RED SOX VS. INDIANS MONDAY NIGHT

Cleveland, OH - Writing a quick update from the hotel in Cleveland, right across a parking lot from the Quicken Loans Arena...just beyond which the light towers from Jacobs Field are visible. That's where we (The Wife, The Baby, and I) will be Monday night for the Red Sox vs. Indians.

It's an exciting game for The Wife because she's seeing her Red Sox. It's exciting for The Baby because she's going to be wearing her cute little pink Red Sox outfit, and she's hoping the NESN cameras will find her. For me, that was going to be the exciting part of the night as well, besides seeing the stadium. Wednesday night will be a bobblehead night in Cincinnati - I just felt the American League game was lacking something. Not anymore.

The news came out today that the Red Sox will be recalling Jon Lester for the start on Monday night in his return to the Majors after a battle with cancer. That's a far cry from a Julian Tavarez start. I'm really psyched. I should have realized something was up when earlier in the day I saw that the Southern Bureau had picked up Lester in the fantasy league. I liked watching Lester pitch - I like seeing some of these young guys come up and do well - and by all accounts Lester seems like a good guy to root for. Which I'll be doing in person Monday night.

METS INJURY NEWS: Lots has been happening while the Mets have been out West, thought it was worth catching up on.

Thursday (or maybe it was Wednesday) the Mets signed Marlon Anderson - I forget where he was released from this year - but the former Mets' bench specialist has been getting significant playing time in left field this weekend. Now that I think of it, Anderson might have been released by the Dodgers before the Mets signed him. I could look it up...but I'm on vacation.

Then Jose Valentin fouled a ball off his leg on Friday night, and it turns out the leg is broken. I saw Valentin limp off the field Friday night as I was packing heard the injury news driving across New York state on Saturday. The Mets recalled Anderson Hernandez (Name Game alert - Marlon and Hernandez = Anderson Anderson!), who had been hitting very well recently at Triple-A. Ruben Gotay will still see the majority of time at second base. I hate to say an injury is good news, but Valentin was hurting the Mets by being in the lineup - his knee was really in bad shape, and he said he was playing through the pain to reach an incentive for at-bats in his contract which I think kicked in another year for him. And Willie Randolph kept playing him, even though he was visibly only at 50-60%. So it's nice that now there's no choice in the matter...unfortunately, Valentin might not be back all year.

Finally, from the injury front - about a month until the return of Pedro Martinez*.

OOPS: I don't know what I did to poor Mike Maroth - but he gave up 10 earned runs in his last start for the Cardinals, and he's just been awful since coming over in a trade. I hope he turns it around.