This just might be my final post. For all the times I've been wrong, and the few times I've been spectacularly wrong, I have never been quite so wrong as I was on July 1st. On that fateful day, I mentioned how discouraging it should be for Red Sox fans that their $146 million ass-kicking machine of a baseball team had to that point managed to come from behind in their final at bat to win only once all season. Now I am eating my words, as they did it for the second time.

Unconfirmed rumors from the Tigers clubhouse placed manager Jim Leyland on the floor of his office, in the fetal position, chain-smoking and weeping when he heard the news tonight. That World Series trophy is as good as won for the Olde Towne Team as we speak. And that's why I have to shut this blog down for good, because this team has the perfect combination of tired arms and overpaid frauds who dream of hitting .250. Nothing I say can slow them down now.

Of course, there are naysayers who might point out that the two comebacks occurred against Baltimore and Tampa Bay, currently in next-to-last and last place respectively in the AL East standings. There are even some crypto-fascist reactionary types who might think that a team whose 3 and 4 hitters have not yet managed to equal the home run total put up by Alex Rodriguez could have a small problem when it comes time to face a more daunting bullpen than that of the Devil Rays. But I am no longer one of those guys.

Terry Francona changed all that. Never in all my born days could I have conceived of a move as brilliant as pinch-hitting JD Drew in the 7th so that the .248 hitter could ground into a double play. Not since C. Montgomery Burns pinch hit Homer Simpson for Darryl Strawberry with the bases loaded and two out so that a right handed batter could face the left handed pitcher (even though Straw was 9-9 with 9 home runs) against the Shellbyville team has a manager been so committed to playing the percentages. Hell, if all he wanted were a double play ball, who better than Wily Mo?

But the real key that emerged from this game...they finally know how to use Eric Gagne. He pitched a scoreless 9th because there was no real pressure on him. It would have been very difficult, indeed, for him to get the loss tonight. So no wonder he didn't choke. As long as the Sox can pitch him in situations where he can't make things worse, he'll be awesome.

And the Sox got a game back, thanks to the Yankees being mauled by the Orioles on the day that saw the passing of Hall of Fame shortstop Phil Rizzuto. I hate to say this, but all day, whenever I saw it on a news ticker or Sportscenter, the only thing that kept popping into my head connected with Rizzuto was George's key chain with Phil's head saying "Holy Cow" when it was squeezed. I know. I am a horrible human being. But at least I admit it.

And in other depressing news, it seems that the Patriots are going to try to play Adalius Thomas at inside linebacker and move Mike Vrabel back to his natural position of outside linebacker. Leaving aside the issue of whether one can still be said to have a natural position when one has lost a step or two or thirteen, I must confess this depresses me.

I was looking forward to ripping the Pats when Thomas' production from his contract year didn't follow him to New England. Now they have a ready made excuse. Of course he can't get double digit sacks, he's playing a different position in a different scheme. It should have very little to do with the fact that now Mr. Thomas has the financial freedom that he doesn't have to think twice about getting extra cheese on his Whopper.

Tonight also served up yet another disappointing episode of The Bronx Is Burning. I understand that it's based on a book (a book which I never read, in the interest of full disclosure), but I'm still bent that the show has so many different strands going at the same time. I want to see more about the Yankees in 1977 (more scenes of them beating the Red Sox would have been greatly appreciated).

If I wanted to watch a documentary of how Ed Koch got to be the Mayor of NYC, I'd find a way to do that. Or check into the psych ward, whichever comes first. And maybe it's because I am not a New Yorker or a particularly morbid person, but I really have no interest in Son of Sam stories. Quite frankly, I don't see how the election of Ed Koch or that tool shooting innocent people had any bearing on the baseball season.

Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe if Bella Abzug had won the mayoral election, the Yankees wouldn't have caught the Orioles and the Red Sox. Maybe if Mario Cuomo had won, Kansas City would have held on to the lead at home in that fifth and final game of the ALCS. Maybe if Son of Sam had murdered one fewer person, the New York Rangers would have surprised the hell out of the civilized world and made the World Series in a stunning turn of events.

ESPN is a sports network, is it not? It's not the everything about everything about life network, and sometimes they'd do well to remember that over at the World Wide Leader.

So, the Patriots have been more active in this free agency period than they have in the past. It is and it isn't a surprise. It was obvious from the way they wore down in the playoffs that they'd have to reload. The loss against the Colts was the first time they'd given away a game of that magnitude when they led in the second half since the dynasty began. It was just a question of how the team would go about it, through free agency or the draft.

Apparently, they've elected free agency. It makes some sense, since they seem to have lost their mojo in the draft at some point in the last two or three seasons. With the notable exception of Maroney, last season's draft was a disappointment. Chad Jackson is delivering fifth round pick performance on a second round pick salary. He may get better, but then again he may not. There is no reason he shouldn't have emerged as the team's number one receiver this past season, not so much because he's amazingly talented but because it's a pathetic group against which to compete.

Stephen Gostkowski has made some big kicks to this point, but I think it's too soon to evaluate a kicker. Place kicking is a strange racket. There are some guys who burst on the scene like Matin Grammatica in Tampa Bay and then fade away. Unfortunately, careers don't often rebound the way his has with the Cowboys. There are guys like Vanderjagt who (before his career went into respiratory failure in Dallas this season) only miss two or three kicks a year, but they happen to be the biggest kicks. But the Pats got through one season and letting Vinatieri go did not prove to be their undoing, so I should give credit to the team for that.

The other picks left something to be desired. Yes, David Thomas caught a big TD in San Diego, but the Patriots were fairly well stocked with TEs. For my part, I do not believe that Thomas made Daniel Graham expendable. Graham did that to himself, looking for top of the line TE money on a relatively parsimonious team which already had a much better TE in Ben Watson under contract who just happened to be younger to boot. I can't figure why they drafted another TE in the fourth round (Garrett Mills), but that's just me.

Ryan O'Callaghan started the first few games of the season, but he was far from inspiring. I guess any evaluation of his performance will be tied to your opinion of the team as a whole. I am not a Pats fan, so I think he was a bust. A Pats fan might say that his contributions were what you can reasonably expect from a fifth round pick. He might be in trouble if DeBrickishaw Ferguson is just the first in a trend of lighter, more athletic tackles to counter the smaller, speedier defensive ends like Dwight Freeney.

We'll have to wait and see on the other picks from last season. The draft is important, but not the only way to build a team. After all, the 1979 Steelers were the only team to win the championship with a roster of players who had only played for the Steelers at that point in their careers. It's still important, though. To keep playing at a high level, an NFL team needs to have significant contributions from its late round picks. Consider the Bears, their leading sacker was Mark Anderson, a fifth round pick. Or the Saints, with wide receivers like Marques Colston and Terrence Copper.

Although it wasn't necessarily the case in past years, this Patriots team needs immediate veteran help at a number of positions. Their linebacking corps in particular needed an upgrade. Age and health problems have taken their toll on Teddy Bruschi. More surprising was the decline of Mike Vrabel, who looked like Imhotep in the Mummy after he'd lost his supernatural powers at the end of the season. And of course the wide receiver position was not exactly a strength.

The Patriots have, to this point, made two moves to upgrade their linebacking corps. First, they signed Baltimore OLB Adalius Thomas. Perhaps more importantly, the team engaged in the underrated process of addition by subtraction. Tully Banta-Cain who was probably the 37th best linebacker in the AFC last season has departed for San Francisco. Alas, I couldn't ascertain by my astute investigative reporting whether he had flowers in his hair or not.

Patriots fans seem delighted with the Thomas signing. I am not as disappointed as you might expect. Unlike the average person who follows football, I have a very long memory. I can recall the strange case of Edgerton Hartwell. For those of you who don't remember him, he was once a promising inside linebacker playing next to Ray Lewis in the Ravens defense. He parlayed that into a 6 year contract with Falcons worth $26.25 million. Unfortunately for him, and the Falcons, Hartwell couldn't stay healthy. This offseason, as his former teammate Thomas made the big splash signing with the Pats, Hartwell was a footnote on the transaction wire as the Falcons cut their losses and released him.

At least I'm not the only one bringing up concerns in the wake of the Thomas signing. This writer on SI.com has a piece of his column on the Pats signing devoted to the list of free agents who have left Baltimore for greener pastures only to leave their mojo behind. It is not a short list, either. Gery Baxter, cornerback for the Ravens, turnstile for the Browns is just one of its members. I take issue, however, with the inclusion of Anthony Weaver. Yes, he had half as many sacks in 2006 as he did in his last season in Baltimore, but he only had 2 sacks that year. Of course, my defense of Weaver just might be related to the fact that he played at Notre Dame.

I am not convinced that Wes Welker is a significant upgrade at the wide receiver position. As you read this, if you are new to this blog, I guess I ought to point out that I have a significant antipathy to Wes Welker. Due to the bizarre priorities of the "people" who established the default scoring system for Fox Sports Fantasy Football, return yards were worth as much as receiving yards and more than rushing yards. So I ended up losing a game by 3 points when Welker went for 19.7 for my opponent. I blogged about it at length in the wake of that catastrophe, so you can read it if you want here.

Welker's career stats aren't overly impressive. One could argue that he is a more proven commodity as than what the team could expect from the two picks the team gave up to get him (2nd and 7th rounds). That may be true, but then last season's best return man, Devin Hester, was a 3rd round pick. I think the most important aspect of this pick is that it should free Maroney from returning kicks. I guess that's nothing to sneeze at, but I think that the Patriots will end up regretting the last few drafts, and giving up picks in this one, three or four years from now. Remember it when it happens that you heard it here first.