The bitter end...

9-7. Stranded on second base in the last inning as the final fly ball out floated to center field behind me. Their lineup did more damage than ours did. I had probably my best defensive game of the year, with 3 really good catches (2 on dives, one on a full sprint) plus a couple of others....tracked down the bombs over others' heads to keep the batter from scoring an inside-the-park homer. But every error in the infield got compounded in such a big game.

Afterwards, ten of us went out to a Tex-Mex restaurant. I had chicken enchiladas in molé sauce. I really like molé sauce....this one wasn't spicy enough for my liking though. And the Bud Light in the pitchers was flat. (Molé sauce is tomato-based with chili peppers and unsweetened chocolate.)

I paid my $20 share of the bill with some of the bet money on our office suicide pool. That's an NFL contest where everyone chooses some team to win one game this week. If the team you pick wins its game, you keep playing. If they lose, you're out. The winners survive to next week, where you pick another game, with the caveat being you can't pick a team you've already chosen. This makes it so that you can't ride the best team in the league all season long. After 5 weeks, the field of 12 or 13 will most likely be down to 2 or 3. We'll see. I have Seattle to beat Tampa Bay on Sunday.

David, is there anything comparable in the Aussie rules leagues?

The best part about running the pool is having spending cash over the length of the contest....I can always later write a check to the winner, or make a single trip to the ATM to make up the cash I've used on stuff like lunch.

Tim Wakefield of the Red Sox pitched last night, and because the game was decided after he was removed for a substitute, he was neither the winning or losing pitcher last night. The first time all season he wasn't credited with either. This is a statistical rarity for a pitcher to go this far into the season without a "no decision".

Anyway, I bring this up because when I was living at home doing some graduate school at UConn, I used to use a 4-track tape recorder to make some homemade music with my guitars and synthesizer (with built-in drum machine). Sometimes I'd take the time to write well-structured songs, and other times I'd just mess around and layer stuff on top of it. One such song I wrote was called "Clemens got a No Decision" which was based on a Red Sox game I had on in my room at the time. Roger Clemens left the game down a run, but the Red Sox tied it up before losing later (I think they lost 4-2 to Detroit, although baseball-almanac.com doesn't support that.) Anyways, lyrics have always been optional, an afterthought at most, to my stuff....so I started rambling on one of the tracks that although Clemens got a No Decision, that you shouldn't get a no decision -- like me the singer suggesting people make up their minds in their life -- make a decision, one way or the other. Anyway, not one of my best songs. I think the song after it featured me saying stuff backwards, like Stairway to Heaven -- just f'ing around with the tape recorder.