PriorBlog

My four-year-old niece is obsessed with dinosaurs.  I know a lot of kids are really into dinosaurs, but my niece is special.  This weekend she was invited to the natural history museum in New York to confer with a group of other scientists.  The museum was considering acquiring a recently excavated Halisaurus fossil, and needed her to verify its authenticity.  Since it was also her birthday, she decided to celebrate there, and after haranguing poor Heim into watching the dogs, we headed down to celebrate with her.

Getting down there was no problem, but the ride back was six and a half hours of hell.  Everybody will tell you that the best way to get from Boston to New York or Philly is to head out on the Mass Pike and then take 84 to 91 instead of just taking 95.  If you take 95 it’s about 20 miles longer.  But, on a holiday, getting back is the worst.  We ran into trouble getting on 84 (exit 29, I think).  This is a horrible exit when busy, and if it’s bad there you can bet you are going to be stuck at the Mass Pike toll for an eternity.  The Mass Pike toll was so clogged up that I listened to the entire Red Sox game from the time it took to get from just above Hartford to the Auburn exit of the Mass Pike.

At least it was a good game.  Schilling pitched really well and Papi had all of the Sox RBIs on two homers.  They were up 3-1 going into the eight when they removed Schilling and put in Joel Pineiro and Javier Lopez.  Caught some static after Piniero walked the first two guys to start the inning, and then I heard somebody smash a line drive into Youkillis’ glove.  One out in the eighth, tying run on third, Michael Young and Mark Teixeira up.  They bring in Papelbon.  I have to confess that when I heard that Papelbon was gong to be the closer again this year I was pretty bummed out.  I felt, and I kind of still feel, that they’ll ruin him.  But last night, he was amazing, striking out Young, and getting Teixeira to pop out.  Then he retired the side (Sosa, Blalock, Wilkerson) in order in the ninth.  Electric.  A game I’ll remember for a long time, but not as long as that traffic jam.  That was brutal.

One more note on the Red Sox.  I think I can get used to this Dave O’Brien announcer guy.  He kind of reminds me of Dave Campbell.  I really like Castiglione, and it is nice to have him out from under Trupiano.  For the record, the greatest baseball announcers of all time are Vin Scully and Harry Kalas. 

This entry was posted on Monday, April 9th, 2007 at 7:31 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.