Jared W. Smith

Here’s the rundown of what made Monday…well, Monday.

• A-Rod pulled off the ultimate double play Sunday night — he thought himself above receiving an award from Hank Aaron, for God’s sake, and then his agent went on, during the middle of World Series Game 4, and announced he was leaving the Yankees. Ridiculous, classless, and just putrid. I would say it was clearly all about the money for him, but something tells me he won’t get the kind of money he wants but in a few select places outside of New York, and I’m willing to bet Boston is not going to be one of those places. A-Rod may be a great player, but I’ve lost a lot of respect for him.
• Frank Wren’s first trade as GM of the Braves was a smart one: Edgar Renteria to the Tigers for starting pitcher Jair Jurrjens (try typing THAT three times fast!) and a minor leaguer. The Braves may miss Renteria’s bat in the short term, but Yunel Escobar is more than capable of getting things going for the Braves, and is a stellar defensive player to boot; the fact that they got a starting pitcher and were able to unload salary really sweetens the deal.
• One more baseball thing, and I’m leaving it alone: I like the choice of Joe Girardi for the Yankees. He’s a proven manager that got improbable results from a team that should have, on paper, lost 100 games. I just hope the Steinbrenners back off him and let him run the team — Joe Girardi’s style is not to be a yes man. He’s a baseball man, with great baseball sense. (And if Joba Chamberlain is starting next year instead of setting up for Mariano Rivera, we’ll know who has the true control in the Bronx.)
• Damn shame what happened in North Carolina. It bothers the heck out of me to see seven people lose their lives, period.
• According to last.fm, I listened to Journey 138 times last week. Slowly, but surely, I am becoming Steve Perry.
• My Facebook requests are just out of control. Exhibit A:
  
• No, I’m not sure when I’ll get to culling through those. Because I’m sure by the time I do, I’ll have some request to install another spammy app. I think Facebook needs to find a way to clamp down a bit.
• Less than a month to Thanksgiving break. I can hardly contain my excitement…I need it.
• If there was any doubt that it’s fall, I’m sure your doubt was put to rest this morning when you went outside to upper 40s temperatures and a stiff northeast wind dipping windchills into the 30s. On a side note, I’d love to have filmed a bunch of the people who, as usual, did not wear anything remotely close to appropriate for the weather, and superimpose an old Weather Channel logo over their suffering with the “You Need Us, The Weather Channel, For Everything You Do” theme from 1986 playing in the background. I would laugh for hours. I’m not sure about you, but I sure would.

To bed with me…

Life as a New England sports fan must be pretty damn good right now. They have a world champion in baseball and a football team that could almost be charged with murdering other teams, they’re that good.

Congrats, Boston, on your seventh title. And congrats to Mike Lowell on his MVP award — he’s truly deserving. He killed teams in the postseason — not just the World Series — with his timely hitting.

On to football season, full-time…and finally, regular sleep. These postseason games were on way too late at night. The World Series — hell, a vast majority of the postseason — was completely inaccessible to children under 16. I know it’s ratings pressure, but they have to fix this. It just seems wrong that a kid can’t watch his or her heroes win the World Series. I dunno, it just seems wrong to keep our national pastime (still is, right?) out of the reach of those who will carry it forward to the next generation.

That first point release is out, so time to upgrade. See you on the flip side.

Update: Looks like it’s up and everything is running quite fine. Word! I need to now get the new tagging system integrated…

Barring an unforeseen change in conditions, my family’s houses are unscathed, and they’ve been allowed back home. Words escape me about how fantastic this is. The wind has died down considerably from what I’ve been told — let’s hope they stay down, so the firefighters have a fighting chance of getting this one under control.

I wish I could say the ordeal is over for everybody, though — there are still nearly a million evacuated, and they won’t all come back to their homes in one piece. Please continue to keep those families in your thoughts during a seriously trying time.