Ladies and Gentlemen, Your Starting First Baseman: DeMarlo Hale

How some of your favorite Sox players will be spending the All-Star break

Well, not yet, anyway. But it may be coming to that. In what has become a sort of real-life David Lynch film that gets weirder at every turn, the 2010 season claimed another Red Sox victim tonight: Kevin Youkilis, who left the game with pain in his right ankle. I pray to God that’s French for “Nasty hangover.” Because a line-up free of Youkbacca and stocked with such talent as Bill Hall, Eric Patterson, Kevin Cash and Youk’s replacement “I’m Only Niuman” Romero ain’t gonna win us many cookies.

Tonight, the Fantastic Four were a combined 1-for-14, although that one hit was a ninth inning Patterson triple that pulled us one run closer and put the tying run on third. What this tells me, John Henry, is if ever there was a time to impose mandatory exposure to gamma rays for every player on the DL, it’s now. Hey, that shit worked for Bruce Banner.

As much as it sucks to drop another to the Rays, especially with the prospects of a Wake vs. Price mash-up tomorrow, there’s really no sense punching out the lights. The injuries are taking their toll. We’re plugging holes left and right just to keep above water and the fact that we’re still in the thick of things is a testament to this team’s moxie. Hopefully it will serve us well once everyone’s healthy and looking for revenge.

That said, if we lose Youk for any stretch of time, I’m takin’ up crack.

Lastly, we want to congratulate the winner of our “Where are you watching the Sox on the Fourth of July” contest. Some freakin’ awesome entries across the board, which made it very tough to pick one winner. But after careful consideration by me, Denton, the folks at TiqIQ and my Aunt Ralphie, the winning entry was finally identified. Congrats to buckhntr, who gets the $100 eBay giftcard (and who should hit us up at soxfiend2004@comcast.net to work out “the details.”) This was the one we just kept coming back to, time and time again:

“i bought 2 seats from fenway and they are on my porch here in brooksville, maine. come gametime me and the honey will be sittin’ in those seats drinkin’ cheap vodka with very expensive oj and listenin’ to the game. have a fifth on the fourth. god bless america and the men and women who do us proud in servin’ our great country.”

Amen. And thanks again to all who entered.