vernon Wells -- you can throw an awful scare into people across New England just by sneaking up and whispering, "V-Dub." Wells battered Boston pitching last year, hitting .338/.388/.753 with eight home runs in 77 at-bats, including a three-homer game. Get used to it, Boston, since he just signed a seven-year contract.
7. A Pesky problem: There's a shitstorm a-brewin' over the killjoys who are barring Boston from having living legend Johnny Pesky in uniform during games, since teams can only have six coaches in the dugout. Really, though, isn't that the biggest problem facing baseball these days -- having an 87-year-old man in the dugout as a good-luck charm and a reminder to the players of a team's tradition?
8. Retro Cool Sawx: The aforementioned Bill Lee (pitcher, 1969-78) was a patron saint to left-handed Capricorns everywhere. The Spaceman might not have been the most popular dude with his more straitlaced teammates, but he was all about pitching off-speed junk and hurling "truth into the bourgeois face of language," as poet Tom Clark once put it. And yes, Warren Zevon immortalized him using the majesty of song.
   
   Our favourite Spaceman story... Lee long disputed that the Green Monster was 315 feet from home plate: "I once threw a screwball to Luis Aparicio while he was still with the Chicago White Sox. He dented the wall with it. Without the benefit of a tape measure, my ego will not permit me to accept that there is any way Luis could hit my screwgie 315 feet on a line. Somebody is lying." Sure enough, years after Lee had retired, the left-field marking was revised to 310 feet.
9. Need-to-know: This season it's the Sawx who are the unpredictable team in the AL East; you know the Yankees will be first or second and the Jays will finish second or third. Boston was outscored last season (825-820), meaning it was fortunate to win 86 games. (Closer Jonathan Papelbon was nearly unhittable.) Adding Dice-K, who at worst should have an ERA in the mid-3s, should settle the starting rotation.
   
   As for Drew, the No. 5 spot in the order behind Big Papi and Man Ram was a black hole, so he will be a prize pickup if he can play 140 games. Those gambles could pay off in a World Series, or another third-place mess.

That's all for now. Send your thoughts to neatesager@yahoo.ca.