Baseball season in full swing, pardon the pun, and the Red Sox are far ahead in the American League East division.  Since 2004, I’m filled with an ever-present faith in the Sox and am excited for this season’s roster.  The pitchers are doing their jobs, players are coming up with key plays, the bats are coming together.  It looks to be an exciting season and so with that in mind, I’m dedicating this posting to the Boston Red Sox.

Of course, the first stop has to be the great Red Sox web site setup through MLB.  The MLB team sites are packed with information, up to minute scores and updates, stats, rosters, schedules, etc.  The MLB has consistently hosted some of the best corporate web sites from the very early days and embraced a variety of technologies to deliver the best in baseball.  Fans can even subscribe to watch every game of the season through their new MLB.TV.

The Jimmy Fund is a charity for the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute “where children and their families find hope”.  Dana-Farber does great work for children with cancer and they’ve held deep ties with the Red Sox organization since its inception in 1948 and the then Boston Braves joined forces to help a 12-year-old cancer patient.  Their site has a great selection of photo galleries.  The 50 Year Anniversery gallery is particularly nice, especially the photo of Mo Vaughn walking 11-year-old Jason Leader back from the mound after the young clinic patient got a chance to throw out the first pitch.

The Boston Public Library has many great sites and an extensive collection of photos including their Boston Cicra 1918 exhibit.  You can see what Boston looked like when Babe Ruth played for the Sox and Calvin Coolidge was governor of Massachusetts.  And when the Red Sox had won the World Series before a long, 86 year drought that finally ended in 2004.

There are lots of great Red Sox blogs available.  Red Sox Connection is a fun site that has a lot for all types of fans.  The Joy of Sox blog is an in-depth blog with frequent updates, analysis, and a long list of links.  Soxaholix is a very interesting site that features a daily comic strip about an office of die-hard Sox fans.  And of course, any discussion of Red Sox baseball has to include reference to the great Yankees Suck blog.

Go Sox!

One of the great things about the internet is its innate ability to allow people to pool their resources.  By providing a simple avenue for like-minded people to seek out one another, combine their efforts, and then produce a product that can be advertised fairly inexpensively, the internet should be heralded as the greatest advance in the industrialized world since the assembly line.  From encyclopedias like Wikipedia to independent films like Star Wars Revelations to bird watching communites like Ebird.org, the internet is chock full of the fruits of combined labor.

MyDavinci.com is another great site that relies on pooled resources.  At MyDavinci, you can upload a photograph and have one of the available artists turn it into an original work of art for a nominal fee.  They offer watercolor and oil paintings, pencil sketches, and photo restoration services to turn your simple photos into something really worthy of hanging on your wall.  The prices range from $50 for an 8x10” pencil sketch to $950 for a 36x48” oil painting.  You get to choose the photo, the style and characteristics of the desired artwork, and approve the design before the final result is produced.  Typical delivery time is 3-6 weeks, but there are options for rush orders.  If you’re interested in art and would like to have a family portrait or original landscape produced, it’s definitely worth trying.

MyDavinci.com

As of today, the legal defense fund for Custom Cleaners in Washington, D.C. is up and running.  For those unfamiliar with Custom Cleaners, they are the dry cleaners being sued by a customer for $67 million dollars over a pair of pants.  As if that’s not bad enough, it gets worse, much worse.  Although the owners, Jin Nam and Soo Chung, admit initially misplacing the pants, they found them several days later, but the customer still wasn’t satisfied.  They even offered to replace the pants, but the customer demanded a new suit and kept increasing his demands and eventually sued.  Through their attorney, the Chungs repeatedly attempted to ward off the lawsuit, which has continually grown for the past two years, by making repeated offers to settle, reaching as high as $12,000.  The customer still wasn’t satisfied.  Instead, he feels he is entitled to $67,292,000 which includes emotional damages ($500,000), legal fees ($542,000), ten years of car rentals to drive to a different cleaners ($15,000), and just for good measure, he wants the Chungs to be fined $1,500 per violation per day that they had signs on their walls offering “Same Day Service” and “Customer Satisfaction Guaranteed” ($1500 per violation x 12 violations x 1200 days = $21,600,000).  Oh yeah, and he wants these violations to be multiplied by three, because after all, including their son, there are three Chungs ($21,600,000 x 3 = $64,800,000).

By now, you may be wondering how someone convinces an attorney to represent him in this suit which has grown to include thousands of pages of legal documents, a witness list of 63 people, and an attempt to expand the case to a class action suit.  It’s not so difficult when you represent yourself.  Worse, Roy Pearson is not only a member of the bar he’s also a sitting judge.  ATRA, the American Tort Reform Association, feels that the size and scope of this $67 million lawsuit over a single pair of pants is clear demonstration of Judge Roy Pearson’s inability to demonstrate “appropriate judicial temperament” and should not have his term, which expires this year, renewed.

However, whether or not Judge Pearson’s position is renewed, or whether or not his lawsuit is eventually dismissed, its effect on the Chungs, Korean immigrants, has already taken its toll.  “I’ve been in the dry cleaning business for 14 years, but this has never ever happened before. If anything happened to our customers’ clothing, we would always compensate them accordingly and fairly,” explained owner, Jin Nam Chung. “It’s affecting us, first of all financially, because of all the lawyers’ fees,” he continued.  His wife, Soo Chung tearfully added, “I would have never thought it would have dragged on this long.  I don’t want to live here anymore.  It’s been so difficult.  I just want to go home, go back to Korea.” And who can blame them?  “It’s incredibly preposterous that he’s [Judge Roy Pearson] making so much out of something so insignificant,” said their attorney, Chris Manning. Fortunately, an overwhelming number of supporters have contacted Manning, of Manning and Sossamon, PLLC, that they have established a legal defense fund site where concerned citizens can offer support through PayPal or contact the Chungs with words of encouragement. 

www.customcleanersdefensefund.com