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According to many fair-weather Red Sox fans, the loss of the first game may spell doom for the Boston team.

Out in the lost wilds of Texas, where longhorns are periodically turned into prime beef, the Red Sox were succulent morsels for the Texas Rangers.

Rounded up like the usual suspects, the team that only a week ago had fans humming 100 wins this season began to sink like the sun after a hot day into the Western sky.

Those who had picked Jon Lester to win the Cy Young Award questioned their folly as he gave up three home runs in his five innings of toil.  He didn’t pitch badly in a losing cause. He simply mislaid his pitches like Easter eggs.

Carl Crawford, savior from the Grapefruit ball clubs of Florida, began to look like another big gun brought in years ago. Alas, Houston home run king Roman Mejias never quite turned into the home-run hitting outfielder that the Sox had hoped for in 1963.

Jarrod Saltalamacchia, whose name is the longest for a Sox catcher since Pepper Jim Pagliaroni, lost track of his called pitches and began calling time out.

On a positive note, San Diego native Adrian Gonzalez began to look like San Diego native Ted Williams. Alas, Ted played on some fairly poor teams over the years.

David Ortiz slammed a late inning home run to tie the game, and it almost seemed like a stampede of Red Sox might steer the Texas team in the direction of defeat.

Alas, something was rotten in the dugout of the Red Sox.

Had my ears heard correctly, was Fat Albert warming up in the Red Sox bullpen?

No, it was Matt Albers. Phew, that was close.

Instead, the new Mighty Casey came to the mound, but alas he did not strike out the opponents, but only himself. Daniel Bard met the lions and they ate him up in a big gulp.

Cheer up, Sox fans. This losing streak cannot go much longer than 162 losses in a row.  It almost makes you yearn for the good old days of spring training. They never lost more than 10 in a row back then.

Blame it on April Fools.

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Every year the Mariners come out with a new set of five or six commercials in which they feature their most exciting players.  This year we got to meet Larry Bernandez and watch Ichiro hit tic-tacs.  The marketing team always comes up with something pretty clever.

Here’s a look at some of the best:

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Ash sucks.  Bleacher Report.  Please delete this article.  And the Mets. 

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Out-of-court settlements are usually the fate of frivolous lawsuits.

Today, the lawyers for two tempests in a teapot settled their dispute about as amicably as warriors in the longstanding baseball feud involving the Red Sox and Yankees could.

Yes, Jay-Z of rap music and friendly fan of publicity had sued Big Papi of the friendly Red Sox Nation for copyright infringement.

Skeptics hinted that Jay-Z, a lifelong New York Yankees fan and among the most solvent of pinstripe patrons, had chosen a battle with Ortiz deliberately.

Ortiz, recently accepted as a naturalized American citizen, keeps his roots in the Dominican Republic fueled with business dealings. He had opened a restaurant in his native land and chose to call it the Forty-Forty Club.  Alas, the name 40/40 had already been legally adopted by the paternal Jay-Z for his own American enterprise purposes.

Jay-Z may have been upset by the scandal when a construction worker on the new Yankee Stadium had cursed the home team by burying a jersey with Ortiz’s number in concrete back in 2008. A bigger dig ensued than at the Boston tunnel scandal.  Conducting an excavation ceremony at the new Yankee home, Ortiz’s Red Sox shirt caused delays and uproar as the jackhammers released the evil spirit.

Did this lead to the dispute between Ortiz and Jay-Z in April of 2010?

Big Papi Ortiz, an occasional patron of the Jay-Z nightclub in New York City, had been inspired to flatter the singer by imitating Jay-Z’s business acumen.

Alas, Yankee fans are never flattered when it comes to money. Jay-Z took Ortiz to court immediately when he tried to open his restaurant, namely based on a 40 home runs and 40 doubles he achieved in 2004 as his ideal.

Who owned the right to the name? Which event came first? Was it the chicken or the egg? The Federal court judge suggested both parties ought to stop wasting the time of the busy judicial system and have their high-paid mouthpieces come up with a solution.

They did so, announcing on March 28th that something akin to principles had allowed both sides to agree to sign off on the latest skirmish in the Yankee-Red Sox feud.

We expect Big Papi may not bring his dance shoes to the emporium of Jay-Z any time soon, and Jay-Z will likely not travel to the DR to eat up a storm off the menu at the Ortiz eatery.

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The countdown is on to Opening Day. Expectations have never been higher in the entire 121 year history of Philadelphia professional baseball. Behind four of the top pitchers in the game in Roy Halladay, Cliff Lee, Roy Oswalt and Cole Hamels and a lineup that features two former MVPs and perennial and potential All-Stars.

The Phightin’s have won four straight National League East titles. They have appeared in three straight National League Championship Series, (NLCS) winning two of them, had the best record in the entire Major Leagues last year at 97-65 and won the World Series in 2008.

The most anticipated season ever is set to begin, and Philadelphia finally has the team to beat. We are now (finally) the Yankees (WITHOUT selling our souls to the devil.)

Then why has the attitude in Philadelphia gone from excited to anxiety? Whether it is the injuries to Dominick Brown or Brad Lidge or the potential ineffectiveness of the lineup, Philly Nation’s confidence has grown into a legitimate concern.

Then there is Chase Utley, one of the most beloved Philadelphia athletes of all time. He has been battling patellar tendinitis, chondromalacia and bone inflammation in his right knee and he will begin the season on the DL. Many pundits believe that this is a smoke-screen and he will require surgery that may sideline him for the majority of the year.

Utley said on Monday, “Over the past few weeks I think we have made some progress for obviously the good and we’re going to stay on top of what we’ve been doing. So I’m optimistic at this point and we’ll continue to do what we’re doing and go from there.”

Utley said he has consulted with several doctors, and the opinions they have offered have varied. This is extremely good news for fans, as they want Utley to exhaust every possible option he has in the hope of their best player being able to be a part of what could be a historic season.

The best thing about all of this is that many of the doctors suggestions were in the best interest of Philadelphia and its fans.

Here is what the top doctors in America have suggested that Utley should do for his knee.

1. “Chase, I would recommend you have the leg amputated and play second base with a peg-leg, thus increasing your longevity and the likelihood of taking out middle-infielders on potential double play balls.”

2. “Chase, you should take some of Joe Blanton’s excess (you know) and insert it right into the knee cap to increase comfort.”

3. “Chase should borrow Carlos Ruiz’s knee-savers, because he can wear them in the field as well as at the plate. They will not only help him “save” his knees, but also may become a fashion trend in baseball.”

4. “Chase actually should play second base while sitting on a stool, as he has done in Spring Training.

5. “Chase, the Phillies should invest in a Tempurpedic mattress for you to lay on at second base during games started by Halladay, Hamels, Oswalt or Lee as they will continue to dominate as they always have. Leg elevation would be best as well.”  

The same doctor called back this morning and was reported as saying:

6. “Upon further review Chase, the mattress idea would work for Blanton as well. You should be as comfortable as possible watching balls sail over the fence.”

7. “Chase, the peg-leg idea is the way to go as it can double as a leg and a baseball bat.”

8. “Do whatever Jamie Moyer is doing.”

9. “Stop crying, Philadelphia loves warriors.”

10. “Retire and let Brian Dawkins play second base, as he has been tweeting daily about his desire  to return to Philly.”

There you have it folks, some of the best doctors in America when it comes to knees and their suggestions for how Utley’s injury should be handled.

Soon to come, Joe Blanton and two dozen donuts are rumored to be on the move to the Yankees for a danish to be named later.

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With the start of another season of major league baseball just around the corner, teams are making their final preparations, ensuring their opening day game is one that fans will remember.

Part of the opening day festivities is getting just the right person to throw out the ceremonial first pitch.  Sounds like a simple task right?  Guess again. 

Here are celebrity “first pitcher” performances that you will definitely remember.

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If you want to know why the hobgoblins of 1989’s Field of Dreams refused to allow Ty Cobb to play ball on their ghostly field, you have only to re-watch the classic 1994 movie Cobb, starring the inimitable Tommy Lee Jones.

Alas, one was the lovely, tear-jerking movie that men loved to bawl about. The other was an antidote to sugarcoated cotton candy about life and death that Field of Dreams provided.

Cobb set many records as a player. In the film written and directed by Ron Shelton and based on Al Stump’s famous biography of the baseball anti-hero, Cobb manages to set a yardstick of records that cannot be touched by “the children who play baseball nowadays,” as Cobb states in the movie.

If you are ready to throw Barry Bonds to Michael Vick’s dogs, you ought to consider Cobb. Why hasn’t Pete Rose invoked the name? He may be afraid of the demonic spirits that would attach themselves to his already bad luck streak.

Yes, folks, Ty Cobb managed to crack the original top-10 list of record-setters.  In the Ron Shelton movie version of his life, the star of the Detroit Tigers breaks every one of the Ten Commandments. And, that is no easy feat.

Here they are:

X.  Bearing false witness is lying under oath. Here he beat Barry Bonds by a mile. He allegedly lied about the Black Sox scandal, setting up the baseball commissioner with the threat of blowing the lid of baseball fixes if the league pursued the idea of prosecuting him. 

IX. Oh, he coveted lots of things, but usually found a way to achieve them. One he detested was Babe Ruth’s home runs. “I’d hit those things if I had to,” he reports in the film.

VIII.  He not only coveted many wives and girlfriends, but he managed to bed Lolita Davidovitch in one racy scene. Marriage was not a sacrament to Cobb.

VII. Not only did he beat his wife in this film, his litany of being unfaithful drove her to seek divorce finally for his adultery.

VI.  Let’s face it. Any man who sets the record for stealing bases, and especially home, surely squeaks by with breaking this rule.

V. Did Cobb kill a person, committing murder? According to Shelton’s screenplay, he pistol-whipped a man to death in a back alley.

IV. Honoring his parents was undermined by his contempt for his mother. It may have resulted in Cobb being the trigger man in the bizarre and unsolved murder of his father. Someone in the old family home used a shotgun to dispatch the man.

III. Cursing at God is such a common sin, that some may find it hard to condemn it, but when Cobb curses God for making him an old drug addict, this is a piece of work in the history of curses.

II.  Back in the early days of baseball, many cities and town felt playing baseball on Sunday was a sacrilege. Of course, Cobb had no problems with a professional game (especially with all that money involved).

I. Cobb probably had a few false gods up his uniform sleeve. He put baseball ahead of all else, and his records were most important of all. Yet, in the years subsequent to his playing ball, he made tons of money playing ball in the stock market.  In his mind, everything paled next to the almighty dollar.

Perhaps some of these sins were a stretch even for Cobb, but the fact is the allegations against him make the crimes of Bonds, Vick, Rose and hundreds of others, seem like minor ethical lapses of judgment.

Next time you are ready to cast a stone at the latest folly of a modern athlete, you may well want to pay homage to the “greatest ballplayer of them all: Ty Cobb.”

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Yes, it is hard to believe, but the paparazzi/sportswriters who cover the Boston Red Sox have been unable to drum up decent controversy this spring.

The story lines are now falling into the “pathetic” category. Once again, a bunch of seasonal hacks raise the issue of Jonathan Papelbon being washed-up, or worse, wanting to escape the Red Sox.

A few have gone the route of trying to show that Hideki Okajima is riding a bubble ready to burst.

They beat the dead horse again with this tired bit: Where can we play the perennial All-Star Jed Lowrie?

Food Network may prepare a special on Dustin Pedroia’s favorite game-time snack.

A few diehards continue to worry about how Kevin Youkilis will handle switching back to third base this season, or why he always shaves his head, but not his chin.

Speculation is rampant about which of J.D. Drew’s fingers will draw the first hangnail of the spring, potentially putting him on the shelf for two weeks.

Scraping the bottom of the barrel, stories abound. For instance, we have learned that Adrian Gonzalez’s agent is a third cousin removed of Wade Boggs.

A couple of stories revealed that David Ortiz has cursed out those media-folks who wonder if his career will go into the hopper this season.

A few desperate, writing souls have clung like dogs to a bone to the head-bop that Josh Beckett experienced weeks ago, hinting that it may still be affecting his role in the rotation.

When a legitimate controversy entered the spring—namely the barbs passing between Ozzie Guillen and Bobby Jenks—Terry Francona put the matter to rest with a few choice words to both parties, and the only fun story of spring training withered on the vine.

The fact is that this is the most pedestrian group of Red Sox in modern history. Ah, for the days when 25 Red Sox used 25 different cabs to get to a ballpark on the road.

Theo Epstein and Francona have put together the most sober-minded players ever in the history of the Red Sox. Nowadays, they only play baseball, not silly games, in Boston.

You won’t see Manny Ramirez slugging a teammate, or hear that Babe Ruth has tossed a grand piano into the river, or that “Spaceman” Bill Lee thinks his manager is a gerbil.

We won’t hear that a couple of players have jumped the team and were seen heading to Israel.

We won’t have the star giving fans in the left-field stands a gesture of contempt. We won’t have a player refusing to fly on jets.

We certainly won’t see a disturbed Red Sox player climbing the net behind home plate.

Yes, fans, the good old days are gone.

It really leaves us nostalgic for the cellar-dwelling Red Sox, when Fenway Park had empty box seats and tabloid headlines made us giggle about “Dr. Strangeglove.”

Oh, well. Let’s play ball.

We will simply have to be happy with a World Series-caliber team.

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We’ve all heard of Roger Clemens and Manny Ramirez and their “alleged” flirtation with performance enhancing drugs (PEDs). We know about Andy Pettitte (just seems like an inordinate amount of t’s in his name), and his admitted drug abuse in order to get a leg up on the competition in Major League Baseball.

Alex Rodriguez has been called “A-Roid” more times in a season than there are pennies in his ridiculously bloated contract. PEDs were, and probably will continue to be, a big problem in the big leagues.

With that in mind, I have researched a few excuses provided by the rule-breaking players and here are a few that caught my attention.

Unfortunately, there are plenty more cheaters and excuses out there, so please share them with me in the comments section.

Also, let me know your thoughts on PEDs in the MLB.

Do you think the game should just allow them? Would it be a better game for the fans if the players could legally juice? Should it be their choice since it’s their body? Let me know. Thanks.

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Craftsbury, Vermont, nestled in the forests of northern New England, is famous for two movies filmed on location: one film was made by Alfred Hitchcock, and the other stars Bill “Spaceman” Lee.

Alfred Hitchcock, The Master of Suspense who brought us Psycho and The Birds, went to Craftsbury in 1954. He was attracted to the rural small-town setting where for a few weeks in the autumn, the foliage and splash of colors roll over the hills for miles in every direction.

A self-styled eccentric and vagabond, Bill Lee came to Craftsbury after playing for the Montreal Expos. Still tiny, more of a village, it has a tad more than 1,000 residents today. It seems appropriate for a renegade of a conservative sports game to find solace in a land founded by Ethan Allen and the Green Mountain Boys.

Bill Lee, formerly of the Boston Red Sox, was dubbed the Spaceman for his otherworldly notions and antics. The southpaw won 17 games three times for Boston in the 1970s.

More people took a shot at Bill Lee during his career than suspects who murdered Harry in Hitchcock’s dark comedy classic, The Trouble with Harry, filmed in the wilds of Vermont.

Now Hitchcock’s Harry and Spaceman Bill Lee share the same geography.

Harry was a dead body who kept being buried and dug up by murder suspects. Bill Lee is a ballplayer who keeps coming back from retirement and pitching anew. Not too long ago, Lee pitched nearly six innings for the Brockton Rox, a professional team, and won the game at age 62.

Hitchcock did not want to film his movie in England where the original novella was set, and he scouted the settings of New England where quirky people might live. He thought Craftsbury was the perfect location for what might be called Space Cadets. Bill Lee would agree, and he moved there too.

To the shock of Hitchcock upon arrival at Craftsbury, the leaves of summer had already turned and fallen off trees in late September of 1954. Alfred Hitchcock, an auteur before his time, ordered set designers to glue the leaves back on the trees.

Bushels of more fallen leaves were collected and brought back to Hollywood for the studio production scenes. If Lee is the certified eccentric of baseball, Hitchcock won the title in the film industry.

Lee found the quirkiness that Hitchcock admired in northern Vermont and often plays ball, even into his 60s, near the Craftsbury Common that Hitchcock used as a backdrop in his movie.

Bill Lee lives the life of a freethinker and uses local timber to help produce baseball bats, much like the weapon Hitchcock used to kill Harry in his movie.

Lee disdained convention, and he was passed over by Don Zimmer, who could have used him to pitch against the Yankees in a pivotal playoff game. He is not a Zimmer fan, to say the least.

Hitchcock passed over Cary Grant for the lead role in his movie, and thus turned his little film into his greatest box-office failure. Hitchcock considered making a movie about baseball, featuring a crackpot who fills a baseball with explosives that ends up in the World Series. Alas, he never got around to making it.

Hitchcock, of course, did make a film about the apocalypse when birds beset mankind. Bill Lee contends that the spirit of his former boss, Red Sox owner Tom Yawkey, now inhabits various birds that follow and torment him wherever he goes.

Bill Lee’s movie, A Baseball Odyssey, is available on DVD, with key scenes filmed in Craftsbury, Vermont. For that matter, so too is Hitchcock’s little-known masterpiece, The Trouble with Harry. 

This connection definitely makes Alfred Hitchcock and Bill Lee birds of a feather.

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