Well, as I was driving from the former seat of all NHL power, Montreal, through the free and independent states of Vermont, New Hampshire, and Massachusetts today, it struck me what an odd thing royalty is.

Royalty, in modern times, is something that is perpetuated by those who didn’t actually make those great conquering achievements and establish their reigns, but rather those who find themselves, because of a certain location in history and an accident of birth to be in a position to (air quotes) “carry on a tradition.”

Yet those (air quotes) “royals” sit there on their giant thrones and primp in their hand mirrors and try to dictate morality according to them, about how you can dive, or how you should play, or how you shouldn’t run a player into the center glass, and the rest of us, those poor, filthy masses, are just supposed to take it.

Well, a couple of hundred years ago a bunch of rowdy radicals charged out of the Boston bars, went down to the dock, and dumped the king’s tea into the salty sea.  And in doing that, it struck a chord that rings true even today.  That when confronted with imperious conceit, fighing the good fight is not only the right thing to do, it can be a heck of a lot of fun.  And who has more fun than us?  For Andy Brickley (sp?), Nako Funayama (sp?), and our NESN production crew, I’m Jack Edwards at TD Garden in Boston…

Is this an indictment of Montreal players or fans?  Or both?  Or the royal wedding?  Did Mr. Edwards track down a thesaurus over the commercial break to come up with “imperious conceit?” My questions continue, but I look forward to anyone else chiming in…

What’s going on here? This man has no strange facial hair, his hat is normally placed, and his face is somehow avoiding the typical contortions expected of a nerd (though what’s with the bat?). This man is far more dangerous*. On WEEI today (Boston sports talk radio), Francona was asked how he valued RBI**.

How do you value RBIs?

I think there are some things that can be skewed. I grew up in an era where, if you hit .300, you were a good player. Well, you know what? That’s not the tell-tale. I was the perfect example. I could hit .300. I never helped our team. I hit all singles, I never walked, I wasn’t fast enough to score any runs. It was kind of cosmetic. Getting on base is a very important stat. It doesn’t mean we have nine guys up there trying to walk. But it means if they’re seeing pitches and working counts, they’re going to become more dangerous hitters. If they’re on base, we talk all the time about keep the line moving, You have to have a good enough team to do that. If you have four or five guys who are taking their walks, and four or five guys that can’t hit, that’s not going to work. If you have a balanced team, which we try to do, and you have that approach, it’s going to work.

(transcript here)

Hey Francona, if you got out of your mother’s basement maybe you’d know how the game of baseball is supposed to be played. I can see through your veiled reference to OBP. Francona might not have the fashion down (yet), but this man is a nerd.

* I’ve been reading Dan Brown and sentences like “This man is far more dangerous” seem perfectly acceptable at the moment.

** WEEI, the plural of RBI is RBI. They’re runs batten in, not runs batted ins.