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Orlando Cabrera just cleared the bases to put the Sox ahead 8-3 and a significant portion of the crowd at Angel Stadium sounded quite happy.

It never ceases to amaze me how many Red Sox fans show up at opposing stadiums. That’s gotta drive the home team and fans crazy.

Fun day today. I had an appointment to find out about LASIK vision correction and whether or not I was a viable candidate for the procedure.

Technically, I’m eligible, but the list of likely side effects was pretty sobering: reduced night vision, high probability of needing corrective lenses in the near future, and absolutely no ability to to perform a followup procedure if my vision begins to worsen.

So yes, I really am that blind.

Jason Varitek just took Bartolo Colon deep over the right field fence to tie the game at 3 in the 6th.

When the Sox went down 3-1 in the bottom of the 5th, I really felt that the Sox had to at least tie the game in the 6th before the Angels could get into the killer back-end of the their bullpen… and they did!

I love this team!

Crud. I hate rooting for the Yankees. It’s not right. However… I don’t want the Red Sox to play the Twins in the first round of the playoffs. The concept of two games against Johan Santana in a 5 game series just scares me.

The Yanks beat the Twins today, locking up the AL East Division title for the seventh consecutive season. David Points points out why this isn’t necessarily a bad thing for Sox fans:

Minnesota is now tied with the Angels and Athletics for 2nd best record in the AL. The Twins have losing records against both the Angels and A’s, so the Twins need to sweep the Indians this weekend to have a shot at home field for the first round.

The Angels and A’s are playing this weekend to decide the fourth and final playoff spot in the AL. One team has to take at least 2 of the 3 games, so I’d say the Sox have a decent chance of missing the Twins in the first round.

Personally, I’d rather see the A’s take the West. First, I like the A’s better than the Angels. I think it goes back to a few years ago when the A’s were MLB’s frat house on the diamond. Second, the Red Sox‘ offense has gone through Oakland’s pitching like a hot knife through butter

Engadget:

As expected, Netflix and TiVo are teaming up on a video-on-demand service…

Excellent. Netflix has already signed up Warner Brothers for the trial period. It looks like this thing is really coming together.

A nice article by Bill Simmons about being a Red Sox fan in Boston.

The Red Sox dominate everything. You can’t walk 10 feet without seeing a Sox hat, can’t step into a bar without seeing baseball players on a TV, can’t have a conversation without the topic turning towards the team. The collective mood of the city ebbs and flows with the fortunes of the team, like an oversized college campus, everyone riding the same daily roller coaster. When the Yankees come to town, you can feel it. It’s like an invasion. The Yankees are coming.

This is one of the things I was trying to get across the other day.

After moving into my new apartment, I got around to signing up for Netflix (thanks, Lee!). Then, I hopped online and grabbed a copy of Netflix Freak.

In anticipation of getting Netflix, I’d been skimming their RSS feeds in PulpFiction. I thought they were useful as reminders about which movies were available and which movies were “hot,” but I didn’t think much more about them.

Actually, that’s not completely true. I thought it would be cool if I could drag RSS entries from PulpFiction to Netflix Freak and have them added to my queue. PulpFiction, like NetNewsWire, supports a well documented clipboard format for RSS sources and RSS items, so this type of integration could be possible. I passed this thought along to the folks at The Little App Factory and they said they’d consider it.

Around this same time, first public beta of NetNewsWire 2.0 was released. I’d read some of what Brent Simmons wanted to add to this release and I was intrigued, so I downloaded it and imported my subscriptions from PulpFiction.

After a while, I tried something I’d never previously liked in any news readers — integrated web browsing. Much to my surprise, I liked it. I’d say it meets something like 98% of my browsing needs.

Tonight, it hit me — NetNewsWire has built-in support for Netflix queuing! When an interesting movie pops up in an RSS feed, I simply:

1. hit the Right Arrow to open it in the built-in web browser
2. hit Command-Shift-Left Arrow to switches to the newly created tab (Command-Shift-Right Arrow would work if there was only a single tab opened).
3. click the Add button

The next time NetNewsWire downloads my feeds, the new DVDs show up in my queue. If I want to modify my queue, now I bring up Netflix Freak.

(I realize I could do this in PulpFiction, but like I said, NetNewsWire’s implementation of integrated browsing was the first one that I liked using.)

At first glance, NetNewsWire and Netflix Freak don’t seem to have much in common aside from connecting to the Net. It’s really cool what’s possible thanks to things like WebKit and Web Services.

Now, if I can just figure out how command-clicking works in the NetNewsWire browser, I’ll be real happy

Oh yeah, it’s been 1 year to the day since the Patriots last lost a game. How cool is that?

Something dawned on me when I was working on this post — I’ve lived in three different apartments since the Pats last lost.

I’m not sure if that says more about the Pats or me…

• I certainly enjoyed Saturday and Sunday’s Red Sox – Yankees tilts. I was at Fenway for Saturday’s game and caught Sunday’s from my folks’ place.

  There’s very little like being at Fenway for a Yankee’s game. The Sox have sold out every home game this year, so the atmosphere at Fenway is usually pretty good. It gets cranked up several notches for a Yanks’ game, though. There’s always something going on.

  During the 7th inning, Derek Jeter dropped a throw on a potential double-play. Immediately, the Yankees made a pitching change, bringing in Paul Quantrill. During the pitching change and the subsequent warmup tosses, the crowd was chanting “JE-TER. JE-TER.” I’ve never heard the place so loud for so long.

• Isn’t math fun? The Red Sox magic number to clinch the Wild Card is 2, but a victory of Tampa Bay tonight clinches a playoff spot for the Sox. Huh?!?

  If the Sox win tonight, it sounds like the only team that can pass the Sox is the Anaheim Angels. In doing that, though, the Angels would also have to pass the West-leading Oakland A’s. If that happens, there’s no way for the A’s or the Texas Rangers to overtake the Sox.

• One disappointment over the weekend — Ellis Burks wasn’t able to play.

  When I was in the 4th grade, I had a picture of Burks hanging in my locker. I was too you to understand all the crap he had to deal with being a black ballplayer in Boston. I just thought he was a good ballplayer.

  Burks came back to Boston in the offseason, but his balky knees kept him out of action from mid-April until mid-September. He returned from the disabled list last week and got a hit in his only plate appearance.

  Before the bottom of the 8th inning in Sunday’s game, the Red Sox announced that Burks was taking part in his final game. He came out of the dugout and was greeted by a standing ovation. The fans then spent most 8th inning chanting “We want Ellis!”

  Unfortunately, Burks’ knees once again betrayed him. It was still fun to see one of my favorite ball players from my youth get a proper send off in front of the home crowd.

• I went to 7 Sox games this year. That’s more that I’ve ever been to in a single season. Now, I have tickets to the first two home playoff games. I am so looking forward to that.

• I really hate it when umps over-react. Bronson Arroyo hit Aubrey Huff and Tino Martinez in the top of the 4th. Huff was on a changeup, Martinez a fastball.

  In the bottom of the 4th, Scott Kazmir hit Manny Ramirez. Warnings were issued. On the next pitch, Kazmir hit Kevin Millar. He immediately reacted in disgust at his lack of control.

  The umps threw him out of the game for intentionally throwing at Millar.

  Keep in mind, Kazmir had a no-hitter going at the time.

  The move definitely helped the Sox. Jorge Sosa took over with 1 out in the 4th and the Devil Rays leading 2-0. By the time Sosa left the game with 1 out in the 5th, the Sox were leading 5-2 on homers by Johnny Damon and Manny Ramirez.

  Now, I’m not complaining about the Sox taking the lead. I just can’t stand when stupid umpiring over-reactions change the course of the game.

• We thought we saw one of the Farrelly brother’s on the big screen. I wonder if they were doing more filming for Fever Pitch. I mean, if you’re going to do a movie about an obsessed Red Sox fan and you’re going to film at Fenway, you need footage from at least one Red Sox – Yankees game.

  Gotta get that book, by the way… and yes, I realize the original isn’t about a Sox fan. It’ll give me something to do, though, when I’m recovering from my upcoming oral surgery.

• An ice-skating rink in the Fenway outfield?!? I am so there.

• Nice. Between the time I started this post and the time I finished, the Sox finished off the Devil Rays to clinch to Wild Card.

Michael beat me to the punch on posting this, but it could come in handy: creating Apple Store Permalinks