Gentlemen, show your cards!

While rooters across New England chew their moustaches clean off their lips, Red Stockings General Manager Theo "Boy Wonder" Epstein is waving cigar smoke from his visage, reading ticker-tapes, dispatching messenger boys and cranking his telephone device in an effort to secure new troops for the remaining months of the 2009 base ball campaign.

Scuttlebutt is flying faster than an aeroplane as the clock marches inexorably toward the 4:00 trading deadline. When the hour tolls, who will remain, who will depart, and who will join the squad?

Alas, I am moments from boarding a steamer-ferry for a summer cottage colony on an island in Casco Bay! I hope to receive a strong enough wireless signal to remain current on the latest news, but if nothing else, I will rely on the daily broadsheets and tabloids to recount the results during the week-end.

Until then, keep a tight hold on the Duffy's and remain faithful!

Yrs.

Stuffy McInnes

...And then the relief hurlers took the pill

The smoke was visible from Marshfield to Muscongus Bay

When the final tally of the contesting season is calculated, the acrid stench of last evening's conflagration may plague Rooters' olfactory system throughout the winter.

The General leads, we can do naught but follow!

Watching our Gen. Joshua P. Beckett command the pill is like downing a flagon of courage alongside a huge snifter of grit!

His pretzel delivery stymied the Oaklands on a hot July evening, and his curses and jeers from the hilltop charged his compatriots to display a similar absence of mercy with their ash clouts! When the line must hold, when the troops must not break, the General is the man we need.

Let us admire this statistic: The General has recorded 7 victories and zero defeats when hurling after a team “loss.”

Send The Elder out to pasture

Rooters greeted the arrival of John “The Elder” Smoltz to the Boston club with no shortage of excitement in the cold months of the lushing season. This hall-of-fame hurler (rapturous Rooters argued) would surely propel the Local Nine to victory in the all-important month of October, when base-ball anoints its champion!

Alas, a team wishing to prevail in October must at a minimum secure enough victories to join the limited ranks of base-ball’s finest squads. And to-date, The Elder is looking to be more of a hindrance to that quest than a hero.

The Red Stockings have fallen in five of the six contests in which Smoltz twirled the first frame. After each defeat, the recovering hurler assured Rooters that he was working back into top form, and would indeed command the pill with the surety of an “Ace.”

And then, yester-day, he squared against the flighty bird-men of Baltimore. Instead of securing the “sweep,” Smoltz allowed the Baltimores to bat freely and with great force. Base-runners advanced about the diamond like a carnival whirligig. The result: Six “runs” accumulated, and the coffin lid nailed firmly shut.

The calendar stands in the final week of July! The gold-plated aggregation of ringers in New York have begun earning their Steinbrenner doubloons and have overtaken the limping Red Sox in the divisional standings! The speedy yannigans of the Tampa squad are showing fine mettle as well!

There is simply no slack left in the line. A mere game or two difference in the win/loss ledger will likely determine whether the Bostons are clouting and twirling on our behalf through the crisp autumn days, or whether the green walls of Fenway fall silent until spring.

The thought of that silence has me reaching for an extra dram of Duffy’s these evenings. The Bostons cannot allow the Elder to continue his rehabilitation at the expense of the team’s standings. Each time he mounts the hurling mound, it is as if he is waving a white flag rather than dazzling bats-men with a well-located pill.

It is time to replace him in the rotation with another hurler who at least affords an opportunity for victory. Shall it be a “trade” between organizations? Or is the yannigan Buchholz ready to twirl every fifth day? Either! Both! Anything!

The Stockings continue to slide!

Not even a cloud of dust from a muffed bag-burgling can obscure the fact that the Red Stockings are in the midst of a base-ball cataclysm. For even those upstarts from the Tejas Territories hosted the Red Stockings and kept the Boston heroes from tallying more than a small child's handful of aces on the board.

Back at the emerald-hued confines of the Fens is sure to do a body good beginning to-morrow eve, as the Home Towners take on the Birds from Baltimore. And in the dug-out there are sure to be some new faces, with General Manager Theodore "Boy Wonder" Epstein coming out aces in a series of backroom shenanigans with two National League squads.

And alas, it is good-bye to our stone-fisted between sacker, Mr. Julio "High Pockets" Lugo. May your britches always be uncommonly hitched upon your lithe frame, and let the breezy winds of St. Louis turn your stern countenance into one of mirth and child-like wonder.

Beat that lumbago, Knuckles!

What a malady to befall our tricky hurler, Knuckles Wakefield! A sciatica or lumbago is no trivial matter, and it seems our heroic victory-earner is in line for some rest and relaxation away from the ball-park.

In his stead will be Clay "Beanpole" Buchholz, who has dazzled at the minor league level, and is eager to regain his professional form on the carefully manicured diamonds of the Major Leagues. All eyes will be on his pill tossing this eve.

Godspeed, Knuckles, and Godspeed Beanpole!

A tantrum without base-ball!

The All-Star clouting contest of Monday night dragged on longer than a Sunday sermon at the fundamentalist church, and the All-Star contest itself was an exercise in mock excitement. Indeed, the match had its points of interest, but what bragging rights does a Rooter have if his league is the victor? Shall I telegram a friend from Atlanta, sending my condolences that his team has the misfortune of being part of a league that regularly sucks eggs?

That collection of vaunted heroes in flannel that assembled in fair St. Louis on Tuesday evening had it's own aura and mystique, but it did nothing to rival the excitement a Rooter feels when his Red Stockinged heroes are led from the stadium tunnels to the emerald expanse of Fenway Park. I am ready for victories to land in the "win" column, and for each hurled pill and ash clout to be marked on scorecards in gossamer teardrops. Let it be so, good friends!

Alas, one more eve of waiting. Perhaps to-night I will stoke up the charcoal and prepare a supper of seared sausage and cold ale whilst I draw portraits from memory of the faces of each Boston hero, from the aquiline nose of Jason "The Argonaut" Bay to the devious and impish grin of Dustin "Lil' Hands" Pedrioa. But come tomorrow, I will put my ink wells in a drawer and store my sketch pads out of harms' way.

For tomorrow, base-ball is back.