Keepin’ It Real, Yo.

Yesterday was a day of milestones. Personal ones. For Colon and David Ortiz.

Colon (4-1, 3.41 ERA), the bargain of the century,  has done what Clay and Schilling should be this year, but didn’t even show up until he dropped a few pounds and learned to harness his control.

Granted, Colon isn’t going to put a hole in Varitek’s hand anymore, but his 91-93 MPH fastball is extremely effective when he throws a mean 85 MPH change.  Who knows if he’ll keep this up all year, but wow, what a total bargain. Nice call, guys.

Big Papi, an icon of today’s baseball world, celebrated his naturalization as a U.S. Citizen. Red Sox President Larry Lucchino was in attendance.

I had a tome of a post planned for today and then got completely torn in fifty directions. I’ll now condense my thoughts to bullet form as not to kill you like a Curt Schilling diatribe.

The Good

• The Sox are back in first place (by 1.5 games).
• The Rivalry continues, with or without Daubach or Nixon.
• Ellsbury’s hand did not get separated from his body when he made the play against Longoria.
• Sean Casey is a “company man” and is willing to kinda’, sorta’ play the role of Trot Nixon.
• That whole “what do we do with the Ellsbury / Coco platoon thing” is over for a while…
• The Rays have left the city after going 0-6 at Fenway this year.

The Bad

• The Rays have left the city.
• Jonny Gomes is now one notch above Posada on the disgust-o-meter (and that’s saying something).
• Carl Crawford is now a mortal enemy and a TOTAL punk… (insert other choice expletives).
• Jon Lester hit two people and will be suspended.
• J. D. Drew had NOTHING to do with the fight. NOTHING.

The Stupid

Coco Crisp has become an insane human being over a small, silly chain of events. When he woke up yesterday morning, there was no question that if he got hit he would charge the mound and take a swing. It was premeditated and it wasn’t even warranted in my opinion.

He went after the wrong player and then instead of taking it like a man and walking to first base, he charges the mound like a little super freak.

All kinds of baseball etiquette was blown away this week with the Rays and the Sox. Let’s hope they put this away and forget about it.

Quick hits:

• Big Papi goes on the DL with a “slightly” torn tendon in his wrist. Is it or isn’t it? Isn’t saying “slightly torn” akin to “slightly pregnant”?
• UPDATE: 09:27 AM - It appears as though Papi’s injury will keep him out about 2 months… More as this develops. This word comes from inside the organization. Sean Casey could not be reached for comment…
• It appears that Toronto-born Hazel Mae is leaving NESN at the end of the month. She didn’t offer up what would be her next endeavor, but there has to be something contract-specific for a larger network happening. I’m sure she’s going to end up in San Diego or somewhere very pleasant.
• Masterson makes another start tonight and I’m pretty excited to see how he does. His two appearances in the bigs have been nothing but solid. He’s probably going to get at least two starts if Dice-K needs the extra day or so to recover the shoulder.
• Manny has hit home runs in 3 consecutive games. Nice work, man. Not as good as Chase Utley this year, but still…

Finally, I have to say… I don’t usually post links to non-baseball items, but I may have to start. Every once in a while I run into something that gets my odd humor in a frenzy. The more I think about this site, the more brilliant it is. Check out the life of John Arbuckle WITHOUT Garfield:

http://garfieldminusgarfield.net/

Manny stood at the plate and took a massive but fluid swing at the first pitch from former Sox pitcher Chad Bradford and hit the ball about 410 yards to the opposite field. It was, without question, his nicest home run this year.

Ramirez will never win a gold glove, but he is one of the best natural hitters the game has ever seen.

With Bartolo pitching as well as he is and Buccholz struggling, the call was made to option the pitcher down to Pawtucket. I don’t blame them one bit. Buccholz and Lester have roller coaster experience this year and no one is sure where they’ll wind up (W or L).

I’m sure with the way Bartolo is going, this wasn’t too hard a decision. One small thing, though, is that Buccholz doesn’t seem to do well when he’s frustrated, so we’ll see if this has any long-term impact.