Wrong place, wrong time

Poor Doug Mirabelli. That's twice now he's been thrown under the carpet.

Last season, Kevin Towers, the San Diego general manager, took a shot at Mirabelli, a former Shreveport Captain, a couple months after trading him to Boston.

Now Gary Thorne misinterprets something Mirabelli said and turns it into a national story. In case you missed it, Thorne said Mirabelli told him the blood on Curt Schilling's sock during Game 6 of the 2004 ALCS was not blood. It was some other substance.

On Thursday, Thorne recanted his statement, saying he mistook Mirabelli's sarcasm for something else. For a backup catcher, whose most marketable trait is catching Tim Wakefield's knuckleball, Mirabelli has been caught up in a relative ton of hot water lately.

And very little of it is of his own doing.