OK - I'm the last one to point this out, but this is a truly extraordinary blog. No, I don't know if this author is for real, but it certainly sounds authentic (I do have my suspicions about certain other bloggers purporting to show the seamier side of Orthodoxy). No time to reflect on the ramifications now, but there are many. I certainly won't dismiss the term "shidduch crisis" as blithely as I might have been tempted to do in the past.

to the most famous pitching non-prospect of the last 20 years, Sidd Finch. Alan Schwarz has a great retrospective in today's NYT:

Selected Mets officials were among the few people (including Sports Illustrated editors) even slightly aware of what the magazine was up to. They issued Berton a uniform and allowed him full access to their spring training complex, even letting him sit in the bullpen during exhibition games as Stewart clicked away. Fans would ask the weird-looking guy in the No. 21 jersey if he was trying out for the club, and he would reply: "Yeah. You'll hear about it later."

Did they ever. When Sports Illustrated hit the newsstands several days before the April 1 cover date, "The Curious Case of Sidd Finch" staggered baseball and beyond. Two major league general managers called the new commissioner, Peter Ueberroth, to ask how Finch's opponents could even stand at the plate safely against a fastball like that. The sports editor of one New York newspaper berated the Mets' public relations man, Jay Horwitz, for giving Sports Illustrated the scoop. The St. Petersburg Times sent a reporter to find Finch, and a radio talk-show host proclaimed he had actually spotted the phenom - who, truth be told, was back in Oak Park teaching art at Hawthorne Junior High.

I was writing a long post until after 2:00 AM last night. I had intended to finish it now.

I thought I had saved it.

Apparently not.

@#$%@!#)%!@$%!!!

There's no way I can reconstruct it now.

It was an extended review of all we have seen over the last couple of years regarding a certain rivalry to be renewed on Sunday night in the Bronx.

Here are some random items from the now-vanished post:

For me the greatness of the rivalry, currently at its peak, exists between the white lines. ... What gives these clashes added allure is not all the peripheral hullabaloo but rather the extraordinarily high level of baseball that is played when these two historic franchises are at their best.

- "Sully"

I'm not even a Yankees or a Red Sox fan, and I have to admit that they've played the best, most dramatic games of the 2004 season. There were times it seemed like anyone could put on the uniforms and have an epic game: Your office could split on hometowns, put on a whiffle ball tournament, and the Red Sox-Yankees match-up would go 11 innings, decided on a miraculous over-the-cubicle-into-the-water-cooler diving stab of a line drive for the last out.
- Derek Zumsteg

What can happen in a best-of-seven that hasn't already happened between these two this season? What kind of heroics can top what we have already witnessed? Is Pokey Reese going to throw three innings of brilliant relief in a 18-inning 1-0 win? Will Jason Giambi pinch-hit in a critical jam and hit a ball that's never found for a grand slam home run to win the deciding game seven? I don't know, but it's going to be interesting and it should be great baseball.
- Derek Zumsteg

You might say that expectations were met - especially if you're a Sox fan.

This has been a very depressing winter all around in NYC, but it may finally lift. Let's get it on.

OK, not just yet. One sour grape to get off my chest (seriously mixed metaphor alert). So help me God and Bill James (don't any Sox fans remember his "Tracers" or other demolitions of old stories?) - in no particular order - if I hear one more reference to how the veteran leadership showed by Varitek in picking a fight with A-Rod for no particular reason "sparked the Red Sox's turnaround" or some other nonsense, I'm sending that person 100 autographed pictures of Derek Jeter (if it's made by a Red Sox fan) or 100 copies of each of "Moneyball" and "Win Shares" (if it's made by a know-nothing in the media). Dean Barnett, consider yourself warned.

Such veteran leadership, which worked so well that the Red Sox lost several games in the standings immediately thereafter and didn't start gaining for another 2 1/2 weeks, inspired the Red Sox to grant Varitek a captaincy and a $40 million contract, which should make him a wealthy man long after his knees have expired.

Previews to follow over the next few days...assuming I remember to hit the "Save" button.

Here's a phenomenal interview with Bill James - one of the best I've seen.

Most of it will be of interest to his disciples (and wannabes thereof), but here's an excerpt of greater applicability:

James T: I have to ask you this. On an internet baseball fan site, I recently saw you quoted to the effect that veteran leadership had enabled the Red Sox to come back from down 0-3 in the ALCS. But, in that forum, the immediate response was to doubt your sincerity. Bill couldn't mean that! And these were people who held you in high regard. Are you resigned to your reputation at this point in time?

Bill James: Well, believe it or not, I don’t worry about my reputation in that sense. I’ll let that take care of itself.

This is probably a long-winded answer, but I’ll try to explain it this way. If I were in politics and presented myself as a Republican, I would be admired by Democrats by despised by my fellow Republicans. If I presented myself as a Democrat, I would popular with Republicans but jeered and hooted by the Democrats.

I believe in a universe that is too complex for any of us to really understand. Each of us has an organized way of thinking about the world—a paradigm, if you will—and we need those, of course; you can’t get through the day unless you have some organized way of thinking about the world. But the problem is that the real world is vastly more complicated than the image of it that we carry around in our heads. Many things are real and important that are not explained by our theories—no matter who we are, no matter how intelligent we are.

As in politics we have left and right—neither of which explains the world or explains how to live successfully in the world—in baseball we have the analytical camp and the traditional camp, or the sabermetricians against the scouts, however you want to characterize it. I created a good part of the analytical paradigm that the statistical analysts advocate, and certainly I believe in that paradigm and I advocate it within the Red Sox front office. But at the same time, the real world is too complicated to be explained by that paradigm.

It is one thing to build an analytical paradigm that leaves out leadership, hustle, focus, intensity, courage and self-confidence; it is a very, very different thing to say that leadership, hustle, courage and self-confidence do not exist or do not play a role on real-world baseball teams. The people who think that way. . .not to be rude, but they’re children. They may be 40-year-old children, they may be 70-year-old children, but their thinking is immature.

Or, to put it in one sentence, if I worried about that @#%$ I would have folded my tent 25 years ago, when my ideas were anathema to the mainstream baseball establishment.

Let's try this again.