Before I get into the weekends events, I have to sound off on Matt Clement. He got smacked around again against the Blue Jays tonight. I didn't have any real expectation of Clement beating Roy Halladay tonight, but Clement was just horrible. 6 runs in 3 and 1/3 innings. I don't know if he's still feeling the effects of the line drive off the leg in his last start or he just sucks, but they have to do something about this guy. Of course, with a nearly $10 million price tag this year, I'm not sure what that would be.

That's the bad news. The good news is that Jermaine Van Buren and Manny Delcarmen pitched 3 and 2/3 innings of scoreless relief and the Red Sox have managed to climb back into the game with home runs by Coco, Manny and the big clutch 3 run home by Varitek to tie the game at 6 in the 8th. A great comeback from a 6 run deficit - we'll see if they can get all the way back and win this one.

We had a great Memorial Day weekend. Other than a Pawsox game, we had nothing scheduled and that made it feel like a real long weekend. Most weekends are filled with Tae Kwon Do, Girl Scouts, swimming, baseball and other assorted events for the kids, but with the holiday pretty much all of that was cancelled. So Saturday we went to see the movie Over the Hedge. It's an animated flick with a bunch of forest animals discovering that the forest they live in has mostly been turned into an upscale subdivision. The animals find out they can get junk food from their new human neighbors and various hijinks ensue. The voice work is great, including William Shatner as a possum. It's a fun movie - nothing groundbreaking but a good way to spend a couple of hours with the kids.

Sunday brought us to our first visit of the season to McCoy Stadium, to see the Pawtucket Red Sox take on the Norfolk Tides. We had the good fortune to see hot Red Sox prospect Jon Lester start for the Pawsox. Lester is pretty impressive - a lefthander who throws a 96 MPH fastball. He wasn't at his sharpest - he had three walks to go along with his three strikeouts, but only gave up one run in 5 and 1/3 innings, doing a nice job of working out of a bases loaded jam in the 4th.



Unfortunately, Lester's replacement, Marc Deschenes wasn't nearly so good. He gave up six runs in his three innings and the Pawsox ended up losing the game 7-5. The offensive star for the Pawsox was DH Jeff Bailey, who was 3 for 4, including a three run homer and a double. He was also robbed of a second home run on a great catch by Tides center fielder Lastings Milledge (what kind of a name is "Lastings", anyways?)

The game was followed by an excellent fireworks display. It's always a pleasure to go to McCoy, even if the results aren't quite what we would like, but we had a good time.

Today consisted of sleeping late and heading up to Salem, MA for the afternoon. After we grabbed some lunch, we checked out the New England Pirate Museum, which turned out to be very cool and very interesting. We also went to the Salem Wax Museum which was, to be honest, pretty lame. Finally, we went over to the Salem Maritime National Historic Site and saw a short film on Salem's history as one of America's trading centers in the 18th and 19th centuries. Afterwards we walked along the docks and saw a recreation of a merchant ship - unfortunately we couldn't go on board, since the last tour of the day had already happened, but it looks like something we'll check out on a return trip. Here's a picture:



Oh yeah, the Sox ended up losing 7-6, as David Riske gave up a run in the 8th.