Mad props to…

Adrian Beltre: Raise your hand if you thought Beltre would be leading the Sox in average (.349) and RBIs (52) two weeks before the all-star break. When the Sox signed him, they signed him for his reliable defense and solid bat. He has done nothing but exceed the expectations that had been set for him at the beginning of the season. The 2 time Gold Glove winner has stepped in and filled the role at third that Mike Lowell could no longer do because of his hip, and has come up huge at the plate in games when his team needed him to. He’s not going to start the all-star game, but he should.

Evan Longoria: He probably will start the all-star game, but that’s not why he’s getting mentioned here. If there’s one thing I can’t stand, it’s professional athletes making absurd amounts of money and not putting forth their greatest effort. Kudos to Longoria for getting in teammate B.J. Upton’s face after he dogged it chasing down a fly ball in Sunday’s game against the Diamondbacks. Upton, a talented player with excellent speed, has no excuse for jogging after a fly ball in a tie game, in which the Rays ended up losing. It’s a good sign for the Rays to see a young player stepping up and taking a leadership role.

Ozzie Guillen: If there were any coach in professional sports who would go out to dinner with a player from a rival team while they’re currently playing each other, it would no doubt be White Sox manager Ozzie Guillen. After the Cubs Carlos Zambrano erupted in the dugout the other day, he did what any irrational hot-headed nutcase would do… go out to dinner with the coach of the team he’s playing. While the meeting of the two mad men makes Big Z look even worse than he already does as of late, it doesn’t change the image of Guillen who has made it clear that he doesn’t really care what anyone thinks, and pretty much does whatever he wants. Hopefully for the owner of the restaurant they ate at, there wasn’t an argument over who was picking up the check.

FIFA: Hey, it only took 4 blown goal calls on soccer’s biggest stage, but FIFA has agreed to re-open the file on instant replay technologies. I think that soccer, more than any sport, could benefit from instant replay, and ironically, it’s the only major sport that doesn’t use it. In a sport where 1 goal is more often than not the difference, it’s so crucial to get the calls right. At the very least, they should implement instant replay to protect the lives of the refs who blow the calls.

Banana Chocolate Chunk Ice Cream

Got a couple of over ripe bananas being neglected at the bottom of your fruit bowl? Well if you don’t, go buy some banana’s and make this in a couple days. I figured it was time to branch out with my culinary endeavors into the realm of dessert, and why not start with ice cream? However, I can’t take full credit for this recipe. It’s straight out of the Ben & Jerry’s ice cream book, so if you don’t like it, you know who to blame.

What you need:

All the ingredients, minus the eggs, sugar, and 2 Hershey bars.

• Ice cream maker, or an alternative method of making ice cream. Google it
• 2 cups heavy cream
• 1 cup milk
• 3/4 cup sugar
• 2 eggs
• 2 over ripe bananas
• 1 lemon (juice only)
• 4 Hershey’s chocolate bars

Yeah, I have fancy ice cream bowls. You wanna fight about it?

Ben & Jerry’s Sweet Cream base:
Whisk together your eggs and sugar in a large bowl. Add 1/4 cup of sugar at a time when you mix. Then add your cream and milk and mix all of it together. Follow the instructions for whatever method of ice cream making you are using to freeze the ice cream. With an ice cream maker it usually takes about 30 minutes for it to freeze.

Banana and Chocolate mixture:
Mash up your two over ripe bananas. Squeeze the juice out of your lemon, and strain out the pulp and seeds. Mix the two of them together. Chop up your Hershey bars and add them in to the banana mixture and stir.

Limited edition ice cream container. Get em while they're hot.

When the ice cream is almost done with the freezing process, add the banana and chocolate mixture and mix it up. Let it continue the freezing process for a few more minutes. Even when the “freezing process” is completed, the ice cream is still usually pretty soft, so dig in if you want, but I put mine in a container and froze it for a few more hours before indulging. Enjoy.

Poll: No-hitter? It’s kind of getting old…

Edwin Jackson tosses a no-hitter against his former team, the Tampa Bay Rays.

We as baseball fans have been spoiled… with good pitching that is. This season has already given us 2 perfect games (should really be 3), and 2 no-hitters. Tonight’s no-hitter tossed by Arizona Diamondback’s pitcher Edwin Jackson was sloppy to say the least. He walked 8 batters and threw 149 pitches, not to take away from the impressiveness of it. It was also against his former team, the Tampa Bay Rays, who get no-hit like its a bodily function (2 perfect games and 1 no-hitter thrown against them in the past season and a half). Maybe it’s just me, but Jackson’s no-hitter really didn’t get me excited. I was far more excited about Armando Galarraga’s should-have-been perfect game.

There have been 20 perfect games and 224 modern era no-hitters. But perhaps the most under looked pitching feat is the 20 strikeout game. It’s only been done 3 times in the history of the game. Twice by Roger Clemens and once by Kerry Wood. Stephen Strasburg… dazzle me.

“Bard” from the 9th; Laser Show in the 10th

Is it too much to ask for Daniel Bard to get a chance in the 9th inning, especially after Jonathan Papelbon blew a 2-run lead to the same team the night before? Apparently so. Is it too much to ask for Dustin Pedroia to hit 3 home runs in one game? Apparently not. The laser show could be seen from space last night as Pedroia went 5-for-5, hitting his 3rd HR of the night in the 10th inning to bail out Papelbon from what could have been his second loss in as many games against the Colorado Rockies. An assist goes to Darnell McDonald as well for keeping it tied in the 9th by snagging a near-home run from the top of the wall in deep center.

While Pedroia had the best game of his young career last night, the real story here is Papelbon, who came in to the game with a 2-run lead in the 9th for the second night in a row, and blew the lead, for the second night in a row.  With a 11-8 lead in the bottom of the 8th, 2 outs, and runners on the corners, Bard came in to relieve Scott Atchison. Bard surrendered 1 hit that allowed 1 run to score, and struck out the next batter, all on 10 pitches. Now I’m sure that me and a thousand other Sox fans were shocked to see Papelbon come in for the 9th, given that he was 24 hrs removed from giving up 3 runs on 2 home runs in the exact same situation. It was the perfect time for Terry Francona to give Bard a shot at closing out a game. Instead, Pap came in and nearly did what he did the night before; lose the game in the 9th. He gave up 2 earned runs on 3 hits, and was about 6 inches shy of losing it had it not been for McDonald’s defense.

Let’s go to the top of the 10th. Marco Scutaro digs out an infield single, and sets the table for some extra inning heroics, which have been harder than ever to come across for the Sox this season (who, after last night, are 2-7 in extra inning games this season). Enter Pedroia, director of the laser show, who deposited the second pitch he saw from Huston Street into the stands for his 3rd home run of the night, giving the Sox a 13-11 lead. Let’s analyze Papelbon’s past 24 hours up until this point; 1.1 IP, 5 ER, 2 blown saves, 1 loss. Why not put him back out there in the 10th and see what happens? That’s exactly what Francona did. And much to my surprise, Pap had a much needed 1-2-3 inning, giving the Sox a much needed win to avoid the sweep. Now just out of curiosity, if he had blown it in the 10th, would that have been two blown saves in one game?

Now it’s time for the Papelbon vs. Bard debate, which I think may be settled sooner than later. Every season since 2006, when he became the Red Sox full-time closer, Papelbon’s OBP against has risen from .211 to .305, and his K/BB which was 9.63 in 2008, dropped to 3.17 last year, and currently stands at 2.25. Even more concerning is the fact that we haven’t even reached the all-star break, and he has already matched his earned run total of 14 from last year, and has allowed 6 HRs, 1 more than all of last year. He’s also matched his blown save total of 3 from last year. It all comes back to the fact that he is essentially a 1-pitch closer. It’s impossible for a closer to get by in the MLB with 1 pitch; Mariano Rivera is of course the exception to this rule, because he’s just a freak. So many times this season has Papelbon thrown a splitter that doesn’t split, or a slider that stays flat and seen it hit for a gapper, or even worse, taken out of the park. He has no confidence in any of his pitches besides his fastball, which can only get you so far before hitters start to pick up on it, which they seem to be doing. Bard on the other hand, has a handful great pitches. A fastball in the high 90s, a great slider that Manny got to witness first hand last friday, a curve that breaks nicely through the zone, and a change-up in the low 80s; all of which he can throw for strikes. He also boasts a 3.33 K/BB and a .238 OBP against. While he does have 4 blown saves in 7 attempts this season, I believe those numbers would come down after he was given more opportunities. The mentality of a closer is something that can only be achieved from experience.

With Bard still relatively unexperienced in the closer role, it doesn’t seem likely that Papelbon will get dealt before the trade deadline this year. After next season, his contract is up, so they could be looking to deal him in the offseason, or sometime in the middle of next season. A lot depends on the progress Bard makes, and how Papelbon finishes this season, but it’s beginning to look like Papelbon’s days in Boston may be numbered.

The Resurrection of Big Papi

Don’t call it a comeback. Around this time a year ago, an ailing knee, a PED revelation, and a painstaking 2 months at the plate were all but signaling the end for one of Boston’s most beloved sluggers. After an injury-plagued 2008 season where he failed to reach 100 RBI for the first time as a member of the Red Sox, it was becoming ever so clear that the man who put the 2004 World Series champs on his back could no longer produce. Though he finished with a respectable second half, it hardly made up for his lack of production in April and May. On June 20th last year, he was hitting .208 with 5 HRs and 28 RBI, and was on track for the worst year of his career in Boston. A year later, he’s batting .263 with 15 HRs and 45 RBI, even after an April of struggles all too reminiscent of last year. It’s pretty safe to assume that barring an injury or a prolonged slump, Ortiz is on his way to another 30HR/100RBI season.

His resurgence couldn’t have come at a better time for the Sox. Entering the season with one of the most dangerous rotations in the AL and a revamped defense, the one question mark was whether they had enough power in the line-up to contend with teams like the Rays, Yankees and Twins. After the Sox had their worst April of the decade, Ortiz’s bat has helped them climb from the basement of the AL East to within a game of the Rays and Yankees who are tied for first going in to today.

Assuming his production doesn’t slow down, and he finishes close to what his projected number are, it poses the question about what to do with him at the end of the season. He’s making $13-million this year and his contract is up at the end of the season. He has a club option worth $12.5-million that the Red Sox shouldn’t feel obligated to pick up, because they know that at this point in his career, even if he can continue producing like he is, he’s not worth that type of money, and other teams aren’t going to take a chance on an aging DH with a history of knee problems. It’s clear that Ortiz loves Boston, and if he’s doing this well right now, who’s to say he doesn’t have another year, possibly two, left in him? While two might be a stretch at this point, I would love to see the Sox offer him a 1 year contract in the neighborhood of $5-million. A lot will have to do with the free agent market this off-season, but in a season where the DH position is particularly weak throughout the league, Ortiz can certainly not be underlooked.