The Patriots game was on, of course, and we hung around to watch it.  We were thrilled that they won, and hoped that the evil Jets would win later on.  Yep, we had to root for the Jets, which is right up there with Sox fans rooting for the Y*****s.

We didn’t hang around for the Jets/Dolphins game, we had other things to do and we needed to get home.  But sadly, the Dolphins won, and so did the Ravens in their game against the Jaguars.  Which means that the Pats are all done for the year…no playoffs for them.

They gave it a good run, though.  With Tom Brady being out, that had to have hurt the most.  But Matt Cassel did a great job, though, he stepped up to a huge challenge and gave it his best.

Oh well.  There’s always next year.

I think the Jim Rice debate is finally over. He gets in this time. He’s gained a lot of votes over the years and he’s been so close, that this year he should get over the top. It’s hard for me to believe that it took 15 years on the ballot, because ask any of us who played with him and against him - he had that 10-year period where he was absolutely the most feared hitter there was. Jimmy deserves his due finally and he’ll get it.

I think he has a good shot at getting in this time, as well.  It’s time, already!

The votes are due in by Wednesday, says Eck.  Not sure when the Class of 2009 inductees will be announced.  But I swear, if Jim Rice is not one of them this year, I will throw something at the tv, and probably knock it right off the tv stand.

Which would not be a good thing, because I can’t afford a new tv at the moment!

This pisses me off, but not as much as not getting C.C. Sabathia.

Anyhoo, in (dis)honor of all of this, I give you I’m Getting Nuttin’ For Christmas…the funny version done by Stan Freberg.  Right-click and save, please!

I will be putting a song today on each of the blogs in My Vast Blog Empire, so be sure to look for them throughout the day.  Also, I will be posting a complete list of where all 23 Days songs are sometime, somewhere today.

Merry Christmas anyway!

Sheesh, if I were taking that much footage of snow, I’d need another video card…or two, or three, or a hundred!

So I was wondering if anything new was going on with the quest to acquire Mark Teixiera.  I checked at RedSox.com, and it says that the Sox may still be in the running, after all.  We shall see.

I still hate Scott Boras, though.  Does he require that if you hire him as your agent, you can NEVER again speak for yourself?

In other news, I got my package of free schwag from the New Hampshire Fisher Cats, for getting our season mini-plan again for 2009.  There was a Ted Williams bobblehead, two lift tickets for Pats Peak, a 20 pound propane fill-up, a ten buck gift cert for T-Bones/Cactus Jack’s restaurants, a gift cert for some auto parts shop, and $20 in gift cards to Shaw’s supermarkets.  You can get all of this schwag, too, if you buy any season ticket/mini-plan (6 or more games).

Our tickets will be sent in February, and in April the new season will begin.  Can’t wait!

What a good kitteh!

Dear Margo: I have been dating a guy for two years, and when we met, everything was perfection. We have had ups and downs, of course, but I feel there’s one thing that is always putting a strain on our life: My boyfriend is totally obsessed with the Pittsburgh Penguins. Everything he does revolves around them, from the clothes he wears each day (always a Penguins hat and/or shirt) to the car he drives (his license plate boasts the name of his favorite player) to his room, which is covered floor to ceiling with 8 by 10 pictures, jerseys in cases, pucks, sticks, game-used skates and hockey cards. He needs to go to all the home games (42-plus over eight months), and he goes alone because he only has one ticket. His hockey mania takes a huge toll on our relationship because it involves a large chunk of time away from “us.” We both work and go to school, so our time is limited, but the Penguin season in the mix makes it much worse. I end up feeling unimportant to him — almost as if he has a second girlfriend and he’s cheating on me with “her.” Please help me find a way to make him understand my feelings and to lessen the strain on our relationship. — Off-Season-Only Girlfriend

Dear Off: You have my sympathies. A former husband was also obsessed with hockey … about which I knew nothing. In fact, I remember watching the first game he took me to for a while and then blurting, “My God! They’re on skates!” I suspect that even if your boyfriend had two tickets it would not solve your problem. Your guy sounds like such a jock and a fanatic that my hunch is the romance cannot last. No offense, but the Penguins seem to have edged you out in terms of where he puts his energy and spends his time.
I suspect he already understands your feelings, and that a relationship is not so important to him. I am guessing the only way you could see more of him is if you ran the Zamboni machine. — Margo, acceptingly

Margo is WAY off base here.  Has this letter-writer, who sounds like a total bimbo if you ask me, even sat with her boyfriend and watched an away Penguins game on TV?  Has she even considered going in on the cost of season tickets for the two of them?  My opinion is, if she wants this guy, she’d better accept the fact that he is a die-hard hockey fan, or hit the road.  She sounds to me like a shallow bimbo who is more interested in finding the best diet pill, than in trying to share her boyfriend’s interests.

When I first met Mike, he HATED sports of all kinds.  But I made it clear frim the get-go that I’m a die-hard baseball fan, and if he wanted to be with me, he’d have to accept it.

What I did was bought tickets to a ball game, and asked that he come with me to the game, just this once.  If he really hated it, I would not make him go to any more games.  But all I asked was that he give it a try, and if he hated it, fine.  But he would also have to accept the fact that baseball is a big part of my life, and he was not to complain if I spent time away from him during baseball season.

He agreed, fair enough.  We went to the game, and he found that he enjoyed it.  And the rest is history.

Margo is not giving the boyfriend here enough credit. I suspect he would LOVE it if the girlfriend suggested going to a game together, getting a second season ticket for next year, or watching a Penguins game together.  I suspect that she hates hockey so much, she won’t be happy until this guy gives it up completely. And then he’d be miserable, and end up cheating on her eventually, with some woman who LOVES hockey.

If she loves this guy, she should make an effort to give hockey a chance.  I really don’t think she has done so.  If she finds that she really hates it, then the relationship won’t work.  But you never know until you try, right?

So I’m not going to bother trying to get anything there.  And did I mention the cost?  For what it costs for Mike and me to go to ONE game at Fenway, we can go to MANY minor league games…at ballparks that have railings on the steps, to boot.  Going to a Sox game is like applying some of that alli diet stuff to your wallet…it loses weight, and fast!

I honestly don’t see how so many people can afford this.  Yet games sell out, every single one of them, year after year.  The only good thing is that they didn’t raise the ticket prices again this year!

Hopefully this will post when it’s supposed to.  We’re going away for the weekend, to the Christmas festivities at Old Sturbridge Village, and I may not be able to blog and get my songs posted each day.  The place we’re staying at does have free WiFi, but it doesn’t work well if we get put on the back end of the building. And besides, all of my songs are on my home desktop.

WordPress lets you change the time/date of a post, so that it can be scheduled to post  in the future.  Hopefully, it works!

Enjoy the song, and be sure to check all of the other blogs in My Vast Blog Empire (links in sidebar over there) —–> for more!

Tek is represented by the evil Scott Boras, which means that Theo will have to surrender a jazillion dollars and his first-born son, in order to re-sign the longtime Sox catcher.   Sheesh, don’t these guys already have enough money?  Scott Boras himself probably has more money than the ballplayers do!  He can certainly afford the best in safety equipment, which he needs because so many people hate him so much.  Many say that George Steinbrenner ruined baseball, well, I think Scott Boras ruined things even more.

Anyhoo, Theo is looking towards a future sans Tek, and he suggests that perhaps we might see two guys who were on the PawSox last year, George Kotaras and Dusty Brown, platooning in the catcher position.  ARTICLE HERE.   I did get to see them both with the PawSox last year, and although they’re good, I agree with the article that neither is quite ready for prime-time.  Do they still have Kevin Cash?  I need to check on that.  Still, if Tek goes, it’s gonna take two guys to replace him.

And what about the “Captain” thing?  If Tek leaves, would the Sox appoint a new captain?  If so, who should it be?  I’d vote for Big Papi…he has a great attitude, he’s been around a while, and everybody likes him.

We’ll just have to wait and see…