It's August--Let's Start Talking About Them Boys of Summer

I need to stop blogging in the middle of the night when I'm feeling more and more desperate to go to bed. I start getting tired, and I lose track of some of what I've been thinking about during the day. On Thursday, I'd planned to write about the changes to the Boston Red Sox on the last day of eligible trading. I ended up talking about Lollapalooza, which was timely enough, but then I never came back to baseball. So now here's my chance.

I can't pretend to know what was happening with Manny Ramirez and the Red Sox. For some reason, the slugger became disillusioned with the team. It wasn't necessarily a surprise when he was included in a three-way trade with the Pittsburgh Pirates and the Los Angeles Dodgers, but it was still a somewhat unfortunate end to his time in Boston. I'm not sure what I might've written had I dealt with this on Thursday, but even just a few extra days has made the whole thing make more sense. The Red Sox ended up with Jason Bay, who seems to be adding spark to the team. I'm not the first person to have noticed potential parallels to the '04 season when unhappy Red Sox star Nomar Garciaparra was traded away. It was counterintuitive that losing a strong player would strengthen the team, but that's exactly what happened when the Red Sox finally broke their World Series championship drought. On the flip side, Manny has blossomed in his short time in LA. According to the LA Times, as of Monday morning, he was hitting .615, and his tenure is inspiring headlines such as "Tinseltown Is Swooning Over Manny." Before the trade, I hadn't been aware that Alyssa Milano had her own baseball blog. Well, she does, she's a Dodgers fan, and she is STOKED that Manny is now in Dodger Blue. So is this trade best for everybody involved? It's too early to know for sure, but initial signs certainly are positive.