Are you jealous Jon?

Just as the sun will rise in the East Wednesday morning, Jon Gruden will arrive at One Buc Place just around the corner from Raymond James Stadium at 3:18am to plan how to attack the Seattle Seahawks this Sunday night. When he was hired by the Bucs, he was considered to be an offensive genius in the NFL coaching community. He quite possibly could be scratching his head in 4 hours, wondering how did Joe Maddon overthrow his title.

The Rays had 12 hits on Saturday, 13 hits Monday, and 14 hits on Tuesday. 39 hits and 31 runs in 3 games. Carl Crawford achieved something no other player has in MLB playoff history has, a 5-5 plate appearance tonight with 2 stolen bases while batting .500. Willie Aybar is batting .500 as well with 5 RBI's this evening. The Rays are scoring more often and easier than the Bucs offense. Can Carl Crawford play wide receiver after the World Series? The Bucs could sure use him.

Tonight's debacle started early when the Rays scored at will on the 42 year old knuckleballer, Tim Wakefield, who had not pitched in 16 days. He lasted 2 2/3rds innings. On behalf of the Rays fans Tim, we enjoyed having you, hope you enjoyed being had.

I had mentioned last night that it looked as if there was a commercial being filmed in Fenway after the 7th inning for Pepto Bismol. Pepto isn't going to coat, soothe, and relieve this ass whipping tonight. Sox fans, just skip over the Pepto, move right after the game to Grey Goose and Morphine.

Time for the observations of tonight's beatdown and there is one pressing issue I must address first and foremost-

Craig Sager- For the love of God man, have you no dignity? A velvet suit jacket? VELVET? And that's not even the half of it, your tie looked as if it was made from drapes out of a Motel 6 hotel room in Lake City that was going out of business. And, please........please, tell me I didn't see you wearing blue shoes with that outfit.
A VELVET suit jacket? You looked like a walking carpet painting of Elvis sold on US 41 by some Pakistani couple in a Citgo gas station parking lot on Sunday afternoon. Has your broadcasting career reached this low?

BJ Upton- Son. I can't say enough good about the majority of what you are doing. I hope this offseason you can tone down your "anger" with the "man" and spend some time with Joe Maddon and he can get you headed in the right direction. Watching you play is frustrating because you could be a superstar but you seem to zone out at times and one of those times was in the 8th inning.

Verizon- I've got the perfect new commercial for you. Joe Maddon walks up to Fenway Park with a duffel bag over his shoulder, sporting his Hugo Boss glasses. He's met at the gate by all the baseball writers, and those who can't write and blab about sports on the radio gurus of America. Maddon reaches the front gate of Fenway but it's locked and all the sports intelligentsia tell him, "You can't come in here, it's a dead zone." Maddon smirks, looks over his shoulder, the camera pans over to show the entire Rays team and they are all carrying Verizon phones. Maddon says, "It's okay, I brought the Network. Can you hear me now?"

38-0- The Rays are 38-0 when leading in any inning this year by 5 or more runs. Check my other blog postings about the Bucs when scoring 26 points or more.

Subway- I'm just annoyed with this 5.00 footlong advertisement campaign you are running. The subs you picture in you ads, where are they? All the veggies perfectly stacked, lunchmeat perfectly portioned, cheese hidden away, no condiments dripping from every end of the sandwich. Shit, your 5.00 footlongs look more like 5.00 footballs by the time you get out of a Subway.

Lights off- Damn. Tonight was the important night for those of us who blindly follow the media folks in their feel good initiatives to right the wrongs of the world and once and for all tell the foreign oil companies enough is enough and turn off our lights! Ooops. Sorry Anderson Cooper. Were the lights off at your house tonight? So,at the conclusion of tonight's pummeling, TBS reported that the state leading in the Lights Off campaign, was no less than Florida. 42,311 households had agreed to participate and 120,908 light bulbs had been turned out. OOOOOH! Saudi Arabia must have been quaking in their shoes. Oil probably plummeted 20.00 a barrel.
The reason 42,000 households in Florida turned off three lamps in their house was because the Bay area was confused and thought it was not a Lights Off program, but a Lights Out program and once the Rays were up 13-2, thought it was Lights out and simply went to bed in the 8th inning. But God Bless the Bay area for saving the world and destroying the global oil demand.

If the Sox return to St Pete- Perhaps they should change things up a bit. I'm thinking they maybe ought to think about staying in a Holiday Inn Express on their next visit. According to their ads, you can do some remarkable things if you stay there.

Big Papi- You hit a triple tonight and the Red Sox broadcaster on the TBS announcing team was near orgasmic. All you need is one hit to get back in the groove. Tonight, the triple you hit was the first hit of the series. You are 1-14 with runners in scoring position. Then you followed up your triple, with a strikeout. As much as the Sox want to downplay the trade of Manny Ramirez, your team misses him badly in the lineup. Add his loss in with the loss of Mike Lowell and Josh Beckett's health, and quite simply this is not the same team which rallied last year from a 3-1 deficit over Cleveland.

I know America wanted a LA/Boston World Series, and you could hear the announcers tonight trying to rationalize a comeback for the Red Sox, but to take a page from Obama's playbook, CHANGE NOW!

Oh and one last thing before I go tonight. In this election cycle, of course the mainsteam media is pushing every angle they can for Obama. I've seen and read lots of stories over the past few weeks about how, we as Americans, need to be more tolerant of people of color and whites aren't going to be the people in the majority in the coming years. I could care less about someones skin color, however I do have issues if the person is a LEGAL citizen of this country or not, but as I was reading the coverage of the game tonight, I ran across this story on Foxsports where Ken Rosenthal wrote about how the Boston Red Sox are looking very white.

http://msn.foxsports.com/mlb/story/8670984/Will-non-white-free-agents-shun-the-Sox?

This article disturbed me and it should you to if you can read in the underpinnings of the article around today's political climate. These are uncertain times we are headed for in this next election. I'm just happy that my Tampa Bay area sports teams are helping to give me some relief during this period.