Running the bases -- go for home

-- It's a hot summer day, we're feeling good, and the Sox were winning the last time I checked, so N4N'll go out on a limb: they're going all the way in October.

-- The Boston Globe's Kevin Cullen has a poignant and spot-on column today about former Sox second baseman Bobby Doerr, 89, who's making his last visit to Fenway Park. As Cullen notes, Doerr is part of the quartet, with Ted Williams, Dom DiMaggio, and Johnny Pesky, whose lives David Halberstam described so well in The Teammates. If you care even a whit about baseball, read that book as well as Cullen's column.

-- It's no surprise that Major League Baseball is entering into a revenue-sharing agreement with StubHub, which is owned by eBay:

“The taboo of the secondary ticket market has been all but eliminated,” said David M. Carter, assistant professor of sports business at the University of Southern California’s business school. He said that baseball and other professional sports franchises are asking: “Why not capture some of the revenue that for years has been left on the table to scalpers?”

Is this good for fans? The question seems besides the point, given how this change is being driven by money and the Internet. I've been satisfied with my occasional dealings with StubHub (the Sox also have their own Replay service), although ticket prices there for Sox games can range from somewhat reasonable to totally outrageous.

-- If you're a Sox fan, you've got to love the Eric Gagne deal. Scott Lord, the perspicacious skipper of my softball team, theorizes that this signals a plan to move Papelbon to the starting rotation next spring.