For the Red Sox fan who has everything — we suggest the Daisuke Matsuzaka-signed baseball, available at Fenway Sportszone on Newbury Street. It’s the priciest signed baseball at the store known for its selection of signed sports memorabilia, listed in the $500-$600 range (which only seems fitting for the player with the six-year, $52 million contract).

Sportszone owner Frank Russo says he has sold two Matsuzaka baseballs this summer and he has two more in stock. And those two are just the tip of the 14,000-baseballs Sportszone currently has in inventory.

“We have the largest selection of autographed baseballs in the city,” Russo says. “And our prices are reasonable compared to other shops closer to the ballpark.”

Russo has built his 12-year-old business on offering fair prices and authentic memorabilia to rabid Red Sox fans who can’t get enough of their favorite team. He only sells signed sports memorabilia that comes straight to him from reputed distributors or that he has seen signed by the players personally.

“My reputation is too important to play around in that area,” he says.

For a fan looking to start his or her collection, or just buy a great souvenir, most of the signed baseballs come nowhere close to the price tag for the Dice-K balls. Russo says he currently sells more Manny Ortiz-signed baseballs than any other. At about $200 a ball, he sells three to four a week. Balls signed by many other players are for sale in the $50-$60 range.

Russo is constantly working to keep his inventory up to date, making trips three or four times a week to the major sport memorabilia distributors who have contracts with the big-name players. He also meets personally with some of the players who might be a little lower on the roster so that he is able to sell their signed memorabilia as well. Russo says he has at least one signed ball from everyone on the current roster, save those just very recently acquired, like Eric Gagne.

Russo also carries some signed baseballs from former Red Sox players, like members of the highly-collectable 2004 World Series team. And he usually has a few signed balls from Red Sox greats of years past, like Jim Rice of the 1975 World Series team.

Sportszone also carries a smaller selection of signed Red Sox jerseys and game-used bats. But it’s the baseballs that are Russo’s bread and butter.

“Jerseys take up a lot of space and bats are more expensive,” Russo says. “For many collectors, balls are a good way to go.”

When Russo began his business a dozen years ago at its prior location closer to Fenway, he also carried more in the way of Patriots, Bruins and Celtics memorabilia. Russo’s background is actually in football, having worked with the Patriots years ago and still coaching currently at Curry College. But soon, Russo discovered that the national trend of baseball memorabilia outselling football and other memorabilia by at least 3-to-1 was especially true in the heart of Red Sox Nation. The only non-Red Sox signed memorabilia he carries on a regular basis is from Bobby Orr, Ray Bourque and Larry Bird.

Moving from Sportszone’s original location to Newbury Street a few years ago has diversified Russo’s customer base. Many more tourists come through his door now, and his loyal customers continue to shop as well. One thing is certain – if the Sox continue to have winning seasons like this year’s, Russo’s livelihood is in no danger.

“People really like this stuff,” he says. “If they didn’t, we wouldn’t still be in business.”

Living in a city and a state that is known for its liberal politics, Ellen Rooney, a resident of the Back Bay and president of the Beacon Hill Business Association, says she has long felt the city’s politics is a separate matter from the politics of state or national elections.

“We have a thriving ward committee in Ward Five,” said Rooney, who has chaired the Ward Five Republican Committee since 2001. “This committee has been going strong for a long time, since well before I got involved. And after last November’s gubernatorial election) we had a huge attendance at our first meeting. I think Republicans who had been too busy before the election, felt the need to be with other Republicans.”

On a basic level, the work of ward committees in either party is to maintain the organization of the party as a whole.

“We put together slates for specific campaigns; we organize volunteers for campaigns in local and state races — including things like mailings, standouts and phone banking,” said Rooney.
“We also elect delegates to the state convention and are involved in the selection of delegates to the national convention.”

According to Rooney, the Ward Five Republicans hold monthly meetings, which sometimes are more like social gatherings, and, she said, the group will probably plan a campaign season organizing event for sometime in September.

Most recently, Ward Five has hosted speaking engagements for representatives of some of the major Republican Presidential campaigns in the 2008 presidential race.

Representatives for Rudolph Giuliani, John McCain and Mitt Romney have already visited the Ward Five Republicans, and all were “received quite well.”

“The Ward Five Committee is an intensely moderate group of Republicans, with only a few members who are on the edges of the party lines,” said Rooney. “Socially we tend to be liberal, but fiscally. We’re conservative. You never know what kind of reception a candidate’s representative will get, but in the recent meetings our members have asked a lot of questions, including some that were challenging, but they were not hostile. They helped to open a discourse on the issues.”

Rooney said the fact that each of the presidential candidates to this point has sent well-prepared representative has also been a major factor.

“It helped that they were able to really answer questions,” she said. Rooney said that as the election grows nearer, many members of the Ward Five Committee will drop out of active participation so that they can volunteer to work for one of the candidates. However, once the election is over, many of those Republicans will return to their committee work.

“One of the things I find is that as a ward we tend to have really low voter turnouts in the local elections, and that is maybe part of the reason we see so few Republicans run successful campaigns in the state,” said Rooney. “But around presidential races, we get very high turnouts and that can help to build momentum for the party.”

Rooney pointed to the choice of former Congressman Peter Torkildsen to head the state party as a good sign that the Massachusetts Republican Party may be ready to see a resurgence.

“I’m really glad that we have Peter Torkildsen in there right now,” said Rooney, “because he will help us rebuild the state party. That’s what he’s doing right now.”

It goes back to what we see in the local races,” she added. “It’s almost like we as a party don’t want to be bothered with local races. But that’s how you build a party, from the local seats up. It is something that the Democrats have understood very well for a long time. They always have a line of candidates ready to take the next step up because they spend so much time building their party at the base.”

As for who Massachusetts Republicans might support in the 2008 presidential race, Rooney said it’s still too close to call, but she gives a slight edge to Giuliani.

“It’s an unusual time right now and it’s hard to tell who people are supporting. But it seems that a lot of major office holders are supporting Giuliani, so I’d give him the early edge,” she said. “Still, there is a lot of time and I also think that things are fluid, so we just have to wait and see.”

On Wednesday the Boston Landmarks Commission accepted a petition to study further the possibility of designating as a historic landmark the first floor interior of 5 Commonwealth Avenue.

The 1904 building, home of the Boston Center for Adult Education, is for sale. Neighborhood preservationists saw a sale — possibly to a buyer unschooled in either architecture or Boston history — as a potential threat to the building’s interior, which includes considerable original detail and a ballroom unlike any other in the city. They submitted a petition to the commission with about 48 signatures asking for the landmark designation to be considered.

An obstacle to landmark designation is that typically a landmark must be accessible to the public in some form, said Ellen Lipsey, executive director of the Boston Landmarks Commission. A private home would not readily be accessible. She said there was no timetable for a decision to be made.

A lawyer for the BCAE said the building and its contents must be sold for financial reasons, and that his client intends to sell it to an individual who would use it as a single-family house.

Neighborhood preservationists were heartened by the outcome. “I’m pleased,” said Frances Duffly of Marlborough Street. Even if the commission ultimately rejects landmarks designation, Duffly believed that a prospective owner would now realize, if he or she hadn’t already, that the interior is valuable and should be treated with care.

The BCAE lawyer and a Back Bay resident who said he was a potential buyer both argued against the petition, claiming that landmark restrictions could compromise a sale, since a new owner would not have free rein to improve or change the first floor architecture.

But both Duffly and other preservation advocates thought that the opponents were confusing landmarking with the significantly more restrictive easement on the property.

“It doesn’t mean you could make no changes,” Duffly explained. She expected there would be wide latitude in installing appropriate new systems and said that she and others believe that working with landmarks commission staff could keep important historical detail, make the outcome more attractive and useful and make the building as a whole more valuable.

Preservationist John Neale, who presented the case to the commission, said he could imagine that the dramatic and detailed first floor would be one of the reasons a buyer would be interested in the building in the first place, and that they would probably also want to display it to invited guests, making it at least somewhat accessible to the public. “This house cries out for this kind of use,” he said.

BCAE officials were on vacation this week and not available for further comment.

In a bid to keep Boston at the forefront of the urban green movement, Boston City Councilor Michael Ross proposed a series of five environmentally friendly measures aimed at conserving energy and boosting recycling at a City Council meeting on Wednesday.

The measures form what Ross calls his “green agenda,” which comes on the heels of similar movements being undertaken in cities across the country.

“We have always been the innovation capital, “ said Ross. “When you look at what other cities are starting to do, this is an important issue for Boston to take the lead on.”

The agenda is made up of five separate measures, all of which will be considered and voted on individually by the City Council. They include: requiring all new taxis to be hybrid vehicles; placing wind turbines for energy collection on public and private land; strengthening vehicle anti-idling laws; implementing mandatory restaurant recycling; and including automatic on/off power switches in all new dorm and hotel construction.

The conversion of all taxis to hybrid vehicles is a process already underway in New York, where Mayor Michael Bloomberg has pushed for the conversion of all of the city’s 13,000 taxicabs to more fuel-efficient hybrid vehicles. Currently New York has about 400 hybrid cabs.

The conversion process could be less of a Herculean task in Boston, with far fewer cabs on the road. And while cab owners would have to pay a premium to replace older Crown Victorias with the relatively expensive hybrids, they would see an immediate saving in their fuel costs. Boston already has a few of the hybrid cabs on the road, according to Ross, with the first being put into service back in 2006. “It’s proven that this can work, “ said Ross.

The implementation of mandatory recycling for restaurants is a measure that already has the approval of some restaurateurs, said Ross. The idea itself was the brainchild of Silvertone owner Josh Childs. “He came to me and basically said ‘I want to do this, how can we get this going?’” Ross added that the proposal also has the support of the Back Bay Restaurant Group, one of the largest restaurant conglomerates in the city, owners of Back Bay staples such as Bouchée, Joe’s American Bar and Grill, Abe and Louie’s, and Charley’s, among others.

As with the taxi conversion, mandatory recycling for restaurants has been shown to be feasible in other cities; New York has had a mandatory recycling law in place since 1993.

The idea for the increased placement of wind turbines in the city came to Ross during a recent trip to Buffalo, where he was struck by the number of wind turbines he saw from the plane while landing.

“We think nothing about having huge, ugly oil tankers on public land on our shoreline in Dorchester,” said Ross. “The concept of doing the exact same thing with wind turbines would have a much more positive impact on the environment.”

Wind turbines could not only be placed by the city on public lands, but could also be made an increased presence in future private development through zoning regulations and the permitting process, Ross added.

The proposed strengthening of the anti-idling law would include an increase in the idling fine, along with a decrease in the permitted idling time from 5 minutes to 3 minutes. However, Ross was quick to point out that the first step to tightening the restriction on idling is stricter enforcement of whatever laws are on the books.

As part of the legislative process, each item will be referred to a committee for discussion. Ross said he intends to hold hearings on each of the items as he seeks its passage.

Remain calm

Tomorrow is move-in day in the neighborhood. It’s the first time in 6 years that September 1 occurs on a weekend. The weekend move seems to heighten the tension.

If you’re not moving, it is a good weekend to get out of town and let the movers have their way with the streets and the alleys. They will anyway.

If you can’t get out of town, it’s a good day to take a long walk, so that the hubbub doesn’t assault you all day.

Some people who are not moving actually enjoy moving day. There is so much action — and isn’t lots of action a reason we live in the middle of the city anyway? One former Back Bay resident recently told us that when Emerson College left the Back Bay, he and his wife found their street too quiet. So they moved to Beacon Hill. That was the point at which we could no longer follow his reasoning. It didn’t seem to us that there was much difference in activity between the street he moved to on Beacon Hill and his former Back Bay street, but he must has perceived some difference.

There are always a few days when the young people who move in to their apartments celebrate their escape from dorm life or parents or another over-riding authority and make a lot of noise.

It usually doesn’t last. The kids get to school or to a job and find that they have to work hard, which doesn’t leave them as much time for partying as they had imagined.

If they have a car, they learn quickly that parking is a problem. With tickets and towing, they either chuck the car or learn the rules and follow them.

We have no experience in cities in which there is no student population or only a few students. In many places in America, school has already started for everyone from age 4 through 22. They don’t have the big September shift.

It’s their loss and our gain. As disorganized and messy as the big move is, it is ours. It is one of the identifying markers of Boston. Bring it on. We’ll remain calm.

End of summer

Not much happens in Boston during the last week of August, and we could get lazy. Luckily, we’ve had some diversions to keep us at the top of our game. We’ve had movie stars entertaining us on Newbury Street. They wear great clothes and look as good as we expect them to. We’ve been treated to the delectable experience of watching the moralistic Idaho demagogue and senator, Larry E. Craig, publicly humiliate himself as he bellows, “I’m not gay.” It’s been satisfying to see Alberto Gonzales prepare to limp off into private life, much as did Dan Quayle, who wasn’t up to the job either. We’ve had a lunar eclipse, although most people saw it later on their computers, rather than in real time.

We need distractions such as these the last week of summer. Next week it is back to real life.