It was a night to remember at Professor Thom's on Friday night as the bar was packed with Red Sox fans (at least 100, probably more) as the 2007 World Series Championship Trophy made an appearance in New York, and it was a huge hit.

The Trophy spent most of the day at three different stops in Connecticut: New Haven, Waterbury and Hartford. The Thom's viewing was scheduled for 7 PM, but the rally in Hartford did not end until after 5 PM, so it looked like it might not happen for a while. (We put on the World Series DVD on the big screens to entertain the fans while they waited.

As promised, some more pics from last Friday night, when the Trophy made its Professor Thom's debut.

The above picture is of me, as I'm being filmed by the folks from Bombo Films. On the screen behind me is the 2007 World Series DVD, and a silhouette of Terry Francona. There just seems something rather "ghostly" about it.

Manny Ramirez took another giant step in his storied career toward his inevitable inclusion one day with the baseball immortals at Cooperstown with a 7th inning home run off of the Orioles' Chad Bradford for his career home run number 500 in the Red Sox 6-3 win at Camden Yards on Saturday night.

And I missed the whole thing, as I picked last night as the evening to check out the new Indiana Jones movie with a dear friend of mine in Brooklyn. (BTW, it's a good movie. Rather hokey in parts, but still quite enjoyable.) After the film I got a text message from my sister, who was there with her husband and my two nephews. That's how I found out about Manny making history.

So Al Gore won the Nobel Peace Prize. Good for him. My favorite quote on the subject, from Talking Points Memo:

"You know, with Al Gore winning the Nobel Prize for his environmental activism, it really makes the Nader voters look prescient, doesn't it?"

For serious.

Tessie - The Dropkick Murphys
Dirty Water - The Standells

“NO PODÍA creer que estuviese haciendo aquello”, recuerda Lee. Estaba paseando en una bicicleta cuando, sorprendida, vio a Chris, su mejor amigo, con un grupo de jóvenes."Chris estaba fumando un cigarrillo y bebiendo".

Lee se quedó atónita, pues eso iba en contra las buenas costumbres de la familia. Chris dejó caer sigilosamente el cigarrillo y lo apagó con el pie, pero eso no engañó a Lee.

The Red Sox opened their four game jaunt in Japan with a win on Saturday afternoon (Friday night/Saturday morning in the Eastern US) with a 6-5 win over the Hanshin Tigers in the Tokyo Dome. A raucous, sellout crowd saw the Sox score four runs in the first on a David Ortiz home run and a three-run shot by J.D. Drew.

The Tigers are very similar to the Red Sox in that they have probably the most knowlegeable, rabid and passionate fan base of any team in Japan. They follow the team all over Japan, and sometimes outnumber the home team's fans. (Sound familiar?)

Clay Buchholz once again struggled this spring, giving up four runs to Hanshin in the second. In all four starts he's gotten knocked around. Granted, you can't get too high or low when it comes to spring training, but you have to wonder if Buchholz could probably do with some more time in AAA.

It was truly a night to remember as a large crowd turned out at Professor Thom's to see if the New England Patriots could indeed run the entire NFL regular season table and defeat the New York Giants.

What they witnessed was simply one of the best nights in NFL history, and one of the best games of the 2007 season.
And the champagne can now stay on ice in Miami. Uncorked.

Yesterday's New York Daily News had an article by Mike Barnicle, a Boston-born and bred columnist, about the recent domination of sports by the New England teams called "Boston getting used to idea of beating New York following so much heartbreak. " The basis of the article was the new attitude of New England sports fans, and how that section of the country is now the center of the American sports world right now. Here's the article:

http://www.nydailynews.com/sports/2007/12/28/2007-12-28_boston_getting_used_to_idea_of_beating_n-2.html

It was a pleasure to see baseball return in 2008 as a nice crowd gathered at Professor Thom's last night to watch the Red Sox defeat the Minnesota Twins in Ft. Myers, 8-3. Kevin Youkilis, Jason Varitek and George Kottaras all hit home runs and Daisuke Matsuzaka pitched two scoreless innings.

But the important thing was on a cold night in late February, we were all together watching baseball again. More than one person said to me they were so happy to see it back, as was I. In the middle of the game, it began snowing.

Snow and Red Sox baseball. Quite the odd combo.

The talk was varied last night. Can the Red Sox repeat? Will Daisuke win 20? Will Beckett win the Cy Young Award this year? Will the Red Sox trade Coco? And of course, what an asshole Hank Steinbrenner is. (Here he is pictured before giving yet another colorful interview last night.)

Spring is officially 19 days away. But it was back at Thom's last night. Even if it was snowing outside.

Time out folks: Chris Webber's career has come full circle. C-Webb signed with Golden State today, and could be back in action as early as next Thursday. The Warriors are betting this comeback pans out better than Penny Hardaway, Scottie Pippen, Reggie Miller and Allan Houston. I'm just hoping this will lead to less TV time for Austin Croshere.

The eight game suspension handed out to Chris Pronger over his stomp of Ryan Kesler, isn’t being hailed as the work of an enlightened judiciary.

While Brian Burke is probably content with the number of games that Pronger will have to sit out, other than Pronger himself, Burke would be the only one who thinks justice has been served.

For the most part, the commentators, editorialists, reporters and even one or two players (especially one particular player) all seem to think that the punishment was a good number of games short of a full and proper sentence.

This coming Friday night at about 7 PM, Professor Thom's will have a special visitor grace its premises. The 2007 World Series Championship Trophy will be stopping by for a viewing for all Red Sox fans to enjoy.

I've been always been fascinated by how people out there in Cyberspace find my blog. Many find it through Google and Google Image searches. And I always want to know where people are coming from.

It seems as though they are coming from the four corners of the world to my blog. That's the beauty of the Internet. A search, some so far off the beaten track lands people here. I get a lot of Red Sox fans naturally, but I get a lot of "Mighty Quinn" searches, all kinds of trivia searches, and also many on the other subjects I write about, such as 9/11, The Twilight Zone and autism.
People from just about every major country of the world have come here at one time or another. The UK continues to be the foreign land that most are from. But I've seen countries like Mongolia, Benin, Fiji, Estonia and Bolivia pop up as well. I'd seen Iraq, Iran, Syria and just about every other Middle Eastern hot spot here, too. A few months back I realized that there were three major countries I had never seen come up on Site Meter: Afghanistan, Cuba and North Korea.

Five in a row and counting, usually when you hear that news coming out of Detroit it's about another string of Red wing victories.

But things are a little different all of a sudden in the Motor City, as the Red Wings continue to struggle through the mid way portion of the season.

Friday night they dropped their fifth straight game and once again provided the spectacle of having Chris Osgoode chased from a game, as the Columbus Blue Jackets easily dismissed the Wings at the Wings own Joe Louis Arena.

Columbus was off to a fast start and never looked back on their way to the 5-1 victory, highlightin a Detroit team that is suddenly a little off their game plan, giving away too much of the ice to the opposition and failing to provide much in the way of defence in their own end.

The Wings have been frustrating their coach Mike Babcock for most of the last couple of weeks their slide, but never more so than Friday, providing for what Babcock called their worst effort yet.

You've got to love this. In response to Hank Steinbrenner (aka Mr. Hankee, Hankenstein, etc.) and his utterly dimwitted remarks about the Red Sox and their fans, Red Sox owner John Henry came back with what I believe to be the perfect response to it.

He's adopted Hankenstein as a member of Red Sox Nation.

Henry sent him a membership card "giving him access to an array of options including our newsletter, bumper stickers, pins, Green Monster seats and a hat personally autographed by David Ortiz."

More from the Boston Herald: http://www.bostonherald.com/sports/baseball/red_sox/view.bg?articleid=1077223&srvc=redsox&position=1

Perfect. It makes the Baby Boss look even more like the total schmuck that he is.

Here's an important message for all of Professor Thom's Trivia Night regulars.

We will have changes to the nights we will be doing it because of Celtics going to the NBA Finals. Trivia Night will be happening this Tuesday night, June 3rd, at the normal time of 9 PM.

But the week after that, we will be moving our Trivia Night back to Wednesday, June 11th at 8:30 PM, due to the fact that Game 3 of the NBA Finals will be happening the previous Tuesday night.

Now, stay with me, this might sound complicated. The week after that, we will be having a special Monday night edition of Trivia, on June 16th at 8:30 PM, if the NBA Finals does not conclude by Sunday, June 15th (that is Game 5). Game 6 of the NBA Finals is scheduled for Tuesday night, June 17th. (Unfortunately, I can't be at Thom's that Wednesday due to a prior commitment.) If the finals have finished by that Sunday, we will have the normal Tuesday night edition at the normal time.

Chris from Fans4Writers.com sent me this news. -JAOur messages went up at 9 a.m. -- from what I understand, there were more winds than the Skytypers liked and they ended up repeating two of the messages to be on the safe side, which we appreciated. The messages were:

FANS4WRITERS.COM
HELP A WRITER SCORE
SAVE YOUR SHOWS
SUPPORT THE WRITERS

Didn't get any news coverage at the time that I'm

Once again, the Red Sox offense on Saturday night inspired the immortal words of that noted philosopher Harry Doyle: "What, just one goddamn hit?"

Yep, that was all the Red Sox offense could muster against Justin Duchscherer and the Oakland A's, as they dropped yet another game on the road, and the second to Oakland in two nights, 3-0.

It was simply an awful performance by the Red Sox offense. They seemed to be popping everything up, and didn't get a man to second base all night. They didn't get a baserunner until the sixth, when Jason Varitek was hit by a pitch. David Ortiz broke up the no-hitter in the 7th with one out with a clean single to center. But he was the last Red Sox player to reach base.

Take nothing away from Duchscherer. He was simply terrific, retiring the first 15 men he faced, and striking out four in eight innings. Josh Beckett was very good, and allowed just 2 runs on 7 hits in 7 innings. But Manny Delcarmen was awful again, and basically put the game out of reach for the Sox by allowing Oakland another run in the 8th.

And it was another lousy performance by the Red Sox on the road, where they are now a miserable 10-16. They have been simply murder at home, but underwhelming away from Fenway. They have now dropped the first two games of an 10-game trip.

The Official 2007 MLB World Series Film will be released on November 27. I'm sure like the 2004 DVD (pictured), it will fly off the shelves.

This time it will be narrated by noted Red Sox fan Matt Damon. Last time it was done by Denis Leary, who I thought did a nice job with it.

I would take a wild guess that I won't be in this DVD, as I was in the 2004 film, as the Red Sox were about to win the World Series. A group of friends of mine and myself were shown celebrating as the win took place. I don't remember seeing any MLB camera crews in Professor Thom's during the postseason, but who knows...

For all my fellow readers out there I want to apologize that it took me until the middle of April to actually start talking about. You see to me the baseball season doesn't begin until the Final Four is over so last Monday was actually the first time I had even paid any attention to baseball. However, after the week I have used to get caught up on whats happening in the baseball world I have seen that there has been one reoccurring theme throughout the early going, its all backwards through the first few games.

The Good Surprises

The Red Sox got a splendid performance from Bartolo Colon (pictured) in his second Red Sox start. He sure looked like the Colon of old as he went seven innings and allowed just one run. He was consistently hitting 95 and 96 MPH on the radar gun. But for a long time last night it looked like he might come away with nothing.

As for the third game in the last four, the Red Sox lineup was retired in order for the first three innings without a man reaching base. It reached 11 straight last night before David Ortiz put an end to it by taking Felix Hernandez over the centerfield fence to give the Red Sox a 1-0 lead.

But the rest of the offense was silent through the seventh. Seattle tied the game at 1-1, and it had the makings of another game the Sox would lose without getting more runs. The Mariners had opportunities to score more, but couldn't cash them in, thanks to Colon.

Our favorite reporter over at North County Times Mr. Chris Bagley has an article out this weekend on consumer spending as related to the housing slow down.

Chris figured out one way to track this is to visit the local BMW dealership. He reports that sales of BMWs are off by 5-10% at Brecht BMW in Escondido. This is especially significant since total U.S. BMW sales actually increased by 7.1%.

Chris also interviewed Marney Cox, chief economist for the San Diego Association of Governments. According to her, per every $100,000 increase in home value, there's an average increase of $6,000 in consumer spending.

Here is a clip from Paul "Fitzy" Fitzgerald, that noted Boston fan, who gives his take on the second Red Sox World Series championship in four years, from last month. Fitzy is actually the comedian Nick Stevens, who I've actually had the pleasure of meeting a number of times at Professor Thom's. Nick and I even did a few innings of "Kayreoke" together during the 2007 season. He's really a talented guy who does standup comedy and has made many appearances at places like VH1.

This is a list of my Book Reviews from 2007. If any of these links don't take you to where they should please let me know.

The Long Stretch by Linden MacIntyre
Chocolat by Joanne Harris
Cotillion by Georgette Heyer
Lord John and the Brotherhood of the Blade by Diana Gabaldon
Secondhand Smoke by Karen E Olson
Dead of the Day by Karen E Olson

Just a quickie here to let you know that I'm busting out the Fresca and Wheatables, planting my sorry you-know-what on the Official TATB Couch for three or so hours, and live blogging tonight's Pats-Bengals game. So be sure to stop by this address for a visit or two or 10 as you enjoy the Monday Night festivities. I can assure you that ol' Horst here will not be mentioned at any point (dude looks like a party, doesn't he?) but beyond that I'm not making any promises.

Couple of other items that crossed my filbert nut of a mind on the commute home tonight:

The Red Sox won their second straight game over Tampa Bay, 5-1 on Wednesday night, as Josh Beckett won his sixth straight game, and the Red Sox took over first from their new archrivals.

J.D. Drew continued his hot hitting and clutch fielding in the absence of David Ortiz, as he drove in another big run and made another fine running catch in the first, as he did on Tuesday night.

The bullpen did another fine job over the final three innings, as Manny Delcarmen, Hideki Okajima and Craig Hansen pitched scoreless ball to get Beckett the win. It was especially important that Okajima have a good outing, as his last one was one of his worst ever in a Red Sox uniform. He allowed a hit to the first batter, then retired the side after that. And Hansen continued his fine pitching as well, and it allowed Terry Francona to avoid using Jonathan Papelbon.

Other Chris at Stuff as Dreams are Made On had a great idea. Our blogging friend Bookfool (Nancy) is unable to keep up her blog and her Wahoo Wednesdays because of some health issues within her family. So Chris decided to Wahoo Wednesday himself in her honour.

Gourdie says Wahoo!

Wahoo for Bookfool! Hope she's able to Wahoo soon herself. We all miss her.

Awesome post from Chris Brogan today:

I believe we’re going to shift back to thinking customer service and community management are the core and not the fringe. I believe we’re going to move our communications practices back in-house for lots of what is currently pushed out to agencies and organizations. I believe that integrity, reputation, skills, and personality are going to trump some of our previous measures of professional ability. I believe the web and our devices will continue to move into tighter friendships, and that we will continue to train our devices to interpret more of the world around us on our behalf.

Read the rest here.