With another offseason coming, come yet another plan to add more seats to Fenway. However, from my read of this, this change should benefit anyone watching a game at Fenway, from home that is.

The Red Sox adding seats to Fenway Park is great news for Sox fans, and it has nothing to do with ticket sales.

If there's one thing that Fenway Sports Group excels at, it's getting as many seats as they possibly can into Fenway Park. Over the last decade, they've found a way to fit more than 2,500 extra bodies into Boston's historic ballpark, leaving it changed, yes, but most importantly, viable. The days when the idea of replacing Fenway entirely was being thrown about are not so far in our past that we can start taking its continued use for granted.

But a couple hundred seats here and there are not the difference between keeping Fenway Park and being forced into some generic new park, so why is it that the plan to add 160 seats over the coming offseason (as reported on by the Boston Herald; pardon the cynical headline) is not only noteworthy, but actually some of the best news from an altogether bleak year?

It all has to do with camera angles. Red Sox fans will be familiar with the camera well on top of the wall in center field. That's going away. The plan is for the Red Sox to replace that camera well with new seats, moving the video equipment up into what the team is calling a "basket" under the Bank of America sign--that's the smaller massive scoreboard off to the left of the primary one, for those who don't keep track of the naming rights.

The upshot of all this? The possibility of some dramatically improved camera angels.

Nothing is likely to change with NESN. Their camera angles have been among the best in the business for a while now, providing a dead-on view of the pitcher and batter from center field, giving fans a fairly accurate representation of the strike zone. But when the Red Sox have gone national? Not even close. How many games have Red Sox fans had to watch on FOX with the should-be-antiquated classic camera angle that makes it look like the pitcher is halfway between the batter and first base? How many times have we been tricked into getting upset over accurate calls made to look bad by the angle, or ignored bad calls made to look good?

The camera doesn't change what happens on the field. That much is obvious. But when it comes to the product we fans are provided, there's been a huge drop-off in quality in recent years when it's left NESN's hands. It's hard to say why this has stuck when better options are clearly available, but hopefully this will force the change that has been a long time in coming.

And they're off......Day baseball begins.

O's - Yankees
White Sox - Tigers
D-Backs - Twins.

AC/DC will release Rock or Bust, their first album in six years and first ever without founding rhythm guitarist Malcolm Young, later this fall. It will feature 11 new songs, one of which – "Play Ball" – will be previewed on Turner Sports as part of the network's Major League Baseball Postseason campaign on September 27th. The album will come out on December 2nd.

In addition to confirming the release of the record, the band also announced Young's permanent departure from the group. Earlier this year, the group said that an illness had forced the guitarist to take a break from the band. Now he will not be returning at all, "due to the nature of Malcolm's condition," according to a press release that did not go into specifics.

The band recorded Rock or Bust this past spring at Vancouver's Warehouse Studio with producer Brendan O'Brien and mixer Mike Fraser, both of whom worked on AC/DC's 2008 release, Black Ice. Malcolm and Angus Young's nephew, Stevie Young, played rhythm guitar on the record and will take part in the band's world tour to support Rock or Bust in 2015.

"We miss Malcolm, obviously," frontman Brian Johnson told Classic Rock in July. "He's a fighter. He's in [the] hospital, but he's a fighter. We've got our fingers crossed that he'll get strong again.... Stevie, Malcolm's nephew, was magnificent, but when you're recording with this thing hanging over you and your work mate isn't well, it's difficult. But I'm sure he was rooting for us."

What did you think of Haren's comments on the $10M option? I thought it was refreshingly honest.

Talk about an issue that is old as the game is itself.....


Tensions flared and benches cleared in a game between the Chicago White Sox and Detroit Tigers over White Sox ace Chris Sale’s apparently belief that the Tigers had someone set up in center field to steal signs. And, Sale ended up hitting the Tigers Victor Martinez because of it. If there intent behind the plunking, Sale must not have realized how much it would ultimately help the Tigers. Martinez came around to score the tying run, and Detroit added five more across the seventh and eighth and won, 6-1. The Tigers entered play Wednesday one game ahead of the Kansas City Royals in the AL Central, and reduced their magic number to four with the win.

Stupid human tricks -

If ever there was a DUI story that made you shake your head in wonder, this is the one. It involves 53-year-old John Lourenco who was cited for alleged drunk driving 4 times in just 30 hours. It’s bad enough to be pulled over once, but four times? How does that even happen?
According to the Providence Journal, it all started one Sunday morning when Rhode Island resident Lourenco crashed his Dodge truck into an SUV. A 4-year-old and 6-year-old riding in the back seat of the SUV were taken to the hospital and later released. Lourenco was also taken to the hospital where he was restrained after throwing urine at the hospital staff and was given a summons for driving under the influence.

He headed home and stayed put until Monday when he was arrested at 7 a.m. after crashing his Chevy into another car and a breathalyzer showed a blood alcohol level of .220, well above the legal limit of .08. This gets him summons number two and he’s released into his parents’ custody. (A 53-year old man released into his parents’ custody? What does that tell you?)

A short while later at 11 a.m., he took off in an old an old Plymouth Barracuda (how many cars does this guy have?) and was spotted by the police. They took him to the hospital, summons number three was issued, and he was released to the hospital’s custody. Not content with the level of havoc so far caused, he went for one more drive.

At 5 p.m., he set out in his dump truck – yes, dump truck – and managed to drive the thing into a tree. What? This time they took him back to the hospital and kept him there where he was held for court. He was arraigned on the first three incidents and released on a $25,000 surety bond with the dump truck incident still pending.

Thanks to an ill-timed rain delay in his final start this afternoon Twins right-hander Phil Hughes is one out short of hitting 210 innings for the season, which would have triggered a $500,000 bonus.

However, in tossing eight innings of one-run ball against the Diamondbacks–instead of the necessary 8.1 innings for the bonus–Hughes did set MLB’s all-time record for best strikeout-to-walk ratio in a season:

YEAR SO/BB
PHIL HUGHES 2014 11.61
Bret Saberhagen 1994 11.00
Cliff Lee 2010 10.28
Curt Schilling 2002 9.58
Pedro Martinez 2000 8.88
Greg Maddux 1997 8.85
Pedro Martinez 1999 8.46

That’s a helluva list to sit atop.

Hughes is 16-11 with a 3.52 ERA in 32 starts this season, while the rest of the Twins’ rotation is 31-58 with a 5.60 ERA in 126 starts.

....and you can keep your lousy baseball too!!!!!!

These are the Twins we are speaking of.  They NEVER give away money......

Just another Jeter lover.

Nationals outfielder Bryce Harper is a big Derek Jeter fan, which you would expect from someone who grew up rooting for the Yankees. In an MLB-produced video message to the retiring Yankees shortstop, Harper says he has always looked up to Jeter.

“Jeter is somebody that, he’s not just the captain of the Yankees, but captain of all of baseball. He’s the true baseball player, and the guy that you want to be like on and off the field. He’s somebody that I’ve looked up my whole career. Being able to play against him was something that, you know, I’ll never forget.”
Harper, who was 2 when Jeter made his major league debut, paid tribute to the Captain during Tuesday’s 4-2 win over the Mets at Nationals Park by wearing a Jeter wristband.

And I will leave you today with high hopes in getting some new blood......

well they deleted my post pretty quick lol I was waiting for the Admins to post about staying on topic which they do often...they did so I posted the link to here,,,said they could come here for the stuff that's not welcomed on their trivia page...not sure why they'd delete it...

but I've set up a twitter account for us, see if I can recruit some that way..."for the stuff you need more than 140 characters to say"
lol


@sportschatterer

Damn!

As in, damn good question, and damn if I know.  Pun fully intended, the Yanks would be damned if they do, and damned if they don't.  I would think that having him sit, but pinch hit once in the last game would be the best way to go, but what do I know.....

What it is like to chat up Jeter while on base, and how the interactions very, very much.

www.nytimes.com/2014/09/25/sports/baseball/safe-at-second-and-now-a-few-moments-with-derek-jeter.html?smid=tw-share&_r=1