Adventitious blog entries 5
ad·ven·ti·tious
[ad-vuhn-tish-uhs]
–adjective
''associated with something by chance rather than as an integral part; extrinsic.''

In today's 'adventitious' entry - ambidextrous pitchers, exploding fastballs, Joe Morgan, Curt Schilling and the Dirt Dogs site.

How's your arms?

Good friend Charlie Ayer passed this super little story on Pat Venditte, Creighton University’s ambidextrous pitcher. A couple of years ago team-mate Eoin O'Connor and I were playing catch before a game for Ireland and we were jokingly trying to throw left handed to each other. The results were not pretty. It is incredible to think anyone could throw, and do so effectively, with both hands. Venditte is apparently the only ambidextrous pitcher in N.C.A.A. Division I college baseball and has at time of writing a very good 3.29 earned run average in 18 appearances this season.

ESPN and the exploding fastballOn Sunday ESPN's front line commentary team described Jon Papelbon as having an 'explosive fastball'. Fair enough, except they used this phrase three times in the space of three minutes.

Got this email this morning from good friend and Hurricane team-mate Garrett Pearse;
''Did you see that Paplebon lost his right hand yesterday when one of his exploding fastballs went off in his hand during a bullpen session?''

Kenny Lofton knows baseball

Speaking of ESPN, analyst Joe Morgan has his own fan site, kind of. They picked up on something I actually heard on the weekend while watching the Sox take on the Rangers. At the time I thought to myself, 'well, that was pretty silly'. Here's what Joe Morgan said about Kenny Lofton;

''He is Ron Washington's kind of player. He has a lot of confidence. He's a winner. And he knows how to play the game.''

That's not exactly incisive. Firejoemorgan.com has even more to say about it.

Curt Schilling

I find Curt Schilling's blog pretty enjoyable. How often do you get to read the thoughts of an established Major League superstar? Curt sums up the weekend that was;

''All things considered this trip could have been worse. Offensively we aren’t even close to clicking yet we still managed to break even on the road. Jon Papelbon was incredible last night.''

The state of affairs

The Joy of Sox has a nice little 'after six games' summary

''Drew is 7th in the league in batting and tied for 3rd in hits. He has hit in all six games (the only Sock to do so). Lowell's 3 doubles is tied for the lead league with several other players, including Cleveland's Trot Nixon.''

Flip flop, flop flip

Dirt Dogs continues to change his slant on various Red Sox related issues faster than I change my socks. The Dirt Dogs site, which is actually linked to by the Boston Globe, is famous for verbally assaulting players one day and then sycophantically adoring them the next.

In the last few days, Dirt Dogs chastised the Red Sox heavily for moving Papelbon back to the closer role, taking the slant that his value would be best used over the course of a number of innings. Some quotes from his page;

Papelbon Can't Save a Game That His Replacement Lets Get Away
While Jonathan Threw to Three Batters - The Sox Throw One Away with Tavarez

So after one start by Tavarez Dirt Dogs was ready to do his usual hatchet job. Amazingly, just two days later, his view flip-flopped dramatically. More quotes from his page;

... That Really Closed It Out. Now, That's a Save.
Paps Really Saved the Day Last Night - Those Were Five Outs That Count

So which is it, are 'five outs' important, or not? I am only surprised he didn't somehow manage to work in Keith Foulke being part of the problem, and print some inane, poorly photo shopped picture illustrating same.

Thank God for people like Eric Wilbur, Bill Simmons (Sports Guy) and great Red Sox blogs like ''The Mighty Quinn' 'The Red Sox Times'' and ''The Joy of Sox'' . Thanks to them we have a positive and upbeat forum for Red Sox reading. If all we had were the negative Dirt Dog and the acerbic Shaughnessy, well, lord knows what we would do. Is the NHL interesting at all?