Though Bad Altitude finds some slim consolation in “the Red Sox haven’t had to use any of their vulnerable pitchers — which is every single one of them besides Beckett, Schilling, Okajima, and Papelbon — in a close-game situation yet”, there’s also the not-so-small matter of Colorado’s likely MVP leaving taking the bat out of Todd Helton’s hands in the last of the 8th Thursday night.

The Fanhouse’s Pat Lackey, unduly distracted by some marketing nonsense of some sort of another, fails to understand there’s only one option for the real fan during this Fall Classic ; fake your IP address so you can watch the MLB.com international feed instead of Fox’s promo-happy presentation.

Starting with last night’s “unscripted” conversation between Royce Clayton and Coco Crisp about the free taco giveaway (you can call it unscripted all you want, but why else would ROYCE CLAYTON be mic’d up?) I think Buck and McCarver have talked more about the free tacos than baseball. They replayed the conversation tonight, they celebrated in the booth when Jacoby Ellsbury stole a base, they played ANOTHER conversation between Clayton and Ellsbury with Clayton urging Ellsbury to steal a base for America, and they interviewed Taco Bell’s creepy COO. His empty eyes bored a hole into the camera and my Fox-addled soul. Not only that, Jub-Jub asked the Stepford-COO about giving away “Millions of dollars of free tacos.” Try tens of thousands of dollars of free tacos, maybe.

It’s been some kinda career for Clayton ; from the shortstop who replaced The Wizard, to the mouthpiece that took on tasks that would embarrass Eric Byrnes.