Q.  Hey!  "Good Bad and Ugly" is a cyber-plagiarization!

A.  Yeah.  From Detectovision.com, circa 2003.  :- )  Used to be a fave paint-by-numbers back in the day.  (Now we have newer, shlockier paint-by-numbers.)

I think I mighta seen GB&U someplace else, though, so it's cool.

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Q.  What is going on with this team?  Is this "just one of those things that happens when you play 162 games plus 30 in spring training"?

A.  They'll do everything they can to spin it that way.

What is not "just one of those things," is (1) Figgins telling Don Wakamatsu off in the dugout, on TV, and (2) doing so after such a monumental foulup on his own part.

1. Clubhouse tension = normal
2. Telling your manager to kiss your Cadillac on TV = not normal
3. Doing it after you just blew off a ballgame in the middle of the 5th = very not normal
4. Next up: finding out where Capt Jack is on Wok, on inmates and asylums, and on -0.8 RLP second basemen with bad attitudes
   

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Q.  Maybe it was just a brain cramp.

A.  If you've played so much as slo-pitch softball, you know that when there's a throw sailing in from the OF, that somebody better be backing that throw up. 

He just took the play off.  It's one thing to take a play off with the score 11-2.  You feel me?

...................

One time my teenaged son was supposed to be in bed by 2:00 a.m. and I came in to find him up, and bumming around, at 5:30 a.m.  I politely said something to him.  He picked that moment to go off on me.  Guess what happened?

It's one thing for the employee to give some lip.  It's another thing for the employee to do it after he has embarrassed the entire franchise the way that Figgins did on the play.

Q.  Was the game play as ugly as it sounds?

A.  I've read that in a 1-1 game and less than two out, the difference between 2B and 3B is worth being aware of.  You'd have to check Baseball Prospectus on that.

.... :- ) OK, actually, the Red Sox' run expectancy in the inning went from 1.2 runs with Cammy on second, to 1.5 runs with Cammy on third.  So that's +0.3 runs handed to the Sox, in a tie game, because you felt a little put out by the idea of backing up a base (laterally, about 10 yards' trot).

(But, amusingly, the Win Expectancy Finder says that the Sox had a 42% chance of winning if Cammy held second, and only a 40% chance after he went to third.  Heh.)

..............

In real terms, that's the ballgame.  The M's aren't scoring runs.  The Sox take the lead in the 5th, we're done.  You kind of want to play decent fundamental baseball to stop the lead run if it's not too much trouble.

You're saying that you don't much care whether the Sox take the lead, and that you don't much care whether you lose the game.  That's not just SSI's opinion.  That's why these managers throw hands about stuff like that.

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Part 3

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