35th Street Mess

It's no secret that the Tampa Bay Devil Rays and their manager Lou Piniella have no love lost for the Boston Red Sox. This could have posed major problems for that bunch over on 35th. Thankfully, Piniella has too much respect for Hawk to let the D'Rays give anything less than their maximum effort.

Big ups to Piniella, his squad, and of course Hawk for forging this relationship in the first place.

The next time the Illinois State Lottery decides to horn in on a Chairman World Series run they better have their act more together than they did last night. In case you missed it, they had a promotion after the game that ended with three contestants in centerfield with giant scratch off cards for a grand prize of $1,000,000.

Anyway, it took the contestants about 10 minutes to scratch off these giant cards. The promotion went over like a led balloon. If you didn't know better, you'd think Gallas was back running the operation.

Illinois State Lottery get off my field.

The press, the fans, and the umps, in that order. The only way I don't want to see the same 25 back next year is if they win it all.

Have I grown weary of the Comcast bashing because the network lost nearly 1 1/2 hours of last night's game. These things happen. The benefits of the Sox going to Comcast and cutting out the middle man (FSN) far exceed the occasional production glitch like what happened last night. People really need to chill.

I see where Marriotti questioned the validity of yet another record setting sell out on 35th last night. Cat, if it's a sell out to Savarise, it's a sell out to me.

Street talk around 35th has it that the Chairman has been a bit crabby these days, short in his conversations. At this point who can blame him.