Four things Jerry Trupiano did today to p*** me off

1) Showed up for work.
2) Turned on his microphone.
3) Spoke.
4) This:

Eighth inning. Sox trailing, 6-4. Jason Varitek, the tying run at the plate, rips a drive toward right field. Trupiano, either certain that this is a game-tying home run, or deliberately creating false drama to make us think it's a game-tying home run, breaks into his patented "Way back! WAY BACK!!!" routine . . .

. . . and . . .

. . . and . . .

. . . (and you know what's coming next) . . .

. . . then informs us after an annoyingly dramatic pause that "it's a foul ball. By about 8 feet."

Me, driving to work at that moment: "Arrgh! ARRRGGGHH! You #@&*%*$*@*@*&%*@##!!!!! ARRRRRRGGGGHHH!!!!!"

Now, obviously I've listened to enough Sox games to know he's going to pull this misleading b.s. at least a couple times a game. Heck, it's at the point where whenever he bleats "Way Back!" most of New England just assumes the baseball will find an outfielder's mitt somewhere shy of the warning track. Deceiving us, whether deliberately or overzealously - it's how Trupe rolls, yo. We know it. He's been doing it to us for 13 years.

Yet it still infuriates me so much that at the moment when he inevitably says "the wind knocked that one down, Joe" or "really got that one down off the end of the bat, Joe," I inevitably begin assaulting my steering wheel, running over random pedestrians, and screaming like I'm channeling the ghost of Sam Kinison.

The one thing that usually calms me down is my recurring happy-place daydream of taking an immediate detour to Fenway, bursting into the booth looking like Nicholson in "The Shining," yelling "Way Back, Troop! WAY BACK!" then tossing him out the window (with a little help from Castiglione, you just know it) while saying, "Your fall . . . it's about 8 feet, *&#&%^*!!."

Hey, it makes me happy, okay?

Trupiano even trumped his usual incompetence today. On the very next pitch, Varitek hit a shot down the rightfield line, prompting Troop to yelp, "Line drive! BASE HIT BY VARITEK! . . . oops, wait . . . foul . . . foul ball." It was so blatant a botched call that even he seemed embarrassed. Momentarily, anyway.

If you listened closely enough, you might have heard Castiglione weeping softly in the background.

Not to mention yours truly flipping out somewhere on Rt. 1.

(Whew. Glad to get that off my chest. That's all I've got. New Nine Innings column coming tonight.)

(Update, 11:44 p.m. Thursday: . . . Er, make that Friday night. At the moment, I'm too busy trying to plot a way for the Sox to ditch Renteria in Anaheim and get Cabrera back here where he belongs. I'll let you know how it goes. - CF)