Ah well... it's only spring training

Oh wait. These games count.

Crap.

So we begin the 5th annual "This could be the year Rich Harden gets it all together" season and today Emil Brown gets the big hit and somehow remembered to touch all the bases.

It doesn't seem right to be shut down the last few innings by old friends Keith Foulke and Alan Embree. Can't they let us off the hook? For old time's sake.

Well, at least this Japanese nonsense is over. And I am no longer fighting with my children for the TV.

I want the Red Sox and my kids want Max and Ruby.

Now the defending World Champs are heading back home, magic number still at 162.
But before they leave the Orient, let's enjoy the trailer for the single greatest Godzilla epic EVER...

Destroy All Monsters

What better place to open the season?

The Red Sox begin their defense of the 2007 World Championship on Tuesday...
They play the Oakland A's, whose home park is a mere 40 miles from my house.

So what better place to play than in Tokyo!

A quick glance in the American Heritage Dictionary shows the definition of "retarded" as followed:

1. Often Offensive Affected with mental retardation.
2. Occurring or developing later than desired or expected; delayed.

I would add

3. The starting of the regular season in Japan only to fly back and play more exhibition games.

As stupid as these trips are, rest assured I will be up at 3 AM PDT watching them.

And as a rabid Godzilla fan from my youth, I guess this gives me as good an excuse as any to show the Japanese trailer of one of my favorite Godzilla films, Godzilla vs Gigan (or as it was called on the Creature Double Feature on Channel 56 in Boston, Godzilla on Monster Island).

For my fellow Godzilla fans, it was the one with the hippie, the cartoonists and the cockroaches disguised as humans using an amusement park as the control center of world domination.

It's worth a rent.