A few baseball and non-baseball thoughts while watching Sox-Sox Game 1:

- Happy New Year to those of you of the Jewish faith. We enjoyed a very nice family service at our temple this morning, and my in-laws are coming soon for dinner.

- As predicted, the Cardinals took Game 1 from the Padres, but San Diego made it interesting with three runs in the 9th off the Cards closer Jason Isringhausen. Unfortunately, the Padres were down by six runs at the time and the Cards came away with an 8-5 win.

- I finally got around to seeing the iPod nano over the weekend. It's hard to believe how small this thing is - those commercials that call it "impossibly small" aren't kidding around. It's so small that it almost looks fake. It's so cool that if I could come up with an excuse to buy one I'd do it in a heartbeat.

- I got autograph number 12 on the Pawsox all-time team card set from Dave Stapleton over the weekend. Stapleton, of course, is best known for not substituting for Bill Buckner in the 10th inning of Game 6 of the 1986 World Series. Stapleton had been coming in defensively for Buckner, who had bad ankles, all year, but Sox manager John McNamara wanted Buckner on the field when the Sox won the World Series. Of course, we all know what happened next.

- Clement has already hit two batters in the first. Podsednik scored to make it 1-0.

- Today is the one year anniversary of my trip to Pittsfield to speak to the Parks Commission about Wahconah Park. You can read about it here or you can pick up Jim Bouton's Foul Ball plus Part II and read the whole behind-the-scenes story. Make sure you check out page 434.

- Clement got hammmered in the first, and it's 5-0 White Sox. Not a good start.