BOSTON. Concerned that the Cleveland Indians' use of flying insects made the difference in their Division Series triumph over the New York Yankees, the Boston Red Sox today began preparations for the American League Championship Series by ordering four hundred pounds of mini shrimp that coaches will toss at pitchers to gird them for an expected onslaught of the bugs, known as "midges".
"Don't inhale this stuff unless you want to end up like Steve Howe."
"I thought midge was somebody my wife played bridge with," manager Terry Francona told reporters. "They threw Joba Chamberlain off his game, so they must be pretty powerful."
A midge who does not play bridge.
Midges, also known as "Canadian soldiers", are tiny flying insects that bedeviled Yankee pitchers in game 2 of the series, causing star rookie reliever Chamberlain to throw two wild pitches in the eighth inning, allowing Grady Sizemore to score the tying run.
Mini-shrimp, if that isn't redundant.
Midges are common along the shores of Lake Erie where the Indians' home field is located, but are unknown in New England. Sox officials settled on mini-shrimp as the closest approximation to the gnat-like pests that New England had to offer. "There are a lot of roaches in the student apartments around Fenway," said Sox pitching coach John Farrell, "but we couldn't find anybody willing to go in and get them."
Kucinich: "Running for President is a great way to meet bodacious women."
In the late 1970's when Democratic Presidential candidate Dennis Kucinich was Mayor of Cleveland, a heavily-polluted Lake Erie caught fire, causing fans to refer to the Indians' former home field as "The Mistake by the Lake". Kucinich still bristles at the implications of that nickname.
"Lake Erie is a clean-burning, natural fuel."
"The lake did not catch fire by mistake," Kucinich says. "It was by accident, and there's a big difference."
i'll tell ya what i went to cleveland one time and never been to a game there since. i was on vacation in e.salem and we drove up there to the game. i have never seen anything like it in my life. there were three burnt out cars on the side of the road and one still smoken. sat in the upper deck on third base side there were no bugs then. that i remember and i remember seeing those cars. when we got to the stadium it was ok ballpark out on lake eire. i don't know what street we traveled but was not impressed. one thing i thought was cool was there was a building that looked like the washington monument upside down. it may have been the phone company building? granderson said lots of towels to wipe sweat but no bug spray. bug spray will attract them not get rid of them. anyway the yanks needed something to blame their loses on. by golly they get paid too much to lose that bad. i thought it was cool that some of the yanks looked to be spitting the bug out of their mouths. old joba rule pitch an inning get a day off. now its eat a bug in cleveland another day off. per bug. whinny little b.a.s.t.a.r.d. damn that clemens attitude
Con Chapman is a Boston-area writer. He is the author of "The Year of the Gerbil: How the Yankees Won (and the Red Sox Lost) the Greatest Pennant Race Ever," a history of the 1978 AL East pennant race, and a number of plays, including "Number One Hockey Mom," "Please, Pope," and "What Mickey Belle Isle Told You," a trilogy about hockey (JAC Publishing). His work is available on Amazon Shorts (at 49 cents a dowload), and he writes on sports for Flak Magazine.
