Acid Rain, Black Holes, and

Acid Rain, Black Holes, and Low-Down Dirty Dogs

That acid rain is soaking Fenway again, and once again, we sit out the game on a Tuesday night.

Meanwhile, rumors abound about a certain left-handed stud being brought into the Evil Empire.

First, if you'll pardon my French, the Diamondbacks would have to be on fucking crack to give up the Big Unit to the MFYs...and for who? Who / what are they going to trade for? Especially considering that the only way the D-backs would give up Johnson is if they could cut payroll by doing so?

Of course, you never know with Georgie Porgie. And you know what I say? Bring it on.

I mean, wouldn't it be interesting to have Schill in Boston and RJ in pinstripes--two former teammates now on opposing sides of The Rivalry?

I say, bring it on.

Just look at the AL in the past year: Foulke, Schilling, Rodriguez, Vazquez, Brown, all come to Boston and New York. It's as if East Coast baseball has become a black hole, a burnt-out galaxy now sucking in superstars.

Think about it. The comparison is apt. A Cambridge University website defines a black hole this way:

A black hole is a region of spacetime from which nothing can escape, even light.

To see why this happens, imagine throwing a tennis ball into the air. The harder you throw the tennis ball, the faster it is travelling when it leaves your hand and the higher the ball will go before turning back. If you throw it hard enough it will never return, the gravitational attraction will not be able to pull it back down. The velocity the ball must have to escape is known as the escape velocity and for the earth is about 7 miles a second.

As a body is crushed into a smaller and smaller volume, the gravitational attraction increases, and hence the escape velocity gets bigger. Things have to be thrown harder and harder to escape. Eventually a point is reached when even light, which travels at 186 thousand miles a second, is not travelling fast enough to escape. At this point, nothing can get out as nothing can travel faster than light. This is a black hole.

We are reaching critical mass.

Still, I have to say I'm quite satisfied with what we have. I say, let George put even more superstars in the kitchen, as if even more cooks will sweeten the broth. He'll never swallow his pride and get a Mark Bellhorn or a Pokey Reese. He'll keep signing big studs and wondering why they don't play well as a team.

Even as part of the black hole, the Red Sox boast a precious X-factor: that elusive baseball commodity known as the Dirt Dog.

What exactly is a Dirt Dog?

It's not the kind of thing you can just look up, as I discovered.

Luckily, BDD has a highly informative section on "Origin of the Dirt Dog". According to this page, ironically enough, it was Paul Quantrill--then a reliever for the L.A. Dodgers, who first christened the Red Sox "dirt dogs":

"Some guys in this game are so talented and gifted, the game comes so easy to them, they take it for granted. They get handed their jobs or roles or the ball with no questions asked... Nobody's put above anybody else. This is a big part of what makes a championship team."

"I'd rather have Dirt Dogs than a gifted guy not giving 100 percent. I believe it's because they didn't learn to grind, to battle through adversity. These are guys who will keep competing and not hit the wall and give up."

And that's why the Yanks acquiring RJ wouldn't really surprise me.

Or bother me too much.

My prediction: Houston Astros vs. Boston Red Sox, 2004 World Series.

Bring it on.