To The Boston Red Sox...SIGN PAPELBON

The Boston Red Sox and four of their players have until noon today (Tuesday) to reach salary agreements or else Theo Epstein's spotless arbitration record (none) will be gone and monetary figures will be submitted for February judgements. Theo has never gone that route before. The four players are Jeremy Hermida, Ramon Ramirez, little Manny Delcarmen and most notably Jonathon Papelbon. In my view, Hermida and Ramirez will avoid arbitration. The same goes for Manny Delcarmen although I don't know anyone's thinking process. I give you my opinion as a fervent Boston Red Sox fan.

Obviously, the biggest name of the four is Jonathon Papelbon, one of the elite closers in major league baseball. Sometimes his occasional blown leads and blown saves starkly stand out year to year but look at Paps' 2009 numbers...1-1, 1.85 ERA & 38 saves. Outstanding. In the past Paps has been willing to accept one year contracts from Boston and he'll probably do the same this year and next before he will be a potential free agent in 2012. Remember, time flies and that's only two years from now. He earned six and a quarter million smackeroos last year and could easily earn ten million this year and even more in 2011. Is he worth that kind of dinero. Simple. YES!!!!!

I implore Theo and Jonathon to agree on SOMETHING before noon today to avoid the trials and troubles of arbitration. Where would we be without Papelbon. Those two world championships would just be mirages, wonder dreams of what could have been. But they were real. Thank goodness.

That's all I have for today except for this. Last night, the national champion University of Connecticut women Huskies went down to Durham, North Carolina, number seven Duke's home court and killed them by a score of 81-48. That was their 57th (!!!) win in a row, all by double digits. They go on and on and on, simply unstoppable. If you click on this post's title you'll be zapped to the Hartford Courant's coverage of the mismatch.

By the way, if you read the Offerman post just below this one, the latest news is that Jose has been banned for life from the Dominican League. That's the right call if you ask me. Click on the title of my Monday post and put your sound on to see what caused his lifetime ban. Temper temper, Jose.

As always, BE WELL and I thank you for popping in to my little corner of "the blue nowhere." See ya.