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It’s always nice when you go to make a feature request and you find that, not only has somebody else made the same request, but the developer has already committed to said feature in the next release.

NetNewsWire — Duplicate Tag Detection

When my brother and I left Fenway Park Saturday night, the obituary for the 2004 Red Sox was already forming in my head. Emotionally, I was done. There had been good time, there had been bad times, and I was completely drained.

By the time Sunday’s game rolled around, I was at peace. I was ready to enjoy the game, win, lose, or draw. I can honestly saw I enjoyed the process of Game 4 more than any of the previous ALCS match-ups. I think I would have felt that way had David Ortiz not launched Paul Quantrill’s 12th inning pitch into the Red Sox‘ bullpen.

When the Sox took a 2-0 lead over the Yankees in Game 5, I told myself I wasn’t going to get irrationally exuberant.

When the Sox came back to tie the game at 4 in the 8th, I appreciated it.

When Fox showed Tim Wakefield, Derek Lowe, and Curt Schilling walking towards the bullpen, I swear I wasn’t getting goose-bumps. It must’ve been a draft.

During the extra innings, I looked down and saw I’d taken off my watch and was clutching it in my fist, the metal arm band digging into my skin. At that point, I realized the Sox had managed to pull me back in. Damn it all.

If the Sox manage to pull this thing out, David Ortiz has to be the ALCS MVP. He’s won the last two games with walk-off hits and he started the 8th inning rally with a massive homer off the Volvo sign behind the Green Monster (mmm, dented Volvo).

The Sox bullpen has been absolutely superb the last two nights. They threw at least 14 innings of scoreless relief (I don’t remember how many outs there were after Mike Timlin gave up his final run). Tim Wakefield pitched like it was the 2003 ALCS (minus the annoying walk-off homer, of course). Bronson Arroyo pitched like he did in the ALDS, as opposed to his performance in his aborted Game 3 outing.

It’s almost unfair that Mariano Rivera gets charged with a blown save for work in the 8th inning. He came into a nearly untenable situation, with runners on 1st and 3rd with nobody out. According to Tango Tiger’s Run Expectancy Matrix, the average team gives up 1.9 runs per inning when faced with that situation. Maybe the number’s don’t completely work, since the Sox already scored one run on Ortiz’ homer off Tom Gordon, but Rivera still held the Sox to 1 run on a Jason Varitek sac fly.

However, he gave up the lead, so he gets a blown save. I believe the Fox graphic said that was the first time Rivera had ever blown back to back saves in the playoffs.

Hell, now I’m psyched for Game 6. Schilling versus Jon Lieber. Bring it on.

Oh yeah, there’s one other reason for Irrational Exuberance — Tony Clark’s ground-rule double in the 9th inning that prevented Ruben Sierra from scoring. Now, I don’t believe in curses, but the Red Sox never get that bounce! I mean, if that ball’s an inch lower, it stays in the field of play and Sierra scores easily. Instead, Sierra’s sent back to third and Keith Foulke slams the door.

I hate to say it, but that was a Yankees Bounce. I’d say that was Jeffrey Maier snatching the ball away from Tony Tarasco or Chuck Knoblauch missing Jose Offerman by about a foot with the tag and still getting the call, except the rules were interpreted correctly this time.

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Full disclosure time — if you signup for Dreamhost through any of these links, I get a referral bonus.

Oh yeah, the Yankees knocked off the Twins 6-5 in 11 innings.

Sox – Yanks ALCS. Better batten down the hatches.

I’ve been trying out MarsEdit and I like it. I prefer its posting interface to MoveableType’s web interface. However, I still like to compose my entries in BBEdit and save a local copy on my hard drive.

This is doable using MarsEdit’s “Edit with BBEdit” command, but it’s a little cumbersome; the best solution I came up with was editing the post in BBEdit, “saving” the text back to MarsEdit, then pasting the text from MarsEdit into a new BBEdit document.

Like I said, cumbersome.

My solution was to write an AppleScript that would create a new MarsEdit post from the frontmost BBEdit window.

on run
    tell application "BBEdit"
        try
            set active_doc to active document of text window 1
            set doc_title to (name of active_doc)

            -- check to see if the file's been saved
            -- if not, check if the document has a custom name.
            if (active_doc is not on disk) then
                if (doc_title starts with "untitled text") then
                    set doc_title to ""
                end if
            end if
        on error
            beep
            return
        end try
    end tell

    my CreateNewPost((text of active_doc), doc_title)
end run

on CreateNewPost(post_text, post_title)
    tell application "MarsEdit"
        set post_window to make new post window
        tell post_window
            set the body to post_text
            set the title to post_title
        end tell
    end tell

    activate
end CreateNewPost

The body of the new posting comes from the text of the BBEdit window and the title comes from the name of the document. If the document doesn’t exist on disk, the script checks to see if the document has a customized name.

The check for a customized name is a little simplistic — it checks if the document name starts with “untitled text.” I couldn’t really think of anything better to try, but I’m open to suggestions.

If I were really industrious, I’d create a script that used the External Weblog Editor Interface so it would work with multiple editors. However, I’m lazy and I just wanted something that would work for my situation.

This has been tested under BBEdit 8.0. I don’t know if it’ll work as written for older versions. If it doesn’t, it should only take minor modifications to fix any issues or make it work with TextWrangler.

Congrats to Chris and Ellen on the birth of Jordan Louise Contard. All home annd doing great.

Now that I’ve proposed the theory of certain managers buying into the hype from the media and the fans, I’ve got to wonder if Ron Gardenhire just joined the club.

After getting blasted for leaving Joe Nathan in to pitch a third inning of relief in Game 2, Gardenhire elected to have Juan Rincon start the 8th inning of 5-1 game.

Bernie Willaims drove in the first run of the inning to make the score 5-2. Then, Ruben Sierra homered to tie the game.

Before the Sierra homer, the Fox broadcast cut to a shot of Nathan warming up in the pen. John Olerud, who followed Sierra to the plate, doubled, and Nathan was brought into the game.

The Twins‘ season is on the line. The Yankees were getting to Rincon. Why wasn’t their best reliever in the game as soon as the tying run reached base? Was Gardenhire smarting from the criticism he received for leaving Nathan in for the third inning in Game 2?

For what it’s worth, I think Gardenhire made the proper decision in sending Nathan out for the third inning of relief on Wednesday. You have to go with your best. The mistake was not lifting Nathan as soon as it was clear that he was scuffling. Likewise, the mistake tonight was not lifting Rincon as soon as it was clear the he was scuffling.

The Fox announcers just compared a young Ruben Sierra to Vladimir Guerrero. Moments after making the comparison, Sierra hit a game-tying homer, just like Guerrero in yesterday’s Sox/Angels game.

Funny how life works sometimes, isn’t it?

Playoff baseball at Fenway Park is a completely different animal than anything I’ve ever experienced. When you’re in the crowd, the highs come higher and faster, the lows come lower and harder. That’s the only way I can think to explain it.

When David Ortiz sent Jarrod Washburn’s first and final pitch of the evening over the Green Monster to send the Red Sox to the ALCS, Fenway Park absolutely exploded. All the stress that had been building since Vladimir Guerrero’s 7th inning Grand Slam came bursting out in a celebration that was unlike anything I’d experienced. We hung around for a good 15 minutes or so just clapping and screaming.

This was a far cry from the reaction when Guerrero’s shot left the park. I saw the ball in the air. I saw Trot Nixon, who was tracking the ball, start to slow. I looked for Johnny Damon and saw him coming to a stop. I saw the ball clearing the fence. I turned around, put my head against the wall, and said some things I really shouldn’t have said (after all, there were small children at the park). I’ve had bad reactions to plays that have gone against the Red Sox, but I’ve never reacted that poorly to a single play (not even Aaron Boone’s homer in last year’s ALCS). I was so sucked into the Fenway environment that everything was that much more important.

For 6+ innings, Bronson Arroyo showed a national audience why he was pitching Game 3 of a playoff series and Derek Lowe was sitting in the bullpen, waiting for the phone to ring.

Arroyo pitched brilliantly, striking out seven while allowing only two runs. The first of those runs was a mammoth home run by Troy Glaus, the second was a runner who scored on a Mike Timlin walk after Arroyo was was lifted from the game.

When I watch Arroyo pitch, it amazes me to think that he’s being paid less than 10% of what the Red Sox presumed 5th, Byung-Hyun Kim, was paid to spend most of the year at Pawtucket.

The meat of the Angels bullpen finally showed up last night, with Brendan Donnely throwing 2 1/3 shutout innings and Francisco Rogriguez dominated for another 2 2/3 innings. Then Mike Scioscia decided to “manage” and bring in the left-handed Jarrod Washburn to face David Ortiz with a man on first and two down.

Meanwhile, Troy Percival was still in the Angels bullpen. The same Troy Percival who saved 33 games during the regular season. The same Troy Percival who hadn’t yet appeared in the playoffs.

This was after Mike Scioscia said that Anaheim didn’t have any left-handed relievers on the roster because there was nobody available that he liked better than his all-right-handed staff.

Last year, I told people I thought Grady Little bought into the hype when he sent Tim Wakefield in to pitch relief against the Yankees. The Sox bullpen wasn’t particularly taxed and they still had several power arms available. However, the media had been badgering Grady about whether Wakefield would pitch in relief against the Yankees since he’d been so dominant in his two starts.

This year, Scioscia got a number of questions about not having a left hander in the pen. When the season was on the line, he bought into the hype. Instead of going with his best available pitcher, Scioscia went with his left-handed Game 1 started. One pitch later, the Sox were celebrating and the Angels were trudging home.

I snapped a roll of photos at the game and I’m really curious to see if they came out. I should pick them up on Wednesday and I’ll try to scan them in shortly after that.

The Red Sox are heading back to Boston with a 2-0 lead over the Angels after tonight’s 8-3 beat down.

Pedro Martinez pitched a great game, allowing 3 runs over 7 innings. The Anaheim bullpen, which was supposed to be an area of strength, gave up 5 runs over the final three innings, all earned. Francisco Rodriguez, the 2002 World Series hero, gave up the game winning run; Johnny Damon scored on a Manny Ramirez sacrifice fly

Conversely, Mike Timlin, Mike Myers, and Keith Foulke combined to pitch 3 shutout innings after Pedro left the game.

This series isn’t over, not by a long shot. Last year, the Red Sox came back to Boston down 0-2 to the A’s and ran off 3 straight victories to advance to the ALCS. That being said, I expect one of the flights back to Boston will be a lot more enjoyable than the other.