Sports Redux: The Third Base Shuffle

Let's give a hand to the Boston Red Sox: they're on the cutting edge. During a late (to us, anyway) Friday night game in Seattle, the team continued to show fans the new dance craze that's poised to sweep the (Red Sox) Nation: the Third Base Shuffle. It's easier than the Frug, more athletic than the Lean Back and only slightly more annoying to witness than the Macarena. All you have to do is wind up in a pickle at third base and then get out.

It is a dance, right? It wouldn't actually be that Red Sox players demonstrated extraordinarily poor sensibility on the bases twice in two games. Couldn't be. And yet there it was - Manny Ramirez joining Kevin Youkilis on third base during the first inning of Friday's game at Safeco Field to effectively squash a strong offensive showing, just one day after Doug Mirabelli's unfortunate running goof back home at Fenway.

It also seems that Manny didn't get Doug's memo from the day before: "If you screw up running the bases, you'd better make up for it at the plate." Whereas Mirabelli pushed the Sox up and over Baltimore, Ramirez kept on being himself, hitting into a double play in the fifth and striking out in the seventh with the tying run on base. Despite seeming early on to be ready to dominate Seattle and snap an eight-game Safeco losing streak, the Sox left the ballpark as losers in a 7-4 game, one that Gordon Edes aptly notes wasn't so much as demonstrative of Seattle winning as Boston giving up the game.

It had the potential to be something special: a chance to end the losing ways in Seattle, another emotion-filled start for hometown boy Jon Lester and a strong response to the fact that the Yankees seem incapable of keeping the ball in the park as of late.

Whoops: Lester gave up some big shots, including a three-run shot by Yuniesky Betancourt, Julio Lugo and Mike Timlin gave up big errors in the sixth to allow the Mariners to take a 5-4 lead and Timlin gave up a clutch two-run homer to Kenji Johjima in the seventh.

At least disgrunted Sox fans can know that some folks on the team were livid after the showing. Sure, Ramierez was seen smiling and laughing in the dugout shortly after his first-inning mental error, but Timlin and Varitek reportedly had a tense exchange at game's end. While Timlin was quick to take the blame for his mistakes while talking to the press, as he prepared to leave the clubhouse, he said to Tek, "Not a word," before departing.

Oh snap! Good. It was a lousy showing. People SHOULD be angry.

So, that ugliness behind them, Boston attempts to snap a ten-game losing streak at Safeco today, when Dice-K faces Jarrod Washburn.

-- This completely sucks: The NFL is playing Big Brother on how much you can learn online about your favorite team. The league is prohibiting news organizations from airing any more than 45 seconds of online footage from stadiums. Audio or video. Why? It wants to maintain the viability of NFL.com and team websites. Sounds to us that the NFL doesn't want to put as much effort into its online resources as would be needed to compete with other media sources...on behalf of online media, we'd like to give a very special shout-out to the Pats owner Robert Kraft (member of broadcast committee) and team president Jonathan Kraft (member of digital media panel).

-- In other Pats news: Randy Moss was suited up and on the field yesterday. The only problem? No one knows what's going on with the guy. We assume, of course, that Patriots.com will have all the answers for curious or concerned fans. Censored accordingly. We're still bitter.

This photo by flickr user Fifi LePew doesn't say that it's the Manny variation of the Third Base Shuffle, but it sure looks like it is.