David Roth on the New York Mets’ reinstalled no. 6 starter :

I kept trying to come up with some sort of comment about Trachsel’s 20 minute warmup to throw 60 pitches, but nothing seemed quite right. It’s funnier as it is than I could’ve possibly made it. I feel bad for the guy, being shut out of the rotation and all, but there should be at least two starts for him coming up: one for the temporarily dead-armed Benson (put your own smutty Anna Benson joke in these parentheses, if you want) and hopefully one for Pedro if anyone can get him to take a rest. After that… is there really no way they could trade Sluggish Steve to the Red Sox for, say, Varitek-blocked catching prospect Kelly Shoppach? Shoppach would enable the Mets to leave Jacobs at first (and as far as I’m concened, leave him there: he looks aggressive, and hits the ball hard) and he’s apparently a pretty decent prospect with a pretty un-decent chance of ever seeing much behind-the-plate action in Boston. What’s best about all this is that Steve T’s DJ Screw-style pitching pace could put an extra twenty to thirty minutes on to games, thus pushing back the 7th inning last call even further into the sodden Fenway night. Sox fans wouldn’t love that?

Much as I love perpetuating negative stereotypes about the good people of Boston, I must take exception to David’s remark. I’ve attended a good number of Red Sox games over the years and not everyone in attendence was shitfaced. At least half of the children under the age of 10, for instance.