With a whimper...

So it has finally come to pass: The Bostons advance to the Series of Divisional Champions, where they will contest the right to raise a World Series banner above Fenway's gleaming green battlements.

And yet there is no rejoicing in the McInnes household. Tho' I have spent weeks crossing this nation in clattering steam trains on assignment for my gainful employers, I have glumly followed the seeming evaporation of our heroes' vigor in recent weeks.

Their shameful display of shabby hurling and swatting of late is an insult to the beauties of the game. What they have been playing can barely be termed "base ball."

Something must change before the first tilt against the wily Angels of Anaheim in the Los Angeles region of California: Order double rations of Duffy's for the squad! Coat their athletic supporters with mentholated liniments! Anything to strike a fire under this beleaguered band of bumblers!

The glory awaits, but not for the faint-hearted!

All wet...

Blasted flannel-clad miscreants. The children cry, and Rooters follow suit.

Will this madness cease this evening? I will sit at the tavern and bend an ear to the wireless.

Commence pacing...

Some weeks ago, all seemed lost for the Red Stockings. The New Yorks were pulling away in familiar fashion, and several competitors for the "Wild Card" berth in this year's play-offs were knotted around the Olde Towne Team.

But that was then. Now, the Red Stockings are five games behind the New Yorks, but a whopping seven games ahead of any Wild Card interloper.

One question remains: Can the Red Stockings repeat their home-field success in different environs? Last night's bull-pen miscues give pause to even the heartiest Rooter.

It is getting awfully warm in here!

My, oh my. It seems to be heating up in the vicinity of the Fens. This is an enjoyable development as the mercury takes its final turn southward, into the crisp temps of autumn.

Keep hurling, heroes. Keep swatting, Goliaths. Keep posting victory after victory!

The remainders of a wastrel life

In the far reaches of Maine, school-aged children often pass a lazy fall Saturday by rounding up an adolescent sow, dressing it in herringbone outerwear and leading it to suckle on a fine Burgundy.

In much the same fashion, the White Stockings of Chicago's North Side aimed to dress our once-strong Gen. Joshua Beckett not in the epaulets and gleaming medals of heroism, but in the frilly frocks and lacy petticoats of a betrothed handmaiden. And instead of quaffing flagons of grit and determination, it was as if he was hoisting a dainty cup of chamomile and brushing biscuit crumbs with a finely stitched kerchief.

Indeed, our supposedly fearsome corps leader did nothing but play patsy with the North Side swatters in yesterday's tilt. If one of the opposing hitters had proffered a jumping rope, surely our General would have deigned to skip around the Fens singing school-yard ditties.

What is our General's malady? What keeps him from commanding the pill in the same way that George Washington guided his troops 'cross the Potomac on a cold winter's night?

Never fear, readers. These are among the questions we will strive to answer as we begin the stretch run to the season's end.