Between blowing through screen doors as though I were the Kool-Aid man and waging one-man wars against Cambridge, Brookline and Connecticut, I have found myself too busy over the last two weeks to criticize some of the old familiar enemies of this space. For too long, Bill Simmons, Dan Shaughnessy and Mark Cuban have been able to vomit up ignorance into the punch bowl we all share whilst the general populace is all too willing to call it alphabet soup and move on. Believe it or not, despite what that last sentence and my track record would have you believe, I'm not drunk. It's just a complicated paraphrase of a great line from an episode of NewsRadio.

Tonight, it's time to criticize the Benefactor one more time. I never got around to saying this at the time he elected to tell the world about his colonoscopy (as I was disappointed in the complete lack of discretion on his part), but I found it surprising. Not just the over-sharing, but for what the doctors apparently didn't find. I would have bet good money (Hell, I would have bet internal organs and wound up in a bathtub full of ice down a kidney) that the doctors would have found Mark Cuban's head right there in his colon. Alas, the search continues.

The reason I feel compelled to criticize the Benefactor tonight is simple. Mark Cuban has submitted an application to Major League Baseball for the right to bid on the Chicago Cubs. No matter what anyone tells you about Persian restaurants and excessive heat, that rumor is what made all those people sick at the Taste of Chicago festival the other day.

The city of Chicago is the second-best city in the world, right behind Boston. I like the Bears. Antoine Walker is from Chicago. Hell, I even like the Cubs. To me, the Cubs represent everything that the Red Sox never were. The Cubs and their fans dealt with losing longer than Red Sox Nation, and they deal with it still. But they bear it with class and dignity. The Boston Red Sox and their fans have yet to bear anything with class or dignity.

One never hears Cubs fans raise a cheer of "Cardinals Suck" the way Red Sox fans chant "Yankees Suck" at the drop of a hat. Cubs fans don't resent the fact that the Cardinals have been more successful than their team. Instead, they pity Cardinals fans for being from Missouri. Chicagoans know that St. Louis has a brewery and an arch and little else on which to hang its hat. I admire Cubs fans for that.

The last thing the fans in Chicago need is for Mark Cuban to purchase the Cubs. Can you imagine how he would comport himself on a stage as big as that? He very likely would morph into Commodus from Gladiator and show up at Wrigley in that white suit of armor that Commodus wore to the arena in the film's final scene. 81 times a year, Wrigley would become a zoo, a place to see and be seen rather than a place to watch a game. Basically, it would become Fenway West.

Furthermore, I don't view the Mavericks as an NBA success story. It is undeniable that Dallas was a doormat before Cuban purchased the team. Now the road to the NBA title goes through, or more precisely over, the Mavericks. However, in professional sports, second place is king of the losers. And the Mavs haven't won it all. Nor do they show any sign that they will any time soon. The Benefactor has yet to address his team's fatal flaws, and it looks like another great regular season and abrupt exit from the playoffs is in the cards.

Even after every dollar spent and improvement made, the Mavericks really aren't a marquee franchise. Admittedly, they should take consolation from the fact that the four time champion Spurs aren't one either. The NBA lives and dies in New York, Boston, Chicago and LA. The Mavericks and Spurs could win the next 74 NBA titles between them and never produce a moment like Hondo's steal (or Bird's) or Reed gimping out to play against Wilt. It just won't happen.

But somehow through all of that Mark Cuban has earned the right to purchase a Major League baseball icon? Dallas is a third-rate city. It has Nieman Marcus and the Cowboys and some oil companies growing fat off gouging the rest of us. Chicago is a whole different animal. If he buys the Cubs he has to win or face a media storm not seen since Jay Mariotti was a child.

Let's say the Benefactor buys the Cubs and turns them into a perennial playoff team, but never wins it all. Obviously it won't taint his legacy, since Mark Cuban, for all his wealth and prominence, doesn't have a legacy. It will, however, be a big disaster for a fan base that has suffered enough.

The one comforting factor in all of this is that there is no way the Cubs will sell for less than $700 million. That means the Benefactor would either have to put nearly half of his net worth on the line or build a consortium to purchase the team. I can't see a consortium putting up with his grandstanding nonsense, so this may all have been a false alarm. Let's hope.

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.

So the All Star Break is upon us now. The Red Sox are riding in with some momentum, having won 2 of 3 from the Real Sox in Chicago. Yesterday's never ending game could be one a momentum crusher though. It's not every day that I get to see the Red Sox surrender the lead 3 times in one game. Of course 19 inning games aren't exactly a common occurrence for that matter.

Things were looking bleak for me, a couple of days after I started referring to the White Sox as the "Real Sox" they have to go and lose the first two games of the series to my mortal enemies in their own park. I just have that kind of timing. But one doesn't watch the team he hates above all others win the championship in 2004 without developing coping skills, like the ability to find the negative in everybody else's good time.

So I was ready for this post, even if Papelbon didn't come up big with a split that didn't split with 2 outs and a 1 run lead. It was his 3rd blown save of the year, and the first time he'd allowed a run on the road. The good thing about that is from here on the games get bigger as the playoffs approach. Papelbon was up for the stretch run last season, and he did appear in two playoff games, so he has some experience. The question is: "Will he be able to bear up under the strain of closing big games in a pennant race?"

As you might expect, I'm hoping that he won't hold up under the strain. I wonder too, what might happen to his psyche if he blows a few big games and finds out for himself exactly how fickle Red Sox Nation can be. I wasn't very impressed with this analysis of the home run Jermaine Dye hit off him last night:

``I threw it really lackadaisical," Papelbon said. ``He hadn't seen my split the day before. I wanted to throw him something to where he would look at and not swing at, but it caught the middle of the plate.

``At the same time, he hasn't seen my split, and even though it wasn't a good one, you've got to give him credit for keeping that ball fair, one, and taking it out of the park. He was smokin' hot, on fire, between last night and today."

Never having faced the media after blowing a save, I can't really say that I'd carry myself better than Papelbon did. That said, I think he could probably have come up with something that didn't come off as petulant as that excerpt from the Globe story on the game.

He is a bit young. For his sake, I hope he learns that he shouldn't throw lackadaisical pitches with two outs in the bottom of the ninth when trying to protect a one run lead. For my sake, I hope he keeps throwing pitches like that. There is also the chance that his honeymoon with Red Sox Nation might come to a bitter end if he keeps throwing lackadaisical pitches in big situations.
Over the weekend, I watched Gladiator again. Aside from the fact that it might be the best movie of the last ten years, it's also full of amazing scenes, from the battles to the scene where Proximo grabs the slave trader by the junk and yells at him for selling queer giraffes. As I watched the Battle of Carthage reenactment, I realized that Joaquin Phoenix playing Commodus is Mark Cuban. Watch it again, look at the way Commodus reacts to the sword thrusts, it's just like Cuban reeling and flailing when Dirk Nowitzki fails to kick 4th quarter ass (to quote Jason Whitlock).

I wonder now, whether the Benefactor sits in his office reviewing game tapes before sending them off to the league office watching Dwyane Wade driving through the defense and looks at Avery Johnson saying something like: "Why wasn't this called a charge. It vexes me that this wasn't an offensive foul. I'm terribly vexed." Does he sit in his chair at league meetings twirling a sword on the floor like Commodus did in his first meeting with the Senate? Would Mark Cuban make Stu Jackson embrace someone dying of plague?

If Mark Cuban is Commodus, and Bill Simmons is his new hero, does that make the Sports Guy Cuban's version of the loyal senator who tells the story about the sea snake that lets its enemies take bites out of it?

I feel that it is my duty to point out that I am not the first person to make this comparison. Here's what I assume is a representative sample of the people who've thought of this before I did. I thought I had something original here, but it was funny enough to roll out anyway. Or so I thought.