We do not flash Doug Mirabelli in this house

It seems right to start a new blog out on a positive note, so let's talk about last night's game rather than tonight's (so far).

(Please note that there is an implicit 'knock on wood' following any sentence ever posted here.)

06/12/07: Rockies 1, Red Sox 2

Lawyer Larry: "Do you like baseball?"
Jennifer: [flashing Papelbon bracelet] "Yes?"
Lawyer Larry: "Do you want tic--"
Jennifer: "Okay!"
Lawyer Larry: "--kets to tonight's game?"

Yes, yes we did. Bless you, Lawyer Larry, and your thirty-year-old season tickets. These are by far the best seats we've ever had at Fenway. In fact, they're the best seats either of us has ever had to a baseball game, and one of us used to weekend at the Kingdome, back in what the kids no longer call "the day."

Fast-forward a few hours. We've purchased our Pedroia* and Youkilis T-shirts, changed into them in the middle of Yawkey Way, and elbowed our way to seats twenty freakin' rows behind home plate, looking straight down the third base line. This is so unbelievably lucky that we spent much of the game pinching ourselves, and are still braced for the inevitable karmic ass-kicking to come (see also: tonight's game).

We sat down just in time for Tim Wakefield's first pitch. From our truly, truly, truly outrageous vantage point, we had a better view of the famous knuckleball than Jason Varitek ever wants to have.** You know how you always read that it dances? Yeah, it does that.

Caroline: "It is the Shakira of pitches."
Jennifer: "It's sexy, curvy, and it knows how to move."
Caroline: "It makes a man want to speak Spanish."
Jennifer: "..."
Caroline: "Too far with that metaphor?"

Though the score does not indicate as much, the Red Sox actually did have at-bats in the game along with the pitching. You know what's even more fun to watch than a knuckleball? Kevin Youkilis. Youk and his batting stance that makes him look like a maniacal lumberjack. A maniacal lumberjack with an equally maniacal ferret attached to his face. As with the knuckleball, Youk's stance looks cool on NESN but is even more entertaining in three dimensions. Like it or not, it's been the offensive highlight of recent games.

Things we didn't yell at batters, even though we wanted to:
"Yoouuuk, update your bloooog!"
"Dustin isn't slow, he just has tiny little legs!"
"Dougie's going deep tonight!" (Okay, we said it, but we didn't yell it.)

Things we did yell:
At Mike Lowell: "We like you better than Todd Helton!"
At Todd Helton: "We like Mike Lowell better than you!"
At Manny, during an intentional walk: "You don't have to swing at bad pitches, you should only swing at good pitches!"

And then Papelbon happened.

We say "happened" because the boy came on like a force of nature, with the aura of confidence and the thousand-yard, kid-from-Firestarter stare. It's funny how it can be totally apparent that a pitcher has full command--J.Pap's fastballs were like the Concorde to Tim Wakefield's Dodge Dart--and yet that didn't stop us and 37,000 of our newest best friends from holding our breath for all three beautiful, beautiful outs.

Caroline consented to sing along with her namesake song for once***, and Jennifer defeated the jinx her Yankee-fan mother placed upon her by witnessing her first Fenway victory.

In a word (and this is a pretty long post for us to be all "in-a-word" at the end, but welcome to the monkey house): blogworthy.

*We're pretty sure the people at the souvenir store had not even heard of Dustin Pedroia. Caroline hereby claims her T-shirt as the first of its kind, unless someone produces photographic evidence to the contrary, and probably even then.

**Though Jason "O Captain Our Captain" Varitek did come out and play catch with Wakefield between innings while Doug "E. Fresh" Mirabelli suited back up, and, lo, there was much rejoicing. And much of it was Not Safe For Work.

***Curse you, Neil Diamond. One day we will meet in battle. Neither can live while the other survives!