Ladies and gentelemn, every so often an event so improbable unfolds in a baseball game and we realize that the whole enterprise is rigged to benefit the Evil Empire. How else can you explain a team coming off a stretch where they had lost 5 of their last 6 games (including the most recent by the emasculating, humiliating margin of sixteen runs) defeating the team with the most wins in their sport, coming off a four game stretch in which they scored 46 runs and were not defeated? That just shouldn't happen.

Of course, there might be people who could focus on trivial details that might make the Red Sox eight game lead look a little less impressive than it would on the surface. For instance, those four games in which the Red Sox scored those 46 runs (which, by the way, might not have been the 46 most impressive runs of all time but had to be in the top 136) were played against the Chicago White Sox. In case you haven't noticed, the White Sox are in the midst of an epic collapse which would be front page news if the Astros sinking ship weren't sinking in more spectaular fashion.

The Yankees, meanwhile, received their humiliation this weekend at the hands of the Detroit Tigers. Since news from the great American Midwest seldom seems to reach the elite in New England, I have the honor of revealing that the Tigers are fighting for their playoff lives. And the Tigers have had a nasty habit of beating the Red Sox this season. All that keeps the Tigers from taking the lead in the AL Central is the fact that Grady Sizemore and Travis Haffner haven't been told that they are in a penant race, so they don't know yet that they are due to choke any day now.

So perhaps it's not all that surprising that the Red Sox could lose a game to the Yankees. Believe it or not, even with the three game sweep in April, the Red Sox have managed to win only seven of the thirteen games they have played against the Yankees to this point. Granted 7 of 13 is more than half, but the way some Red Sox fans have yammered on about it, you'd think that the Red Sox had won 14 or 15 of the 13 games.

Even though the lead is still 7 games, there are some encouraging signs for people like me. For instance, JD Drew was fantastic tonight. I imagine there were many nervous citizens in Red Sox Nation when their $14 million right fielder took the plate as the go-ahead run against rookie Joba Chamberlain with two out and two on in the eighth. If Red Sox fans were given to (or perhaps capable of) introspection, this sitaution would trouble them much more than it does now. A ten year veteran paid an eight figure salary was at a distinct disadvantage against a kid who has to think twice about getting extra cheese on his Whopper and is barely old enough to drink the beer which was banished from the clubhouse this season.

It's been a while since I've had a good time at JD Drew's expense in this space. Part of it has been due to the team's overall success to this point. But part of it has been due to a state of catatonia induced by my old friend who brings me his Red Sox information. You might remember him as the man who claimed that JD Drew's numbers were comprable to A Rod's. Recently, he told me in confidence that next year, Red Sox fans will consider JD Drew to be a bargin at that price.

For several days, I was stunned into silence, but then I got to thinking. How could JD Drew be considered a bargin? I have a few alternatives to put before you. First, and probably least likely, JD Drew could stop sucking at his chosen profession. Second, the Red Sox could harvest his internal organs and sell them on the black market. He is, after all, a healthy donor specimen, but there are moral and legal qualms.

But, the most likely scenario I can envision to make JD Drew look like a good value is that the Sox are going to sign an even bigger fraud for even more money. I'm sure Red Sox fans will get their heads in a tizzy envisioning A Rod replacing Mike Lowell at third base. It all falls into place when you think that the same agent represents A Rod, Drew and Daisuke Matsuzaka. Then again, maybe Matsuzaka beaning A Rod once a game might not be the best sales pitch.

Well, the Major League Baseball All Star game was held this evening in San Francisco, and I watched maybe 1/2 hour of it. And I barely paid attention to the brief portion of the game that I watched. I don't know who won, and quite frankly, I don't care. It matters little to me what league wins.

Of course it matters to Red Sox fans because they know that the Sox are all but in the Fall Classic as we speak, so they need to plan for the possibility of four home Series games. They needn't even worry that their two big boppers have combined for fewer home runs than Alex Rodriguez, whose numbers are comparable to JD Drew's. They needn't even worry that Mike Lowell could have an anxiety attack if he's expected to get a clutch hit on the road. This season is over.

Today was all about learning things that I already knew over again in painful fashion. As a general rule, I never go to Cambridge. The city is overrated. The bars and restaurants are no better than what you find on the good side of the Charles River. The people are more arrogant with less justification than Bostonians, and if they knew 1/3 about anything of what they profess to know about everything, then truly each and every one of them would be a Socrates. And to borrow a line from James Madison, Cambridge would still be a madhouse.

I have a corollary to that rule which states that if you must go to Cambridge, never have a specific time at which you must arrive at your destination. Tonight, as I attempted to get from point A to Cambridge, I found myself stuck behind several morons. As you who read this space should know by now, I have a series of tests to tell who is and who is not a moron.

One way to tell who is a moron is to see if they have a radio station sticker on their car. Any person who does is likely to be a moron. If they have a WBCN sticker the odds go up. If they have two WBCN stickers, the odds go through the roof. And if one of the two BCN stickers commemorates the fact that said station broadcasts the New England Patriots, one would need multiple advanced degrees, a Nobel or a Pulitzer or corresponding award for academic or creative eminence to escape the status of moron.

Another way to tell who is a moron is to be stuck behind a column of people who are yielding to Canada Geese on the damn Riverway. I do not endorse cruelty to animals, but if I have a choice between scattering a gaggle of geese and getting rear-ended by some nitwit in a work truck who's been drinking since 3 PM, let's just say I'm going through the geese. Letting them cross the street only encourages them to keep doing it. Canada Geese aren't cute. They're filthy, belligerent and a public health menace. The people ahead of me should have ran them down and dealt with the moral, legal and automotive consequences, leaving me free to go about my business.

And another variety of moron is the Red Sox fan. I was stuck behind a BMW with a Red Sox license plate bracket as I tried to make my way down Broadway in Cambridge. THis person was hell bent on missing every single light possible. The ultimate driving machine was not being driven very well in that instance. And then the last type of moron is yours truly for breaking sensible rules.

And as if Cambridge weren't bad enough, then there is Brookline. After my business among the Cantabrigians was concluded, I went looking for a place to eat in Brookline. Alas, for me, it happened to be 10:00, and one cannot allow restaurants to serve food to customers after 10:00 whilst preserving the curious blend of urban and suburban, academic and blue-collar atmospheres that make up the rich pastiche that is Brookline.

Give me a break. Of course it's my fault for going to Brookline and for being too lazy to get back into my whip and drive to a saner community for a better, cheaper meal. That said, don't go to the Beacon Street Tavern. I spent a week there tonight. First, the kitchen closes at 10, so one must eat off of the late night menu or else go hungry. I wish I had gone hungry.

The sliders weren't bad, but they weren't $14 good either. The service wasn't bad, but the place was beat. First, 3/4 of the menu was inedible, at least from my point of view. They had a lot of appetizers with things I just won't eat. Like beets and goat cheese. I ate more beets as a child than I really needed to, and I only ate the ones my parents forced me to eat. With God as my witness, I will never eat beets again. And if goat cheese were really so great, why would people go to cows for their milk and cheese needs?

But the real problem was the clientele. There was the dude in a Bud Light shirt and a throwback Red Sox hat, drinking white wine and chatting up a blond at the bar while he scratched his back. I'm guessing he didn't get the signal to swing away tonight. Then there was the guy talking about how he did yoga and meditated before he came out for a beer. I want to party with him.

But this is supposed to be a sports related blog, so I thought I would pass on this link sent to me by my man up on the frozen tundra in Maine. It's a freelance piece comparing the most recent edition of the Boston Celtics with the 2002 conference finalist. It basically makes different points to argue that Ainge bites as a GM and ought to be removed from office. It's nice to see someone else feels that way too.

And then, I have to pass this on. Antoine Walker was robbed at gunpoint, again. This time it was in his house, as opposed to on a street in Chicago's South Side at 4 in the morning. No word yet as to whether Danny Ainge and Banner 17 were involved. After all, it does seem like the only way they'll get their hands on a championship ring. Of course I'm kidding about that last part, I just don't see why people can't leave my man alone.

And when the going gets tough in NASCAR, guess whose drivers can't share the limelight as teammates? Would you believe it was Roush Fenway Racing? Apparently, Kyle Bush was edged out of his win by his own teammate, Jamie McMurray. Just one of my many problems with NASCAR is that a sport must either be an individual sport or a team sport. It can't be both. So I don't care what the drivers do to their teammates except for when it gives me a chance to run down one of John Henry's business ventures.

In a recent comment about my last post, a reader took issue with my criticism of the Red Sox for failing to come back to win more than one game in their final at bat this season. His rationale was that the stat itself was not particularly useful. As he said most teams lose in that situation. Now, I tend to pay surprisingly little attention to what I say from one post to the next, but I'm pretty sure that I said that I expected the Sox to lose much more than they win when they trail after 8, but I could be wrong. Stranger things have happened, like America's prosecutor Fred Thompson turning out to have been a mole undermining his committee's case during the Watergate investigation.

I do, however, believe that it is a relevant stat. The playoffs are an entirely different dynamic than the regular season. Should the Red Sox encounter the Detroit Tigers in an opening round series, for instance, they will face a team with better starting pitching and a deeper offensive lineup. To beat a team that is as good as your squad, you need to be battle-tested. Beating the Tampa Bay Devil Rays, even with Wakefield on the mound doesn't make count.

When you consider the fact that the Red Sox have come back in their last at bat to win a game only once this season and that it was against the Baltimore Orioles and that the game in question was the catalyst for the epic losing streak that cost the manager his job, this Red Sox team ceases to impress. Let's not forget that the travesty in 2004 was built on late inning rallies, prevailing against the odds and Kevin Millar being the single dumbest human being to escape a Darwin award.This current edition of the Boston Red Sox has yet to prove that it has heart, guts, balls or any other anatomical feature that can stand in for constancy, courage or any of the other cardinal virtues in a half-assed metaphor. They just might want to do that before all of the chips are down.

Of course, I suspect that my reader is lashing out at me to exercise his angst that the Celtics have compensated for their lack of success by whoring out the image and likeness of Red Auerbach so that Adidas can throw his face on some special basketball shoes. I think that just clinched the Rookie of the Year and multiple MVP awards for Jeff Green. As though Red weren't suffering enough in his twilight years between Banner 17 gutting the team and adding cheerleaders, now they have to make his stay in the afterlife unpleasant?


But back to Red Sox fans. On Sunday, the guy who comes to me with his Red Sox info (my own personal answer to questions I've never asked) came into my home. Where I sleep. Where I come to play with my toys. And he was sickeningly full of that which makes the grass grow green. The Red Sox game was on, JD Drew was coming to the plate and he hit me with the buzz kill.

He got into the classic Red Sox fan argument position, thrust his chin forward as though he were capable of bringing the pain should the situation require it and said in his big boy voice that if I were to look at the numbers over the course of his career, JD Drew's stats were comparable with A Rod's. On some level, I imagine that they are comparable. In the same way that a kick in the groin is comparable to a steak dinner.

As we live and breathe, Alex Rodriguez is batting .314 with 28 HR and 80 RBI. JD Drew is breathing down his neck with a robust .261 batting average, an awe-inspiring 6 home runs and 33 RBI. I'm not a mathematical genius, but I don't think those statistics are comparable at all, except of course by our old friend the inequality.

Now, I imagine I would be irresponsible if I were to allow the fact that I just used a very small sample size to contrast the performance of two ten year veterans. So here you go, sticklers for statistical accuracy, go to Baseball Reference and tell me their career numbers are comparably in the good way. JD Drew has only just managed to hit more home runs in his entire career than A Rod hit as a member of the Texas Rangers. A Rod has batted in nearly three times as many runs as JD Drew managed to this point. The fact that A Rod has played 800 more games than Drew isn't enough to offset the fact that A Rod has 330 more career home runs than Drew and is only two years older.

Of course, this is a guy who maintains that Jim Rice was the most feared right handed hitter of his era. And he defends his position when one mentions Mike Schmidt by pointing out that Rice had a much higher batting average. Which is true, although it leaves out the fact that Schmidt played in a much bigger ball park against the National League (which was the stronger league at the time) and with a dead spot in the lineup where the pitcher batted. And it also leaves out the fact that Schmidt his 160 more home runs than Rice did in 400 more games. All while playing a much more demanding defensive position and winning Gold Gloves. Jim Rice might belong in a Hall of Fame, but it just isn't the one in Cooperstown.

What bothers me most about my friend tormenting me with his Red Sox absurdities is that he lacks a sense of honesty and even worse irony where the local nine are concerned. JD Drew's numbers might compare favorably with A Rod's when you throw in all kind and manner of qualifiers and modifiers to adjust for the fact that JD Drew has only a slightly smaller chance of becoming the next pope than he does of finishing a season. But qualifying and modifying stats undercuts the argument in the first place. It's like saying that if grasshoppers were armed with automatic weapons, they wouldn't be on the bird's dinner menu.

As for the sense of irony, I seem to remember A Rod as the villain in the il-conceived farce that is Red Sox Nation. I am constantly being told that A Rod is the embodiment of all that is wrong in baseball today and when so inclined, he eats unattended children for a light snack. But it's OK to pay a right fielder $14 million to hit .260 with 6 home runs and 33 RBI because his numbers can be compared to A Rod's? Maybe I'm missing the facility for intellectual dishonesty and mental gymnastics that enables a man to be a Red Sox fan, but I just can't buy it.

Before I sign off, I have to weigh in on the Boston Pops performance this evening. I have a bachelor party, a golf game and a wedding in the next three days, so I don't know when I'll get another chance to post. And if I do get the chance to post in that time, I'm sure that I will be past the point where I can blog coherently. So it's now or never.

I must say, I was colossally disappointed with the concert. From the get-go, I didn't see the point of the whole set up. Why John Cougar Mellencamp? I am not one of the Bill Simmons disciples who found the Sports Guy's cute little epigrams mocking Our Country particularly piquant. I hate the song, but no more or less than any other song appearing in an overexposed commercial campaign. But why is he coming back?

I try to keep my political views distinct from my aesthetic judgements. I don't care that John Cougar Mellencamp has become a darling of the anti-war movement. That doesn't change the inherent merits (or utter lack-thereof) of his music. Mellencamp was a very inferior Midwestern version of Bruce Springsteen, in much the same way as Jon Bon Jovi is a very, very inferior New Jersey knock-off of the Boss. His music was (and is) blue collar, but generic, cliched and without the thinking-man rebel's edge one can find Born to Run, Darkness on the Edge of Town, the River and the rest of Springsteen's music. In short, John Cougar is basically Bill Simmons to Bruce Springsteen's F. Scott Fitzgerald.

But enough on John Cougar. During the fireworks display, there were various recordings played over the loudspeaker system. Rest assured, I am scandalized with that decision on two levels. First, nobody went to the Esplanade or turned their TVs on to see some tool's i-Pod. The damn Boston Pops could have learned/rehearsed 3-4 more songs (or is an orchestra of that eminence confined to using selection to refer to the material they play?), after all it's not like this was an impromptu gig. The Fourth of July happens every year. Right in the same spot on the calendar too, not like Labor Day which skulks its way through that first week of September.

In addition to being scandalized by the fact that the Pops let recorded music be played at their signature concert, I was also deeply disappointed by some of their choices. Kenny Chesney was on the play list, and while he might be elevated in the esteem of New Englanders because he rocks a Red Sox hat from time to time, it doesn't change the fact that his music is shallow and childish even for a country singer. I could have done without the Sesame Street theme as well, but such is life.

Far worse, in the collection of "patriotic" music played throughout the program, the Battle Hymn of the Republic didn't make the cut. Of course very few songs manage to offend the real core of America the way that song does. For Southerners and racists, it calls to mind places like Antietam, Gettysburg, Shiloh, Vicksburg and Appomattox, and God forbid we hurt their feelings. And then the overt religious sentiments of the song offend Massachusetts residents who wear their atheism as a badge of honor. But we did have 3, maybe 4 different George M. Cohan selections. Kind of warms the cockles, doesn't it?

And finally, I found myself wondering what a British soldier might have felt seeing the Middlesex Volunteers march onto the stage at the beginning of the festivities. I'm betting that a member of the Queen's Own Closet Case Grenadiers must wonder why his great-great-great-grandfather lit out running so fast from a rabble like that in Concord. And in case you're wondering, I am, in fact, aware that John Cougar Mellencamp has dropped the Cougar from his stage name, but I'm not going to let him get away with that.

All that, and I didn't even take the CHB to task for acting like he's broken a story on Julio Lugo's offensive struggles.

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 knew today was going to be a weird day from the start. I woke up to see a headline in the Boston Globe, one of the day's lead story in a major metropolitan newspaper, to the effect that some jackass with a pseudonymous blog (not me obviously) managed to get himself revealed in open court. He actually included a thinly veiled account of the daily proceedings of his trial for medical malpractice in his blog. As far as I'm concerned, important personal details have no business in a blog so long as the blogger wants to keep a private life apart from the blogging life. I'm not sure yet what the details are on the settlement of the other blogger's case look like, but I bet it was one hell of an expensive mistake.

Then as I was driving through a neighborhood in Boston at 7 this morning (I can't tell you which one, lest I compromise my somewhat secret identity), I found myself behind a Nissan SUV. The guy driving it was rocking a cowboy hat. At 7 AM. In Boston. And not the metropolitan area, either. The city itself. If that's not a bad omen for the start of a day, I'm not sure what is.

And there is the whole A Rod mess. So what if he yelled at a guy who was trying to field a pop fly at third base? If any other player on any other team did that it wouldn't have been a story. If one of the Red Sox players did that, Red Sox Nation would be fawning over him as though he cured polio. But since it's A Rod, it's the worst thing that has ever been done on a baseball diamond, or at least since he slapped the ball away from Bronson Arroyo. People just need to leave the guy alone for a while.

But tonight's post is really about basketball. The NBA is slowly wasting away before our eyes, and it's almost laughable. I'm not blaming the refs or the league for the on-court violence which is a far bigger problem in my eyes than the off court violence associated with the current NBA player. This degeneration from basketball to a sort of half-assed rugby is the responsibility of the players. They put up with it, so why should the league address it. Every team that whines when its star is hacked turns a blind eye when its goons maul the opposing star. So the players need to do fix this themselves.

And it starts with personal pride. Not ego, but honest-to-goodness "I did my damn job the way it ought to be done to the best of my damn ability" pride. For the love of God, Bill Russell would have been scandalized into committing ritual seppuku if he defended Chamberlain the way Prince and Hamilton played LeBron tonight and he were a samurai. A little bit of contact is fine, but a player ought to find a new line of work if he can't guard his man without hand checking him 10 times in a 24 second possession.

The three most egregious instances of shameful basketball came in the second overtime. First, Webber never should have gotten continuation on the foul that sent Ilgauskas packing. He carried the ball in the first place. Also, the motion which enabled him to put the ball in the basket was not the same motion which was interrupted by the Ilgauskas foul. That cannot be continuation, de facto or de jure. Finally, it probably wasn't even a foul at all.

Then there was the 24 second violation on Cleveland where they passed the ball to Varejao for some strange reason. As he fought for the loose ball, Billups splashed him. That's got to be some manner of foul. You simply cannot throw your body onto another player's body in a non-contact sport. It's just not the way it was intended to be played.

Finally, on one of Detroit's final possessions in the second overtime, Chris Webber tried to set a pick by hand-checking the Cleveland defender (I'm pretty sure it was Pavlovich). There's no way that you can set a pick with a hand check. Hell, according to strict semantics, I don't even think you can hand check on offense, but I don't know how else to describe what Webber did. Instead of positioning his body appropriately, he reached out and put his hand on Pavlovich's hip as the Cleveland player was defending another Piston.

But lost in the hype that will surround this game (and rightly so, it was a legendary performance by LeBron, he played like 3 men in the 4th quarter and 2 OTs), is a rare win-win situation for me. Phoenix has decided to take the GM title away from Mike D'Antoni and install Steve Kerr in that position. I like this move because I do not like the team, and I won't miss Kerr calling games.

First, Phoenix was on a nice run under D'Antoni. True, they have yet to advance past the Spurs or reach the conference finals. However, they have made the playoffs after a very good regular season in each of the past two years. It seems like an interesting time to mess with their chemistry in this fashion. Players seem to like D'Antoni, more to the point they have responded to his leadership fairly well when it comes to wins and losses.

And what exactly has Steve Kerr done to show that he's ready to build an NBA championship caliber NBA organization? Was it sitting next to Marv Albert night in and night out without being bitten? So what if he were a cog in title runs by the Bulls and Spurs? Where does that translate to successful GM?

After all, if that were all it took, maybe Danny Ainge would be helping to hang banners in the rafters of his own building. Can Phoenix not see the parallel? Role player on title teams, terrible broadcaster, terrible 80s hair. Ainge and Kerr might be the same person, for all intents and purposes, with the exception of one key detail. Ainge was a moderately successful coach for a couple of years. Kerr doesn't even have that on his resume. Enjoy the long descent into mediocrity and beyond, Phoenix fans.

Was any one really surprised when the Yankees announced today that Roger Clemens will be rejoining the team in the not-yet-determined but not-too-distant future? THe Yankees have the money, and they really need pitching help, what with the rash of injuries and the fact that Carl Pavano may or may not have left the team to track down a pseudonymous blogger who hates the Red Sox and rashly predicted that a guy who'd barely managed to start 19 games in his tenure with the Yankees would win 18 games this season thereby jinxing said pitcher as little has been jinxed in the history of jinxes. In an unrelated story, I am moving from location to location trying to stay one step ahead of a different nemesis with the initials CP.

Signing Clemens is a huge media coup, but how much can he really deliver for the Yankees at this point in his career? I hope he has quite a bit left in the tank, since the Red Sox were among the prospective suitors. A dazzlingly successful return would be win-win for the purposes of Sedition in Red Sox Nation, as every game Clemens should help narrow the gap between the Sox and Yanks and it will make the Red Sox look bad for not signing the player who is currently tied with the immortal Cy Young for the most wins in the team's 104 year history.

Unfortunately, while the Yankees were busy signing Clemens, the Minnesota Twins were hard at work almost but not quite battling back to defend their home field from the Red Sox. It was a day of good signs and bad signs for me. Among the bad signs, Schilling pitched entirely too well. The good sign is that Okajima allowed a run to score, so maybe he'll tire as the season progresses.

But this day was all about Clemens. Back in October, I had a dream that Clemens was putting away a pinstriped jersey with the number 27 on it. I am a superstitious guy. I believe in the power of dreams and the occult and suchlike things. Looking ahead, I just don't see how this Yankee team can survive the season, let alone advance to win a World Series.

It just seems like a strange, uncomfortable mixture of youth and experience. The young players, especially the pitchers, seem too young, and not ready for a serious pennant chase. Some of the more experienced players just don't seem like they have the chemistry to make a champion. The guys who have rings don't seem as hungry, and the guys like Giambi and A Rod who haven't won yet don't seem like they know how to pull it together at the right time to get the big hit.

The Yankee championship teams of the late 90s didn't have a lot of guys who produced inflated stats. They had smart, unselfish guys who could do a lot more than simply playing for the big three run homer. This current Yankee lineup has players who can do everything on the field, but they've gotten in the habit of waiting for some one else to do it. I wonder, since I don't know, if this is what the Yankee teams of the end of the 1960s were like.

Even if Clemens return takes a lot of pressure off of the starting rotation, that's only half the battle. And since this isn't the human interest moral of the story spot at the end of the old GI Joe cartoons, half the battle is a whole lot of nothing. At his age, Clemens can't be counted on pitching into the seventh inning in every outing. He might not be able to do it more than once in every three starts.

So that leaves the massive problem of the bullpen, which was supposed to be rebuilt around Viscaino in the offseason. Right now, it looks like that particular portion of the Randy Johnson trade is not working as advertised. I don't think I've ever seen a bullpen come out of spring training with so many tired arms. If you think about it, it's not as though these guys started strong and were tired out because the starters have been injured and ineffective. The bullpen was no good from jump street.

It's not just Rivera. I think he's going to go on a run where he saves 18 or 19 in a row any day now. I don't know if that's keen insight or just a part of my brain that isn't prepared to see a guy who has been locked in for the last 11 seasons go out like this. Closing is a tricky business, but Rivera and Hoffman have been like death and taxes over the years. Sooner or later (and probably very soon at their ages), their dominance had to end. I just wasn't expecting it to be quite this soon.

Among the other things that surprised me lately was the ease with which Ottawa brushed aside the New Jersey Devils. I haven't had a chance to watch Ottawa much this season, since hockey is below old movies on the radar screen in my world. To be fair, so is virtually every sporting event with the exception football and compelling baseball and basketball games.

But the Devils were like the Yankee teams that won titles a few years back. The Devils had that same mix of smart players who knew their roles and came up big in crucial situations. And like Rivera, the Devils had the most feared weapon of the era in Matin Brodeur. Now, it seems like the Devils had a blend of guys who could score like Gomez, Gionta and Elias and guys who could defend like Madden and Pandolfo.

The trouble was they weren't young enough and athletic enough to score with Ottawa, nor were they solid, patient and tough enough to offset that deficiency with their defensive play. They have yet to recover from the retirement of Scott Stevens and the departure of Scott Niedermeyer. Rafalski and Colin White are good defensemen, but the unit is not what it once was across the board. I knew all that going into this postseason, but I expected to see the Martin Brodeur I used to know. It just didn't happen.

I guess it's funny, the way a team can age so much in a week. Like the Heat against the Bulls, or like the Yankees when the season opened. The Devils and the Heat were battle tested, they had championship experience, but they ran into opposing teams with youth, athleticism and depth in a combination that proved to much for the seasoned teams with the championship pedigree.

The Yankees should be potent enough on offensive to emerge from the long, long, long season. But what will they look like when they do? They are going to be an old, tired team in October. We all ought to know this, since they look like an old, tired team in April and they looked like an old, tired team at noon today. Obviously they didn't get younger by signing Clemens, but they might be fresher and deeper now.

Clemens has always had guts on the mound. Whether he always pitched with them is an open question. I don't really want to debate Game Six of the 1986 World Series, and his commitment to the Red Sox organization in the mid-1990s left a little to be desired. But Clemens gave his best in Game 7 of the 2001 World Series, in Game 4 of the 2003 World Series, in Game 7 of the 2004 NLCS and in his start against the White Sox in the World Series in 2005. This Yankee team needs his toughness right now.

It just won't be enough. The old players are too old. The young players are too young. The tough players aren't tough enough. The hungry players aren't hungry enough. I don't see the Yankees going deep into this postseason. This team doesn't appear to have done enough to address the deficiencies that have contributed to early exits in 2005 and 2006.

But before you get your knickers in a twist and start planning the victory celebration, Red Sox Nation, do me a favor and remember one thing. This Red Sox team is built for one purpose and one purpose only. And it's not to win a World Series. It's to beat the Yankees. They look like they can do that this year. But the bullpen isn't deep, the closer is fragile and the offense isn't what it was back in the dark days of 2004. The Sox aren't going to win a postseason series this year.

And one other happy note this evening. Read this review of some movie I have no intention of seeing from Slate. Just look at the first paragraph and try to remember the last time you read something that jarring that quickly. And then read the rest of the article and see if you can't figure out why we even bother trying to live with one another.

I am not a nice guy, nor am I tremendously sensitive. But even I have limits, there were some lines that I never intended to cross in this blog. I didn't want to do this, but with the way Red Sox fans find the fact that Matsuzaka hit A Rod and Jeter so piquant, I felt it was time for me to send a more serious message of my own. So without further adieu...

GREAT MOMENTS IN RED SOX HISTORY #7 - 8/18/1967

On August 18 in the middle of the Impossible Dream Season of 1967, Tony Conigliaro came to bat against Jack Hamilton of the California Angels. Hamilton's pitch hit Tony C in the face, causing massive trauma. Tony missed the entire 1968 season. He won the Comeback Player of the Year award, which now bears his name, in 1969, but he was never the same. By 1975 he retired because his eyesight was deteriorating.

Bob Ryan wrote a piece on the tragic event last year on its 39th anniversary. I thought this particular paragraph was worth noting:

But Aug. 18 is always a somber date for me, and, I'm sure, for many others. Tony C is the greatest of all ``What-Ifs?" in Boston sports history. When he stepped into the box in that fateful fourth inning, he was 22 years old. He was the Golden Boy, en route to the Golden Career. Who among us wouldn't have traded places with Tony C?

I just don't see how a fan base which professes to possess a sterling knowledge of baseball history can in one breath lament the pitch that ended Tony C's career but still enjoy the spectacle of Alex Rodriguez or Derek Jeter being hit because they wear another uniform. If Roy Halladay had hit David Ortiz or Manny Ramirez or JD Drew this evening, Red Sox Nation would have deluged Governor Patrick's office with demands that he call out the state militia and declare martial law to punish the offending pitcher.

Is it a really a coincidence that Red Sox pitcher Tim Wakefield has hit more batters than any other pitcher in Major League Baseball since the start of the 2003 season? Is it a coincidence that the Red Sox seem to dominate this Sports Illustrated feature on basebrawls, including this shot of Pedro Martinez getting his just deserts?

Pitchers who have spent significant time on the Red Sox currently rank 2, 3 and 4 in active leaders in hit batsmen.

The guy who comes to me with his Red Sox information has an insufferable bravado he uses when he talks about Red Sox pitchers hitting opposing batters "by accident." He pauses, which would add dramatic emphasis if his rhetorical gifts measured up to his opinion thereof. And it's typical of Red Sox Nation's reaction to the bullying tactics of the Olde Towne Team. And if you don't believe me, look at this shot of the famous moment when Varitek bravely stood up to A Rod.

It truly takes a brave man to stand up to another man whilst wearing a mask, helmet, chest protector, shin guards and a big leather catcher's mitt. Just ask a Red Sox fan, and that fan will tell you how tough 'Tek is and how that moment was an impressive achievement.

Maybe I'm being a little too harsh in reminding New Englanders of a superstar cut down in his prime and dying before his time because he was hit in the face by a pitched ball. But that is the end result of throwing 96 mile per hour fastballs as you learn to pitch inside, or try to remind the world that you own the inside part of the plate.

I understand that pitching inside is part of the game. But I don't believe that the Red Sox make mistakes when they hit opposing players. I don't know much about baseball as it's played in the Japanese League, but I highly doubt that they only pitch to half of the strike zone in the Far East. I just find myself imagining that it's more than a little coincidental that the two hitters beaned by Daisuke Matsuzaka were either notoriously successful against the Red Sox (Jeter) or on pace to break all records for hitting in the month of April (A Rod) while he learned the subtle nuances of pitching in North American baseball.

I think we all know how Red Sox Nation will react should the next message pitch hurt one of their heroes. What I fear in this situation is that Red Sox Nation will show as much dignity as they have in all of this discussion of the A Rod and Jeter incidents should another unfortunate incident like this

befall and opposing player in Fenway.

It's been a little while now since I last posted on a baseball related topic. Like virtually every other sports fan in America, I have been devoting most of my attention to college basketball of late. For instance, I filled out my second bracket sheet today on boston.com. I hadn't intended to enter their bracket challenge until I saw that I could compete against Brian Scalabrine. The way I see it, between my total lack of athletic ability and Dann Ainge's penchant for brain typing, if I beat Scalabrine in this competition, I should get a million dollar deal with the Cs.

I simply could not let this article in the New York Times pass by without comment. Because Philadelphia fans booed Mike Schmidt and Yankee fans boo ARod, the two situations must be somehow related. Those of you who have been reading this blog for a while will already know that Mike Schmidt was my favorite player as a kid. I even wrote a post using him as a foil when I addressed the revisionist claim that Jim Rice was the most feared hitter in baseball when he was in his prime. Thanks to the magic of labelled posts, you can navigate to it with relative ease by clicking the Mike Schmidt label in the right hand column.

Mike Schmidt and Alex Rodriguez are not as similar as a comparison of their career numbers would lead one to believe. A Rod broke in at a younger age, 19 as opposed to 22 for Schmidt, so he has much better numbers at age 30 than Schmidt did. But Mike Schmidt played in an era with fewer teams. He also played his entire career in the National League. Even though they're both third basemen, it's still relevant because NL lineups all have that glaring hole in the 9 spot because the pitcher bats. For a guy like Schmidt that had to be cost him 5-10 RBI over a full season.

Schmidt also played in an era of massive ball parks that were nowhere near as conducive to great power numbers as the stadiums of this generation. Think about The Vet, Riverfront in Cincinnati, The Astrodome, Three Rivers, Old Busch Stadium (when it was the ghastly monstrosity with astroturf in the 1980s before the renovation in the 90s) and Fulton County Stadium in Atlanta to name a few. And even without steroids, HGH or any of the rest of the illicit performance enhancing substances we suspect today's power hitters to have used at some point (if they aren't still cheating on the sly), current players have a massive advantage over their predecessors of even 20 years ago because of the advances in nutrition and strength and conditioning programs.

But A Rod and Mike Schmidt are different in more ways than just numbers. A Rod has better postseason stats than Schmidt, but Schmidt was World Series MVP and champion in 1980. And Schmidt's surprising low postseason stats (.236 with 4 HR and 16 RBI in 36 games) are in large part due to a disastrous World Series in 1983 (1 for 20 over five games, .050 average with no walks, no RBI and six strikeouts). But even the Mariner teams A Rod took to the playoffs had better lineups than the Phillies teams of the 70s and 80s. It seems impossible to believe, but Mike Schmidt hit 48 HR for the eventual World Series Champions in 1980. The other seven regular position players combined to hit 58 home runs.

Mike Schmidt's relationship with the fans and media weren't perfect because Philly is Thunderdome. A Rod's trouble in New York is largely his own fault. I don't blame Yankee fans for disliking him. To come out and suggest that his difficulties in connecting to the fans were the result of being good looking, rich and biracial is absolutely insane. After all, what is Jeter? He is all of those things, plus he comes up big in big moments and he bust his ass every game.

I've heard more than a few people say that Red will be looking down on the Cs and working the lottery in their favor. I don't believe that for a second. Karma hasn't deserted the Celtics. Karma beat the Celtics half to death and left the team bleeding in a ditch. If you don't believe me, consider this. The Celtics lost to the Bulls tonight in the United Center. When the Bulls wore GREEN jerseys. I don't give a damn if it is the only home game of St Patrick's Day week. You simply don't wear green against the Cs.

Can you imagine wearing green jerseys against the Celtics with Russell, Heinshon, Cousy, Hondo, Cowens, Bird, DJ, Parrish or McHale on the floor? When the Cs lose out in the lottery, and I'm predicting now that even if they had all but 3 ping pong balls in the draft, the universe would find a way to stick them with that 4th pick. So Celtics fans might want to brace themselves for Joakim Noah or Big Baby Davis. When they miss out on Oden/Durant they're going to take one or the other of last year's models. And next year, we'll see Pagliuca come out and say: "If Delonte becomes Bibby and Al Jefferson becomes Karl Malone, I'd say Danny has done pretty well." And who knows, maybe I won't be the only one who finds that preposterous.

At least Wyc has his red Ferrari with the Celtics plate to console him as Banner 17 runs the last vestiges of Celtics pride into the ground. Either he thinks he's Magnum, or he's overcompensating for something. But it doesn't change the fact that the team has gotten worse and not better since Banner 17 took the reins. And Tyrus Thomas wearing a green jersey had a career night against the Boston Celtics.

And congratulations to all the pundits who lamented the fact that Drexel were not granted an at-large bid in the NCAA tournament. They did one hell of a lot of damage in the the NIT. They really made the committee look foolish.

It's amazing how much has happened in the sports world since the last time I posted. I have so many to attack for so much. First, how elated we all are that the Celtics franchise record losing streak has been halted before it reached NBA record levels. While some are inclined to accentuate the positive (consider this slide show on Boston.com which tried to find one positive aspect of each of the 18 straight losses and highlight it), I choose to focus on the negative because I'm good like that.

While it's nice to get a win, and always good to get ESPN to stop beating the record losing streak angle to death, I think it does one good to remember the axiom of Winston Wolfe from Pulp Fiction and wait a bit before giving one another the gift of oral gratification. Let us not forget that not only are the Bucks a bad team, but they were also short handed. Michael Redd and Charlie Villeneuva were not in the lineup. You might not be tremendously impressed by either of those players, it is still a significant loss for a team with only 19 wins.

While I'm on the topic of the Celtics, I might as well attack the team's promotional "Guys Night Out/Girls Night Out" ticket packages. For $99 you and three friends/acquaintances can enjoy a Guys Night Out at the Celtics game where you will receive 4 hot dogs, 4 sodas and 4 autographed pictures of the Celtics dancers to go along with the chance to see the worst team in the worst conference of the NBA. Apparently women need even more inducement to see these "games." Their $99 gets them the same 4 hot dogs and sodas, but they also get 4 15% off coupons at the TD Bank North arena Pro Shop and free admission and line privileges to the Greatest Bar on Portland St. after the game.

That $99 package gets you seats in the balcony (if you want the four tickets in the loge section, it will set you back $149) for the following opponents: New York, Atlanta, Charlotte, Toronto and Orlando. If you want a higher class opponent, you can shell out $119 for balcony/$179 for loge to get one of these amazing four seat packages for Houston, Seattle, Philadelphia, Milwaukee or Detroit. It's a good deal, I guess, if you really want to see the Celtics. What I really resent is the patronizing gift of 4 hot dogs and 4 sodas to a party of 4 which probably represents a cost of $0.25 incurred by the concession people. Maybe throw in a bag of peanuts or two, or another round of soda, or even a second hot dog a piece to take a little of the sting out of the price.

The trouble with the Celtics as a team is that they are basically a poor man's version of the LA Lakers. Pierce is a slower, slightly less competetive, slightly whinier Kobe. Al Jefferson is a poor man's Lamar Odom. Perkins and the other spare parts at the 5 need to work a bit before we can consider them to be a poor man's Bynum/Kwame Brown/Brian Cook combo. But you get the general idea.

Then there is my hero, and yours, Jim Rome. Lately, he's been hammering Joe Torre for his handling of the A Rod situation in NYC. Now, there is probably some room for improvement in the way he dealt with A Rod, but I think Rome might want to step off his high horse before criticizing Torre for dropping A Rod in the batting order in the playoffs. It's not as though Torre sat in his office one day while he was bored and said "What can I do to Alex to make him fail and hurt this team?"

The fact of the matter is that A Rod was dropped to 8th in the order because he was underperforming by the standards of a player who was payed 1/25 of A Rod's salary. When I think back on Torre's decision, I am inevitably reminded of the scene in Patton when the General, as played by George C. Scott, slapped an enlisted man and said in his apology that his intention was to remind the young man of his obligations, both as a man and as a soldier.

Perhaps Torre thought that the gentle approach had brought little success, so maybe a sterner approach might work. And as for Jeter running the town and extending no welcome to A Rod, what should Jeter do? It was his town, and it is his town. Until some other player comes in and leads the Yankees to four rings, it will always be Jeter's town.

What we really need, as sports fans and as a nation, is a primer from the media on how all people ought to react to any given situation. Some commandments would be nice, but if there isn't a burning bush handy, some guidelines would be really help. Then we'd know what to do, and we wouldn't antagonize the reporters, talking heads and writers who, after all, only have our best interests at heart.

This brings us to the Tim Hardaway situation. The real issue isn't necessarily what he said. It would have been nice if he kept his motuh shut. He certainly hurt himself with his incredibly insensitive remarks. But some of the fault lies with Dan LeBatard, too. Until he put his foot into his mouth, no one in the whole wide world really needed to know, or cared to know, Tim Hardaway's position on homosexuals in the locker room. Or in the world at large, for that matter.

LeBatard said today on OTL that he asked all of his guests that question lately. That's a lame defense. If a gay athlete comes out then he should be treated like a human being. If he elects to remain in the closet, that's his business. It certainly isn't my business. Or Dan LeBatard's. Or LeBron James' business. Or Tim Hardaway's business. No one waits with bated breath to hear what Athlete X thinks about a given situation. Or at least they shouldn't.

Amaechi was right to an extent to shift focus away from Hardaway per se and direct his concern to what others who might be inspired to harm homosexuals because of his words. However, I think that Tim Hardaway bears no responsibility for any act committed against homosexuals. Unless he commits said acts. People have to be responsible for their own acts.

Almost as bad as the general insenstivity is when insensitivity masquerades as sensitivity. I thought Mark Cuban's response was as shallow as shallow gets. Perhaps there are more concerns than just the bottom line. And this writer from San Francisco who took a Utah columnist to task for mentioning that Amaechi was one of the worst players in Jazz history immediately after the announcement. But the thing about that is who even thought about Amaechi before he revealed he was gay? There is nothing particularly homophobic in saying that John Amaechi was one of the worst playes in Utah history if the stats support the argument. And if the piece had been written out of the clear blue sky, would we attack the writer for being mean-spirited.

In the end, there is very little any writer, TV reporter, politician, religious figure or athlete can do to stop homophobia. You can discourage it, punish it, ridicule it, but if we want to live in a free society people have the right to be ignorant. But I believe that in the words of Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.: "My right to swing my fist ends where the other man's nose begins." People have the right to be homophobes, but they don't have the right to harm homosexuals physically or verbally. So Tim Hardaway shouldn't be punished beyond what the NBA has done so far, and maybe we should stop looking to our athletes for social commentary.

But I really hope I haven't ended up sounding like this guy. It's certainly not my intention. I certainly didn't want to go to the other extreme and imply that Hardaway's reaction might bear some similarities to Ted Haggard's. All I can say is that it's a very good thing for pro basketball that the Lakers Cavs game is going down to the wire as I write this. I am interested to hear Barkley's take on this whole mess, so I will stay up, edit this a bit and watch.

I will leave you with Charles Barkley's last words of the evening: "Ain't no 67 year old man in the entire world gonna outrun me." Amen Charles, Amen. I'm tempted not to do this, but I'm picking you in your footrace with Dick Bavetta this weekend. It's the one thing I'm looking forward to at the All Star Weekend.

If I were the type of blogger in the habit of giving titles to posts, I guess I might call this one Damn Yankees. The Yankees fans might be consoling themselves with the dulcet tones of Crowded House in their hit "Don't Dream It's Over." I wanted the Yanks to win, not as a Yankee fan, but as a Red Sox hater. But I like Jim Leyland as a manager. I think he radiates an old school, more competent, less snakebitten Pop Fisher (the manager from the Natural) vibe. I've never been able to summon up any negative feeling against the Tigers, which is strange for me since I hate so many things with so few reasons.

The Yankees assembled one of the great paper champions of all time this season. But like another team I hoped would best a squad from Michigan this fall, they were ready for every eventuality but one. In case you're wondering or you don't read my blog regularly, I'm referring to the Notre Dame loss to Michigan. I still don't know whether the Irish are better than the Wolverines, I believe it but I'm biased. The Yankees seemed to deflate when Detroit battled back to win game 2.

It's just me talking, but I got the sense that the Bronx Bombers expected Damon's 3 run shot to put the kibosh on the Tigers. The whole team seemed to be looking around for some other one of the All Stars to step up and get the big hits. Unfortunately, no one stepped up against Bonderman or Kenny Rogers. I don't want to diminish the excellent pitching performances both gentlemen submitted. But the Yankees of 6,7 years ago with a lesser galaxy of stars made a living out of surviving against excellent pitching performances.

This Yankee team just seemed like it lacked guts in huge moments. The Tigers seemed more like the Yankees of old than this edition of Yankees did in this series, and it decided the series. Read this article from the Tigers website. It tells me that it's go time for Oakland, and in the immortal words of Marvin the Paranoid Android from The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy: "This will all end in tears" if your Billy Beane. Or at least another Bonderman inspired tantrum where he throws a chair into the wall.

Alex Rodriguez has to go. He's a great talent, I can't deny it. He says he wants to be part of the solution in NY, but I just don't think he can do it. The big stage and the pressure seem to eat him alive. It might be self-inflicted, he might take the pressure the media and the fans and his teammates put on him and internalize too much of it. But he has an absolute knack for saying the wrong thing at the wrong moment. First there was his infamous war of words with Trot Nixon a couple of years ago. In the recent Sports Illustrated piece, he complained that people didn't like him because he was biracial and good looking. That seems odd to me, what with the fact that the average Yankee fan would take a bullet for Derek Jeter, who is both good looking and biracial.

I looked at his Wikipedia page, and you who read this tell me that a Red Sox fan wasn't at this. I didn't know that ARod was openly gay. I didn't know he was gay at all. Somehow, with the amount of ESPN I watch and the sports articles I read, I think I would have heard that one of the most famous players in the game swas gay. Not that I care, because it's not my business, but it presents a chance to try Red Sox Nation. Are you really so petty, and pathetic that you need to call a high profile Yankee a homosexual to feel better about yourselves? Even homophobes should be horrified by this trend.

Some other team will take him if the Yankees pay a big percentage of his salary, and he'll fill seats for them. Any other team will be glad to make the postseason, and he just might make a difference (think Magglio Ordonez, but much more talented). In New York, a Yankees championship is not the amazing event that it is elsewhere. Even winning the World Series there has a "Nice work, you did what you were supposed to do, now shut up" feel to it. Outside of the New York pressure cooker, his errors will likely drop and his offensive numbers will probably go up.

The Yankees can afford to pay him to play somewhere else. They might be better off as an organization, as strange as it seems, to pay him to play for another team. He won't be a focal point, no more pressure, no more controversy. The Yankees will have a hole in the lineup, and they'll need to find a third baseman. Aaron Boone is available, since the Indians declined his option. He'll be a cheaper alternative, with less power, but the power numbers weren't there for any Yankee in this series. It's time for the team and the player to go in a different direction, and Red Sox fans surely share my fond memories of Aaron Boone's home run to end the 2003 ALCS.
Gary Sheffield will likely be gone from the Bronx next season too. His option is too expensive for the production one can expect from him. I'll miss him. His massive swing and his if looks could kill expression were pretty cool. I remember Bill Simmons saying that Sheff looked like the last guy you see when you get too deep in the hole with your bookie (I'd link the specific article if the ESPN archive fee weren't too steep for the limited budget of this blog). He didn't look good at first base today, and is he a better option in right field than Abreu (who is most definitely under contract for next season)? Big Stein spent a boatload on the two, but he can afford to cut his losses. And as the Walrus said, the time has come to talk of other things...

I think it was unfair to talk about this Yankee team as the best offense ever assembled. Obviously they weren't, when you look at the fact that Giambi, ARod and Sheff managed three hits among them in the ALDS against the Tigers. There are, or were, two factors oft overlooked in the rush to overhype and overanalyze this Yankee team.

First, it is insane to compare any team from this era to the Murders Row Yankees of the late 1920s and early 30s. In case you may have forgotten, let me remind you that in the dark ages, pitchers hit every day. There was no DH until the 1970s. So there was a weak link in the lineup every day for those Yankee teams.

Most people who know that Curt Schilling and Josh Beckett would have submitted the two most dominating pitching performances that the human mind can conceive understand that I am fabricating the second factor from thin air. Unfortunately for Red Sox fans, they spend too much time looking at the world through rose colored glasses or perhaps the bottoms of empty glasses. But the second reason I think it is pointless to compare the current MLB players to their far distant antecedents is this: they lowered the pitcher's mound after Bob Gibson (who disappointed me by not throwing a hellacious beating on scribes who compared him to Pedro Martinez in the mid to late 90s) ruinated the MLB hitters in the 1968 campaign.

I haven't even mentioned the other peripheral issues one ought consider in such a comparison. Advances in nutrition and exercise regimens altered the physical dimension of even the average American, so what has it done for pro baseball players? And then there are the ball parks. Back in the day, what is now Monument Park in Yankee Stadium was in play. The centerfield wall was 450 feet away. I'm surprised no one else mentioned anything like that on ESPN. That has to be like 12, 13 minutes of talk on Baseball Tonight. Perhaps it's too intricate for the average fan.

I think the Tigers will win it all. Right now, they have a serious team of destiny vibe. Kind of like the Red Sox had the vibe that they were destined to be swept by the Yankees in a pivotal five game series. Heads had to roll for this season, and they did. The path is now paved for a title run next season. Ron Jackson and Dave Wallace will not be joining us for the rest of their lives (to borrow a phrase from my favorite movie villain, Hans from Die Hard).

It seems like only yesterday that Ron Jackson was the genius who undid the singles hitter mantra the Twins tried to instill in David Ortiz and turned him into one of the most feared power threats in baseball. We live in a what have you done for me lately world, and apparently when they reckoned the account on Ron Jackson, the answer was not enough. Francona (or Francoma, as the Red Sox fan who told me he'd be happy with a 12-7 split in the season series with the Yankees calls him) is still in place for the time being, but like Nebuchadnezzar's kid, the writing is on the wall. I'm thinking of betting that he'll be looking for a job come next November. I take no joy in it, I merely use it as one more avenue to pour salt into the wounds of Red Sox Nation.

This offseason will be an interesting one. Will the Red Sox spend to compete with the Yankees? Or will they weasel out and rely on the dwindling reservoir of goodwill from the travesty of 2004? At some point, Red Sox fans might cowboy up and kick back against a team with the highest ticket prices in baseball, a penchant for charging nitwits $12 to tour an empty stadium and $9.95 for citizenship in Red Sox Nation, a skewed concession economy that leaves fan with a colossal thirst paying over and above the cost of a 30 banger in a packie for a round of watered-down Bud/Bud Light and an front office devoted to misinformation (OK, so I made that last one up, can you find it in your heart to forgive me?). Third place in the AL East sticks going down, even if they did win the title two years ago, and fickle friends in New England won't take it again.

Remember, you heard it here first. The Yankees will win it all next season if they sign Roger Clemens. I dreamed it two weeks ago, now we'll see if it becomes reality. I believe in mysticism and dreams and that irrational stuff. It's fine with me if you don't, but that's how I roll. I feel so strongly about it that I'm willing to be that guy and provide a link to my own post where I initially mentioned the dream. I hate the self reference, but just so you know that the Yanks were still alive when I dreamed it.

Notre Dame did what we expected them to do today. They beat Stanford, and I actually felt badly about it. I hate Stanford, I root against them all the time in every sport, but they looked like a high school team out there this afternoon. It was like me arm wrestling my four year old niece. Dallas plays Philly tomorrow. I'd be rooting for them anyway, but I have TO, Bledsoe and Jason Witten in fantasy. Poor drafting, I know, but I was drunk.

What did we learn from the rest of the college football games this week? Michigan beat Michigan State pretty badly. Last week Illinois upset Michigan State in East Lansing. Today Illinois lost a shootout at home to Indiana. The Fighting Irish needed a miracle comeback to beat the Spartans. So Notre Dame might get through the remainder of their schedule unscathed and face USC with a 10-1 record, but then again they might be in the weeds if Illinois or Indiana decided to pull a fast one and ambush them WWE style.

While it might be intriguing to see a team that had game planned for one opponent suddenly be surprised by another team jumping into the stadium without warning, that's simply not football. And I doubt the NCAA would approve. It might happen one day, with the degeneration of sports fandom. Hopefully, I won't live to see it. I think Michigan still isn't quite as good as they were on that day in South Bend, and Notre Dame wasn't that bad. But the long and short of it is, Michigan has national title hopes, and they killed Notre Dame's chances of competing for that stupid crystal football.

GREAT MOMENTS IN RED SOX HISTORY - INSTALLMENT 2

Dateline: 7/28/04

This should ring a bell with most people, since it was recently voted the most memorable Red Sox vs. Yankees regular season game since 1979 by the brilliant men and women who make up the ESPN Baseball Tonight audience.

Bronson Arroyo, who is now known in Cincinnati for his bat and his pitching and not his unbelievably terrible music, hit A Rod with his 81 mile per hour fastball. A Rod, tool that he is (bear in mind I write this as a hater of the Red Sox, not a fan of any team), took issue with that. There are a couple of ways to look at this. First, A Rod is a bully and a fraud trying to intimidate Bronson. Or, getting hit by a baseball hurts a bit, and A Rod was just a bi upset, as anybody would be in that situation. It isn't really important which interpretation you favor.

Jason Varitek took issue with A Rod's verbal jabs at Arroyo. Then Varitek pushed A Rod, and a fight ensued. The momentum of the game changed, Bill Mueller hit a walk off home run to end it, and the Red Sox turned their season around. They made a huge comeback in the ALCS and then beat the Cardinals (who were either confused about the start date, or simply had a morbid aversion to winning big games) in the World Series. That was not a good time.

Since that time, I have been assured that this particular game was of great import. I have also been told that Jason Varitek is a tough guy. Of course, I've been assured that Jon Stewart is funny, Santa Claus brings presents to good children, Diet Dr. Pepper does in fact taste more like regular Dr. Pepper and that there is a possibility that intelligent life could exist somewhere else in the universe.

Of all those statements, the only one I firmly believe is the first. It was a big game. I find Jon Stewart smug and insufferable. I think my problems with Mr. Stewart rest in a difference of opinion: he (or his writers) think that he is the smartest guy in the world, I think that alone doesn't make a guy funny. Nobody wants to see Stephen Hawking do stand up (his talking machine is really creepy, not very sensitive of me... but honest). As for Santa, if the virtuous were rewarded, there is no way that the Red Sox would have won it all. I can not say whether Diet Dr. Pepper tastes more like regular Dr. Pepper. I hate them both. Jason Varitek's case is worth examining more closely.

If you look closely at the footage of Jason Varitek's confrontation with A Rod, you'll see some interesting things. When our so-called tough guy confronts A Rod, he is wearing a chest protector, a mask and shin guards. For all intents and purposes, he might as well have been wearing a suit of armor. A Rod had already gotten rid of his bat, leaving him unarmed and unarmored. And people expect me to believe that Varitek is a tough guy?

Carlton Fisk was a tough guy. He has to be considered the gold standard of toughness at that position, especially for the Red Sox. This fact has been amply proven, without my citing examples like the time beat down Thurman Munson and another Yankee who came to Thurman's aid in a play at the plate. I wonder, though, whether anybody could point to an instance where Fisk got in someone's eye and threw the first punch while he still had a mask on (I think we can say that Varitek's two handed shove to the chest/face of A Rod counts as a punch)?

In analyzing this fracas, it is just possible that I am overlooking one factor might mitigate Tek's behavior. I mentioned the mask, the shin guards and the chest protector, but what of the junk? Could it be that Jason entered a fray with a heroic disregard for the welfare of his family jewels? I must confess that I do not know if Mr. Varitek chooses to gird up his loins with a cup before he takes the field (and I am not in any hurry to find out).

It seems like it would make sense, since a stray bounce on a pitch in the dirt could render him a eunuch. However, I have watched his career somewhat closely since he came to the Sox, and I am not sure that this is something Jason need fear. I think the part of the body colloquially referred to in the last generation as the male anatomy is Mr. Varitek's least vulnerable spot. I think any man that starts a fight when he's virtually invulnerable has no need for a cup.

Jason Varitek is a bully, and a fraud. In short (and simply put for Red Sox fans) Jason Varitek has no balls. The events of 7/28/04 prove my point.

P.S. It has finally happened, Wily Mo Pena has caught Bronson Arroyo in their home run race on April 26. Imagine how wide that gap might have been if Arroyo played more than once every five days. Nice trade by America's prom date. Even better sentence fragment by the Cincinnati Kid.