You know, I don’t want to irk two of the handful of people who read this thing, but I just can’t cheer on the Fenway crowd for booing the Phillies’ Brett Myers last Saturday. And it’s not just because I have to disagree with Dan Shaughnessy on everything.

Booing a formerly-beloved center fielder, giving a standing ovation to a well-beloved part-time outfielder, these are things that are within the confines of the game. When the crowd acts like a jury of 35,000, making a decision with scant (though emotionally charged) evidence, on what will probably be a real criminal case, it feels wrong; it’s the kind of mass impulse that leads to the kind of awful things mobs can do. Even though the guy really does sound like a shit, even though what he is reported to have done is awful, and even though the only remorse he still seems to have shown is of the “I’m sorry you found out about it” variety.

I can’t get on the fans too hard. If I’d have been at Fenway, I probably would have joined in. But I can’t take the extra step and say it’s good or that I’m happy about it.

Really, if there’s anyone at fault here (besides Myers himself), it’s the Phillies management for starting him the next day. I mean, even if he had done something trivial, say got arrested for shoplifting some executive toys from Nieman Marcus, I don’t think it’s out of line for them to pull the guy out of the lineup the next day.

On a similar note, there was a good interview with Jaron Lanier in the Globe’s Ideas section last Sunday on the load of crap that is the whole “Wisdom of Crowds” idea. He draws what I think is a valid parallel between the mute acceptance of badly designed software and group think: the idea that “the computer must know better than I do” being a similar individual abdication of responsibility.

We made our first trip to Fenway Park this year to see the Sox take down the Nationals on Monday night, with Terri’s parents. Some random notes:

• Another reason to like Mike Lowell: his at-bat song is “London Calling”
• We got a chuckle when the Fenway sound crew played the “Three’s Company” theme song when two Nationals went out to the pitcher’s mound for a conference.
• Happy to see Gabe Kapler back at Fenway for the first time since his utterly bizarre Achilles tendon rupture last year. He got a standing O; in anyplace other than Fenway, a standing O for a part-time outfielder would seem weird.
• So, I can’t figure out if the Fenway sound people played “A Town Called Malice” by The Jam when lackluster reliever Rudy Seanez came out of the pen because Rudy picked it, or because the sound guys were making a comment on the fact that he was getting booed mercilessly. If it’s the latter, might I suggest “A Message to You, Rudy” for next time?
• Terri and I resumed our standing discussion of what our closer songs would be. I still stick by “Stigmata” by Ministry. Terri, in a similar vein, but far more ingeniously, sticks with, “Control I’m Here” by Nitzer Ebb, which I should let her explain, because I don’t want to steal her thunder more than I just did. I wish I had thought of it.
• And here’s an mp3 of the fans singing along to Sweet Caroline. A few seconds in you can hear an announcement that the Nationals put in former Sox and Damon-noggin-clocker Damien Jackson.

People talk about things being stranger than fiction, and in my mind, I imagine a perpetual battle between reality and fiction (which we can imagine as a single universe containing all the individual fictional universes invented by all human beings, everywhere, ever), over who is the weirdest. One day, reality gets the edge. The next day, someone comes up with populating Everquest II with an evil Curt Schilling. Bizarro Curt also supports the ALS association.

(via Universal Hub)

So, Ed’s post today made me think about why I actually like interleague play. Sure, it is a gimmick, and when it was devised, the sport was sort of at a nadir, so it was almost certainly introduced for the wrong reasons.

But the two leagues are so separate that without it, it’s almost like they’re two different sports entities who happen to have a game against each other at the end of the year. You don’t get the same thing in football because there are so many fewer games that fans from each league have enough time to pay attention to what’s going on in the other league. Baseball, it’s hard to keep up with a single team let alone what’s going on in the other league.

And, if I may step out on a limb, the other big reason that interleague play is good is that it is existentially unsettling. Because of some small de jure differences, huge de facto differences in the way the game is played have evolved over time. I don’t think that interleague play has changed this or even slowed the trend toward deviation between the two leagues. But it does create this one magical time every year where you are forced to realize that what you thought was fixed, inevitable, essential, is actually radically contingent, and could have easily been otherwise.

Plus, I like to see some National League style play occasionally, it it’s also high-larious to see some of the AL pitchers at bat.

Every time I hear the name of David Mitchell’s new novel I want to sing it to the tune of Neil Diamond’s “Song Sung Blue”. Not sure why.

Perhaps it’s the same demon which drives Terri to sing “If you like Jorge Posada” to the tune of the Pina Colada song every time the Sox play the Yankees. And this season has added “Why do you pull the ball, Toby Hall?” (of the TB Devil Rays) to the tune of… [guess]

How much am I loving my first Red Sox games with Tivo? No Foxwoods commercials, kids! That is fantastic.

I’m also excited because Larry Lucchino mentioned in the pre-game show that this year’s Fenway Park renovations will include two Dunkin’ Donuts in the park. None of the existing concessions really sell any coffee whatsoever, so I’m very excited about this development. Normally, you suck down a couple of beers, and then either need to keep going, which you can’t, because no beer is sold after the 7th inning, or have a little pick me up, which you can’t, because there’s no coffee to be had in the park. I have found it hard to believe in the past that there was no Dunkin’s in the park, and now there is. The ideal coffee option would of course be a Toscanini’s, but this will more than do.

OK, I have to pay attention now, because I still only recognize about 1/3 of the guys on the team this year.

Ok, no surprise that the Dominican Republic whooped Italy in the World Baseball Classic. What surprised me was Italy’s roster. Mike Piazza? Frank Catalanatto? Lenny DiNardo? What did they do, look up every MLB player that had an Italian-sounding name? Pretty much.

Here’s one of the pitfalls of those highly-relevant ads that has made Google a bazillion dollar company.

For those of you who are dying to know whether rock star GM Theo Epstein will get on that plane and regret it soon and for the rest of his life, there is some interesting scoop in Gordon Edes boston.com chat. I guess it’s not scoop so much as it’s inside information into some of the personal things behind the negotiations. As Michael Corleone would say, it’s never “just business”.

I didn’t watch of the World Series except for the last game; it’s just hard to deal with Fox sports when you can’t turn down Joe Buck and Tim McCarver and turn up Jerry and Joe on WEEI. (Digression: speaking of Joe, did you know his son Duke is in the NYY media? We saw him on ESPN, working on the field at the Penn State game the other weekend, which was coincidentally being called by Sean McDonough. Anyway….) I agree with Ed that Lyle Lovett’s version of God Bless America, accompanied by cello, was actually really nice. And, yeah, I’m glad the White Sox won.

But most of all, I was glad to see Roberto Clemente make the Latino Legends team. He died way before his time.

It sucked, but it could have been worse. At least it was short, and they didn’t bother getting our hopes up.

The irony is that the only team still in it that I have any feeling for is the one that just handed us our still-beating hearts, the other Sox.

The Red Sox are going to lose this year, aren’t they? This is going to suck again, isn’t it?

I mean, 2003 sucked. But last year was so good, I just forgot how much this is really going to suck.

Well, the current Boston Phoenix cover story on the Sox-Boston Globe-NESN connection is sort of a non-story. I share their suspicion that there’s something supremely fishy that the town’s biggest newspaper owns a piece of the Red Sox, and the Red Sox own their own cable network. Particularly when there’s something that might not sit well with the fans (e.g. Curt Schilling moving to the bullpen, even temporarily) I feel like the NESN crew try especially hard to look on the sunny side.

But the Phoenix story really fails to dig up any real evidence of chicanery, and their argument is just “you, know, it’s the principle of the thing”:

There would be a hue and cry, critics say, if Globe publisher Gilman served in an investor-management role with an entity such as Raytheon, but it’s deemed less serious because the holding is a sports team — no matter that baseball has long been a big business and that the Red Sox play a multifaceted role as a storied cultural institution with considerable civic influence.

But I am definitely keeping an eye on this story, because I feel like eventually, there’s going to be something shady that actually goes down. The abuse of power comes as no surprise.

How pathetic I am? Actually watching the home run derby.

Bud Selig is currently talking about the plans for a World Cup style baseball classic. I don’t imagine that if George W. Bush were baseball commissioner, he’d be talking about a world cup, yet I certainly wish W. were currently MLB commissioner. (I wish Fidel had found success in Baseball, too, but it turns out that’s an urban legend).

Caught the second run of the Sox episode of Queer Eye tonight. I sort of had perhaps unrealistic expectations that it would be a good episode, but from an entertainment perspective, it was not. First, they filmed during spring training, and as you might expect, central Florida doesn’t exactly offer the usual cultural & commercial facilities of Manhattan. So they were a bit constrained with what they could do. Second, while makeover shows tend to be thin excuses for product placement, this episode really felt like an hour long commercial for Dunkin’ Donuts, BJ’s, and more. Last, they tried to do too many of them at once, and so there wasn’t a whole lot of personality to the whole thing. So, it wasn’t great TV. Still, I think it’s a good episode as a social milestone. I have this perhaps unfounded faith that the whole Queer Eye thing, despite how problemmatic it can be, is a positive cultural force. Sure the whole enterprise is a bit cheesy and trades in stereotypes and sentimentality and promotions for Crest White Strips. But I’m a pragmatist and I believe in baby steps.

For example. We went to the Angels/Sox game on Sunday with Nora. Three of the Queer Eye guys threw out the first pitch, and Jai sang the national anthem. Of course, I don’t like his breathy, Broadway style of singing, but when have anthems ever been sung for their artistic merit? I was a bit moved at the thought that even ten years ago, an openly gay guy singing in a major league sporting event would have been pretty much out of the question. Good for the Sox management for doing it on a Sunday day game. And good for Larry Lucchino for not buckling to those boobs on WEEI.

In a slightly related note, since there is a huge lacuna in my baseball interest, stretching from about 1986 (when the only thing going for the Pirates was the pre-steroids Barry Bonds) through 2002 (when I went to Fenway for the first time), I missed the fact that in 1997, MLB retired Jackie Robinson’s number for every major league team. Terri pointed this out to me at the park on Sunday, hence the 42 in blue rather than red. Part of me thinks it’s a terrific gesture, and another part of me thinks it just calls more attention to how long and how bitterly baseball held out against integration. Baby steps I guess. Maybe we still need the gesture now. But I still have to hope that someday people will wonder what the big deal was.

The ring ceremony was nice, it was nice to trounce the Yankees, but how about those fans? While most of the Yankees got booed on introduction, as you’d expect, they actually cheered Mariano Rivera (who our batters have really beat up on lately, “lately” including the illustrious end of last season), they cheered for Joe Torre (for the right reasons), and then, in the eight inning, they cheered when A-Rod finally cleanly fielded a ball that came to him (after bobbling or missing about three plays). Oh, the wonderful blend of snark and class that is Fenway. Can’t wait until our first game!