Dennis Eckersley is proving to be quite the color commentator for Sox games. If you missed tonight's game, you missed some exuberant lip reading after Youk got hit by a pitch (remember the scene in "A Christmas Story" where Ralphie lets loose with the Big F? Imagine if he'd said the Big S instead) and what is perhaps the best mangling ever of Justin Masterson's last night (he got the "Master" part right, but somehow managed to swap what you use to catch fish for "son"). Couple that with all the discourses on young cheese, paint and gas and you've got quite the parlor game (my wife asked me more than once tonight: "What?

NESN says he'll have a seat in the announcers' booth when he returns:

"I hope that disclosing my bout with cancer will reinforce the dangers of smoking to every member of Red Sox Nation, especially children," said Remy, the president of Red Sox Nation.

Remy posts some more details:

... Unfortunately, following the surgery, I developed a bad infection further compounded by a case of pneumonia. It was the pneumonia and the infection that set me back. This all happened just as I was leaving for spring training. ...

Infection set in during spring training.

Surviving Grady interviews NESN's on-field reporter, who, among other things, vows not to break their hearts and leave Boston like Hazel Mae and Tina Cervasio.

David Scott reviews the big local sports-media news of the past year, including the way NESN quietly dumped Bob Ryan's show this month:

... The move, initiated by NESN's higher-ups and delivered (awkwardly and clumsily, according to multiple sources) by Joel Feld, the network's executive vice president of programming and executive producer, was yet another sign of an eroding relationship between the Red Sox broadcast unit and the New York Times Company (dba here in Boston as the Boston Globe). ...

Yay! Now, enough with the puns.

Capn Ho: It was a great (and badly needed) win, and a good way to wash the taste of the events of the last week out of our collective mouths.

But Remy? You're on notice.

And CHB? Stalking does not become you.

Back to Canada?

Yes, of course there's an entertaining blog whose sole purpose is to slice up the contestants on Sox Appeal.

Via Paul Flannery, who is, apparently, writing a multi-part series on the question of whether Drew Barrymore is the anti-Christ for having appeared in that Jimmy Fallon movie.

Yes a shame has occurred, something that questions the esteemed academic abilities this city is self known for. In this place, with forty plus colleges and universities. where engineers and architects out number artists and musicians, depending on the street corner. A city full of educators, including ignoble and noble prize winners, where the only sport enjoyed more than the long running soap opera of the Red Sox, is throwing things at other people.

Could not some one come forward to teach Don Orsillo how to craft and pilot a paper airplane?