the shrewdness of apes

it's always a bit strange when a parent calls you at work. sort of a "worlds colliding", "how am i supposed to act in this situation" deal. so when i hear my father on the other end of the line this morning, i'm immediately wondering who died. but his voice is much too jovial for that. he wants to know what the mood is down here (my parents live in New Hampshire) and i assume he means the mood surrounding the convention. wrong again - he knows better than to talk politics with me. he's talking about the Yankees and how they're reacting to their weeks long slide (culminating in that wonderful 22-0 drubbing at the hands of Cleveland) that's has put the Red Sox back in the hunt for the AL East. being cable-less i'm moderately out of the loop, so i don't have much to offer other than what i read in the Times this morning. then he drops this doozy:

"so they're saying the curse is broken. [incredulous reply] yeah, last night Manny hits one into the right field stands and the ball hits this 16-year old kid in the face and knocks out his two front teeth. turns out that the kid lives in the house that Babe Ruth lived in when he played for the Red Sox."

and the occasionally torturous ridiculousness of Red Sox fandom becomes fun once again. now if we could just find that piano....

***UPDATE*** another call reveals more curse-reversing fun facts: the past two games, the Red Sox linescore has started 410 (4 runs in the 1st inning, 1 in the 2nd, 0 in the 3rd). 410 is the area code for Baltimore, where Babe Ruth was born. and the current Red Sox streak in which they've won 14 of 15 games began on August 16th, which was the anniversary of Babe Ruth's death. developing....

***UPDATE/CORRECTION*** turns out the teeth removing foul ball incident happened on Tuesday night, not last night. this article has the skinny on the kid, his family and the house.