Upon review...

...the ruling on the field is overturned.

One of the comments on my last blog about ranking months was that December should be #1. As I'm taking down the lights I threw the red flag and the ranking went under review in the booth.

With all the seasonal lights, the parties, the smiling faces, the decorations and the good will...I'm moving December up to #4. August drops to 7th. April and September stay at #5 and #6.

Unless we're facing a tough lefty.

My Favorite Months

My friend Robyn Bradley suggested we do a "faveology" list of favorite months. I did this once before on FB but it disappeared. Or I can't find it. So here it goes again:

#1 July. Love it. Especially on the Cape. The 4th is my favorite day of the year. There is no such thing as a bad 4th of July on Cape Cod. The whole month has the nicest weather of the year. Everyone smiles at you when you say, "hey."

#2 June. Summer begins, school gets out, weddings happen. Also a great month. Many of the best songs of the year debut in June.

#3 May. How can you not like May? All the leaves are out, there are graduations, the April rain is gone, you sing songs about flowers and Mary.

#4 August. Still summer, still great, but it's starting to wind down and the lawn and gardens need extra watering.

#5 April. Opening Day, Daylight Saving, buds on trees, croci bloom, you put aluminum sulfate on the hydrangeas so they'll be a spectacular blue in July. The world wakes up.

#6 September. My birthday. Also my daughter Kara's. New TV season, new school year, new all sorts of things. The seasonal change gives you a charge.

#7 December. Christmas needs no explanation. I feel like Clark Griswold with the lights but I enjoy it. I also do a decent Santa for the little guys.

#8 October. My wife's birthday. The World Series is fun (if the Yankees aren't in it). Foliage looks great, especially in Wellesley. We have a landscape guy come to do the raking.

#9 November. Things start looking stark, but Thanksgiving is always good. It's a great family time.

#10 February. Cold, but at least it's short. My daughter Caitlin's birthday. Also my brother, a couple of nephews, several sisters in law. Just goes to show how good a month May is.

#11 January. You take down all the Christmas stuff and everything looks bleak. Coldest month of the year. It drags on.

#12 March. I've never trusted March. Yes, Spring supposedly begins but it really doesn't. You're sick of winter but even if it hasn't snowed yet you can't be sure. Your car looks like shit all month. There are no holidays. At least not any day-off ones. Yes, Spring Training gets under way, but it's cold and raw and the snow is filthy.

So there it is. We're in early #11 right now.

Last-Minute Book Ideas

Here it is, the afternoon of Christmas Eve. Still looking for a last-minute book idea for someone? Here are three completely different suggestions:

Extraordinary Rendition
If you're a fan of Showtime's "Homeland" and you're bummed that Season 2 just ended, try "Extraordinary Rendition" by Paul Batista. No relation to the Detective in "Dexter." It's a thriller about a New York City lawyer asked by the ACLU to do a Pro Bono case defending Ali Hussein, who's been imprisoned as a terrorist for several years without ever being charged or even told what his alleged crime is. I won't do any plot-spoiling here. I'll just say that anyone who enjoys "Homeland" will enjoy "Extraordinary Rendition."

What Happened in Granite Creek
Second on this list is a murder mystery called "What Happened in Granite Creek," the second novel by Robyn Bradley. Robyn was on this year's BookBundlz list of best new authors. Robyn tells the story in first person, but from the POV of several different characters and in a back-and-forth timeline. A definite page-turner (or thumb-slider) with an ending you will not expect. Worthy of being made into a mini-series.

The Baseball Hall of Shame
Third on the list is The Best of Blooperstown edition of "The Baseball Hall of Shame" and it's full of quick but funny stories that any baseball fan will enjoy. In the chapter about Most Pitiful Pitching Performances of All Time we learn about the three Kansas City A's pitchers who gave up 11 runs in one inning...on only one hit. The hit was followed by three errors, a hit batsman and 8 bases-loaded walks. It almost makes Alfredo Aceves look good by comparison.

"Extraordinary Rendition" and "What Happened in Granite Creek" are both available in print and e-book editions. "The Baseball Hall of Shame" is only in print, but it will fit in a stocking so you'd better hightail it if you want one in time for tomorrow.

One more thing. If you're reading "The Night Before Christmas" (or correctly titled, "A Visit From St. Nicholas") out loud tonight, remember that most versions have a typo. Santa's seventh and eighth reindeers should be Donner and Blitzen, not Donder and Blitzen. Why? Because "donner"(only one d) and "blitzen" are the German words for thunder and lightning. Have a Merry Christmas!

A funny thing on Saturday

On Saturday I was at what is frequently called "The Game"...meaning the 129th playing of the Harvard-Yale game at the oldest football stadium in America.

Did you know that the length and width of a standard football field is based on the dimensions of Harvard Stadium? The actual rules of football were written up by Harvard and Yale back in 1875.

During the 3rd quarter they posted scores of other games on the Jumbotron, including "Western Carolina 49, Alabama 0." I looked around and could see many faces with a "what???" expression. I could imagine people calling their bookies to put some decent coin on Western Carolina winning the game.

About 5 minutes later the scores were re-posted with the 49 points properly credited to the other Crimson team. I imagined all those folks who had just called their bookie hitting redial to cancel the bet, but not getting a connection because the cell towers were overloaded.

A Boone or two for the election

Thought this was funny. Today, the day before the election, we got a couple of robo calls. One was for Elizabeth Warren, Democratic candidate for the US Senate, the other was for incumbent US Senator Scott Brown. All the polls show it's a tight race.

Here's the funny part. The Warren robo call was voiced by Matt Damon. That's cool. The Brown robo call was voiced by Pat Boone.

Pat Boone? That's who the Brown campaign believes will knock people off the fence and re-elect Scott? Really? Pat, who is 78, is famous for several pop songs in the late 50's and early 60's, like "Love Letters in the Sand" (#1 for 7 straight weeks) and for a squeaky-clean image. I think he did TV spots for milk, and this was way before the "Got Milk?" campaign.

Then I flip on the TV, which I rarely see during the day unless it's on CNBC, and there's an ad for Lifestyle Lift, a company that does facelift surgery. The spokesperson is Debby Boone, Pat's daughter. In the background you hear a snippet of Debby singing.

For those who are too young to know, in the summer of 1977 Debby Boone had her one and only hit, "You Light Up My Life." It went to the top of the Billboard chart and stayed at #1 for ten straight weeks. When you have a ballad that stays at #1 for that long every station winds up playing it. Over and over. The result was that the American public got so sick of the song that they never ever ever wanted to hear it again. That's why you never ever hear it today, even on an oldies station.

So in the TV ad for Lifestyle Lift, they play a snippet of "You Light Up My Life" but they don't use the hook of the song. Made me wonder whether the director was too young to know it wasn't the hook of the song, or old enough to know that nobody wants to hear that hook ever and decided to use a different three seconds of the song so that the advertiser would be happy but viewers wouldn't be too turned off.

And there's another little tidbit to add. While Debby's song was being pounded on the radio in the summer of '77 she and her dad Pat did a TV spot for a product called Acne Statin which would miraculously get rid of your acne. Just rub it on and zits disappear. Trouble was, Acne Statin didn't work, and there was a successful Class Action suit against not just the makers of Acne Statin but against Debby and Pat because they used their celebrity to convince people that they had used the product and it worked when in reality they had not used it and it didn't work anyway. Acne Statin was never heard from again. Neither were the Boones until this week.

But wait, there's more. The makers of Lifestyle Lift are currently under investigation by the Florida Attorney General's office.

Rando thoughts on the World Series

Losing back-to-back-to-back
Only two teams have the distinction of losing the World Series three years in a row. Those two are the Tigers (1907, 1908, 1909) and the Giants (1911, 1912, 1913). The Tigers lost back-to-back series to the Cubs, of all people.

Weighing in
Four of the five fattest ballplayers were in the series this year. This is not to say they're not good, just that they're fat.

One is a Giant, Pablo Sandoval. Nickname is Kung Fu Panda.

Three are Tigers: Miguel Cabrera, Delmon Young and Prince Fielder.

The fifth and biggest wide load is CC Sabathia, a Yankee.

Is that a wig beard?
The two craziest beards among active players were both in the series. Prince Fielder of the Tigers and Sergio Romo of the Giants.

Brian Wilson of the Giants has an even crazier one, but he's recovering from Tommy John surgery and did not play.

I'm calling the beards crazy only because they look like fake beards from a Halloween costume or a Saturday Night Live bit.

The good news
The #1 choice each year is for the Red Sox to win the World Series. The #2 choice is Anybody but the Yankees. Not only did the Yankees not win, they didn't even get there. So it was a good season.

The Walking Man

One day about three years ago I was driving down Oak Street in my hometown of Wellesley MA. On the sidewalk was a man with white hair who looked to be 80-something. He waved me down and I pulled over to see if he needed help of some sort. He said he was fine, but just wanted to ask me about my license plate.

"Are those your initials?" I replied that they are not, that's the way I spell Kelley. With an EY at the end. I learned years ago that you can't say, "Kelley...with two E's" because people will starting writing Keelly. So I got my EY plate. I've ben asked about EY on many occasions. Usually I'm asked if I work for Ernst & Young. Once in a while I'll get a Fonzie from "Happy Days" reference. (Remember he often responded to something with, "Eeeeyyyy!" and there were Eeeeyyy bumper stickers in the 70's?) The man told me that those are his initials and not many people have them. He said his name was Eddie Yost.

I knew about Eddie Yost. He played for the Washington Senators - the team that is now the Minnesota Twins, not to be confused with the other Washington Senators who became the Texas Rangers. (Note on the above Yost baseball card they called the Senators the "Nats" - the same nickname today's Washington Nationals use.) Yost was a lead-off guy and specialized in getting on base via walks. His career on-base percentage is higher than Derek Jeter's. He lead the majors in walks six times, earning himself the nickname The Walking Man. I remember seeing him play on Opening Day at Griffith Stadium in Washington DC. We actually had 1st row seats that my father got from Sen. Leverett Saltonstall (R-Mass). Yost went 2 for 5 with 2 rbi's - and a walk - and 1 run scored as the Senators beat the Red Sox.

So I told Eddie Yost that I had worked for many years with Gay Vernon, daughter of Mickey Vernon, two-time AL Batting Champion and his long-time Washington Senators teammate. The Senators - the second version, the ones who moved to Texas - were an expansion team in 1961. Like the original Senators, they were horrible. Lost over 100 games the first several years. The first manager was Mickey Vernon, who was replaced with Eddie Yost. A couple of managers later they hired Ted Williams. This is proof that even a great ballplayer cannot succeed as a manager if the team itself has minimal talent. Eddie Yost subsequently moved to Wellesley and was the Red Sox 3rd base coach for eight seasons. When he got off the merry-go-round and retired he took up restoring antique merry-go-round horses. Eddie Yost, The Walking Man, was a chatty guy when you passed him on the street. This week he passed away at the age of 86.

Not an off-the-wall experience, but not a fan experience either.

Today was batting practice at Fenway for season ticket holders.  Sorry about 2012, would you like to take batting practice at home plate?  Yes, indeed.

I wore my official Ted Williams #9 home shirt with the 1939 seal on the sleeve, blue undersleeves (like they wore in Ted's day), and a nicely broken-in hat.  Kathy went with me to record it for posterity.  As I was checking in the Sox representative said if I hit the wall he'd comp me my season tickets for 2013.

They took us in through the visitor's locker room, down the walkway under the grandstand, up into the visitor's dugout, then onto the field.  I could choose from wood or metal bats and went with wood.  I could probably have hit the ball farther with a metal bat, but using a real wood bat is way more fun.  The bat was heavier than I would have preferred, but I could swing it.  I found a helmet in my size and headed for home plate.

They announced me on the PA.  "Now batting, number 9, 'the Don'...Don Kelley." The entire at-bat was on the Jumbotron, but I didn't know that until afterward because I was concentrating on seeing the ball real good.  

I had gone to the batting cages on Cape Cod in the morning to take some practice BP both left-handed and right-handed.  Baseball medium-fast.  I had surprised myself by hitting some respectable fly balls righty, so at Fenway I decided to go up there righty and use a Dewey stance.

Five pitches.  I connected on every one of them.  Only fouled one back.  One of them I hit to short and figured if Lugo were playing I might well be on base.  That white blotch next to the edge of the batting cage, above the guy in the red shirt, is the ball soaring toward short.

Afterward we headed to the Red Sox dugout, took some shots sitting on the bench, standing up the railing looking concerned, walking down the gangway to the Red Sox clubhouse looking disgusted, like I'd just been tossed for arguing a close call that went the wrong way.

Then we posed with the two World Series trophies and went up on the Green Monster for some more shots.  It was not an off-the-wall experience (while I was there no one came anywhere near hitting the wall), but I didn't swing and miss at all, so it wasn't a fan experience. It was the most fun I've had at Fenway without seeing a game.

The Big Debate - right or left?

No, not between Obama and Romney, or Biden and Ryan, or Brown and Warren, or even Tierney and Tisei.

On Monday at 2:30 I have an appointment at Fenway Park.  I get to take batting practice.  At home plate.  5 pitches.

Red Sox CEO Sam Kennedy invited season ticket holders to take batting practice at home plate. It's a way of saying thanks for sticking with us during this horrific season.

I do almost everything left-handed, but I can actually hit from either side.  So my big debate is whether to go up swinging from the right side or the left side.  I will probably swing and miss at all five pitches, so it really doesn't matter.

But it does.  I'm going to stand in the batter's box at Fenway Park and swing away.  I can go up righty and be standing exactly where Carlton Fisk was when he hit that 1975 World Series home run. And where Dwight Evans stood for 19 seasons. Or, I could go up there lefty and be standing exactly where Babe Ruth did.  And Ted Williams, and Yaz.

I have a better chance of hitting the wall batting from the right side.  In my dreams.  Maybe they'll let me switch sides halfway though.  No, that won't happen.  I will toss and turn thinking about it tonight, but I know I will thoroughly enjoy it either way.  Even if I miss all five.

Ok, who's fault was it?

Bobby V being shown the door the day after the Red Sox season finally ended was no surprise.  The surprise would have been if they waited for the weekend so it wouldn't make the front page.  But everyone knew the other shoe would drop, and John, Tom and Larry had no need to prolong the obvious, and had the decency to get it over with before the playoffs begin.

Here's how I cut up the blame pie.  I should point out that I have professional experience cutting pies;  in high school I worked at Howard Johnson's in Wellesley and a portion of the the work was cutting slices of pie. Cutting that first piece neatly is an art. Usually it was apple pie that was kept in a heated drawer.  Customers would get a piping hot slice with vanilla ice cream melting on it and think it just came out of the oven.  In truth, it had probably been in the heated drawer for a couple of weeks.

Okay, the blame:

10% to Ownership.  They didn't really want Bobby but hired him anyway because no one better was available.  And they got rid of him when they needed to.

5% to Ben Cherington.  He wanted Dale Sveum, but Dale had no managerial experience and people couldn't even spell his name, let alone pronounce it.  Ownership overruled Ben.

20% to the starting pitching.  Most people would put more of the blame on the starters, and there were a lot of horrible first innings, but Lester, Buchholz, DuBront and even Beckett had a surprising number of Quality Starts that did not result in wins.  (A Quality Start means you went five full innings giving up three earned runs or less.)  Why?  Because either Bobby V left them in until after they had run out of gas or the bullpen blew it on them.  If you don't count Dice-K and Aaron Cook in this section, the number is probably down to 15%.  (Dice-K actually won a game - one run over 8 innings in a 5-1 win in an afternoon game on August 27th.  I was there.)

20% to the bullpen.  I kept hearing hosts on WEEI and announcers on national network games saying the problem was starting pitching and the bullpen had been pretty good, but I completely disagree.  Alfredo Aceves was horrible two times out of three.  His Blown Save count is deceptively low because it doesn't count the times when he gave up a four-run lead, or came in with the game tied and gave it up.  Remember John "Waaay back" Wasdin?  Aceves could be called Alfredo "That's a two-run homer" Aceves.  Or Alfredo Blown-Seves.  Andrew Miller was all over the place, often unable to retire the one hitter he faced.  Andrew Bailey, when he finally showed up, was ok at best.  I saw him in spring training.  They brought him in the the 6th inning and he immediately gave up 6 straight hits.  This was supposed to be our Papelbon replacement? Yikes. To be fair, Junichi Tazawa was a pleasant surprise most of the time and Craig Breslow wasn't too bad.

20% to injuries.  Almost half the roster was on the DL at least once.  Those who came back didn't play to their potential.  Ellsbury missed the majority of the season and performed well below his fabulous 2011.  (But I definitelty want him to stay!)  Nobody expected much from Crawford, and in his place Daniel Nava did better than Crawford in 2011.  So that injury doesn't add much.  Andrew Bailey has already been dumped on above.  Ortiz going down in July hurt a lot.  The various guys filling in as DH collectively batted something like 100 points lower than Ortiz with no home runs.  Scott Atchison getting hurt?  Didn't matter.

5% to player and coach attitude.  Not a high number, and that's because it was brought on by...

20% to Bobby V.  At least.  He made it too much about himself.  He mispronounced player's names. He left pitchers in too long.  8 innings out of Daniel Bard, who was used to pitching only the 8th?  Youk wasn't trying hard enough?  Putting Punto in the lineup when he was batting .178 because he liked him?  Salty as DH...batting .220-something?  Aceves as the closer?  Not bringing Ciriaco up until late July?  Come on. That's not how we do it around here.