Groundhog Day, Part Deux

When the groundhog sees his shadow on Feb. 2 every year, its just an idiotic reminder of the 6 more weeks of winter to come. And yesterday was the summer version of Groundhog Day. Yup, 6 more weeks of sh*tty play from second base, because as we found out from the groundhog/ doctor that it'll be 6 weeks until the return of the Laser Show. 6 goddamn weeks of Bill Hall. Meanwhile, thinking it was cool to damage bones because Pedroia did it, Victor heads to the 360-hour DL as well with an ailing thumb. And the only good news about more playing time for Bill Hall and Tek is that you'll find some pretty sweet Fenway deals on Stub Hub.

Also, the Cheese returned from Colorado safely. While we weren't able to get on the tube with our stupid sign, rest assured we irritated the sh*t out of the Rockies fans in our section... all 4 of them.

Educated Cheese hits the road

The Educated Cheese caravan is packing up the Sam Summer and hibachi grill and taking a road trip out west to go watch the Sox play in Colorado. By caravan, I mean first class flight. And by first class flight, I mean coach.

Regardless, get the DVRs ready, and look for us on the NESN broadcast of Thursday night's game at 8:40pm Eastern time, as we'll be making asses of ourselves and holding up the sign above, doing our best to make the baseball-watching world notice us. And if you don't see us, you'll know that one of the following happened:
A) Got on the wrong flight. Wound up in northern Russia.
B) Got way too drunk, had too many rocky mountain oysters, and got kicked out of Coors Field before the NESN cameras noticed us.
C) Remy was offended by my cartoon drawing of him and requested that he not put us jackasses on TV.

Off to the thin air.

Boo or Cheer

Manny Ramirez returns to Fenway tonight for the first time since being shipped to Sh*t-town, USA (better known as Los Angeles, California).

And we have to ask the question that everybody has been asking... as a fan, when Manny steps to the plate tonight... will you go for the Bud Light or Miller Light?

Here we go.

Warning: Game 7s are bad for cardiac health.

Get the defibrillators ready. Go Celts.

HEY! We're alive!

Barely. Sometimes work is a bitch. Alright, work is always a bitch. We send out our deepest sorrows that we were not able to uphold our posting promises this week as Steve and I have both been held hostage at our respective places of employment. We did however round up the wives and successfully book a trip to Colorado to see The Sox take on the Rox in what is hopefully a replay of 2007.

As for those pesky Sox bastards they seem to be keeping up the "Doing well" and "Sucking something awful" every other game routine that we've started to become accustomed to. The Indians are just a miserable team but they somehow managed to sneak (11-0 is a sneak right?) a few games out of them this week. Now we move on to the worst time of the year besides the day before and after the All-Star Break: Interleague play. Granted The Sox have had some good years against the AL Jr. teams, but I still don't like it. Some pitcher is going to get injured while hitting or running the bases and that's all we'll hear about for weeks to come. They started out on a good foot by punishing Old Man Moyer. 1 down, only like 18 more or something? What a way to ruin June.

Wins, wins, wins

Sox are winning. I'm a fan. I don't care how close it is or against whatever crappy team they're playing because when they win, I'm happy. To be quite honest though, I've been on some sort of a bender as of late, tearing it up for the one year ann'y here, so I haven't had much time to catch a lot of these games. Apparently when I'm not watching, the Sox win. So for the rest of the week I don't think I'll be watching any games, just checking a few box scores here and there making sure the W's are still rolling in.

Do you think that post sucked? See, the weird thing is, I took the Ray Allen approach. I practiced this post for 3 hours straight, with no one else around so I'd have total concentration. Now the other night I did the same thing and brought some of the best material ever seen here (umm, the exact post slips my mind) but now I do the same method and stink up the joint? What gives? It's almost like I went 0-13 on this post and wouldn't STOP SHOOTING THE GOD DAMN BALL ALL NIGHT EVEN THOUGH I WASN'T MAKING A THING. I can't blame Jesus Shuttlesworth though when it comes down to it. The dude could crush me with calf muscles if he so wanted. So, I'll be nice, look ahead to Thursday when He'll Get Game back and tie the series back up.

Today, The Cheese is 1

One year ago today The Cheese was born. I signed up for this "Blogger" thing with a rough idea of something, I'm still not really sure what, then I emailed the info to Steve, he made a few banners, we put some posts together, emailed each other a bunch of ideas, watched "Summer Catch" 13 times to get some Biel-like mojo going and then drew up some MS Paint versions of the 2009 lineup and 491 posts later it's been a year of Cheese.

To everyone that reads this thing daily, weekly, monthly, or somehow just stumbled on here today, thank you for taking the time out of your day to read our nonsense. It's been a big part of our lives for the last year and we appreciate everyone reading and making us feel like we've accomplished something besides memorizing "Summer Catch".

Our apologies for the lack of posts lately but we've been getting pretty hammered celebrating the one year anniversary. Actually, we're just really busy at work, but don't tell anyone because I don't want that bad ass image that we've worked so hard on to be spoiled by people thinking we're hard workers.

Oh yeah, Sox lost to the O's. Again. Want some stat knowledge? Here you go: The O's are 7-23 against the AL East. 4 of those wins are against The Sox. Ouch.

Adrian Beltre is some sort of animal

Beltre = Animal. Let's review the facts:

• Until recently the man didn't wear a cup while playing. He's a 3B where the ball comes at you at approximately a billion MPH, give or take a million, and he believed his pills were made of steel. He now wears a cup because he did in fact take one off the nuggets and found out he is not really made of steel.
  
• He took out Ellsbury on a flyball while refusing to back down and then did the same to Hermida tonight. This might not be a good thing, but the point is you don't stop Adrian Beltre from getting to the ball.
• His home run swing makes the guy drop to one knee he swings so friggin' hard. It's like some sort of explosion when the bat hits the ball and the blast zone has a 4 foot radius which then makes Beltre hit the deck. Catchers and umpires are luckily safe from this blast because they have all that padding on.
• Oh yeah, and he's hitting the crap out of the ball so far this year.

Point proven. Beltre = Animal.

All that for nothing

18 hits and no win? What the hell is that all about? If we had a personal stat boy here at The Cheese I'd ask him to put down the container of peanut butter Cool Whip he was so gently caressing and check out when was the last time a team got 18 hits and still lost the game. Chances are it was last year or something and it's a very common occurrence, but it doesn't seem like it should be. 18 knocks is a lot and deserves a W. Kind of like blackjack if you take enough cards you should be handed a win, same in baseball. If you can average 2 hits per inning you should win. Someone get Selig on the phone. Stat boy!!!

One quick question I was pondering yesterday as my Yahoo! scoreboard kept telling me that Wake was inching closer and closer to that magic 9.00 ERA: Why did they sign this guy to a two year contract this time around instead of just constantly updating his 1 year handshake deal? I know he had quite the magic start to last season, but after that he did some time on the DL and then got knocked around pretty good. I know he's done what has been asked of him for the last 75 years here in Boston, but it doesn't mean I really want to watch him struggle through this deal here.

Celtics - Lakers

Its tough to capture the awesomeness of Lakers-Celtics with just words (though Bob Ryan comes close), so for now, we'll go to the video to get the adrenaline flowing...

(note: you feel like a movie director if you play them all at once)...

Russell's block...

McHale's clothesline...

Bird-Magic "Choose Your Weapon"...

Garnett block, Odom tackles Ray...

Celts comeback in 2008 Game 4...

Garnett hanging and banking, Celts cap title with 131-92 win in 2008 Game 6...

Get the caffeine ready. Round 12 tips-off at 9pm.

Horsesh*t

Umpire ruins perfect game. yuck.

Griffless

Ken Griffey Jr. retired. Sure he had a hall of fame career, but his greatest accomplishment was his brief cameo in Summer Catch hitting a dinger of Freddie Prinze Jr. What, you never saw Summer Catch? Shame on you. Cue lame trailed complete with Biel eye candy...

Behold the Power of the Anti-Jinx

Sometimes it's intentional but most of the time it's just dumb luck (the best kind). So once I got riled up enough last night to make my anti-Lackey and anti-Sox post, from that moment on the Sox started kicking ass. It tends to work like that. My honor kind of waivers and then all of a sudden the team shows some life. It's like I have a direct brainwave link with Teets and company in the dugout. He gets a feeling that the positive vibes aren't all flowing and fires up the troops. It's quite amazing really.

You do however have to know your limits on how many times you can use the anti-jinx. The good thing is, after you use it once, chances are you'll be riding high for a few days and won't feel the need to bust it out again. Case and point, after last night I'm satisfied. Well, satisfied with the win. I think Lackey is still a chooch until he turns a corner here or something, but I can call myself satisfied for the time being. Of course with Daisuke pitching tonight, I'm thinking the satisfaction is only going to last til he walks his first 4 batters and I'll be anti-jinxing the f*ck out of him.

So When is John Lackey Going to, You Know, Pitch.

Oh, you need an explanation to the title? OK. How about a frustrated one? Will this do?

When the f*ck is this sloth looking mother f*cker going to show a glimmer of the $18M a year he's getting?

Is that better? Honestly though, I feel like I'm in some kind of Twilight Zone bizzaro world because I'm still stuck on the wins against Philly and the sweep of The Rays and the sweet mojo that was being brought our way until The Mighty Kansas City Royals came to town. Now tonight we get to watch Lackey give up 11 frigging hits through 5 innings so far, all while The Boys are throwing up a fat-ass goose egg on their end of the scoreboard. I'm sorry for the rantish post but the realization that this team might have already met and surpassed all expectations just makes me want to buy some more stock in Sam Summer and start paying off my own credit cards.