And I’m sorry, but I don’t mean baseball this once.  But more of that in a second, as I will start on your side of the Atlantic.  I didn’t see last night’s Rays game, but it looks like the bullpen blew it again – but we’re going to have to live with that for a while I think.  Jonny Gomes came up big again – hands up anyone who is surprised?  Nobody?  Thought not.  He went 4-4, and hit his 11th homerun of the year – setting a new Rays record for longballs in a month.  I’ll say it again – this guy is GOOD.

Tonight Kaz is up against Schilling.  I’m taking bets on how many innings until one of them gets tossed for hitting batters – the smart money is on not many.  I’m betting that Kaz is desparate to put one over on Schilling after the comments that Curt made a couple of weeks ago.

And now, the beautiful game.  And please forgive me for going on a little bit here, but you see football is the greatest game in the world.  And it is called football, and not soccer.  Sorry guys.

Anyway, today was Southampton’s last game of the season – and its been a disappointing season to say the least, 12th place in England’s second tier.  But today reminded why I love the game so much.  It was good anyway, as Saints finished the season on a high with a 2-0 win.

But it was just a great day.  Tomorrow is the 30th anniversary of Saints winning the FA Cup – the only competition that we’ve ever won. And most of the winning team were back down for a reunion – and an appearance at half-time to massive applause.  And then, at the end of the game, all the players did their traditional lap of the pitch to say thanks to us fans.  But it was extra poignant this year.  One of the best players I have ever seen play for Saints – Marian Pahars, a Latvian striker, is out of contract this summer, and has been injured for most of the last two years.  He’s been at the club for 7 years (a long time for anyone, but especially for a foreign player), and has become a real cult hero at the club (think Edgar Martinez at the Mariners, and you’ll understand how much al of us fans love him).  Its probable that he won’t be coming back next year, and as he did his lap, he waved goodbye, clapped, and fought back the tears.  It was honestly one of te most emotional things I’ve seen in 15 years of watching football.  And it reminded me just how much I love this game.  Sorry baseball.  I love you too.  But you’ll just never come close in my heart to the Beautiful Game.

Which is obviously what you like to see – a tough loss followed by a solid performance such as last night.  Casey Fossum came up big – with 6 shutout innings and allowing only three hits – and Tyler Walker, acquired earlier in the day from the Giants got the save – coming in with two on and no-one out in the ninth, and getting the three outs needed to wrap up a 5-2 win.

Jonny Gomes played the outfield for the first time in three weeks, which was good – he’s had a sore throwing shoulder – but did manage to lose a Jason Varitek pop-fly early on, which led to a lead-off triple for the Sox catcher.  Never-the-less, I like to see Jonny playing the outfield – his hustle is just something else, and he has a pretty strong throw on him as well.

Ty Wigginton drove in his 23rd and 24th runs of the season, which apparently ties Fred McGriff’s club April RBI record.  He’s just been a truly outstanding pick-up.

4-1 to the Yankees last night to finish a pretty disappointing road trip (2-7).  Mark Hendrickson looked pretty good in his first start back – allowing only 3 runs, all of them unearned because of this ————————>   error by Russ Branyan, which means Hendo still has a 0.00 ERA.

Not that I saw any of this of course, because my internet connection here at my university house is worse than useless.  It re-buffers every 20 seconds or so.  I am not impressed.  Such is life though when you rely on technology!

Back to the Trop tonight for the Rays, to take on the BoSox over the weekend, and an attempt to gain some payback for the series up at Fenway.  I’m confident.  As usual.

Courtesy of the Rays’ pre-game press notes – which I never fail to find fascinating.

• During the live-ball era only one other team won a game despite walking as mny as fourteen batters and holding its opponents to to or fewer runs – the New York Giants walked 14 Phillies and won 3-2 on September 26 1954
• None of the Yankee walks scored.
• Big Seth walked the leadoff man in each of the first 4 innings.  Thats only happened twice in the past 10 years.
• Every starting Yankee walked.

Now, hopefully all of that is out of the Rays’ systems, and we can get back to playing some more, um, orthadox baseball.

Mark Hendrickson is starting tonight having returned from the Disabled List (or as it may soon be called the Rays List).  Hopefully he can come somewhere close to the great stuff he showed in his season opener against Baltimore.

Greg Norton has been called up in place of Jorge Cantu – Greg was pretty unlucky to miss out on making the team out of Spring Training – he had showed some excellent stuff, but went down injured a few days before the season opener.

And Delmon Young, who I mentioned earlier had thrown his bat at an umpire in a minor leaue game yesterday, has been suspended indefinitely pending a view of the incident.

OK, first the good news.  The Rays beat the Yankees 4-2 last night in 10 innings, despite managing to walk 14 Yankee batters.  Yes, you read that right, fourteen.  The win came courtesy of some clutch hitting by CC and Ty Wigginton off of Mariano Rivera, which was nice.

The insanity however increases, as Jorge Cantu has been placed on the DL, joining, at last count almost the entire Rays organisation.  I just don’t know how much more bad luck we can take.

Welcome to the Injured Zone:

Then there is Delmon Young, who apparantly threw his bat at an umpire during a Durham Bulls game.  So he’ll likely be suspended for a fair while.  Not smart Delmon.

That would be my plan anyway.  Well at least if Jorge Cantu is not back in the lineup tonight.  I’m guessing you’re not actually allowed to do this but I honestly think that right now it would be better if the DH could bat in place of the (non-Cantu) second-baseman.  Nick Green.  He’s currently hitting an amaemic .097,  and if you’ll excuse the expression, doesn’t look as though he could hit a cow’s backside with a banjo.  I’ve always wanted to work that saying into polite conversation, and its never seemed more apt than now.  Anyway, I figure that most of our pitchers could hit better than that (Mark Hendrickson is a career .188 hitter!!).

Speaking of poor hitting, Russell Branyan struck out his first 2 times up last night to make it 6 K’s in a row.  He really hasn’t impressed yet (with the exception of some nice fielding against Boston), and is surely a prime candidate to be the first guy sent down once a few of our injured players start returning.  He’s certainly shown nothing that Joey Gathright or Damon Hollins will be worried about with regards to the extra outfield spots.

Pitching tonight for the Rays is Big Seth McClung, and I really hope he puts in a good performance.  He needs to.  He’s been nothing but disappointing so far this year, and with Edwin Jackson (who has been sent back to AAA Durham) looking just about ready to stick in the big leagues, Seth has got to start worrying about his place in the rotation unless he improves real soon.

Mike Mussina was simply excellent last night.

It had all started so well for the Rays as well, as Jonny Gomes belted his AL- leading 10th homerun of the season in the first.  The Yankees however came right back with three in the bottom of the inning, and then Mussina simply turned out the lights.  He went 6 innings and allowed only 4 hits, as the Yankees won 9-1.  Some more shaky relief pitching didn’t help the Rays cause – Scott Dunn in particular has had a couple of poor appearances in a row, after looking very good to start the year.

It does have to be mentioned though that the Rays are without almost an entire team of players.  As well as DL-ed Rocco Baldelli, Aubrey Huff and Julio Lugo, we were also without Carl Crawford and Jorge Cantu last night – all five of whom would be first choice starters if available.  The good news is that the Rays are hoping to have Baldelli back with the team possibly as soon as the end of next week.  I hope for one that this can happen – Rocco was so brilliant before his injury, and his return will be as good as getting a brand new player in!

I’ve just been randomly reading seemingly the entire internet (something to do you see), and I ended up as usual on MLB.com, where I’ve just read this piece on  Rick Monday grabbing a flag off some protesters 30 years ago.  I’ve got to say that this is the first time I’ve read about this, and it strikes me as something that Monday should be really proud of.  I would say that for all those who play sport, there’s few times that one can really stand up and be counted for their country – but this certainly looks to be one of them – and he didn’t miss the chance. 

I just love this sort of story – and I hope that reading it makes all you Americans very proud of such an instinctive action on behalf of the ‘American Ideal’.  I know I would be.

I’m in a very good mood this evening anyway, as I’ve just finished writing my university dissertation!!  10,000 words on ‘Electoral Reform in the UK’.  Sounds fascinating don’t you think?!  Now I just have two more essays, and then some exams to worry about.  Not that I tend to worry in fact – I just watch some sports and hope for the best!

And that, coincidentally is how I am planning to celebrate finishing it – with a fine night of baseball action as the Rays take on the Yankees.  I know that you’re all behind us on this one America.  Well except the Yankee fans.  But then there’s no helping them, right?!

Hello Yankees…

The Rays are back in town!!

And going behind Kaz tonight we’ve got to fancy our chances of carrying on from last year and beating up on the Yankees in The Bronx some more.  And, just if you needed more to worry about, Jonny Gomes is hitting .353 lifetime at Yankee Stadium.  Oh, and Jorge Cantu is on a 10-game hitting streak.

I can feel a Rays sweep coming on…

Although I am always hopelessly optimistic!!

The Rangers finished a 3-game sweep of the Rays yesterday evening, with an 8-3 victory in Arlington.  Fortunately I wasn’t watching because I was in the process of moving back to university for my final term.  Oh dear.  I really should try and get some work done…

Unfortunately it meant that I missed Jonny ‘Crash’ Gomes’ 9th homerun of the year.  Have I mentioned that this guy is a little bit good?  That makes it 7 homers in his last 11 games, and he’s currently on pace to hit, oh I don’t know, a lot this season.  77 I think.  I just worked it out but my maths is decidedly dodgy sometimes.  And I don’t think I’ve seen one yet that just crept out down the line.  Most of them are simply massive.

For me, being back at uni is annoying on the baseball front – it means I can’t watch as much because a) I have more work to do, and b) my internet connection here doesn’t stream live video very well.  But I’m sure I’ll find a way.

Apparently Joe Maddon is trying to convince the Rays organisation that Edwin Jackson should stick with the big league team, so impressed was he with his performance on saturday.  I’ve got to say that, judging by what I saw of him, and what I’ve seen from the rest of the rotation, a 1-2-3 punch of Kaz, Jackson and Hendrickson is about the best we can put out there at the moment.  If he does stick it will probably be at the expense of Doug Waechter’s place in the rotation, although to be honest from the starts they’ve made so far if anyone should be in danger its Seth McClung.  We shall see.