We all have our theories on why bad things happen to good people.

I'm no different. I've had my good stretches and more-challenging periods. Last summer fell into the latter and will go down in the Book of Todd as one of the more challenging times of my life.

I just felt out of whack. Not quite as sharp as I'd been the day before and it seemed that my internal karma was out of sync. Where one day I would bend down and find a dollar on the ground, the next I'd bend down and rip my drawers.

Lieutenant Island Views: Commentary About Finance, Politics and Baseball

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It's about half-way to the All-Star game, and balloting started ridiculously early a couple of weeks ago. Here's who should be tabbed All-Stars.

I follow the rules (there must be one member from each team and 32 overall players), which is why there are some snubs, who should be All-Stars. An asterisk* denotes injury which usually relegates a player to snub.

This is a situation that I was not too eager to broach, but now that it's the halfway mark into May and the home-run total by David Ortiz matches my career total, it's time.

When do the Red Sox make a change with David Ortiz?

Yesterday's line for David Ortiz: 0-for-7 3 K's and 11 men left on base.  Two balls were hit  out of the infield.  What a sad, yet telling day for the Red Sox power hitter. Off to another terrible start, David Ortiz single-handedly lost the game for the Sox yesterday afternoon in Anaheim.

Ortiz left the bases loaded twice, once grounding slowly out to first and the second time tapping back to the mound.

Former Boston Red Sox player and current analyst and reporter for Comcast SportsNet New England, Lou Merloni, claimed last week that Sox management taught players how to use steroids during his tenure with the team.

The "s" word, meaning slump, not steroids, is something that almost every ballplayer at every level has experienced in some form, but this one feels different.

He can't catch up to routine fastballs.

Recently, before the season started, Jon Lester was getting hammered by some experts including a mild ribbing by my good friend and co-host Evan Dickens. It's apparent that no matter what Lester does he will be criticized in the end. Criticism's of Lester come primarily from Sabermetric folks who love to dabble in the formulas and the anomalies they create.

During the 86-year-old "Curse of the Bambino," Fenway Park was populated by die hard Red Sox fans who cared only about the product on the field. These fans did not need anything more than a Red Sox win to be entertained.

It was an era when most of the fans were men, men who drank beer, men who cursed, men who worked hard and wanted nothing more than a World Series.