I'm stupid, but not the only one

I've enjoyed having the son of a former major leaguer as a touted prospect for the Red Sox. It has given me several opportunities to reminisce about the time in high school that I was fully decked out in Red Sox garb to interview then-Yankees second baseman Pat Kelly during a mall autograph signing.

Unfortunately, the Boston Herald's Jom Tomase says the guy I interviewed is not the father of Red Sox prospect Casey Kelly. Don't get your inner Maury Povich in a tizzy - it just happens that there were two, actually three, former major leaguers named Pat Kelly. Tomase implies the mix-up happens often:

First off, Casey Kelly’s dad is not that Pat Kelly.

While the Red Sox farmhand is the son of a big leaguer, it’s not the one who spent most of his nine-year career playing second base for the Yankees.

It’s the Pat Kelly who spent nearly eight years in the minors before finally earning the call to the big leagues for a career that lasted all of five days. The elder Kelly debuted in Fenway Park for the Blue Jays on May 28, 1980 and recorded a pair of singles off Bob Stanley that went down as the only two hits of his career. Two games later, the catcher was done, leaving the game after seven at-bats and with a career .286 average.

Oops. That's probably the biggest mistake I've made on this blog. Well, at least the worst since I told Christine that Pablo Sandoval qualified as a rookie in 2009 when she was making her preseason predictions. I think the Kelly screw-up is worse. Christine would agree except my mistake with Pablo made her look bad.

I apologize to all involved. For the record, here's the baseball-reference pages for the Kellys - both related and not related:

Casey Kelly, the son.

Pat Kelly, the father.

Pat Kelly, not the father.

Pat Kelly, an unrelated All-Star outfielder who played from 1967 to 1981. He was born in Philadelphia and is a brother-in-law to Andre Thornton.

Casey Kelley, some unknown minor leaguer who played in the Angels system a decade ago.

Former Phillies backup outfielders: SoxandPhils Matt Stairs signed a minor league deal with the Padres and appears to have a shot to make the team. ... So Taguchi, who "won the World Series with both the Cardinals and the Philadelphia Phillies," is going back to Japan.

My farewell to Mickey Mantle

It was a spur-of-the moment thing. Someone invited me to a Yankees game, and I went.

It was Aug. 13, 1995 - the day Mickey Mantle died. The Mick gave me one of my favorite baseball stories, so I put aside my partisan bias and paid my respects.

I don't remember much from the game, other than it was emotional. It was probably overdone in typical Yankee fashion, but I don't remember being too annoyed by it.

David Cone, who had been recently stolen from the Blue Jays, pitched a gem against a really good Indians team. He gave up a run on six hits and three walks with nine strikeouts in a complete game.

According to Wikipedia, they played Somewhere Over the Rainbow at the stadium because it was Mantle's favorite song.

Other Sox or Phils in the game: Kenny Lofton, Jim Thome, Manny Ramirez, Alan Embree, Wade Boggs and Jim Leyrtiz.

Another Yankee I once met, Pat Kelly, better known now as Casey Kelly's dad, also participated. Charlie Manuel was the Indians hitting coach.

I have no real reason why I'm writing about this now. The program (scorecard pictured above) was part of the latest batch of stuff I salvaged from my parents' attic and has been sitting in a pile waiting for me to write it up.

Rainy memory

Something occurred to me as I mowed the lawn in the rain today. We're going to our first regular season game tomorrow; it's against the Cubs and it could rain. That combination will always conjure a memory for me.

Last May, Christine's co-worker had tickets he couldn't use so we went to a Saturday afternoon game we hadn't planned to attend. It was a pretty good game: Freddy Garcia actually lasted six-plus innings. Although he and Geoff Geary blew up and gave up six runs in the seventh, the Phillies came right back with six of their own to retake the lead in the bottom of the inning. Brett Myers pitched two innings in a non-save situation in what was a turning point toward him being a dominant reliever.

But for us, an off-field incident will always stick out. There was a rain delay that lasted more than an hour. We sat through it, and the place emptied out for the end of the game.

In the ninth inning, as the rain was pouring down again, Aramis Ramirez fouled one back all the way up to our section. In our row. Since there was no one else left in the row at this point, I ran down the row and dove, coming up banged and bruised but with a game ball. Unfortunately, a kid was a few seats and rows away. He wasn't a cute little kid - more like a teen and he was nowhere near the ball. But that didn't stop a drunk in the section from suggesting the ball belonged to the "kid." I wussed out and gave the ball away. {I tease Greg about this, but he definitely made the right decision. We didn't need a fight over a ball.}

I'm still kicking myself for that. It would have been the second ball I ever got at a park - the first in regulation. In the early '90s, I brought my glove to batting practice at Yankee Stadium. I was there real early, camped in the right field corner. Someone hit a lofting fly right to me. I camped under it, but someone jumped over me and snagged it. Determined, I moved up to the wall and soon a ball was roped there. I reached across a bunch of kids (none of them had gloves and had no chance at it) and wound up with the ball.

Later, I had Pat Kelly sign the memento while I interviewed him for my high school paper when he was signing autographs at a local mall. I wore my Red Sox windbreaker and used my Red Sox pen.

Tonight's games: Christine and I are heading to the city for a party tonight. I know we have to miss the end of the first nationally televised Yankees-Red Sox game and probably all of the Cubs-Phillies game, so we probably won't update until after Sunday's game.

What??

I had a busy day at work and was constantly running around.

At one point I quickly checked my e-mail and saw Christine sent me a message with the subject of "What??"

For some reason, I thought it was something personal. You know by now it wasn't, or I wouldn't be mentioning it here. It was:

Burrell traded to Mets

By: Tom Haines
phillyBurbs.com

Former Phillies outfielder Pat Burrell has reportedly been swapped twice this morning, eventually landing with Phils division rival the New York Mets. The Tampa Bay Rays traded the slugging left fielder to the Chicago Cubs then the Cubs dealt Burrell to the Mets. Names of other players involved in the deals were not immediately available.

I repeated Christine's "What??" out loud. Fortunately, none of my cubicle neighbors questioned what had disturbed me.

A few minutes later I bumped into a Mets fan who hadn't heard that the Mets were getting Pat the Bat. ESPN.com didn't have a story, and a quick Google search yielded Mets deny reported Burrell trade:

A club official shot down the report, saying that the report was uncategorically false.

Ouch.

Phillyburbs.com has removed its story.

Red Sox: SS/P prospect Casey Kelly will no longer be bipolar and will focus solely on pitching. ... We signed a Texan, Scott Atchison, who had been pitching in Japan. ... And Terry Francona is confident he will have a left fielder by spring training:

I'm sure when we head down to Fort Myers we'll have a left fielder. We always do. They're really good about that. We're amazingly consistent in that every year we always have a left fielder and I'm guessing we're going to have one this year, too.