Stoke up the hot stove, fat man!

I am not a patient man. And the recent weeks of inactivity on the Red Stockings front has made me irritable and ornery. My entreaty to the corpulent cigar chompers on Yawkey Way: Make some news for the boys in Boston with base-ball on the mind, the lads waiting on every tavern stool who want to know who next season's hurler-in-chief will be.

Winter is upon us, the snow a lily-white blanket keeping warm our fair emerald field in the Fens. But after the bottom of the ninth chapter, baseball does not vanish. It stalks the subconscious, waiting to be fed a diet of spinning horsehide and ash clouts. I beseech thee, Theodore Epstein, feed that hankering!

Strike up the band!

Tune the banjo and polish the plectrum, for happy days are here once again in the Old Town of Boston! Word filtered north this afternoon that Lil' Hands Dustin Pedroia, he of the Most Vaunted Player award given at this year's Annual Base-ball Player's Dinner and Consortium, has applied pen nub to paper, his little hands scratching his signature on the dotted line of a contract that will bind his services to the Boston Red Stockings for a whopping six years' time!

And let me tell you, that little ball chaser will get his fair share of clams in the deal. I'm not one to shoot off half-cocked on pecuniary matters, but i have it on good faith that the key word to this deal is simoleons. You heard it from me: Lil' Hands has enough loot to hire a craftsman full time to create custom mittens!

What a time to be a follower of the squad! What a time to be a lover of scarlet hose and the ol' horsehide! What a time to be alive!

Long live Lil' Hands!

Welcome back, Knuckles!

It's news this morning, good ol' Knuckles Wakefield is back in the fold. I speak for the legions who are fanatics of that hero's shaking, waffling and confounding hurling when I say "Huzzah, and welcome back!"

Stuffy and I are well prepared for the darkening season, and will draw close to the hot stove and report any and all Red Stockings news to our tens of readers.

Until then, we remain, faithfully yours,
Hurdy Chadwick and Stuffy McInnes,
Proprietors,
Full Circuit Clout