Last pitcher standing

The Red Sox signed Brian Shouse to a minor league deal, but the 41-year-old lefty doesn't have much of a chance of making the team, as the Boston Globe noted:

Here's how much the Red Sox think of having signed Brian Shouse: They didn't announce it.

The Globe also noted that Shouse was a teammate of Tim Wakefield's on the 1993 Pirates. He then went five years without appearing in the majors before he resurfaced as a teammate of Wakefield on the 1998 Red Sox.

How odd is that? Of the 47 players who appeared in a game for the 1993 Pirates, 26 played their last game before 1998. Other than Shouse and Wakefield, no member of that team played beyond 2006.

From the 1998 Red Sox, Shouse and Wakefield are two of eight players still active - Nomar Garciaparra, Jason Varitek, Pedro Martinez, Derek Lowe, Tom Gordon and Ron Mahay are the others. Other members of the '93 Pirates also on the '98 Red Sox were Midre Cummings and Orlando Merced.

Of the 47 players who played on that Red Sox team, 10 were gone by 1999 and 32 didn't play beyond 2003.

For the quirkiness of it, I hope Shouse, who was the fourth-oldest player in the American League last year, rejoins Wakefield, the AL's oldest player, in Boston this year.

Other relievers in the news: Boof Bonser doesn't know why his mom started calling him Boof, but he legally changed his name from John Paul in 2001. ... Hideki Okajima signed, avoiding arbitration. ... And before Phillies fans could stop laughing about Carlos Beltran surprising the Mets by having surgery, a similar thing occurred with Brad Lidge.