Right up until the moment the Celtics drafted "Big Baby" Davis, I was quite happy with the way the draft process shook out this year. Landing Ray Allen should turn out to be an unmitigated disaster for a team that already had an aging, overrated swing player wearing number 34. Not only that, but Ray Allen gets paid quite a bit of money, and the salary cap situation in Boston is dreadful.

I would, I must confess, rather have seen them draft Joakim Noah. I think Noah is going to be terrible. He can't shoot, he was worse than useless against bigger, more athletic players in college and he was compared to a baby wildebeest on ice in this space not entirely unfairly. He got by in college because there were very few players who were bigger and more athletic than him. But this is the NBA. Here's looking at you Chicago. The new Bulls run is ending before it began.

On one peripheral level the Ray Allen move makes sense because the last thing the Celtics need at this point is another young player. However, that is the only thing about this deal that makes sense at this moment. Paul Pierce is more of a slasher (or was before he left his speed somewhere back in 2004), and Allen is a jump shooter. But that doesn't mean they can play together. Both guys have egos, after all.

Even if the intention is to turn around and package Pierce with some young players and try to chase a big man like Garnett or Jermaine O'Neal, where is the logic in trading for a guy who makes fantastical sums of money despite the notable handicap of never having won a title, or a finals game, or a conference finals? Even better, why pair him with Pierce when all those things apply to the "Truth" as well?

Unless I miss my guess (and I'm always ready to admit that my predictions go wrong in spectacular fashion far more than they hit the mark), the Celtics have just taken the first step in the process that will lead them to the inevitable conclusion that they should have traded Al Jefferson this season. With Pierce and Allen squabbling over shots and touches, what will be left for Big Al? Or Ryan Gomes? Or Rajon Rondo? Or Tony Allen if he comes back? Or Gerald Green if he has another discernible skill beyond dunking?

Maybe I am of a one track mind when it comes to the Celtics current management team, but I think that this trade is just one more attempt to get out from under the mill stone that was, is and ever shall be the Walker trade. Since that day, Ainge has been trying to find a player to complement Paul Pierce. Ricky Davis didn't work, and Wally might have worked if he'd stayed healthy for more than 8 seconds. If this were the damn rodeo, he might have had something, but it's basketball. Obviously, Antoine did something right, but Ainge didn't like his game. Ainge must like Allen's game, but he hasn't been right yet.

I say this to avert what I fear could be a series of tragic scuffles, tramplings and scattered outbreaks of hooliganism when Celtics fans flock to their local video rental professionals to clamor for the few remaining copies of He Got Game. Don't get your hopes up, Celtics fans. Or do, so that I can laugh at you and say I told you so over and over again.

The rest of the draft was disappointing. I'm not very familiar with Gabe Pruitt, since I never got a chance to see USC play this season. I do remember Big Baby from the NCAA tournament run LSU put together in 2006. I was favorably impressed, and I felt he should have come out right away. Injuries and the fact that LSU was no longer a surprise team hurt him this year. But I think he was a steal in the second round. I think he is immediately the best option the Cs have at center.

I was hoping for the Cs to draft Josh McRoberts. I even had a nice little seed for a paragraph where I could compare McRoberts to Joe Klein, minus (of course) the athletic ability and the mean streak. Too bad I'm one of about 12 people in the area who remember Klein. But trust me when I tell you, it's an insult. Plus, since the Davis pick seems to work, it doesn't help my School for Scoundrels reference from yesterday, because even though Ainge's self sucks, he did help himself tonight.

So without Noah and without McRoberts coming to Boston, I can only be so happy with the terrible trade that will haunt the Celtics. Although it might be possible that Allen could be insulted and awakened by the fact that he was traded for Jeff Green, Delonte West and the aforementioned Wally, I'm not losing any sleep over that possibility. I suppose I wouldn't be a very good Catholic if I didn't believe in miracles, but I don't expect to see them where the Celtics are concerned.

I was, however, so bummed that the Cs could have had a worse draft that I had to include this mugshot of Larry King.

He is one intense, creepy dude today. But back in the 70s, he was worse. I always assumed that you got more creepy as you aged, but this seems to contradict that notion. Hell, I bet if I'd said that was the Green River Killer, you'd have bought it. Yikes.

The other day I was reading one of the articles Shira Springer wrote on the upcoming NBA Draft. This quote from Cory Brewer struck me as kind of funny:

It reminded me of the film School for Scoundrels. In it, Billy Bob Thornton's character asks his students if they own any self-help books. He then proceeds to inform them that they cannot help themselves because their selves suck. So good luck improving your offense, Cory Brewer, but you might have been better served to find a good offensive player to help you. Self reliance only works if your self doesn't suck.

I think that scene from School for Scoundrels also applies to the Boston Celtics. To be fair, the Celtics have their work cut out for them before they can accurately be said to suck, that's how bad they were last season. But now the Cs have the fifth overall pick in what some people think is a loaded draft. They have young players and expiring contracts. They should be able to help themselves, right?

First, I still don't believe that this draft is loaded. I agree with most people that there isn't a big drop-off in terms of talent between the guys projected to go at three and those projected to go at 17 in the various mock drafts. That doesn't mean the draft is loaded, that means that there are a lot of half-decent players who probably will earn superstar money and never manage to become superstars. Maybe that's what Boston fans want now, an overachieving hustler who will shine for a few years before flaming out, like Kevin Youkilis. But only a moron would give a guy like that the guaranteed money due to be paid the fifth overall pick in this year's NBA draft.

And one can never get around the fact that this ownership group and management team have proven themselves manifestly incapable of producing a winning basketball team. Lest we forget that the Celtics were coming off back-to-back trips to the playoffs when they came on the scene and now apparently tanked games down the stretch. Just say that to yourself: "The Boston Celtics lost games deliberately to improve their draft stock." It hurts, doesn't it?

Danny Ainge, who ought to know better (and would, if he had an IQ approaching room temperature) having played for the Celtics is clearly not the right man for the job. Under his watch, the Celtics have become such a mess that Kevin Garnett threatened to sit rather than be traded to Boston. And when the proposed four team trade that would have sent Garnett to the Lakers was announced, it would have ended with the Celtics giving up the 5th pick and Al Jefferson to get Jermaine O'Neal.

Can you imagine that? Giving up a guy who was good for nearly 17 points and 10 rebounds a night and a top 5 pick for an older player who will might get you 22 and 10? Don't get me wrong, I still think that Al Jefferson's trade value will never be higher. He'll never be as big a part of an NBA offense as he was for the Celtics this season. He's just not good enough. But that doesn't mean they should give him away to help other teams get better.

Of course, for what it's worth, Ainge has come out and said that the team intends to hold on to that fifth pick. That's a frightening thought. Ainge has done some serious damage to this team for years to come, maybe a generation. Boston is on the high road to becoming the new Dallas Mavericks, in the bad 1990s version rather than the bad we have a great regular season team with no guts and an owner who makes the Joaquin Phoenix version of Commodus look like a model of restraint and decorum of contemporary vintage.

The funny thing is that every one I talked to about that trade before the report came across the wire that it was rejected believed it. No one was particularly surprised that a team got the shaft in a multi-team deal and it was the Celtics. 25 years ago and beyond that would have been a scandal, now it's a go figure situation. Ainge can't help the Celtics. Nor can the Celtics help themselves. The culture of mediocrity runs too deep.

I think this isn't a bigger story in Boston because Boston fans are morons. It's not because the Pats and Sox have forced the Celtics out of the limelight. It's because in the years between 1957 and 1991, the Celtics provided their fans with an embarrassment of riches. The teams were so good, so deep and so competitive that the fans never needed to bother understanding why a basketball team wins and loses. It was enough that they were the Celtics and they very nearly always won.

Now the NBA stinks. And the Celtics are worse. But it doesn't bother the fans because the average fan doesn't understand basketball. They just want to see dunks and buzzer-beaters. It matters very little that other plays have to be made to set up the dunk and the buzzer-beater. It also doesn't matter that every fan who booed Antoine Walker when he played for the Celtics and thought the team would be better if they ran every play through Paul Pierce could not have been more wrong. Boston fans just want to be diverted for a few minutes and given a venue where 18,000 can (and 14,000 do) gather to chant "Yankees Suck" and feel strong for 3 hours.

I'm sorry I haven't updated for a few days. I've been busy, as you would expect, since I'm a popular guy. My social calendar is always full, but of late it has been fuller than usual. But I have some time and quite a bit on my mind this evening.

Over the last few days, I have run across three tools who deserve to be mentioned as tools of note in this space. I happened to see a guy pulling into a Home Depot parking lot this afternoon driving an oversized camouflage pickup truck customized for off-roading. Ordinarily, that alone would catch my eye, driving an off-road vehicle to Home Depot is never cool. However, this dude was wearing what appeared to be welding goggles in lieu of sunglasses. Wearing tinted safety glasses as sunglasses is never acceptable, never mind the welding goggles. It is ironic, is it not, that such a giant tool would be travelling to a massive warehouse filled with tools of every description sold by one of the world's largest purveyors of tools? Technically it's a mere coincidence, but ironic sounds better.

Another tool who has managed to stand out from the herd of tools to warrant mention in this space is none other than the Mayor of San Francisco, Gavin Newsome. Mr. Newsome has decided to save the environment by banning bottled water from city offices in San Fran. Even though I realize that this decision is going to put a stop to global climate change, greenhouse gas concerns, the hole in the ozone layer and Republicans and their corporations, I wonder whether the mayor of San Francisco could have found a legitimate step to reduce his city's eco footprint.

It seems vaguely noble at first, trying to cut down on the amount of plastic recycled each year. But residents who sign the no bottled water pledge receive a stainless steel recyclable container. Now I might not be particularly smart, but doesn't that mean that you end the plastic problem by creating a stainless steel problem? Of course one can sell scrap metal (or recyclable metal, if you want to put a pleasant face on it) for good money. Particularly stainless steel.

I wonder, then, if this move to stainless steel recyclable containers is more utilitarian than altruistic, while still being a total waste of time and shameless grandstanding. Would that ending the public menace that is the plastic water bottle could change the fact that the city's budget is a mess, or undo the fact that the mayor got caught tagging a subordinate's wife.

Our final honoree for tool of note is our old friend, the CHB. In a recent "effort," the CHB came tantalizingly close to proving that he is, despite his advancing years, hip, with it and completely connected to current trends in the youth culture. He discovered what no one else had had the perspicacity to realize. It was the run of the 2005 Chicago White Sox that made Journey's Don't Stop Believing a cult classic.

Now I am no Journey fan, but I am sure that many others who feel that way have found that particular song to be a guilty pleasure long before the White Sox latched onto it. The song did manage to climb to number 9 on the charts following its release in 1981. It's been in a large number of movies and TV shows, most of which occurred before the White Sox made it their theme.

I think you'll find if you take the time to look up when the White Sox were on a road in Baltimore and Joe Crede requested some Journey songs, which triggered the song becoming the team's theme for 2005, that it had to have occurred after the Family Guy episode that started the song's reintroduction to the mainstream was shot and probably after it aired. That particular episode aired in June, and it got a much wider audience than the White Sox did prior to the playoffs. I also don't think that Laguna Beach took its inspiration for using Journey from the White Sox.

Thanks, though, for the effort. If only the CHB would either familiarize himself with a small portion of the world outside of his experience in the press box prior to writing about it. Far better if he just retired, but why would any of us be so lucky.

And finally, congratulations are due to the Chicago Bears. After all, who would believe that they cut Tank Johnson for the sake of expediency? It takes very little moral courage to drop a guy like that who has had legal trouble. It also took little moral courage not to step in with a sterner hand before the situation came to this pass.

I really don't know what the right thing to do in a situation like this is. I like Tank Johnson as a football player. I think he has a chance to get his life together. He hasn't shown the propensity for attracting trouble like Pacman Jones. We know Tank didn't pay a visit to the strippie prior to his meeting with Roger Godell because Jay Mariotti probably would have had that big heart attack, the one Fred Sanford always threatened to have from the sheer unadulterated pleasure he would have derived from another slip up from Johnson.

I was looking forward to another year of rooting for the Bears. Now I'm not so sure. Any team that did something Mariotti hoped for this much might not be worth rooting for over a long season. I don't have any other team that really inspires me right now, though. I will make a deal with New England though. If Bob Kraft can conjure a pair of testicles and some guts, make his way up to Kennybunkport this weekend and come back with the ring a certain Russian head of state (can't mention his name lest I get some polonium in the mail) pocketed a few years back, I'll root for the Patriots. I'll even defend Randy Moss when he lets his team down when they need him most.

It's been a very long time since I've done a random thing I hate feature. Mostly I've been concentrating on the things that I hate that pertain to the Red Sox these days. And a few bits and pieces devoted to my other mortal enemies like Danny Ainge, Jay Mariotti, Ron Mexico and others. It's getting to the point where I have as many enemies as Richard Nixon. Would that I had the late former President's charm and easy going personality.

Tonight I give you the Random Thing I Hate for June 21, 2007. It's Rachel Ray.



I have always found her moderately annoying. I never watched much of 30 Minute Meals. So she can cook. Big deal. In the immortal words of Hondo Lane: "A woman ought to be a good cook. Hell, I'm a good cook myself." I never believed that she did all the work herself and got the food cooked in 30 minutes. Personally, I suspected that the crew, maybe somebody like the best boy grip or the gaffer did most of the work but she got the credit because she was more telegenic than your average garden-variety fat union guy showing a spirit-crushing amount of ass cleavage.

Also, Rachel Ray is cute. Only this and nothing more. She isn't tremendously hot. Maybe on the Food Network that gets in done, considering the Barefoot Contessa looks like she may have been a middle linebacker in her "prime." Rachel Ray is also perky as hell. I hate perky, energetic people. They make me want to ask them all if they were on dope, as though I were Mr. Hand from Fast Times. Perky people out to be outlawed. Now, if Marvin the Paranoid Android from the Hitchhikers' Guide to the Galaxy had a cooking show, that's something I would watch.

I could deal with that when she was buried on the Food Network with that loser Molto Mario (what does a red-headed tool know about Italian food?). But now she's everywhere. On daytime TV. On primetime TV. On late night TV On Demand for the desperately lonely drunks. You can't get away from her. And those damn Dunkin' Donuts spots aren't helping much. I also hate Dunkin Donuts. There's nothing like rolling through a Dunkin' Donuts early on a Sunday morning with a hangover to try to get a bacon egg and cheese and a soda while every family in a thirty block radius drags their terribly behaved little monster-children down to get some damn munchkins and scream their heads off.

Now rumor has it that she's going to open a restaurant. That's what the world needs, another useless celebrity chef charging premium prices for slightly above-average food. One night at Mohegan Sun, I ate at the Jasper Willis Summer Shack. It was not too impressive. I've been to better street vending carts, but since every tool under the sun has heard of of Jasper Willis, he gets to charge 20 bucks for an entree that's worth about 6.50.

At least I'm not the only person out there who hates Rachel Ray. You can read all about the roots of the anti-Rachel Ray movement in this article from Boston.com. The headquarters of the anti-Rachel Ray movement can be found at this blog on LiveJournal. It's where I got that picture of her with the devil horns. I think you should join to offer moral support. I would, but I already belong to a blog site, and I don't really have the energy to join another.

For a change, I thought I would include a note of positivity amidst my customary negativity. Tonight, with my direst of mortal enemies preoccupied in travelling to the West Coast, I was able to venture into the epicenter of hostile territory. I went to Popeye's Chicken and Biscuits to partake of fried chicken and biscuits. In preparation for the expedition, my friend did some internet research, where he came across this site with a smattering of unfavorable reviews of the Popeye's Kenmore experience.

I don't know if the rocket scientists who found the restaurant overcrowded, slow and generally unpleasant were dumb enough to go to the Popeye's in Kenmore Square when 37,000 people assembled in the vicinity to see the Red Sox play. I could see where that mistake could be possible, since the Red Sox like to surprise the hell out of the local populace by just playing random games without any advance notice. For the love of God, the schedules are set out in advance, you can see when there's a game by looking at TV listings in the paper, on digital cable or on the web. You can read the sports pages. You ought to be smart enough to plan accordingly if you want to go Kenmore Square and not deal with headaches, traffic and overcrowding. And if you aren't smart enough, you ought to be polite enough to keep your damn mouth shut.

I found the restaurant to be scrupulously clean, efficiently run and a very good place to eat some fried chicken. I highly recommend it, and I hope that the Red Sox take to eating their pregame meals there. With that I must go. I apologize for tonight's brevity. I am mired in a food hangover from the substantial portions of fried chicken, biscuits (which taste like they're made from real butter, by the way) and rice and beans. I just don't have the energy to go on. Until the next time...

I highly recommend that you watch the movie Norbit. I was afraid going in that it would follow a predictable pattern wherein all of the funny scenes would have been featured in the various trailers, hence defeating the purpose of actually watching the film. I was wrong, as I so often am. It certainly took the sting out of the unpleasantness that unfolded this evening, even though I extend my congratulations to the Red Sox equipment staff for corking as many bats as they did prior to the inexplicable 11 run explosion this evening and getting away with it.

I also wish I cared about the latest Pacman Jones incident. I can't shake the feeling that as a sports fan and a citizen, I ought to have some sort of opinion on it, one way or the other. But I just don't give a damn. Let him play, don't let him play. Have him shot, don't have him shot. I really don't care. I just want him to go away.

I also watched the movie Breach tonight. I recommend that you avoid it, if at all possible. I found it boring, preachy and slightly anti-Catholic. Of course, I cannot be expected to be objective on that last point, as I might be the last practicing Catholic under 30 in the state of Massachusetts thanks to the criminal negligence and general incompetence of the Archdiocese. But that is neither here nor there.

The scene in the film that offended me most was a sequence where the portraits of the President and the Attorney General in the hallway of the FBI corridor were changed. Bill Clinton and Janet Reno went down and up went Bush and Ashcroft. I felt that was excessive; I felt the scene intended to shift the responsibility for this episode onto the current President. I understand that he is massively unpopular, but he doesn't deserve this.

In the interest of intellectual honesty, George W Bush was President when Robert Hanssen (the FBI agent in question, as this was based on a true story) was captured. He had been President of the United States for all of somewhere on the order of 25 days. Hanssen was captured on the 18th of February 2001. Taking that into consideration, I don't see what the scene where the portraits were changed brought anything to the table. Hell, a subtitle in the opening scene telling us that he was arrested on 2/18/2001 would have given a better a gauge of time frame as that scene did.

I don't mean to imply that any other presidential administration was responsible for this (Hanssen sold secrets over a 15 year period, so there were a few guys in the Oval Office) travesty. I also have no intention of endorsing a party, politician or candidate in this space. I just wish people would leave the current President alone. A 30 minute animated series on Cartoon Network isn't going to end his tenure in office any quicker. Subliminally including him in a boring spy movie isn't going to jar those who voted for him into consciousness.

What I resent above all is intellectual dishonesty. I believe that the current President has a legitimate right to his office. I don't believe Gore won in 2000 because I don't believe Gore believed he won. If Gore felt that he had a legitimate right to the office, he would have fought harder, or one of the 9 US Supreme Court justices would have dissented.

I also believe the lies that the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth told in 2004. If they weren't true, a Yale educated graduate of BC Law, a former Federal prosecutor and sitting United States Senator would have found a legal recourse to fight back. And I believe that the President, the Vice President and the Cabinet believed the lies they told us all about WMDs when they told those lies to get us into the war in Iraq. I really do. I think they all thought that Saddam had more that the ten or twelve shells with Sarin that the military found over there.

No matter how you feel about the current administration, it should not impede your aesthetic judgements. A movie or show doesn't become better than it is empirically because it lampoons (no matter how slightly) an unpopular politician. If the two-thirds majority could have been inspired to impeach Bush, it probably would have happened by now. Or maybe he wouldn't have been reelected.

People on the political left need to recognize that while the conservatives, Republicans, Christians and what have you roaming the Earth and voting for people like George W. Bush are still out there, it might not help them to dismiss their opponents as morons. A comment on the current administration need not be included in every film, show and book. And maybe, just maybe, if they were to appeal to those individuals as though they were rational human beings and forsake the "I am supraman, I have the answers" approach, politics might be less contentious.

On a totally unrelated note, I had to be physically restrained by friends, family and well-wishers from burning all my ties. Apparently, arbiters of the way man should live like George Clooney, Leonardo DiCaprio and John Mayer have been seen without the necktie. If only I'd known sooner. I try to pattern my life on what John Mayer does. I bought a guitar and I tried like hell to get some recording exec to pay me millions to suck, but I just couldn't carry it off. If only I hadn't been wearing a tie... Oh what could have been.

It's been a very long time since I attacked Jay Mariotti in this space. With the Red Sox roaring out to that 14 and 1/2 game lead in the first two months of the season, I was just too depressed to read Mariotti's appallingly dishonest carping. I just couldn't handle it. But with Humpty Dumpty falling flat on his face for the second time in as many starts, I thought I could handle it. I was wrong.

What bothers me most about Mariotti as a man and as a writer is the fact that he acts as though he were tough as nails right up until the moment confrontation could become conflict and then he backs off, whining with his tail between his legs. Just look at that infamous dust-up with Ken "Hawk" Harrelson when Mariotti said "I ought to slug you" only to back off and threaten litigation when Hawk showed signs that he intended to do harm to Mariotti.

A close second in the treasure trove of inadmirable character traits that make up the man, the myth, the fraud is his complete lack of scruple and honesty as a writer. The man has no sense of irony, either. Consider this piece he wrote for Monday's paper on the US Open. Mariotti calls Tiger Woods into question for his inability to catch Cabrera, while barely conceding the fact that Mariotti believed that Eldrick would win the tournament.

It's almost as though this column, which appeared in Suday's paper had never been written. I realize a two or three paragraph apology for the tortured logic, mangled metaphors, left-handed compliments, phony tough and crazy brave rhetoric and general poor taste exhibited in that piece would be out of the question, but a brief, humble little digression along these lines: "Look, I made a mistake. I thought the guy was going to win. I had a deadline and might have gotten carried away thinking I was a much better writer than I am. But I was wrong and I'm sorry" would have been nice.

That is far from the only instance. Earlier, before the US Open, Mariotti wrote this piece ostensibly feeling a bit of empathy for Phil Mickelson in his hour of difficulty. Then, after Mickelson missed the cut, Mariotti wrote a column to demonize Mickelson for complaining about the rough. I can't believe that editors, TV producers and the vast public tolerate him. Outside of a blogs, like fireJay.com, Jay the Joke and Boise Wants Jay, hardly anyone calls him on this nonsense.

Mariotti is currently lining up Mark Cuban for this treatment. At the moment, he is in favor of the rumored interest in acquiring the Cubs shown by the Benefactor. Part of it is due to the fact that Jerry Reinsdorf hates Cuban and Mariotti hates Reisndorf. I'm sure there must be, somewhere in the dark recesses of the back corners of Mariotti's oh so prodigious mind, the faint hope that Mark Cuban will buy the Cubs and bring his little freak parade to Chicago. I'm sure that will mean weeks and weeks of columns and hours of TV time for Mariotti to rip Cuban and the Cubs with very little intellectual effort. But I'm sure a nice guy like Jay hasn't thought of that.

Now it's time for me to go back to hating the Red Sox, at least until the fall. Once the Bears start playing again, I'm sure Mariotti will be writing articles like this more often. After all, when can a middle-aged never-was bully a massive, three hundred plus pound world class athlete? Perhaps that is the root of his appeal to whatever demographic Mariotti appeals. All the other frustrated Monday morning QBs must look to him to take the big and the strong down a peg since they can't do it themselves.

Life is full of situations that have many shades of meaning. For instance, there are those who believe that the Red Sox made a statement by sweeping the Giants. After all, over the weekend they added one game to their lead over the Yankees who could only take two of three from the reeling Mets. Even with fact that the Mets were losing games left and right, they're still a much better team than the Giants. I think the Metropolitans managed to prove that in destroying a Minnesota team that is supposed to be fairly good tonight.

As you would expect, given the title of this blog, I found myself singularly unimpressed with this weekend's sweep. Yes, the Sox held Bonds to one home run in what John Updike once described as their lyric little bandbox of a ball park. And they managed to touch up Barry Zito. But I must confess, I have never thought too much of Barry Zito. I've been wondering since he signed that massive contract this offseason whether he is better described as overrated or overpaid. Time will tell.

I did think it was shockingly generous of the umpires to give Daisuke Matsuzaka a win in Saturday's start. That 3-2 pitch to Rich Aurelia was never in the strike zone, at least not in this physical model of the universe. The bases were loaded and had Aurelia walked, Matsuzaka would likely have overreacted as he has done consistently when he feels upset at ball and strike calls. The Giants could have gotten a second run out of it, but at the very least, the game should have been tied.

I didn't bother to watch Sunday's game with the US Open on and all. I wasn't rooting for Angel Cabrera, but when I saw this quote: '"There are some players who have psychologists," he said. "I smoke.",' I wished that I had. I thought it was refreshing that he was smoking on the course. Most players are so afraid of creating a negative impression that they're afraid to do anything at all. It was nice to see someone not care.

Unfortunately, today I learned that I agree with Skip Bayless on a point. He thinks that there is a hole in Tiger Woods' legacy as a golfer. He has come from behind on a Sunday in exactly zero of the 12 major championships he's won. Nicklaus did it eight times. You'd think Eldrick would have managed to do that by now.

In a way, Woods reminds me of Tom Brady. Every time I hear people compare Brady to Montana, it bothers me. Yeah, Brady has led game winning drives in playoff games and Super Bowls. But it's never come when they needed something more than a field goal with less than two minutes. And he's always had Vinatieri. Until he has a moment like the Catch, or that drive against Cincinnati in Super Bowl XXII, Brady will always be a sunshine soldier in my way of thinking.

At the end of the day, it won't matter how many actresses Brady's knocked up or supermodels he's dated that will define his legacy as a quarterback but how many times he got his team only so far and handed over the ultimate responsibility to a place kicker. And when it's all said and done for Tiger Woods, if he's beaten Nicklaus' record of 18 majors without coming back in the final round to take one away from somebody, it's not quite as impressive as Nicklaus' record of 8.

Finally, the Sox are going to be out of town for a few days. I hope that the trip ends as well as it began tonight. Humpty Dumpty took the hill in Turner Field, and he seems to have finally (and somewhat refreshingly) put to rest that appalling inconsistency he's shown of late. Instead of following a terrible outing with a good one, he followed a terrible outing with yet another terrible start. With any luck he can continue down this path. Of course, 38Pitches might not be such a fun read for a lot of people, but I think I could find a way to enjoy it.

I'm not a big fan of the midday post. Even when I don't have better, or at least more important, things to do, I try to give the impression that I do. But I was just too damn tired, and quite frankly a bit angry, so I couldn't do this last night. In part I was mad that the Spurs won, and a lot of my anger had to do with the guy who was tailgating me in his minivan for a good 10 miles last night. And I'm not an easy guy to tailgate, as I tend to be somewhere around ten miles over the speed limit at all times.

I find myself wondering as I watch certain commercials (like this recent one from Nike) whether I am the only one out in the wide world with a sense of irony. I thought it when I first saw the old Campbell's Chunky Soup Ads that featured Michael Strahan's grinning maw peering in the window on a NYC subway car, with his face framed above a decal that said "Watch the Gap." And I think it now, watching the We Are All Witnesses spots from Nike which will surely go away now that the NBA Playoffs are finished.

We were witnesses, that much is true, but not necessarily in the sense that Nike commanded us to be. We were supposed to witness LeBron James become the basketball player he had better be for the sake of the NBA's future. And he very nearly did. He submitted what would have been the mother of all transcendent sports moments for this very young century in that ">amazing Game 5 performance against the Pistons. I say would have been because he really needed to submit a couple of 30 point efforts, maybe force the Spurs to a game 6 (or at the very least game 5) to cement that status. Alas, it was not to be.

What we, the basketball watching public, instead witnessed was a shameful display of dreadful basketball with a few brief shining moments where the games aspired, didn't quite reach but aspired nonetheless, to something verging on mediocrity. Now for a regular season game in early January where one or both teams comes into the game on the second leg of back-to-back games, that wouldn't be so bad. Unfortunately for us, this wasn't a throwaway game. This was the end-all, be-all. The NBA Finals. These were the last two teams standing slugging it out for the O'Brien Trophy.

Back when I thought it was a good idea to study European History, I remember reading about the Battle of Jutland. The British and the Germans invested ludicrous sums of money in big fleets of massive battleships. The two navies sailed out and met off the coast of Denmark. They fired their big guns at each other for hours, and at the end of the day it was just a big waste of time. The Germans ended up inflicting more damage on the British ships, but they went back to port and never tried their luck again.

That's what this series between the Spurs and Cavs boiled down to in the end. A big, giant multi-million dollar waste of time. I wonder whether some marketing czar at Nike is answering to the CEO as we speak. I wonder whether David Stern is thinking that maybe some rule changes are in order. Maybe Mark Cuban is thinking he really shouldn't have hired Dan Rather, what with the fact that he said CBS is tarting up its evening news with Katie Couric. God forbid we get a younger woman who doesn't look like Methusala's older brother and doesn't have an alleged penchant for broadcasting doctored documents about the President of the US as though they were true. But enough about that.

I think that the easiest way to fix the NBA is to have the officials actually call fouls that are in fact fouls. A foul doesn't cease to be a foul because the player scored, nor does it become a foul when the shot misses. This late whistle nonsense must come to an end. This can never happen, as it would require a miracle and the present NBA regime has apparently outlawed miracles.

If, however, the league office desires to be more proactive about fixing its product than interfering in off-court behavior and imposing a dress code as though this were reform school and not a professional sports endeavor, I have a suggestion I think is constructive (for a change). Get rid of the 24 second clock and replace it with a 14 second clock. Get some positive ball movement back into the game, speed up the tempo and end the trend of the superstar who dribbles at the top of the key until fans decide to surf channels to see if Masterpiece Theater is showing an interesting Miss Marple mystery.

But what do I know? I'm only a rabid sports fan who found himself watching Too Late the Hero last night during the first three quarters of the last game of the NBA Finals. And wouldn't you know, the damn hero was, in fact, too late. And that ending was still more of a surprise than the Cavs losing the game and the series to the Spurs.

But every cloud has a silver lining. This time, to paraphrase the immortal words of MeatLoaf, two out of three is not, in fact, bad, not bad at all. The Red Sox lost the rubber game against the mighty Colorado Rockies. It could not have been better. Josh Beckett was shelled. Francona dug deep into his bag of tricks and ordered JD Drew to bat in the leadoff spot, where he submitted probably the single most impressive 0 for 5 game in the history of Major Leage Baseball.

In case you're keeping score at home, this was the seventh time in the last nine games the mighty BoSox have managed to put two or fewer runs on the board. JD Drew, Coco Crisp and Julio Lugo are all hitting .230 or below and making millions. Kevin Youkilis and Dustin Pedroia have a long way to go to hit the seven figure plateau in terms of salary, but are both hitting over .300. Sooner or later the iniquities of the selfish and the tyranny of evil men are bound to catch up to this team. But at least John Henry has his little foray into professional beach volleyball to console him.

For long time readers familiar with my habit of quoting the Grateful Dead in order to remind everyone that every silver lining has a touch of grey, here it is. The Yankees are seven and 1/2 games back, but they host the Mets (whom I absolutely hate, except for that nice little two week stretch back in October of '86) who enter the game at 36-28 and in first place in the NL East while the Red Sox host the Giants who enter the game at 30-35 and in the cellar in the NL West. It was a nice run while it lasted, now we need the Yanks to stay close through the weekend and then mount another run before the All Star break.

PS - I hate to do this, but it was a nice, empty gesture on the part of the Red Sox to ask that MLB replace David Ortiz with Kevin Youkilis on the All Star ballot.

It seems strange that Tim Wakefield, who has had ever so much trouble against every opponent he's faced to this point, should go eight depressingly strong innings against the Colorado Rockies but Curt Schilling could barely make it through five against essentially the same lineup. Did the Rockies not get the memo that these things simply do not happen in Fenway? Did they not read the million and one blog posts glorifying the near-no-hitter in Oakland last Thursday? Do they not consult 38Pitches? Inquiring minds need to know the answers to these questions.

Even better, while all the king's horses and all the king's men could not put Humpty Dumpty back together again in Fenway, the New York Yankees were otherwise occupied defeating the Arizona Diamondbacks. The lead is now down to 8 and 1/2 games with just under 100 to play. I haven't heard any snappy banter about what the Sox magic number looks like now. It's funny how the near sweep at the hands of the Athletics took a little of the wind out of the Red Sox sails.

I wonder if I'm the only one who wonders where this team goes from here. If the pitching starts to let this team down, what else is there? Ramirez has picked his game up, as I feared he would. But the rumors that JD Drew had found his stroke again (based on the pair of three run homers he hit in the desert this weekend) appear to have been greatly exaggerated. As I may have mentioned last night, the two broken toys who should have been leading off are locked in mortal combat to see who can dip below the Mendoza line first at the bottom of the order.

Maybe it's wishful thinking on my part, but I can see trouble on the horizon for this team, and I'm not the only one. What if they do run into a couple of weeks worth of bad luck? Will the fact that Tavarez said that Josh Beckett would be on the DL if Beckett had a blister like the one with which Tavarez is currently pitching every start come back to haunt this team? Will the cute little debate about whether Youkilis is faster than Pedroia grow into something more serious should one, the other or both run into a slump? I think these things could happen, but one can't expect the author of Sedition in Red Sox Nation to be particularly objective where the Red Sox are concerned.

I ran across something of interest in the pages of BostonNow today. There was a review of the CHB's latest "opus" Senior Year. I enjoyed the reviewer subtitling the review with this little epigram: "Memoir not very memorable." What surprised me was that the reviewer seemed somewhat surprised that the CHB should submit a lackluster, egocentric and out of touch book and expect his public to pay 25 bucks for the right to read it. That seems like it encapsulates every aspect of his career as author and columnist and all-around D Bag.

Unfortunately, I find myself again compelled to blog briefly about NASCAR. Hendrick Motor Sports has apparently signed the biggest free agent in the history of sports. That's got to be considered triply amazing, given the facts that NASCAR is not a sport, that it outgrew its market share (which is why ratings are declining) and that 90% of sports fans in blue states watch NASCAR for novelty purposes.

Even if Dale Earnhardt Jr should manage to win more than three races in a season (to say nothing of a championship, as one must walk before one can run), he's got a hell of a long way to go to be more than just the son of a famous father. Maybe I'm being unduly harsh, but is there anyone out there who could tell me that he'd be on this circuit if his name were Dale Smith? He's not the biggest free agent in the history of sports.

Little E may bring a large chunk of sponsorship revenue to the Hendrick stable, but it's not as though the team owner has to decide between chassis modifications and putting food on the table. But at the end of the day, he's just another semi-literate redneck driving around an oval filled with semi-literate rednecks. Worse, it seems like he's finishing a lap behind the more talented semi-literate rednecks.

In case tomorrow's game turns into a blowout, either in the good way like tonight (a three-for as they say, since the Sox lost, Big Schill was humiliated and I got to watch Assault on Precinct 13 on FX all at the same time) or in the bad way (where the Sox win), I have something to suggest. As long as you're a COMCAST customer and have access to their free movies OnDemand option, you might want to check out Career Opportunities. It's only available through tomorrow, and it's pretty damn funny. Just a suggestion.

Tonight was a big confidence booster for the Red Sox. So what if the Rockies aren't any good, and so what that they lucked out in not facing Brandon Webb when they played the Diamondbacks. That doesn't mean that even though the Yankees won again tonight the Red Sox shouldn't feel super confident that they're on the right track again. One of Terry Francona's questionable moves worked, apparently proving that there is some truth to the old saying that even a blind squirrel finds a nut from time to time.

Francona dropped Julio Lugo to ninth in the order and batted Dustin Pedroia in the leadoff spot. It was inspired strategery on the part of Tito. After all, it energized the hell out of the Red Sox lineup. When you face the Colorado Rockies in your park and you hold them to one run while scoring two runs of your own, you are onto something.

What might be lost in a mad dash to pat the skipper on the back for this piece of brilliant maneuvering is the fact that the Red Sox have invested more than $12 million of the $143,123,714 the team will pay its players this season on two guys who were each supposed to replace Johnny Damon at the top of the order. And what do they have to show for it but two broken toys?

Coco Crisp is currently batting eighth, and hasn't been asked to hit in the top spot since last season. He is batting .225 and is on pace to get 130 hits and score 84 runs this season. There was a time when the expression all glove, no bat was all the rage in professional baseball. It's just not supposed to be a part of the sport's vernacular in the 21st century, not in the AL, anyway.

Julio Lugo just hit a double, stole a base and scored a run tonight. Apparently being dropped in the order woke him up to his obligations to the team. Prior to the game, Lugo was hitting .215 and on pace to get 139 hits and score 80 runs. Of course since the Sox acquired Lugo prior to the NFL introducing its new personal conduct policy, the Sox could turn a blind eye to any disturbing allegations of character issues from Lugo's past.

Damon's numbers might not be so impressive right now, hitting .260 and on pace to score only 92 runs. But unlike Crisp or Lugo, Damon is trending up right now. Over his last seven games, he's hitting .320. It is true that he makes more than the two combined, but even with nagging injuries, Damon is still batting leadoff and has helped spark the Yankees offensive surge over the last 10 days. Crisp and Lugo are still in a downward spiral, and (coincidentally?) so are the Red Sox.

It's just too bad that the Sox are playing the Rockies and the Giants in Fenway. There is so much that should be giving me hope, but with two comparatively weak opponents, the Red Sox have far more time to iron out the wrinkles in their lineup before they give back enough games to make my ill-advised prediction of the not-too-distant past come true.

Every now and then, I like to do some investigating into weighty matters. And every now and then in the course of these investigations, I find myself confronting a situation that baffles me. For instance, one can purchase citizenship in Red Sox Nation for an annual investment of $9.95. However, if one would like the become a citizen of RemDawg Nation, that dubious honor will cost you $19.95. It's a full ten dollars more expensive per annum to belong to the legion of minions associated with the team's announcer than it is to join the team's official legion of fans? That just doesn't make sense.

Apropos of nothing else I have discussed to this point, here is a link you absolutely have to read. I laughed hysterically for about 15 minutes as I read it. It is a collection of results of bizarre attempts to mail outlandish objects via the US Postal Service.

So it's been a few days since my last post. I must confess, I haven't bothered to watch any of the NBA Finals. I've resigned myself to the Spurs winning it all, again. But that doesn't mean I have to watch it unfold. The NBA is rapidly becoming dead to me. LeBron is the only guy on either team that can play above the rim and play the game at the same time. The only other thing remotely interesting about this series is the fact that Tony Parker is about to marry an incredibly beautiful woman. Since that is all the NBA Finals have going, I have better things to do.

I wonder now, how Red Sox fans feel about their team. Roger Clemens is back with the Yankees. All of a sudden, the Bronx Bombers aren't bombing any more, at least not in the sense that had Red Sox Nation revelling not so long ago. I take it you remember those days, when the lead was 14 and 1/2 games. Now it's down to 9 and 1/2. And there are a whole lot of games left to be played.

Today, following Randy Johnson's solid outing, I find myself wondering if there is a little trouble brewing in paradise. Timlin did not look very good in his return to the big club. The trouble is, the Sox get a chance to bounce back from a stretch where they lost 5 games out of 7 against two playoff teams from a year ago. First they had the three game set with the Diamondbacks, and now they come home to play the Rockies and the Giants. Let's face it, neither of those teams are particularly good.

The worst part of the Giants series is that I will be forced to root against both teams. There is a maddeningly little conundrum for you, rooting against two teams one of whom is almost assured to win barring some sort of cataclysm like a meteor hitting the stadium. That might not be so bad, but for the fact that if a meteor hits Fenway, I'm pretty sure that it's not going to end well for me. I'm no astrophysicist, or any kind of physicist for that matter, but I'm willing to bet that I'd be in a world of hurt in that scenario.

I just can't root for Barry Bonds, at least not until someone tells me how he became the only power hitter to age like wine without turning into vinegar. I'm also not sure how he managed to develop shin splints at his age. I thought that was a malady that affected teenagers going through puberty, but then I'm not a doctor in addition to not being any kind of physicist. I just don't like Barry Bonds, and I never will.

Every now and then, I notice something and wonder if I'm the only person in the world that reacts to it in a certain way. Today it's the trouble I see brewing in paradise. Buried in the middle of Gordon Edes' Red Sox Notebook column in the Globe, there is this comment from Julian Tavarez: "Tavarez revealed he has been pitching with a blister on the middle finger of his pitching hand. "[Josh ] Beckett would be on the DL with this,"." It seems frightfully rude of him to say a thing like that.

In certain circles, one would consider that throwing a teammate under the bus. If Terrell Owens dared say a thing like that, villagers would be chasing him down with torches and pitchforks. Or failing that, every sports writer with a deadline and more paunch than brains would be after him as though he'd sold poisoned milk to school children. Maybe Tavarez is free to say what he pleases about whom he pleases when he pleases because he's the only guy in the organization that can talk to Manny Ramirez.

Part of the reason that Tavarez has not been called on the carpet for his comment about Beckett has to stem from the fact that the organization and the fans are unusually slow-witted. No one in Red Sox Nation will even grasp the meaning of the blister comments for another two or three news cycles. So if the team plays well, it will all blow over. But if they keep giving games back to the Yankees and the atmosphere around the team turns negative, this is a story that could come back to haunt them. Give them another run like they had against NY and Oakland and the CHB will be on this like noxious odor on horse manure.

I meant to do this last week, but other matters intruded. In the past, I have been critical of Bill Simmons. That was before I realized that the Sports Guy is tough. Consider the way he laid the smack down on a Cavaliers beat writer who dared blaspheme against the mighty Simmons. Maybe I'm wrong, but that segment of his blog post had to be the online journalistic equivalent of the studio boss waking up to the horse's head in his bed. You simply don't trifle with Bill Simmons.

I really don't care if the writer from Cleveland criticized Simmons fairly or unfairly. Whatever claim to sympathy the Sports Guy might have had went out the window when he threw the coy little reference to the fact that he makes considerably more money than the beat writer in question. There was a time when Simmons was writing on high school sports for the Boston Herald as long as he could fit that into his schedule between shining Michael Gee's shoes with his face and serving as Steve Buckley's human footstool.

I couldn't help but chuckle at this little gem: "Bottom line: If you're going to rip another writer, make sure you've actually read the guy first." When did Bill Simmons become Stone Cold Steve Austin? Where did he acquire the right to set the bottom line in any question? At the risk of transgressing my new rule about people with no right to set the bottom line setting the bottom line, I have a bottom line for Simmons. He's a bully. And a fraud.

He has no problem ripping Art Shell. Or Isiah Thomas. But Heaven forbid that some minnow should dare think that turnabout is fair play and that mean things can be said about Bill Simmons. If one can say or write harsh words about another person, then one ought to be able to take a little bit from another person. Alas, lessons like that must not be taught on the mean streets of suburban Connecticut.

Ladies and Gentlemen, I am not here tonight to say too much about my disappointment that Humpty Dumpty needed very little help from all the king's horses and all the king's men to prevail over the As today. I am still happy enough that the Sox lost four straight. I must ask, with apologies to Bob Lobel, why can't the Red Sox get players like Lenny DiNardo? And thanks to Gordon Edes for breaking the story that Daisuke Matsuzaka probably won't be an all star this season. What tipped you off to this Gordo? The ERA over 4.5? Losing a game to a guy the Sox cut to bring in JD Drew? What next? Will he break the story that water is wet or that what goes up must come down?

Tonight's post is about a heartless Fortune 500 corporation ruthlessly victimizing its patrons. The corporation is Best Buy and the victim in this sordid little mess is yours truly. It was a simple little matter, the attempt to purchase a DVD from a Big Box electronics retailer. All I had to do was pick it up from the shelf and walk to the counter. And it turned into an ordeal. The first problem was that I went to the store over by Fenway Park in the Landmark Center. Go figure, I get a scam perpetrated on me in the heart of enemy territory.

The DVD in question was 16 Blocks. I should have picked it up a year and a half ago when it first came out, but I never got around to it. But the other day, I happened to see it on HBO so I went over to Best Buy. And that's where THEY got me. You can't buy an individual copy of 16 Blocks at that Best Buy in the Landmark Center. I know. I asked a blue shirt. So I sat there in Best Buy, weighing the cost/benefit analysis of purchasing the movie I wanted packaged with a movie that no one could ever want. In the end, I bought it.

Now I have buyer's remorse. I loved 16 Blocks when I saw it in the theater. I loved it the other day on HBO. I'm looking forward to watching it this weekend when the Cavs aren't being robbed by the Spurs. But Best Buy sold me a queer giraffe to quote Proximo from Gladiator. It was a plan devilishly clever in its simplicity. And ordinarily I would not have allowed the store to victimize me. But I wanted 16 Blocks and I wanted it now.

In case you care, the queer giraffe here was Exit Wounds. The classic Steven Segal/DMX effort. No one would go in there to buy that on their own hook. I don't even think DMX's family would purchase the movie (I don't think Segal has a family, I think he was grown from the left over parts of lesser talentless tools in a lab somewhere). But I am now the proud owner of a copy of Exit Wounds on DVD.

I don't think the government should allow these things to take place. It's not my fault that Best Buy purchased more units of Exit Wounds than it can sell. Why should they be able to unload their bad decisions onto the movie that I really want? So we have to take back our opportunity not to purchase terrible films wrapped in cellophane with cinematic tours de force. You should call your legislators, mayors, governors, presidents, bishops, ministers and call the police. I would, but I don't want to end up some registry of public nuisances.

I think the ultimate indignity of this whole episode was that they stuck a sticker on the package screaming for all to see that Best Buy was offering two hot movies for one low price. As my friend suggested, the only way that both of these movies are hot is if they fell off the back of a truck. Even better, I stayed in the store agonizing over this decision for so long that I ended up staying in the parking lot for over an hour (I ate dinner as well, so I didn't waste more than an hour in the place). So it cost me an extra dollar to redeem my car from the Landmark Center lot.

On the plus side, I did all my Fathers Day shopping. I'm going to give the Old Man Exit Wounds. Hell, he has a problem with watching Steven Segal movies when he flips by them as he changes channels. It's awful. For the love of God, Marked for Death and Hard Target have not improved in 15 years. They sucked in 1990, they still suck. So that's his payback for making me watch the Glimmer Man. He gets a terrible movie for Fathers Day. Either that or I might try to take it back to the store. They'll probably boot me right out on the street if I try to bring that back to them, though.

Sometimes I wonder what goes on in Terry Francona's fragile little mind. Tonight, according to Remy and Orsillo, he hoped to get seven innings out of Julian Tavarez. Aside from the fact that Tavarez has gone seven innings only once this season and had thrown over 100 pitches twice coming into this evening's game against Oakland (which is run by the Sabremetrician's lizard king), it seemed like a nice plan. Unfortunately, even good plans sometimes fall apart.

As it was, the Francona Tavarez plan hit a snag in the form of Mark Ellis, who was a single short of the cycle, having faced Tavarez three times in his 5 and 2/3 innings of work tonight. Just in case you care, Mark Ellis was hitting .257 when he came up for his third at bat of the evening. But apparently Julian Tavarez was good for what ailed him at the plate.

I am not happy about this series, even though Papelbon is almost assuredly not available for Game One. After all, Francona's mighty closer is only to be used in consecutive games in the direst circumstances. Of course when you're Terry Francona, sometimes the direst circumstances include a game in which the Sox were leading by five runs in the ninth and then a tie game in the top of the ninth the following evening. On the plus side, as neither was a save situation, Papelbon has only one blown save to date.

But, the real problem is that the Oakland offense is not good. Outside of Ellis' remarkable performance, the offense did very little against the least formidable of the Red Sox starters. And on the other side, the Red Sox are coming off a long game with a slightly later start than usual (8PM Eastern vs. the usual 7PM game time) and a cross country flight that got them into Oakland in the early morning hours. So it was no surprise that their offense struggled against Danny Haren, the ace of this Oakland staff. It bodes ill for Oakland that their pitching gets worse as the Red SOx finally have a chance at a full night's sleep.

In other news that bodes ill for Sedition In Red Sox Nation, Jon Lester threw a complete game one hitter at the Norfolk Tides today in a 7-1 victory for the Pawtucket Red Sox. Off the top of my head, I couldn't tell you the name of a single player on the Norfolk Tides, but I'm willing to bet that they aren't very good. I base this supposition on the knowledge that they are the Orioles' AAA affiliate, and the Orioles aren't that good.

Any pro-quality prospect in Orioles organization is probably competing to push the spare parts that surround Miguel Tejada and Brian Roberts out of Camden Yards. So Lester didn't exactly throw a one hitter against the 1927 New York Yankees. Here is as good a place as any for me to offer this disclaimer, I am glad that his cancer seems to be in remission, but not glad enough to wish him professional success in this organization.

And we have a tool of note segment from this weekend's spectacular managerial tirades. It's not Lou Pinella, who didn't seem to do anything to deserve a suspension. Nor is it Ozzie Guillen, who is still immune from criticism in this space because he makes Jay Mariotti froth at the mouth. Nor is it the manager of the Mississippi Braves for his spectacularly stupid behavior.

Instead, it is the entire Mississippi Braves organization. I'm sure you've seen this footage by now, but I give you the video of this sad spectacle in part because it's funny, but also to ask this question: "Why didn't a player, a coach, a front office executive or a damn peanut vendor go out there and tackle that nitwit before he started crawling like a fat guy trying to do Rambo in some demented parlor game like charades throwing the rosin bag as though it were a grenade?"



I was under the impression that professional sports teams were expected to look out for one another. Granted that fracas between Barrett and the Big Z in the dugout at Wrigley calls that naive assumption into question, but don't minor league teams sell themselves as a purer form of baseball, untainted by the vast sums that grow monster egos at the highest level? The video is just surreal.

His team allowed him to ruin his career. Even if he somehow managed to cure cancer (I admit that's somewhat unlikely for the manager of an obscure AA team), every single person who watches it will remember him as the guy who slunk on the turf behind the pitcher's mound as though he were an infantryman dodging enemy fire and threw the rosin bag like a grenade. Who is ever going to hire him again?

Can you imagine that sell as an MLB general manager? You might as well announce the hiring of Shemp from the Three Stooges (if he weren't dead) as tell the press in any given city that has a professional sports team that you wanted to hire the guy who went ballistic in such a bizarre fashion on the field turf at the Mississippi Braves game. Granted the guy probably had no shot at making it to the Show as a manager. But at least he could have dreamed about it.

Now he's going to go down in history as a viral video loser like that fat guy who fell off the Dance Dance Revolution machine or the loser who filmed himself doing a very graceless rendition of a Jedi routine. Some member of his organization had a moral responsibility to step in and stop him from making such a moron out of himself. Maybe they didn't want to do it, but I feel they owed it to him.

And like that, the Detroit Pistons are no longer in the hunt for the NBA title. Alas, I am not happy. You may rest assured, however, that it has very little to do with the fact that the Red Sox cam back to beat the Yankees today, thanks to Mike Lowell proing that he is the gutless fraud I always suspected him to be. Imagine if A Rod had maliciously attempted to hurt one Yankee and then succeeded in his second attempt.

Unfortunately, I am not pleased to see Cleveland advance. I want LeBron to win a title. I really do. But I don't want to see the NBA turn a blind eye to Manu Ginobli and Tony Parker running at LeBron to augment Bruce Bowen's "defense." The three of them will hack, flop, whine and coward their way to another ring that would be LeBron's if the NBA allowed basketball to be played by the rules.

The only reason the Spurs deserve to win is that Popovich has a defined rotation and a logical system to govern the way that rotation is rotated. That is not the case in Cleveland. For instance, tell me why Damon Jones has played the number of minutes he has played in the situations he has played them in this series. I am not saying he should have played more or fewer minutes. I just don't understand why he has played the minutes he has played; it never seemed to fit.

Why, then, is there even a series to be played? Why waste a young, healthy, impressive star like LeBron when the NBA has not had the guts to stop a machine that churns out bad basketball? Maybe it might sell internationally, but this brand of basketball annoys American audiences. We want to see teams run the floor. We don't want to see stagnant, let the superstar do it half court sets. But we don't want to see flopping, gutless whiners. So thanks for playing Dallas and San Antonio. Dave Cowens and JoJo White want you to man up before you step on the court again.

But I am scandalized and offended that Bill Russell was on hand to present the Eastern Conference trophy. Not so much because he did it, since this is a free country he can do what he wants. But he and LeBron were the only two people who had any business on the basketball court. Plus he's Bill Russell. The NBA should pay him money to be in Boston to remind Ainge and Banner 17 of the enormity of their crime.

I am also scandalized and offended that the Cavaliers put on such a display to celebrate a conference championship. There are still games to be played. You have to go to war with San Antonio. It isn't time to celebrate yet. No one should be allowed to celebrate a damn thing until the last basketball game has been played. Maybe I'm just old fashioned that way. But I must sign off, since I am running a 5K in West Roxbury tomorrow and I have to go to bed.

I really didn't intend to post tonight. After all, I've been drinking for a long time now, and my drunken posts have been unmitigated disasters. But several things need be said about several topics and if I don't do it, who will? The Coast Guard? And the kick in the ass about blogging whilst somewhat intoxicated is that I do not know where to begin.

I suppose I'll start where I left off last night. I have been reluctant to talk about this particular subject, since I have a way of jinxing players and teams, but in the wake of last night's epic performance, I don't think I can jinx LeBron. Hell, even Bill Simmons is on board, and he's only permitted to notice trends which David Stern and Mark Cuban allow him to notice.

LeBron deserves at this point to hold the title deeds to every team and every property associated with basketball in the NBA's Eastern Conference. Every game he plays is a two-fold kick in the ass to the NBA league offices. First, he is triumphing in the face of the system. The Celtics since the Walker trade should hold themselves fortunate to depend on LeBron's mercy for the right to rebuild.

No one will admit it, but the NBA feeds on its superstars. And yet the league allows manifestly inferior players (like the entire Pistons roster, none of whom is fit to unfasten LeBron's oh so very unMessianic sandals) to flop and hack until the only player worthy of shaking hands with Bird, Russell, Heinshon, Cousy, Havlicheck, Jones, White or Cowens is shut out of the NBA Finals. So there are (and have been) two sets of Jordan rules. Superstars get most of the breaks, but when they don't it's OK to maul them in much the same fashion as a tiger mauls its dinner.

But tonight's was to be a baseball post. After all, the Yankees are back in town. And in my opinion, they should have erased not one but two games from the lead the Red Sox are oh so close to frittering away at this point. You may not have noticed, as it's Friday and all those with social lives were socializing, but the Red Sox managed to lose a game that should have been lost by a much larger margin.

In the early stages of the game, I found myself wondering if Chien Ming Wang had run over the umpire's dog. Red Sox fans might not agree, but Kevin Youkilis struck out in the bottom of the second. There is no way in God's Earth that the 2-2 pitch Youkilis took was a ball. It was at the knees and on the inside corner, a perfect pitch. In a logical world it was strike three.

Hell, Schilling would have thrown a towel over his head and wept as though he were trapped in the Old Testament Book of Lamentations until an ump gave him the call he felt the world owed him on a pitch like that. In a perfect world, some person would have emerged from nothingness to throw an hellacious beating on Youke for no apparent reason before he was called out on strikes.

Then, in the bottom of the fifth, Doug Mirabelli achieved one of the more remarkable feats one could imagine in a professional baseball game. He threw out a runner at third base who could not have done much to be safer. And any one who thinks Abreu was actually out is either a shameless Red Sox fan or a total and complete moron. Although, to be fair and to quote the Sinatra song at the same time, you can't have one without the other.

And there is very little that a Sox fan can do to try to answer my allegations. Not only because the average Red Sox fan barely has the intelligence to invilve him or herself in a "Less Filling" "Tastes Great" debate, but because the Lizard King of Red Sox Nation is on my side. If you watch the footage again, you'll see that the Remdawg agrees with me in both cases. The Sox got all the calls and still lost the game. And that's why I think the Yanks should have picked up an extra game out of this exchange.