Late yesterday, the Boston Red Sox placed relief pitcher Keith Foulke on the disabled list with elbow tendinitis.  Since the start of the 2005 season, Foulke has been largely unreliable out of the bullpen, compiling a 7-6 record with 15 saves in 72 games.  His control has been exceptional this season, with a K/BB ratio of 23/4, but that number cannot compete with a 5.79 ERA and BAA in the .280s. 

The bad news: over the past one and a half seasons, Foulke has been more consistently ineffective than at any other point since 1997, his rookie season.  The good news: it doesn't really bother me that much, and it shouldn't bother any other Red Sox fan either.

Don't get me wrong: the Sox bullpen is experiencing its fair share of problems.  Although Boston relievers have a combined ERA of 4.12 and a 10-5 record, those numbers are helped greatly by rookie sensation Jonathan Papelbon (0.28 in 30 games) and veteran setup man Mike Timlin (1.33 ERA in 22 games), who remain the only two reliable bullpen arms the team has.  Boston would benefit greatly from a healthy Foulke, whether his role was closer, setup man or middle reliever.

But as I said, it's difficult to get too upset with Keith Foulke's performance since the start of the 2005 season.  It's not that he hasn't been bad since that point.  What matters to me, and should matter to all Red Sox fans, is how much he gave up for his team in the preceding months.

First, a little history: my first exposure to Keith Foulke came during the 2003 playoffs.  He had been an unstoppable force in the late innings for the Oakland Athletics that season, putting up a 9-1 record and 2.08 ERA in 72 games as the A's won the American League West Division.  He seemed to be exposed against the Red Sox in the playoffs, however, when David Ortiz reached him for a key double to win Game Four and propel Boston into Game Five and eventually the ALCS.  From that point on, there was a feeling in Boston that Foulke might be a nice closer, but he wasn't the sort of guy you wanted on the mound during playoff time, when the pressure was impossibly high.

Following a failed "bullpen by committee" experiment in 2003, the Red Sox signed free agent Foulke to be their regular closer for 2004.  He responded with another excellent season (5-3, 2.17, 32 saves, 79 strikeouts in 83 innings pitched) as his team once again earned a spot in the playoffs.

My first impulse was to remember 2003's Game Four and question Foulke's ability to come up big in the 2004 postseason.  Over the 23 days between October 3 and October 27, those doubts were slowly and permanently erased.  While 2003 stalwarts Timlin and Alan Embree performed erratically, falling far short of their previous playoff heroics (neither player allowed an earned run in two playoff series), Foulke was the definition of the term lights out.  Taking the mound for fourteen innings in eleven games, he struck out nineteen batters while only allowing one run.  His biggest moments came in the epic Games Four and Five against the Yankees: in the two games, each of which featured a storyline that had Boston down a run and facing elimination in the late innings, he held the Bronx Bombers scoreless for a total of five frames, including stranding the series ending run at third base in the ninth inning of the fifth game.  In Game Six, he slammed the door on New York, which had scored in two consecutive innings to cut a 4-0 deficit in half, by finishing off the ninth for his only save of the series. 

Following that seven-game struggle (and his solid four game performance in the World Series against St. Louis, which he memorably ended by inducing Edgar Renteria to bounce back to the mound), Foulke earned his place in Red Sox lore.  He had shaken off all doubts and helped lead the Red Sox organization to its first World Series victory in 86 years, and he had performed brightest on three of the biggest stages possible: Yankee Stadium, Busch Stadium, and Fenway Park in October.  Curt Schilling and David Ortiz might have been bigger and more interesting stories, but Boston would not have left New York without Keith Foulke in the bullpen.

There is a story in David Halberstam's October 1964 about St. Louis Cardinals pitcher Barney Schulz.  Schulz played a huge role for the Cardinals during the pennant race that year, strolling in from the bullpen day after day to save the game and help the Redbirds continue their march to the World Series.  Near the end of the season, Schulz began to have trouble with his eyes: in short, he couldn't see.  Doctors diagnosed his condition as the delayed result of accumulated stress.  Because every time Schulz stepped on the mound for a month was a do-or-die situation, it was only a matter of time before his body began to feel the effects. 

I don't claim to be a doctor, but it appears the same thing might have happened to Keith Foulke.  During the 2004 postseason, he pushed himself to his physical limits.  Rationally, he should have stopped himself from pitching any further, but the intensity of the situation -- the locations of the games, the opponent, the 86 years of history hanging over his head -- prohibited that from happening (the same theory also pertains to Curt Schilling and his largely lost 2005 season).  Because the adrenaline was pumping, he kept pushing the limits, but didn't truly feel the effects until the next season.  Since then, it must be noted, he has been bothered by knee, back, and now elbow problems.

That's why I can't bring myself to harbor ill feelings against Keith Foulke, no matter how badly the Red Sox could use him in their bullpen right now.  When the chips were down, he put his body and career on the line to help lead his team to victory.  That's often what we expect from our favorite athletes; in this case, our favorite athlete delivered.

Earlier today, Pittsburgh Steelers quarterback Ben Roethlisberger was seriously injured when his motorcycle was struck by another vehicle in downtown Pittsburgh.  Roethlisberger sustained a broken nose, broken jaw, facial lacerations and severe injuries to both knees.  He was listed in serious but stable condition before entering surgery.

Here is the most recent Fox Sports link regarding this story: http://msn.foxsports.com/nfl/story/5687558

There seem to be two major problems with the accident: one, that Roethlisberger wasn't wearing a helmet and two, that as long as the Steelers are paying him millions of dollars he shouldn't have been on that motorcycle in the first place.

Personally, I find another aspect of this story much more bothersome.  In the hours after the accident, at least one online blog posted an ill-informed rumor that Roethlisberger was dead:

"I cannot confirm anything, only that I'm hearing conflicting reports that Ben Roethlisberger passed away at 2:47 EST on June 12, 2006."

The writer did not immediately name the sources of his conflicting reports, revealing later that the "Roethlisberger is dead" information came from a post on wikipedia.org.  The Wikipedia web site is open source, meaning it can be accessed and edited by virtually anyone.  This makes it a valuable resource for historical data, but not for breaking news stories.

Citing improper sources is an acceptable mistake, one I'm sure I made more than once in my academic career.  The problem, however, is the reasoning behind such a post.  For decades, the race in the newspaper business has been to get the scoop, to track down the big story before your competitors do.  Now that we are fully entrenched in the Information Age, this race has not diminished; even more stories are out there and an unprecedented number of people are still fighting to be the first to break them.  The difference is that the process is now occurring at breakneck speed, leading to an out-of-control situation that sometimes causes the facts to be pushed aside in favor of making the big splash.

In all honesty, my first thought upon hearing of Roethlisberger's accident was regarding the severity of his injuries.  Will he be ready for training camp?  For the first game?  In time for the playoffs?  Was Super Bowl XL the last time we'll see Big Ben on a football field?  Just how badly is he hurt?  I'm sure I even wondered if he survive surgery and if not, how would I feel.  But to the best of my knowledge, there were no facts to support that concern, so that's all it was: concern, not a story.

It seems that in this case, the rush to be the first, to beat the big organizations -- ESPN or Fox Sports, to name two -- to the punch led to the creation of a rumor that thankfully was proved to be untrue.

I'd like to close by saying that while writing this entry, I decided to go back and look a little more closely at the blog on which this unfortunate rumor was "broken".  My goal was to get a greater sense of what this particular blogger was all about: is he the sort to throw out crazy random rumors, or does he favor careful analysis of interesting issues.  In his defense, my initial instinct is the latter; the blog in question is very well done by a very talented young man -- he's certainly capable of putting forth good ideas and defending them with logical, factual arguments.  In the future, I hope he (and all of us, really, in all forms of media) is more careful.

Hi there, my name is Brian.  How's everyone doing tonight?

For some time now, I have toyed around with the idea of starting a blog, with two purposes in mind: one, as a means of sharpening my writing skills and two, to put forth some personal thoughts on the world of sports.  Before I get started, however, it seemed like a good idea to tell a little about myself and my interest in sports.

I still remember the day I fell in love with the game of baseball: Saturday, July 16, 1988.  I was eight years old.  The Boston Red Sox were playing the Kansas City Royals at Fenway Park.  With the game tied at six, little used outfielder Kevin Romine, who had only entered the game as a pinch-runner in the sixth inning, led off the bottom of the ninth with a homerun over the Green Monster in left-field to win it for the home team.  I was only watching on TV, but the game, the situation and the player have all stuck in my head for nearly twenty years (many thanks to retrosheet.org for filling in the rest of the details).

Since that day, many amazing things have happened in my own personal world of sports: David Gordon of Boston College's last second kick to beat top ranked Notre Dame in 1993; BC's basketball upset of top ranked North Carolina the following spring; the heroics of one David Ortiz in the 2004 playoffs; and James Lofton's walk-off homerun in the 2003 Atlantic League playoffs.  But the joy that I derive from sports in general can be traced directly back to that July day in 1988.

Those are the type of things I want to write about in this space and I look forward to doing so.  The focus won't rest solely on any one sport (although as you can tell, baseball will always be my first love and greatest interest), but will cover a wide range depending on what strikes me as interesting at a given day or time.

You have fun reading, and I'll do my best to have fun writing.

Leave your thoughts in the comments.