Elsewhere 100 years ago:

Phillies pitcher Ad Brennan invents the "oil ball", players from the Cincinnati team in the United States league sue team owner John J. Ryan for back wages and find that his bank account is nearly empty, U.S. League officials say they're going to put a team in Baltimore because fans there are "tired of the International League", and Pittsburgh defeats Reading 17-9 in U.S. League action in a game featuring 15 errors. Game recap in the Pittsburgh Press:

The local U.S. league team took over the so-called Reading team at Expo park yesterday, in a game that was filled with all kinds of poor baseball. Amateurish baseball of the worst sort abounded...Errors were scarcely less plentiful than bingles, for a total of 15 foozles were charged by the charitable scorers.

He's a foozle and his name is peanut.

Today's Birthday Team features guys named Truck and Duke. Should be perfect players for the Joost Ball Era.

C: Truck Hannah
1B: Duke Sims
2B: Eddie Joost
3B: Bill Spiers
SS: Billy Urbanski
LF: Frank Huelsman
CF: Ray Lankford
RF: Billy Maloney

SP: Jack Chesbro
SP: Russ Ortiz
SP: Al Javery
SP: Lou Brissie
SP/Manager: Fred Mitchell
RP: Bill Bray

R.I.P.: Mike Coolbaugh

Man, I didn't realize until just now that Cliff Lee doesn't even have a win yet. I know the Phillies are a bunch of old geezers, but man, that's still pretty hard to believe a third of the way through the season.

The Cubs are on the verge of tying a franchise mark for futilty]. Again. Fun month they're having on the North Side.

Man, I didn't realize until just now that Cliff Lee doesn't even have a win yet.

They should trade him to a contender. I bet they could get Carlos Carrasco, Lou Marson, Jason Donald, and Jason Knapp for him.

Actually, I bet they couldn't. I can't imagine any scenario in which the Dolans pay market price for a superstar.

The Cubs are on the verge of tying a franchise mark for futilty]. Again. Fun month they're having on the North Side.

And Lee Elia is ANGRY.

Speaking of futile, the Rangers are 2-5 in their last week of games against the AL West, and they look simply, utterly, terrible at the moment. This could turn into a very long summer of sold-out games and dazed, frustrated fans.

Man, I didn't realize until just now that Cliff Lee doesn't even have a win yet. I know the Phillies are a bunch of old geezers, but man, that's still pretty hard to believe a third of the way through the season.

I'm not proud of this, but I am feeling some schadenfreude to watch Lee go 0-3 thus far for a last-place Phillies team missing Utley, Howard and now Halladay after he mentioned one of the reasons he didn't want to sign with the Yankees was because they were "getting older." Good call, Cliff.

And Lee Elia is ANGRY.

This never never never gets old. A million thanks to Les Grobstein for capturing it 29 years ago. Easily the pinnacle of Mr. Grobstein's journalism career.

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Game of the day (yesterday): Cardinals 5, Mets 4. The first three innings were quiet, courtesy of St. Louis's Kyle Lohse and New York's Dillon Gee; the biggest threat was a leadoff double in the bottom of the third, but Lohse stranded the runner on a flyout and a pair of groundouts. The Cards then opened the scoring in the fourth on a double by Matt Holliday and an RBI single by Allen Craig, only to see the Mets match them in the bottom of the inning with a solo homer from Lucas Duda. The game settled back into scorelessness for another pair of innings before St. Louis broke through again in the seventh; Craig led off with a walk, moved to third on a hit by David Freese, and scored on an error by Gee. An infield hit loaded the bases, and Lohse was lifted for pinch hitter Matt Adams; Adams struck out, but Rafael Furcal managed to knock in the inning's second run on a forceout before Gee finally ended it by strking out Carlos Beltran.

With Lohse out of the game, the Cardinals turned to Mark Rzepczynski, whose name I somehow spelled correctly without looking. David Wright led off with a single and moved up a base on each of two groundouts, brining up Ike Davis's spot in the order. Since Davis is (a) lefthanded, as is Scrabble, and (b) posting a 41 OPS+ this year, the Mets replaced him with pinch hitter Scott Hairston. Given that Hairston homered to tie the game, the move could fairly be evaluated as a success.

Jon Rauch entered to pitch the top of the eighth for the Mets, and did about as well as Rzepczynski, giving up a leadoff hit to Holliday and a 2-run homer to Craig. The Mets put runners at second and third with one out in the bottom of the inning, and scored one of them on a sac fly before Wright lined out to end the threat with the team still trailing by a run. Jason Motte worked a perfect ninth to seal it for the Redbirds.

No shortage of late-inning drama in this one, obviously. It could have done a bit better if you flipped the linescore around so the Cards were at home, making the 8th-inning homer a come-from-behind game winner rather than a tiebreaker, or if anything had happened in the ninth. But it's still better than anything we saw on Sunday, and that was a full slate of games.

Game of the day (last year): Red Sox 9, A's 8 (14). How good was this game? It beats another 5-4 Cardinals win, this one over the Cubs and lasting 12 innings - and beats it by a lot.

The beginning of the game was relatively tame, demonstrating as usual that a classic is made in the late innings. It actually starts out as a prospective pitcher's duel between Boston's Josh Beckett and Oakland's Trevor Cahill; the only blemish either pitcher absorbed through 4 innings was Adrian Gonzalez's solo homer off of Cahill in the bottom of the first. Boston extended its lead in the fifth on a run produced by the city's two favorite outfielders - Carl Crawford led off with a single, stole second, moved to third on a lineout to right, and scored on a hit by JD Drew. The A's finally broke through against Beckett in the sixth, thanks mostly to Beckett himself - he hit David DeJesus and walked Ryan Sweeney, then threw a wild pitch to advance the runners to second and third; both of them scored from there on a game-tying single by Josh Willingham.

Then the floodgates opened. In the bottom of the sixth, Cahill gave up a single and steal to Ellsbury, a tiebreaking RBI single to Dustin Pedroia, a pne-out RBI double to Kevin Youkilis, and a two-out RBI hit to Crawford, making it 5-2 Boston. Beckett started the seventh by putting the first two A's he faced on; he was then pulled for Matt Albers, who allowed a base-loading single and a sac fly before being lifted himself. Tommy Hottovy (who has just now entered the universe of my knowledge) escaped the jam by getting DeJesus to hit into a double play. Cahill worked a 1-2-3 seventh, and Daniel Bard worked around a leadoff hit with another double play ball in the eighth. In the bottom of the inning, Brad Ziegler entered for Oakland and sandwiched two outs around a single; he was then lifted for lefty Craig Breslow, who gave up back-to-back doubles to David Ortiz and Crawford, both of whom are, of course, left-handed. That extended Boston's lead to an apparently secure 7-3.

Jonathan Papelbon entered to, one would hope, nail things down. He gave up a leadoff hit to Mark Ellis and walked Daric Barton, but then struck out Landon Powell, and the tying run still wasn't up. Coco Crisp then grounded to second, where Pedroia made only his third error of the year, allowing Crisp to reach and one run to score. Cliff Pennington followed that with a double, driving in the second run of the inning and putting the tying run in scoring position. Next, Conor Jackson hit what's listed as an infield single to third; somehow, this managed to score the tying run from second. Papelbon, unsurprisingly, was lifted at this point, and Bobby Jenks gave up another hit but no additional runs. Brian Fuentes pitched a scoreless ninth for the A's, and Jenks and Fuentes traded tenth-inning zeros as well.

That brings up the eleventh, and brings Alfredo Aceves into the game for the Sox. His day started inauspiciously with a walk to Pennington, a double to Jackson, and a go-ahead sac fly to Sweeney; Jackson was then thrown out trying for home on a grounder, and the A's stranded the prospective second run at third to end their half of the inning. Now trailing for the first time in the game, the Red Sox sent their 7-8-9 hitters up against A's closer Andrew Bailey; the first two of them struck out, but Jarrod Saltalamacchia nailed a double, and Ellsbury matched him, tying the game. Pedroia was then intentionally walked, bringing up not Adrian Gonzalez, but Drew Sutton, who'd pinch run for Gonzalez two innings earlier; Sutton fanned, leaving the winning run in scoring position.

Aceves worked perfect innings in the twelfth and thirteenth; the Red Sox picked up a leadoff walk from Youkilis in the twelfth and a two-out hit and steal from Ellsbury in the thirteenth (followed by another free pass to Pedroia - 2 of his 6 IBBs of the year were in this game), stranding a total of three runners. In the fourteenth, with Aceves still on the mound, Willingham led off with a walk; after a forceout and a popup, Barton reached on an infield hit to move the go-ahead run to second. (At this point, Hideki Matsui, the runner on second, was pulled for a pinch runner - normal starting catcher Kurt Suzuki. That's a substitution you don't see very often.) Aceves escaped with a groundout from Landon Powell.

Oakland's fourth pitcher in as many innings was Guillermo Moscoso, who retired the first two hitters of the inning before Crawford doubled. A free pass to Jed Lowrie later, Drew singled to center to drive in the winning run.

This... this is a really good game. Eventful in regulation even before the 4-run ninth inning rally. Then, of course, the 4-run ninth inning rally, which easily could have been a 5-run, game-winning ninth inning rally. Then the go-ahead run in the eleventh, and the tying run in the eleventh; cap it off with mild threats in each of the next three innings before one of them finally pays off. It's a score of 7.70, 5th best game of 2011 to date.

Jerome Solomon of the Houston chronicle tweeted that MLB exec vP Jimmie lee solomon has been let go (no relation).

" Market street blue "
No relation to the Beale St or Hill St Blues.