Do you know, Stex, that between you me and Gator our rooting interests combine for a mind BOGGLING 159-236? A staggering 38.5 games BELOW .500? If we throw the Mets in there (as one throws pepper onto a particularly unpalatable meal: gotta drown out the taste of that which you REALLY hate) we get a tsunami of bad: 221-306 or 42.5 below .500.

Its a good thing we got our good looks ’cause we sure don’t have much else with our ballclubs.

The joy, the sheer “f*** you” of it all apparent in the celebrations of former Sawx Moss, Reddick, and Kottaras at their combined 4 HR, 13 RBI, 9/15 combined performance, was beyond the usual sticking it to their old team. This was much more visceral, much more directed. But at whom?

The 21,000 in attendance last night were almost all A’s fans. Not in attendance were the usual legion of Sox Nation ex-pats. They’ve given up. The A’s spent 4 games in Cleveland against the most moribund team in the league. Last night they faced a team, particularly a pitching staff, that was hanging their manager, their fans, and possibly their playing futures out to dry.

Berthiaume called it the worst game in Red Sox history. Maybe so, maybe not. I just hope the beloved A’s get two more like it.

Your fandom is going to your head a bit.

I watched him gagg, stuff and shitcan the Feesh last night at close range. Justin Ruggiano was the only Feesh batter who got to him for two hits, but he’s this season’s good karma pinup boy and the Feesh can’t usually drive home a run against a peetcher who’s trying to make a gift of a game to them. Otherwise, Biggeth Dicketh wielded that high-octane flutterball like a filleting knife against the Feesh. They never had a chance. On his second strikeout the Iron Giant nearly screwed himself into the ground. Yeah, he’s a free swinger but Carlos Lee isn’t and Lee looked just as bad.

I would also add something I haven’t seen noted very often about his knuckler: his catcher (Josh Thole in this case) doesn’t spend a lot of time flying around like a botfly sniffing the air currents for a whiff of turd behind the batter trying to catch the damn thing; he throws it for strikes. What’s also interesting is that, thrown up in the 80s as it is, the pitch does get whacked by opposing batters but usually doesn’t get very far. Slower knucklers play on the impatience and befuddle the sense of timing of a batter but BD’s knuckler shows up a little bit more reliably within the 60 foot six inch augenblick a batter expects. It does all of its work with movement and with location, which Dicketh controls incredibly well.

If you can handle all the Good Christian stuff – which, by the way, in Dickey’s lexicon is kept trained on himself and isn’t nearly as obnoxious as it would be in a political speech – give his book Wherever I Wind Up a read. The chapters on how he developed his pitch, the quest (there’s no other accurate word for it) on which he embarked to solicit input from other great knucklers like Charlie Hough, the way he persisted in mastering it despite the ups and downs of his career and personal life prior to arriving in New York, are really pretty interesting.

LEEGGGGOOOOOO!!!!