Jonathan Papelbon prefers Playboy party to president

I now have one degree of separation from a Red Sox. Yikes!

Larry Milian, South Florida sports radio host and good friend of the Squawkers, got to interview Jonathan Papelbon during the All-Star Break. And, as usual, the Red Sox closer had a lot to say.

Here’s what Papelbon – aka Cinco Dopo – said in his appearance on the “Andy and the Amigo” show on Fort Lauderdale’s WFTL Sports (640 AM):

• On President Barack Obama’s appearance at the All-Star Game: “It was fun, man, it was fun. I enjoyed the parties more than the president, to be honest with you.” Papelbon said that the Playboy party was the one he liked the best. But he also said “it was good to have the president” at the game “to kind of rejuvenate the midsummer game classic. But overall, it was great.”
• On Obama’s first pitch: “I thought it was all right, man,” he said. “He didn’t spike it and he didn’t throw it to the backstop. I thought it was halfway decent.”
• On Joba Chamberlain: “Joba is going to be great really at whatever he does.” He also called him “a perennial All-Star type pitcher.”
• On the Yankees-Red Sox rivalry: “It’s intense because they’re in our division and we’re fighting against them year after year,” he said. “But the whole rivalry thing, the whole Babe Ruth and ghosts,” Papelbon said, “that’s all media-driven.”
• On Ray Halladay being on the trading block: “I don’t think he’s going nowhere.”
• On Tim Wakefield not getting to pitch in the All-Star Game: “My first All-Star game, I didn’t get to throw either,” although he acknowledged that he was a rookie then, and Wakefield is, well, not!

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