David Ortiz has been outspoken the last couple seasons about the Red Sox' need for more power in the lineup, and he was at it again yesterday:

“Everybody was looking at me like I was a clown,’’ Ortiz said yesterday at Fenway Park, dropping an expletive to make his point. “I said we needed another 30-home run hitter. Everybody was talking trash. There you go. Now what?’’

Okaay. Of course, the Red Sox last year finished second in slugging percentage and third in home runs -- better in both categories than they did in 2008 and much better in home runs than in 2007. Now, Ortiz says the Sox needed another 30-homer hitter, which may or may not be significantly more valuable than a hitter who hit 28 home runs (as Ortiz did) or 27 home runs (as Kevin Youkilis, fifth in the league in slugging, did) or 24 home runs (as J.D. Drew did).

The Sox did have an offensive shortage in the postseason, but it's hard to say another power hitter would have solved anything, given the ones they had were atrocious. Jason Bay put up an OPS under .500, Kevin Youkilis' OPS was .250, and Ortiz himself put up a stellar 1-for-12 line with four strikeouts.

If the Sox re-sign Bay, the best way they can add a power hitter is for Ortiz to get himself healthy and worry about replicating his production from June forward.

Baseball is not big here in Indonesia. The national sport is badminton. You also see a lot of young guys playing soccer and futsal. As far as American sports, basketball rules the day, especially among teenagers. High schoolers sport Lebron or Kobe jerseys. There is always a basketball game being played at the Menteng Taman courts a few blocks from my home.  On the other hand, baseball is rarely played here. I've heard there is an expat softball league, and the American International schools have baseball teams. But, for the most part, this place is not a baseball town. 

You miss many things when you leave a your home city: family and friends, your favorite restaurants, your routines, the weather. One of the things I've missed the most has been being surrounded by baseball fans. I've yet to meet anyone who cares about baseball. This is probably a good thing for me as it forces me to think about other subjects. Perhaps I'll be a more healthy and emotionally balanced person as a result. But it's still frustrating that nobody I talk to here is capable of appreciating the funny way Alvaro Espinoza wore his hat. It can make one lonely.

The other night, Mandy and I were hanging out with another couple who have quickly become two of our closest friends here. Here's the kicker: They're from Finland. Because I am provincial I don't know much about anything outside of New York City. I especially don't know anything about Finland. For instance, I didn't even know that sauna is the Finnish language's one contribution to all languages. So whenever they talk about their home country, I learn a whole boatload of new and interesting facts. That night I learned by far the most valuable piece of information about Finland: There is a Finnish version of baseball called Pesäpallo. This couple, Paavo and Noora (I think the trick to naming your child a Finnish name is to repeat a vowel in the middle somewhere), weren't enthusiastic Pesäpallo fans, laughing that the game was big among "country bumpkins". But it turns out these cosmopolitan Finns were downplaying the reach of this great sport. That, or they were basically saying Finland is filled with country provincials. It turns out that Pesäpallo is Finland's national sport. I learned this when I arrived home that night and spent a few hours on-line researching this sister sport of baseball.

Pesäpallo is like baseball if baseball were tripping the light fantastic. Or maybe a more apt description is it's like baseball stripped of the pastoral setting and somewhat refined manners. Oh, it's also more brain demanding, according to its boosters. Witness 2008 sports news coverage of a championship game.

The thing that stands out to me is the celebration. The way these things usually work out in baseball is that the winning team finds a place away from its opponent to jump on each other and hug and yada yada. In this case, the winning team runs out onto the field where the opponenents dejectedly stand. What is especially odd for the baseball fan is that the winners carry bats over their heads. It just seems very dangerous. Then the celebrants run by the opponents and actually taunt them, or at least a few do. Now, as the newscast shows there was some kind of altercation earlier in the game so maybe this is an exceptional case. But for now I'll turn the particular into the general. American baseball is more sportsmanlike in its championship celebrations than Pesäpallo.

There is some information about Pesäpallo on wikipedia, this page, and this page. The latter is a very good primer. I liked this part especially:

Pesapallo is a European version of American Baseball. It's more brain demanding, needs more athletic abilities and it's much faster (and more entertaining). Pesapallo in the highest level has said to be the most tactical game in the world with American Football. But unlike Football and Baseball it doesn't require big muscles but _quick legs_, _tactital eye_ and _brains_ to master the game. Anyway the main reason why Pesapallo gives more than other games is that EVERYONE can play it! Women and men, boys and girls, together or apart.

Every great sport has to have at least one genius behind it. Pesapallo has Lauri "Tahko" Pihkala:

As early as 1907, Pihkala had watched baseball games in the United States and sought to incorporate aspects of American baseball into his developing concept of Finnish baseball. Pihkala saw American baseball as a hitting and running game in which the rules produced more frequent exchanges of teams “at bat,” speeding up the game. He viewed the American game as a form of “trench warfare” and proposed developing Finnish baseball into a “mobile war” between bases, in conformity with the basic Finnish military doctrine of forest warfare,which was to “fire and move”(i.e., shooting or throwing a hand grenade, and then plunging ahead).

So another way to conceptualize this:

Baseball is to Trench Warfare as Pesapallo is to Mobile Warfare.

Anyway, if anyone ever finds himself in Finland missing baseball, he can take in a Pesapallo game and squint and see something of the game he loves. 

Chris Jaffe, who writes for the Hardball Times, has a new book coming out this December titled Evaluating Baseball's Managers, 1876-2008. The Hardball Times is running an excerpt from it about Billy Martin. Here's how it begins:

Billy Martin was the most fearless manager in baseball history. In 20 years of managing, he never backed down from a challenge. As has been well documented by others, Martin consistently caused dramatic improvements to his squads immediately upon arrival by pushing them hard. The A’s went from losing 108 games to fighting for .500. The Rangers, who had posted back-to-back seasons in which they had played .350 ball, suddenly won half their games when Martin arrived. The Twins and Tigers improved by 18 and 12 games for him respectively. The Yankees won their first pennant in a dozen years under him.

I'm looking forward to reading this book, particularly for Jaffe's evaluations of managers I know well. How is Torre viewed? Was Grady Sizemore Little criminally underrated as I suspect? (I kid:)). And I also want to read about legendary managers such as Earl Weaver and Casey Stengel. This should be a fun read.

The proof is in Buster Olney's recent tweet: NYY are not interested in signing Holliday. They'll talk to Boras to keep other bidders honest, but corner outfield not a priority for them.

Presumably Buster is writing this based on information he received from a source in the Yankee organization. Or he's going rogue and offering his interpretation of the Yanks' offseason plan. In other words, this claim, offered without the least bit of qualification ("I think the Yanks are not interested...." "Team officials tell me they're not interested in Holliday but are interested in using me to further their agenda..."), is dubious, or more precisely, worthless. Still, these are words strung together which actually serve a purpose for this site, and that is to move your eyes from below this post to this post. Mission accomplished Buster!

What are the first hot stove thoughts that come to your mind?

Grace-SF says hello. 

It's been a while since I've found the time to post here -- and let's face it, following baseball after a Yankees World Series win isn't all that fun. Tomorrow, the missus and I will head to the hospital to welcome the arrival of Grace-SF, so I don't anticipate being around much in the near future.

Preliminaries out of the way, the Sox have been slightly active in the subsequent days. Here's a rundown:

• Trade Hunter Jones and Abe Alvarez for Jeremy Hermida. Is Hermida the next David Ortiz or Carlos Pena? The Sox seem to have good luck with scrap-heap, salary-dump acquisitions like this. Of course it seems likely that, if he does eventually fulfill his promise, Hermida could wind up more Pena than Ortiz -- failing to get enough playing time in Boston only to break out elsewhere. He'll be just 26 next year, and he was acquired for next to nothing. A solid move. Fun trivia: Before the Sox landed Jason Bay, Hermida's was the name being tossed around in the three-way trade rumors. Talk about falling stock.
• Decline $6 million option on Alex Gonzalez. A no-brainer of a move. Gonzo provides adequate defense, but it's not stellar like everyone seems to imagine, and his bat is wholly inadequate. Bringing him back wouldn't be a bad idea, but not at that price, and the best-case scenario is that Jed Lowrie's wrist is finally healed, and Gonzalez takes the role he really should have at this point: a sure-handed backup. It's disappointing that the Sox and Brewers couldn't reach an agreement on J.J. Hardy though.
• Sign Tim Wakefield to a two-year deal. As if Wakefield's $4 million recurring contract wasn't a good enough deal for the Sox, they came back and gave him two guaranteed years that cost even less (presuming his annual DL trip). Wakefield, of course, wants to win his 18 games to set the team victories record. He's won fewer than nine games in a season just once since he was a reliever in the early 2000s (that was the 2006 season, when the Sox seemed incapable of scoring runs for him). 
• Decline $5 million option on Jason Varitek. Tek has activated his $3 million option, making him quite the well-compensated backup catcher in his likely final season as a baseball player. Now that it's firmly established that Varitek will not be starting 100 games, it just doesn't seem so bad that he'll return.
• Reportedly offer four years, $60 million to Jason Bay. This is really a fascinating case, given the presence of J.D. Drew and his $14 million annual salary on the roster. Drew and Bay arguably provide similar offensive production, but Bay's comes via the sexier home run/RBI counting stats that seem to be valued more highly in the free agent market. Meanwhile, Drew's defense is much better, and the market for outfielders generally is worse than it was when Drew signed his deal, so by all objective measures Bay should be paid less than Drew. Yet it's virtually certain that Bay will receive more, thanks to the Sox' needs and the paucity of elite bats in left field this offseason. FYI, Bay was worth 3.5 WAR in 2009 and 6.5 WAR since 2007. Drew was worth 4.7 WAR last year and 10.1 WAR since 2007. 

So how do two jewish guys from opposite sides of the baseball fan universe work things out?  They eat pork. Lots of it.  YF and I (along with both families) headed to Sunset Park this weekend to smooth out the rivalrous tension, and also to fill our bellies. We may disagree about baseball, but we both agree that cheap, bountiful chinese food is a key to happiness.  More pics after the jump.

That's YF in the background, polishing off spare rib #27 (in honor of his team of course!)

In the end, it was hard to distinguish which set of animals (Sox fans, or Yanks fans) made the bigger mess. We're all basically the same, right?

On a Saturday family field trip out to Bay Ridge, Brooklyn, we made a stop at a local Greek food shop. Clearly, for the moment, Yankees territory. Their cross-town rivals were represented - city pride still exists. And clearly, as you can see after the jump, the Mets are #2.  Pun intended.

Courtesy of YFSF reader (and avid Yankee season ticket holder and almost-every-game-attender-and-scorekeeper) LSG, here and after the jump are his sheets for the entire series.  Enjoy, YFs.

(click on each image for a larger version)

I have a feeling the Yanks will win the World Series tonite. They are, on paper, the better team, they have the advantage of playing with a DH, and they will be before a home crowd in the Bronx. Mariano Rivera means the Phils are playing with somewhere between 21 and 24 outs to the Bomber's full 27. 

The Daily News gives us 26 Yankee titles, 26 back pages. I enjoyed it very much.

We're taking this one game at a time. At the end of this one, who knows what we'll be feeling? A.J. Burnett vs. Cliff Lee. Comment away!

YANKEES
Derek Jeter SS
Johnny Damon LF
Mark Teixeira 1B
Alex Rodriguez 3B
Nick Swisher RF
Robinson Cano 2B
Brett Gardner CF
Jose Molina C
A.J. Burnett P

Pitching: RHP A.J. Burnett (1-0, 3.55 ERA in postseason)

PHILLIES
Jimmy Rollins SS
Shane Victorino CF
Chase Utley 2B
Ryan Howard 1B
Jayson Werth RF
Raul Ibanez LF
Pedro Feliz 3B
Carlos Ruiz C
Cliff Lee P

Pitching: LHP Cliff Lee (3-0, 0.54 ERA in postseason)

Half man/ Half Mr. November: