They’re not yelling, “Fire Bobby Valentine!”, they’re just saying, “Bruuuuuuuuce!” Springsteen wraps up two nights of shows at Fenway Park, playing 57 songs (not channels) with only ten repeat tunes. On opening night, and perhaps this is coincidence, as the news broke that former Red Sox second baseman Johnny Pesky, 92, had died, The Boss played Johnny 99… The number 23 plays a role without any mention of Michael Jordan or a Jim Carrey flick. Felix Hernandez of the Seattle Mariners becomes the 23rd MLB pitcher to hurl a perfect game while Team USA soccer wins for the first time in Mexico City after 23 losses (and one tie) in a period that spans 75 years. Yesterday was 8/15, which adds up to (cue Twilight Zone theme)… Kudos to ESPN, by the way, for having the foresight to send Bob Ley, Alexi Lalas and Casey Keller to Azteca Stadium… Hope Solo appears on “Morning Joe” because, after all, SHE was the biggest story in U.S. soccer yesterday… As a former SI bullpen colleague of the man, I find this difficult to believe (seriously)…Apparently the new contestant must be as close to six-foot-four without going over the listed height… Melky Cabrera extends the streak of hitters with the second-best batting average in the National League testing positive for PEDs to two years in a row. Cabrera, recall, was the All-Star Game MVP… If Vince Lombardi were alive today, would he say, “It’s not whether you win or lose, it’s whether the outcome will be vacated?”… Recalling that one of The Sports Guys “Yep, these are my readers” crew once suggested an even better nickname for King Felix: F-Her… If you have an hour to kill and want to read a compelling piece on last summer’s mass murder in Norway, courtesy of GQ… Rick Reilly trashes an institution for not being as stellar as it once was, wants its privileges revoked, then turns and assiduously does not look into the mirror… It isn’t easy to be a .200 career hitter and still have a statue erected in your honor outside a ballpark, but then who among us has Bob Uecker’s sense of humor?…  Last Channel freakiness: If you were flipping between MLB Network and HBO yesterday afternoon, it was possible to watch F-Her’s perfect game in Seattle and Kevin Costner’s perfect game in Yankee Stadium — i.e., the movie “For The Love of the Game” — simultaneously (re-cue Twilight Zone theme)….

–John Walters

Tempus Fugit