Joho the Blog
An Entry from the Archives

No, but it is the first time that winning a world series would prove the existence of God. I was converted to Redsoxism in the backyard of a friend's house at the age of 5, while playing card flips. He took the Yanks, and I took the Sox. Money Can't Buy Me Love was on the radio. Ever since then, my existence has been a living hell. Now, may destiny and fate break the chains!

Hey, you're not alone, but give it a day or so more and you'll be like my wife, who hadn't watched a single game all year but who now can see just the back of some guy warming up in the bullpen and say "oh, they're getting Embree ready."

To answer your simple question: A manager can put in a pinch runner anytime; of course, that means the person being run for is out of the game.

I'm an old Mets fan (no more, though, Go Sox!), so I wonder if there's a rough comparison to the 1960's era Mets and 1969. The main difference, of course, is that everybody expected the Mets to lose 100 games a year, so nobody ever got heartbroken at the end of a season, whereas the Sox, well, you know. But still, after '69, the Mets were never again a bunch of lovable losers; they became "normal."

To expand a little on the answer to your pinch-running question, baseball is different from most sports in its view of substitutions. While in other sports it's possible for a player to come out of the game, rest a while and then go back out to play, in baseball this is forbidden; once a player has been taken out of the game, he's out of the game. This adds an element of strategy to the use of substitutions, since teams have a fixed number of players available (in postseason play, the roster size is set at forty players) and each one you use takes a another out for the rest of the game.

You'll see this become a factor in close games and especially in games which go to extra innings; each team has to try to get the advantage while rationing available players for use later in the game. And if you run out of pitchers, well... it's not unheard-of for position players to end up pitching in the late innings of some games.

As for the Red Sox... I don't think anything could make them normal. And as a lifelong Cubs fan, I think the Sox faithful need to learn the meaning of the word "patience."

Somehow I dont think winning the world series has anything to do with God.

What constitues a fan a member of the RSN?
Are there requirements one has to mee?

In answer to the original question, no. Mainly because the Sox are anything BUT normal, even after winning the World Series. We can thank Johnny Damon, Kevin Millar, David Ortiz, and several others for that!

-MH