Red Sox May Have New Young Closer

By | April 12, 2006

Up until last week, the only thing that could make me jump off my couch and yell “PAP SMEAR!!!” was The Discovery Channel. And it wasn’t as if I was happy about it. Mostly, I would be screaming out of fear, because, frankly, there are some things that I just really don’t want to learn about.

But then last Wednesday happened.

The Red Sox were on the road against the Texas Rangers, holding on to a slim 2-1 lead going into the ninth inning. Josh Beckett, in his first start for Boston, had gutted out six consecutive scoreless innings after giving up the lone Texas run in the first, his outing punctuated by violent fist-pumps and October-esque intensity (remember, this is the kid who utterly dismantled the Yankees in the 2003 World Series as a member of the Marlins). Mike Timlin tossed an eventful but scoreless eighth, and Red Sox Nation held its collective breath, awaiting the ninth inning and the first real test on the comeback trail for embattled closer Keith Foulke.

Foulke and his two artificially lubricated knees stayed in the pen. To my surprise and delight, out trotted Jonathan Papelbon, all of 25 years old. Manager Terry Francona was going with the kid, after spending the balance of Spring Training insisting that the closer’s job was Foulke’s to lose. It was the first save situation of the young season, and he was passing over the veteran in favor of the fireballing youngster.

Paps didn’t disappoint. He annihilated the Rangers with 96 mph gas on the black. The control was pinpoint and the stuff was electric. God would have struck out.

The Sox had just won a game that the 2005 squad absolutely would have lost. I leapt off the couch, screamed “PAP SMEAR!!!” and started throwing haymakers into the air like a crazed baboon. (And yes, the only reason I’m writing this column is so I can repeatedly say “PAP SMEAR” and get away with it. Plus, I’m the 1000th sportswriter to make that joke, so I win a set of steak knives.)

In his three subsequent appearances, Papelbon has been similarly dominant. Including yesterday’s outing against the Blue Jays in Boston’s home opener and last week’s non-save inning on Opening Day, he has pitched five innings, given up exactly one hit, struck out five and walked none. I know that’s the mother of all small sample sizes, but it’s a ridiculously impressive start. Yesterday, in front of a rocking Fenway crowd, his ninth inning was straight out of the Sidd Finch Playbook:

Lyle Overbay – fastball looking, splitter swinging, fastball looking.

Shea Hillenbrand – fastball foul, slider popped weakly to left.

Bengie Molina – fastball looking, ball, ball, fastball foul, fastball lined to right.

Ballgame. Cue the Standells.

It’s not simply the fact that Papelbon succeeds, it’s the manner in which he goes about it. He’s a tall walking bitch of a ballplayer and he stalks the mound like a wild animal. He’s a predator. And the way he stares down the hitter – it’s like the second coming of Dave Stewart. Papelbon closing games is like calling on the 1986 version of Roger Clemens to pitch the ninth. It’s all piss and fire, and when the smoke clears, the Red Sox win. You really have to see him pitch to know what I mean.

There’s something to be said for having a closer with unhittable stuff – and it’s exactly that. Even when Foulke was The Man in 2004, his mid-to-high-80s slop always gave me the willies. Because whenever he missed his spots, it became batting practice. When Papelbon misses, the most a hitter can do is foul it off. I know it’s only April, but dammit if I don’t have otherworldly confidence in this kid. It’s easy to believe in a 96 mph fastball that explodes through the zone like a nuclear warhead.

I’m excited for two reasons. First, we’re roughly three more home games away from the fans in the left-centerfield bleachers getting creative and tracking Papelbon’s strikeouts by hanging pictures of speculums and gynecological stirrups in lieu of K’s (and if that’s not funny, well, then I don’t know what is). Second, the Red Sox have their best bullpen since … well, ever. At least since I’ve been alive.

Remember back when the Yankees won four World Series in five years (doesn’t that seem like a lifetime ago)? Any real baseball fan will tell you that those victories weren’t a result of Jeter’s calm eyes or Paul O’Neil’s temper tantrums – the Yankees won because they were playing six-inning games. All the Yankee starter had to do was make it through six frames with the lead, and then the bullpen would close the door without fail. It’s hard to recall now, but back when Mike Stanton, Jeff Nelson and Ramiro Mendoza were still alive, they were nails in the middle innings. Everyone knows that Mariano Rivera is the greatest closer of all time, but he started out by setting up for John Wetteland. Opposing teams knew that if they didn’t have a significant lead by the middle of the game, they would lose. And more often than not, that’s exactly what happened.

Conceivably, the same situation could exist today in Boston’s bullpen. Timlin in the seventh, Foulke in the eighth and then Pap smears the ninth. Of course, this assumes that Foulke will regain some semblance of his 2004 form, when he saved 32 games and pitched with ice in his veins through the playoffs. After suffering both physically and mentally and pitching only 45 mostly-ineffective innings in 2005, his return to prominence isn’t exactly a forgone conclusion. However, his early results are encouraging (again, small sample size warning), and his dart-like delivery and control seem to have returned.

It’s a given that the Red Sox lineup is going to score runs. With a healthy (believe it) Curt Schilling and Josh Beckett at the top of the rotation, and a vastly improved defense backing them up, the starting pitching will provide quality innings. That’s all well and good. But if the Sox find themselves in the enviable position of having to choose between three dominant relievers to pitch high-leverage innings, then we’re six months from the following headline:

“PAP SMEARS A-ROD FOR WORLD SERIES BERTH”

Per Ostman is a Sun Senior Writer.The Victory Lap will appear every other Wednesday this semester.

Archived article by Per Ostman
Sun Senior Writer

A Chat With Franz Ferdinand

By April 13, 2006

Before playing a solid set last Sunday at Barton Hall, Franz Ferdinand’s Nick McCarthy, who plays guitar and organ and sings, sat down with Daze to discuss his music, his city, and the inexplicable success of his band.
Daze: You are by far the biggest celebrity we’ve interviewed, so we’re nervous to be in the presence of rock stars.
Nick McCarthy (Guitars, Vocals, Organ): I’m flattered. We’ve had some time on this campus, and we really really love it. We came in from Camden, and this is a much nicer place. We were wondering why they have signs in our dressing rooms about military garb and how to cut your hair.
Daze: They also house the military groups in here. Watch out, they might come for you next.
NM: Yeah, we’ll be careful [laughs].
Daze: One thing that’s on my mind, Nick, is how four art and music school students go from playing abandoned Glasgow mansions to playing sold-out tours around the world.
NM: [Laughs]. You tell me! You know, we don’t know what happened either. We just played music that we liked, put on parties and people liked it, and a few months later record companies came up to Glasgow to see what we were all about and then we got signed. We put out records, we traveled, travelled, travelled a lot, and now we’re here. You’ve got to play to people.
Daze: So it was just being at the right place at the right time with the right sound?
NM: Yeah, I guess so. You know, we all met my chance. I was there because my girlfriend got into the art school and I’d figure I’d go have a look, since I’ve been in Germany all my life. I only knew them three months before we started getting heard. I just finished studying and I had nothing to lose. I’ve always liked playing in bands, I was hoping to find jazz musicians since I studied jazz bass in school, but the scene was so different.
Daze: What do you think it is about Glasgow that is so conducive to great music?
NM: One thing, it’s really cheap, and that always attracts artists and all sorts of interesting people since you don’t have to work that much. Then there’s all this great industrial space, which all the bands coming from Detroit remind me of. All this empty space and nothing else to do. And a lot of bands come out of the art school. That scene has loads of bands, it’s just an interesting modern school where people talk about new ideas. Bands out of art schools always sound better than music school bands. The parties at music school all the worst their – amazing musicians who have no idea about contemporary music. It’s a total bore. So I found these guys.
Daze: Do you have to actively try to maintain your Glasgow roots where you were kicked out of illegal industrial venues?
NM: Well, you’ve always got to try to keep up your edge. You don’t want to look cheesy, but since it’s the four of us, we stay quite grounded.
Daze: Yeah, man. We still want to dance!
NM: [Laughs] But you do want to progress as well, of course. I don’t want to keep playing the same music.
Daze: How would you describe the progression in your music?
NM: We started off just writing songs. Now it’s a bit darker, a bit less dancable, but a little more like four guys playing music in a room together, working and living it. Now we’re doing big orchestrations, the total other way. We’re using really old cool keyboards. And we worked with horn players in Brazil playing our music, and they were just amazing to record with. Now we’re recording up near Chicago, we’re putting down the band first and then we’re gonna put down lots of layers. We’ve never done that before. We play all the instruments, but it’s more cello, keyboards, flutes, horns, and other effects too. You don’t really hear it too overtly – like the Beatles, it’s all very subtle.
Daze: What do you think about upstate New York?
NM: We’ve never been here before, but we really love it. We went for a walk down Cascadilla Creek to the main part of town, and it was beautiful. People just lounging outside in cafes. Seems like a really lovely place, and the campus is just beautiful up on the hill here. I went to the art museum, saw a few Rembrandts.
Daze: Does having a college audience change things at all?
NM: Well, even that is really different. We were just at Duke, right when those lacrosse players raped that girl, it was really awkward. But overall, it’s been great touring with Death Cab For Cutie
Daze: How do you feel about playing with them?
NM: Well, it’s a really different sound. But that makes it a little festival – their fans are open to us, our fans our open to them. We’re trying to win them over, playing to people who don’t necessarily show up to hear us. There are some guys who never change their mind, but some of them slowly get into it.
Daze: Well, although your tagline is “music that girls can dance to,” the lyrics seem to be really personal sometimes. How do you keep both in perspective?
NM: We like music to work on a lot of levels. We listen to the music first, and then the lyrics. We want it to be catchy, but there’s a lot behind that. When you suddenly realize that the lyrics are really great too, it really takes you. We focus as much on the words as we do on the lyrics – it’s fun to sit around and play with words, too.
Daze: You certainly write about relationships in insightful ways.
NM: Sure, but sometimes somebody comes out with lyrics and we all respond: “Ah, oh no! We can’t say that and still be taken seriously!” [laughs]. The great thing with us is that everyone has their role and we play off each other’s strengths. I’m a little more musical, which here is a dirty word. But Alex is a lot more intuitive. Paul is the most amazing drummer I’ve come across, such a metronome. Bob is the one that keeps us up on all the new music that keeps us thinking.
Daze: Sounds like you’ve found the right people. Oh, it’s been quite an honor talking to you.
(NOTE: Nick then asked us what we were doing after the show and we exchanged numbers. He actually gave us a call later, but being underage meant that we completely missed them at the Royal Palms later that night.)
Archived article by Elliot Singer Sun Arts and Entertainment Editor and Jonnie Lieberman Associate Editor
A Modern Way of Letting Go

By April 13, 2006

I’m graduating in less than two months. I haven’t been fitted for my cap and gown, I have no idea what I’m going to do with the massive amount of things I’ve accumulated in the last four years I’ve been here, and I have no apartment yet in the city that will be my new home. I’m supposed to take care of all of this in a matter of five weeks or so; needless to say it’s an epic task. I’ve been able to field the typical post-graduate questions with grace by mostly being as sketch and vague as possible in my replies. You know, the “Oh my god so what are your plans? Where are you living? How much will you be making? Don’t you wanna go back to school right away?” I know that May 28 is coming. We all do. I know that I’ll have to get said cap and gown, figure out living/travel/other various life arrangements, and an assortment of commencement details too insipid to name. I know I’ll have to do these things … eventually. But I can’t bring myself to think about stuff like this.
People keep asking me about the next couple of months and years, but I’m still trying to get through the week ahead, let alone finish my school work. (Yes, last semester seniors have homework too.) I’ve got one foot out the door and the other still behind me. The pending date that I will leave Cornell forevermore is fast approaching, and, while I’m immensely excited that it is, it suddenly hit me that through graduation’s door we will enter a world drastically different from our Cornell bubble.
In many ways, I’ve simply selectively chosen the details of graduation to think about and those to pursue at a later date. Basically, I’ve chosen to ignore them. Don’t get me wrong, I’m usually as well-adjusted as the next person. But this could be the last time in my life when I’ll be in the same city with all of my nearest and dearest girlfriends, when we’ll be able to stay up until the wee hours of the morning, delaying work because we can, sipping wine and laughing hysterically, and vegging out to our heart’s content. It’s probably the last time I’ll be able to go to class, come back for a power nap, go to another, sleep some more in between, and go to work all in the same weekday. The last time I’ll walk on the street and see at least ten people I know. And as much as studying and worrying about grades stresses me out, do you know I’ll miss Club Uris too? Ironically it’s become my central base to meet up with friends as we have slowly stretched out into the far corners of campus far away from our first Cornell homes on North as freshmen.
I’ll miss meal plan. Dining hall food sucks, but in my opinion cooking and grocery shopping sucks even more. I’ll miss seeing my friends perform in their dance troupes and music groups, or seeing other tremendously talented people on this campus express what they’re passionate about. I’ll miss being in a place where the second it snows paths to walk through have already been shoveled and cleared. I’ve already had a taste of the fact that the rest of the east coast does not operate like this, and I don’t like it one bit.
I’ll miss sleeping in, staying in my pajamas all day long. I’ll miss being able to attend a reading by one of my favorite authors Edwige Danticat, or John Updike, or listen to the harrowing account of real life Hotel Rwanda’s Paul Rusesabagina. We really are in the presence of greatness at this school.
When I think about my time at Cornell, it brings a mix of emotions. I’ve met some of the most fantastic, amazing, anal-retentive, self-involved, oblivious, trashy, blissfully ignorant, annoying, beautiful people at this school. There have been moments that I will never forget and others that I could have done without. I’ve learned that books and world-renowned academia don’t teach common sense or compassion; living life does. People ask me how I’ve liked my time here. “I’ve loved the friends I’ve made,” is my usual response. It’s the more coded and polite answer, of course, but it’s the honest truth as well. I wouldn’t call these years at Cornell the best years of my life; quite frankly I think those are yet to come. But I will say that I’ve appreciated my experiences here, they have taught me a lot about myself and the world. And so I’ve taken to the modern way of letting go; completely sidestepping the fact that the end is near but eagerly anticipating its arrival at the same time. I’m living in the moment but looking forward to the next all at once.
Archived article by Sophia Asare Sun Staff Writer