I would offer my thanks to the commenter who pointed out that Mike Lowell as a cancer survivor would probably be unlikely to take performance enhancing substances if I were convinced. After all, even the great Lance Armstrong wasn't above suspicion. And look at the roster of baseball players who have been suspended under the terms of the new policy. None of them are super-ripped, to use the technical term.

The point I was trying to make, in case I wasn't clear, is that Lowell's numbers in 2005 declined from what they were in 2004. And it wasn't a small dip. It was almost as though his offensive performance emulated a cartoon character who went over a cliff without realizing it. Perhaps his stats windmilled their metaphorical arms comically before they fell off the way they did. But the fact is that his stats dipped just as the MLB steroids scandal was at its peak and then picked up considerably when the story lost its momentum.

It just struck me as a strange coincidence that this process coincided with his trade to a team with the leader of the steroid witch hunt on its board of directors. 33 isn't tremendously old in this day and age, that's true. But I don't believe that professional athletes can turn back the clock, no matter how talented they are. Particularly if they have grey beards and play for inveterately corrupt franchises.

Thank goodness it rained tonight in Blacksburg, VA. Boston College fans will not have to overtax their meager intellectual capacities to explain why the #2 ranked Eagles were the second best team on the field this evening for 59:10. Unfortunately football games last 60 minutes and Virgina Tech couldn't hold its collective water this evening. If it is any consolation, if the offense plays like this against Ohio State (assuming that the next scare isn't the big one), Boston College won't lose by more than 50.

Fortunately, the second overall ranking in the BCS was not the most fraudulent aspect of BC athletics in the last few weeks. There is this video in parody of the Bud Light Real Men of Genius series contrasting the current miraculous success of Boston College's football program against the failure of ND this season.

In a sense, like Boston College itself, this video is a sickening affront against intellectual honesty.

While it mocks Notre Dame's football tradition, it reveals an inherent jealousy on the part of the BC fan who created it. Yes, Notre Dame hasn't won a bowl game since 1994. But is it better to lose the Orange Bowl, the Fiesta Bowl (twice), the Sugar Bowl and the Gator Bowl than it is to win the I Can't Believe It's Not Butter Bowl. It must warm the cockles of a fan's heart to see Fabio present that spray bottle of butter substitute to the winning coach, but I'm an old fashioned sort of guy, I'd rather lose big than win small.At least Notre Dame has made it to a BCS bowl on three occasions. However, with this nice run, BC just might play a game that nets its athletic department a little more than car fare to the game and a canned ham for a change.

For some reason, the creator of this video decided to claim that BC has better Christians than Notre Dame. Perhaps going to an Ignatian evening to say a decade and talk about how a retreat changed your life before visiting a debauch that would make Caligula cringe in the Mods makes you a good Christian, but I must have missed that page in the Baltimore catechism. There are 19 locations on the University of Notre Dame campus which host Eucharistic adoration. By an astonishing coincidence, there are 19 people on the Boston College campus who know what Eucharistic adoration is and 19 roving bands of atheists who would assault any man, woman or child who have adored the Blessed Sacrament.

Notre Dame is the preeminent Catholic university in the world. Every other Catholic college or university is fighting for third place (the eminence of Notre Dame is so great that it occupies two positions). Whatever the reputation of the Jesuits as educators, it was earned long before the Four Horsemen took the field for Knute Rockne. But, to paraphrase Rick Pitino, Ignatius Loyola isn't walking through that door. Francis Xavier isn't walking through that door. Robert Bellarmine isn't walking through that door. As a quick note to BC fans reading this, all three were Jesuit priests and are Catholic saints.

I do not know what would happen should they walk through the door of which Pitino spoke, but I doubt it would end well for the New England Province of the Society of Jesus. I doubt very highly whether they would be mollified by the settlement of their own piece of the sex abuse scandal. It's hard to say what is the crown jewel in the New England Provinces galaxy of stars Boston College, with its litany of athletic scandals running the gamut from fixed games in the 50s to general gambling in the 90s to the rambunctiousness and misdemeanoring of the basketball team under Al Skinner or the high school soccer coach who used to wrestle his players in their jocks after practice at the flagship high school in the province.

And for those of you who might get angry at my lack of respect for Jesuit education, whatever you'd like to throw at me for my writing and whatever syntactical and grammatical miscues I made, it still hits home and proves my point. I went to a Jesuit high school myself, but I've never bought the party line on BC. I think it was better as a commuter school than it is as what they have made it. BC students are crass, boorish and bullying as a rule when they leave campus, I see no reason to suspect that they are any better in a classroom.

And while the Red Sox took a 2-0 lead on this fine autumn evening, I wonder how Sox fans felt when they saw the team's principal owner with his fingers in his ears as Papelbon struck out the final batter of the game. Truly it's a labor of love and not a profit seeking venture for John Henry.

For a little while, I found myself wondering whether I had been a bit unfair in my diatribe against the state of Connecticut. However, it is with a clear conscience and a wish that I could add even more unpleasant things to what I said earlier that I sit down to write this post tonight. You see, today I found myself driving through Connecticut and stuck in a traffic jam because for some reason, the right hand lane of I-95 North had to be closed so that the grass on the shoulder could be manicured with a weed whacker.

Now of all the days to do this, a Friday in the summer seems like an extremely poor choice. Perhaps no one alerted the powers-that-be in the CT Highway Department, but people like to flee NYC for summer destinations on Friday at noon. So closing off a lane of traffic so that a guy could trim the grass is not tremendously cool. Especially since that artificial traffic jam south of New Haven at noon puts people heading for Boston, the Cape or points north in pole position to hit traffic coming through Providence and then again as they get closer to their ultimate goal.

Of course I would be remiss if I didn't mention the fact that the Massachusetts transportation bureaucrats managed to turn the terrible tragedy of the manhole cover on 128 North into a traffic catastrophe of epic proportions today. But to be fair to MA, that was an unforeseen event that called for an immediate reaction and not a poor decision by a bureaucrat.

But there are other things to talk about tonight. We have one more feud where it seems impossible to take a side. Barry Bonds didn't like the Bob Costas show about him, so he called Costas a midget. Costas shot back that he may be all of 5-6 and 150, but he came by that physique naturally. Personally, I think some kind soul out to play the scene from Full Metal Jacket where the Drill Sergeant has unkind words for the Texan who tried to exaggerate his height for Mr. Costas, but that's just me.

I don't like feuds like this because they put me in a position of choosing between two people that I can't abide. In this instance, I think I have to be with Bonds because I hate Costas even more than I hate Bonds. Costas is a whiny midget and a jock-sniff who desperately tries to bring gravitas to the stories he covers. Unfortunately for him, pipsqueaks can't bring gravitas to much of anything. Thanks, though, for carrying your Mickey Mantle card in your wallet for so many years. That gives you street cred...

In other news, we can leave off worrying about the surging New York Yankees. Curt Schilling was phenomenal in his second rehab start. The season is once again over. One good thing about the return of Big Schill is that we now have a ballpark date for when the World of Warcraft craze will end. 38 Studios comes out with their own game along that line (but allegedly much better) sometime in 2010. So America's fascination with these games will end sometime about a week before the 38 Studios title hits the shelves.

I thought it was mighty decent of the Globe to throw the picture of Schilling's image as Everquest character on the front page of the business section. Since he's been on the DL, I've had very few opportunities to criticize Humpty Dumpty. But seeing his animated likeness in a suit of red armor, that's like a gift from Heaven. You didn't hear it from me, but rumor has it he chose Everquest over World of Warcraft because his online persona lives in mortal fear of our old friend Leeroy Jenkins and his penchant for leading unsuspecting gamers into ambushes.

Finally, tonight marks an auspicious night for the performing arts in the Greater Boston Area. Not in the 377 years since the Puritans settled Boston has one night seen such cultural significance as tonight, and maybe tomorrow. Two acts of tremendous eminence will grace stages in our city and we can tell our grandchildren we lived to see it.

In case you can't tell, I am unimpressed with the two showstoppers playing the Tweeter Center and the House that John Henry uses to shake down New England. I am so unimpressed that I am having a hard time determining which show impresses me the least. Under ordinary circumstances, I would have to say Kenny Chesney, as he basically ripped off his entire musical persona from Jimmy Buffet (whom I do not particularly like, as I don't smoke dope and prefer beer to tropical drinks) without the redeeming quality of having received a beating from the real life inspiration for the sheriff from Walking Tall (as Buffet did).

But the Police are impressing me less than Kenny Chesney at the moment. First, they were never that good, not even in the 1980s. Their hits are vastly overrated. Roxanne isn't good, it's annoying. Every Breath You Take was actually improved by Puff Daddy when he covered it. Take a minute to let that sink in. That's how bad the song was. A notorious cheese ball like Puff Daddy made the song better.

But since the Police had the good manners to have a controversial break up and flirt with this reunion tour for the last 20 years, people forget just how pathetic they were. Let's not forget, either, that Sting was in Dune. It's like the John Cougar Mellencamp comeback all over again. These frauds stay away for so long that people forget how bad they were, then people realize they like the political stances the artists have taken and next thing you know, the inherent artistic deficiencies are dismissed and we have this comeback.

Without a doubt, what bothered me the most about this Police appearance at Fenway is the fact that all of a sudden tickets for the previously sold out shows all of a sudden went on sale again 10 days ago. Maybe I'm paranoid, but I can't shake the feeling that something underhanded is going on here. I don't buy the cover story that due to a change in the positioning of the stage more seats suddenly became available. I think the shows weren't selling out, so they pulled back some tickets and trumped up this little gimmick to add a sense of surprise and urgency to unload tickets at the last minute.

That bothers me to no end. I can't really fault the Red Sox or the promoter who came up with that little scheme. It's a nice one, after all. If Red Sox fans weren't sheep, the team ownership would have a lot of trouble shearing them. But Red Sox fans are sheep, so management can manipulate them and shake them down as they see fit.

If you've been reading this space regularly, I think you probably know that I hate Barry Bonds by now. And if you haven't, then I guess I ruined the surprise. But every once in a great while, a writer of such talent, perspicacity and eloquence comes along and makes me think for a fleeting moment that I ought to reconsider my opinion of the man who will hold the MLB record for most home runs hit over the course of a career any day now.

Tonight, that writer is Jay Mariotti. I know I spend a great deal of time in a blog that is supposed to be about my hatred for the Boston Red Sox ripping a "man" who writes for a newspaper 1,000 miles from Boston. Sometimes I almost feel badly about it, but then I read his columns and I grieve for Chicago. Mariotti's recent piece that comes dangerously close to being about something but degenerates into an incoherent rant about Bonds is more a cry for help than anything else.

I know I'm no stranger to an incoherent rant in this blog. But I'm generally drunk when I post jibberish, and I usually apologize for it. Also, this site is free. I don't get paid for it. I don't have any ads to click. So I think I have the right to criticize people who are paid handsomely to do a job and who are covered by an editing staff yet somehow manage to submit disgusting mishmashes of sentence fragments and run-ons for profit.

I wonder why an organization like NOW hasn't noticed that Mariotti is as capable of sexism as any figure they've protested recently. If I started a post with a line like: "Swollen ankles? What is he, pregnant?," I imagine I would get some nasty comments back, but Mariotti's piece was published in a big city daily. Where was the righteous indignation?

What worries me is that Cubs fans are signing petitions and hoping that Mark Cuban wins the bidding process for ownership of the team. You know how I know that Mark Cuban isn't the answer to the Cubs' problems? Jay Mariotti thinks it would be great if Mark Cuban bought the Cubs.

Considering the fact that the Mavericks have not only won every NBA title since Mark Cuban purchased the team but have managed to scrape together 3 Super Bowls, 4 Stanley Cups (they might have had the 5th if not for the lockout) and a runner-up finish in the English Premier League, Cuban will bring 5 or 6 World Series championships to Chicago from jump street. Or maybe I'm the one that thinks an epic collapse in an NBA Finals and a quick exit at the hand of the eight seed the following year isn't much of a resume. Cuban is a shameless self-promoter, not a winner.

Yes, Mariotti loves Cuban now. Just wait until that day when the Benefactor brings his act to Chicago. Mariotti will be the first guy to rip him for acting like a spoiled 3 year old when the Cubs end up on the business end of a close call. Or wait until Cuban can't get into a nightclub and acts like one of the princesses from My Super Sweet 16 when she finds out that Cindy down the block is having a more expensive party.

That's probably why Mariotti wants Cuban to buy the Cubs. That means at least 15 columns a year without any thought on the part of the writer. That's like catnip to a writer of Mariotti's eminence. I don't think a writer owes it to a city to root for its teams, but I do think I writer owes it to himself to be honest about his motives.

I really wish I didn't have to keep saying the same things over and over again, but Cuban can't be allowed to purchase the Cubs. Plus I'm sure John Henry is in favor of Cuban buying a franchise. That way there will be at least one owner who is a bigger tool than Henry with his quaint little Howard Hughes mania for cleanliness. I couldn't begin to think of an executive who would be a bigger waste of oxygen than Larry Lucchino, so I don't know who Cuban's right-hand man will be.

This story arc is taking the jam out of my doughnut, and that's not cool. The Red Sox lost again to the Royals, dropping two out of three to KC. And the Yanks beat Toronto, picking up yet one more game. I should be much happier than I am.

On the plus side, Dave Chapelle said his recent trip to the ER was due to exhaustion. Perhaps it's not as easy to bear the burden of being one-fifteenth as funny as you think you are as I thought. I'm not going to lie, I did like the first two seasons of his show on Comedy Central. And I didn't care one way or the other when he left the way he did. It was his business.

But when I saw him on Inside the Actor's Studio, that was it for me. For a guy whose credits are very meager, Dave Chapelle is an arrogant, obxious dude. My first problem is that there was no mention of the very prominent role Dave Chapelle played in Robin Hood Men in Tights. And the complaints that the studio turned Half Baked into a weed movie for kids didn't sway me. Even if it were the Citizen Kane of weed movies before the studio bastardized it for mass consumption, that doesn't mean the movie deserved to exist in its own right. If you don't want your movie to be altered, don't sell it.

Today was a bad day in Sedition in Red Sox Nation. Nick Cafardo beat me to a punch. And I take very little consolation from the fact that that puts me in a very, very, very small fraternity of people who have been beaten to a punch by a writer notorious for being slow to the punch. I imagine the Red Sox ownership did their very best to conceal the fact that JD Drew is in a persistent offensive funk from keen, penetrating minds like Cafardo's, but the scribe got wise.

Unfortunately for Nick Cafardo, living in the era of Google means that I can simply type his name and JD Drew's name in a search window. Within seconds, almost by magic, I can read articles like this one where Cafardo wrote in December that JD Drew has gotten a bad rap over the years. It would be ironic if it weren't so pathetic.

For my part, I have been reluctant to point out the fact that JD Drew is underperforming in a big way. In part, I have been hoping his offensive woes would get worse before I posted on the subject. I have also been waiting patiently for the team to reverse field and come back to the pack in the American League. To this point, I have been disappointed in that simple ambition. But cliches tell me that sooner or later all good things come to an end and what goes up must come down, so I have yet to panic.

This team simply isn't good enough to keep winning at this pace over the course of a 162 game season. Drew is hitting .250, and may have hurt his back in an effort to look sublimely ridiculous whilst breaking his back on the right field wall last night. Coco Crisp is hitting a stately .231, and begging the question why aren't Red Sox fans demanding his immediate departure with his performance (or total lack thereof) on a daily basis. Manny has come alive, but we all expected that.

JD Drew needs to be a productive player for the Red Sox to maintain any kind of momentum through the dog days of summer. At some point, the teams in the AL East are going to get better. Everything that could have gone right to this point has gone right for the Red Sox. They haven't had any injuries to speak of, the Yankees are ravaged by injuries and their offense is apparently wrapped up in the graduation season (they've hit four homers in the last ten games, and two of them came today).

The Red Sox can afford to harbor a .250 hitter with 2 home runs and 13 RBI right now, but what will things look like for the Nation if their #5 hitter is putting up numbers like that in August and September. I imagine that Red Sox fans will stick out their chests and boast that they will have clinched by then, so a slight statistical correction won't make a difference. Of course, there isn't a group of people in the world that can front-run with Red Sox Nation.

The real question is can Red Sox Nation afford to pay a guy to bat in the five hole where they desperately need protection for Ramirez and Ortiz $12 million to hit .250 without producing solid power numbers? It will make it all the harder to sustain the pleasant fiction that the Red Sox are the victim of the Evil Empire's spending sprees.

I think the problem here is that the Red Sox expect JD Drew to play like a guy worth $12 million a year. If they really wanted him to play as though he were worth $12 million, then John Henry should have signed him for $18 million a year. When this situation becomes a problem, and it will because another hitter is due to go into a slump any minute now or a pitcher will lose his mojo (maybe Beckett has with his litte finger issue), I won't enjoy it as much as I ought.

Red Sox fans have a way of passing their misery on to the rest of humanity. As soon as I get my first "I told you so" post up, I'm sure I'll have comments from Red Sox fans saying they knew this was going to happen because they went to one of the dozen websites that enable baseball superfans to find the statistics they use to bore normal humans into submission and were able to calculate the minute disparities in WHIP and OPS to the 35th decimal place which explains why the team flopped down the stretch.

Speaking of flops, so much attention has been paid to the incredibly harsh suspensions of the two Phoenix Suns following the incident in Game 5 of their series against the Spurs that the underlying hypocrisy of the situation has been overlooked. I think that the one game suspension should have been extended once the Suns tried to sell the fact that their players had left the bench area because of offense-defense substitution patterns to people who should have been too intelligent to buy it.

That was one of the more ridiculous statements I have heard in a long time. First, unless there are some special rules for Phoenix, no one could have come into the game until a stoppage. Considering that there were fewer than 24 seconds to play and the Spurs were over the foul limit, how was the clock going to stop? Unless magical elves intervened, the only way the clock was stopping was a foul by San Antonio.

Once that foul was committed, Phoenix would have two free throws, which is ample time to insert players. In the time it took for all of the players to line up at the other end of the court, two healthy men who are ostensibly world-class athletes should be able to walk the thirty feet to the scorer's table in time to be admitted to the game between the first and second free throws. It happens all the time, in every game and it could have happened there.

A more interesting question is that Phoenix knew, because Mike D'Antoni is the brilliantest mind in basketball (so brilliant that any effort to describe it in one word requires the writer to resort to expressions that are grammatically and syntactically impossible as I just did), that San Antonio would foul trailing by 3 with fewer than 24 seconds on the clock if they wanted any chance at winning the game. So if San Antonio is going to foul and said foul will end any offensive possession and transition immediately to defense, were the Suns really going to substitute two players in an offense-defense pattern?

I don't like it when teams lie to me. Phoenix players left the bench for one reason, and one reason only - to get after some member of the Spurs. I don't want to have to examine their case as if I were Lt. Caffey trying to find out from Colonel Jessup why Private Santiago didn't pack his gear or make any telephone calls prior to his 0600 flight out of Gitmo. If Phoenix didn't try to weasel their way out of the suspensions with such a blatant fabrication that ought to insult the intelligence of any person who has ever watched a basketball game, maybe I'd be a little more sympathetic to their plight.

However, the real travesty of the unpleasantness at the end of Game 5 is that we are expected to treat a small, gutless overachiever from Canada as though he were the victim in all of this. Steve Nash took a step before he went down, he flopped. If I were the type of person that believed that sort of gamesmanship had any place in civilized competition, I would offer kudos to him for that kind of initiative. Unfortunately, I find it reprehensible and I am not amused.

As a point of comparison, I don't know if you remember when Chad Clifton was crushed by Warren Sapp. I tried to find the video on youtube, but it wasn't available. The site was doing routine maintenance, which might have been part of the problem. Chad Clifton, who was slightly bigger than Sapp, went down immediately. But Steve Nash, who was a good deal smaller than Robert Horry, managed to take a step in the process of his collision? It doesn't make sense to me.

As I've mentioned in this space before, there is a serious problem in the NBA right now. Some one needs to step in and put an end to the culture of flopping. Surely I am not the only basketball fan who is horrified that flop artists and hacks like Raja Bell, Bruce Bowen and Shane Battier are considered top-flight defenders? Michael Cooper, whom I hated as a kid, would be rolling over in his grave to see that, provided, of course, that he were in fact dead.

No one seems to have the guts to say this, but the problem in the NBA begins at the top. David Stern is the problem. I have been reluctant to say this because I thoroughly enjoy it when he oppresses Mark Cuban. But he has let the product be debased. He was given a mulligan when the experiment of expansion into Canada proved so disastrous that Vancouver relocated to Memphis (a city that has a claim to fame other than Elvis???) in just a few years of existence. The closest thing to a proactive policy he has instituted is a dress code for players, which hasn't exactly been a smashing success.

Chicago fans, especially, ought to be griping about this situation more than I am. That nice layover between the series with Miami and the second round killed the momentum for the Bulls. Absolutely murdered it. Plowed it under and sowed salt in the furrows. It's been amazing to see the Bulls claw their way back to force a Game 6. But it makes you wonder what this series would have been like had the Bulls with limited playoff experience not had to deal with a week of downtime between playoff games. If it's any consolation, at least TNT had the convenience of running forty games in forty nights promos.

Thanks to the good people over at Deadspin, we have another tool of note segment to bring to your attention tonight. And for the first time, it is a member of the Boston Red Sox. Newly acquired relief pitcher JD Durbin is a tool. In fact, he might even be an archtool. Just look at the picture below, where he is rocking a cooler as a garment.



The only good thing to say about him wearing a cooler as though it counted as clothing is that it nearly conceals the fact that he is also rocking a banana hammock. I think we all know that the odds of a dude who has rocked a banana hammock at any point in his life being cool (or even remotely well-adjusted) are not very good. In fact, I'd go so far as to say that it would be impossible for a guy who had ever worn a banana hammock to be cool at any point thereafter if I didn't believe in miracles.

There are those who might say the Sox acquired Durbin because they are in dire straits in the bullpen. Those who know a little about the business of baseball know that there's no way that a brain trust of Henry, Lucchino, Epstein and Francona would hobble the best baseball team that will not win a title this season with a thin bullpen. They acquired a pitcher who needs a serious transformation to become mediocre like JD Durbin so that this team will have a bigger douche on the team than JD Drew.

They know that the average Red Sox fan is dumb enough or drunk enough to be easily confused by the same first initials and a similar sounding last name. So when JD Drew cools down and hits the DL for the first time six weeks from now, there will be another underperforming JD for Red Sox Nation to kick around. Otherwise the fans would start in on Drew, or maybe Lugo who will join Coco Crisp in the failed leadoff hitter category and Edgar Renteria and Alex Gonzales in the list of shortstops who haven't quite cut the mustard since they let Orlando Cabrera go.

It requires only a glance at JD Durbin's myspace page to see that he is a tool. A total tool, even. Based on the fact that he readily and articulately expresses his interest in both tits and ass, we can reasonably infer that Mr. Durbin is neither a gentleman nor a scholar, as a gentleman or a scholar would find a slightly subtler manner in which to convey his depravity. Fortunately, although its citizens believe themselves to be intelligent and sophisticated, Red Sox Nation is the perfect place for a shallow nitwit. It is, in fact, the perfect disguise to blend in with a crowd of Red Sox fans, regardless of gender.

Unfortunately, he has set his profile to private since Deadspin commenced to rip on him. Apparently, any one who has had a picture taken with Garth Brooks and Tricia Yearwood is cool enough to skate past the shallow headline, and the faux depth of the quote "what hurts the most is watching her walk away." Too bad Deadspin left more than enough incriminating evidence from his page to make him worthy of a tool of note segment.

First, he has a dog. When I quoted WC Fields maxim: Nobody who hates kids and dogs can be all bad, I meant it. I hate dogs. Dogs are very much like people, in fact they have better personalities than a depressingly large segment of the human race. But that's not exactly a ringing endorsement. That's even before treating the fact that he named his dog "Hoss." Naven R Johnson had a better name for his dog.

And there's the banana hammock and cooler ensemble. There is no way short of a gun or maybe one of those Crocodile Dundee type survival knives that I would be caught dead in a banana hammock. And it has nothing to do with insecurity. No man has the body type for a garment like that. Men who wear banana hammocks ought to be arrested.

What frightens me is that an idiot like JD Durbin could become a sort of cult celebrity in Boston, like a shallow, ignorant frat boy version of El Guapo. If he pitches remotely well, he'll be fighting off the sorostitutes in Daisy Buchanan's with a stick. God knows, he'll probably have his own reality show by season's end. And in the meantime, between Durbin and Papelbon, the Red Sox bullpen could be the dumbest unit on any team in any sport.

Sooner or later, lack of depth in the bullpen will hurt the Red Sox. What a shame it will be when that day comes. In the meantime, I'm trying not to let the beating they laid on Weaver and the Mariners this afternoon worry me too much.

Every once in a great while, there is a coincidence so perfect that it reaffirms my faith in a higher power. Today, as the mighty Boston Red Sox sent the best team $145.7 million dollars could scrape together against the lowly Kansas City Royals in Kaufman Stadium, Turner Classic Movies showed Cromwell.

Since today's educated American seems to possess a knowledge of history gleaned from the drivel passed off as fact by the competing political and intellectual factions and very little genuine learning, I feel compelled to point out that Oliver Cromwell led the English common people to victory over Charles I in the English Civil War. I am aware that as an American of Irish descent and a Roman Catholic, I have two reasons to despise Cromwell, since he was virulently anti-Catholic and committed vicious atrocities against the Irish in repressing their rebellion, but it's difficult not to admire a man with this type of curriculum vitae.

It is only one game, and the start of a very long season. But a tyrant took the field in Kansas City this afternoon. A tyrant compared to the Beatles (fittingly) and to Elvis (blasphemously) by the region's chief sportswriter fell to the Royals. At the end of the day, Daisuke Matsuzaka couldn't save them, and it didn't matter that Jonathan Papelbon returned to close games. Even if it were only for three hours and a bit on April 2, 2007, a team led by Mark Grudzelanik and Tony Pena Jr. was better than the team with Manny Ramirez, Curt Schilling and David Ortiz.

There is no need to point out that the Yankees have a considerably larger payroll than the Red Sox. I will concede that point, but can you defend the team that spent this season attempting to out-Herod Herod? It was the Red Sox, after all, who who outbid their nearest competitor in the Daisuke Matsuzaka sweepstakes by more than ten million dollars. Furthermore, they entered into a corrupt bargain with Scott Boras to sign Matsuzaka. They didn't sign JD Drew for any other reason than he was part of the price to land Daisuke.

Maybe it is unfair for the Yankees to bestride the narrow world like a Colossus, in the words of Shakespeare from Julius Caesar. And Henry and his cohorts may raise prices and squeeze more money out of Red Sox Nation to compete with the influx of capital that will come from a new Yankee Stadium. It is their right as businessmen and, as no one can force the fans to pay it, no authority but the fans can stop them.

My sympathies in this matter lie with the Yankees because whatever else they may be, the Yankees aren't hypocrites. They spend monstrous sums of money, they choke small market teams and in the long run they are probably bad for the overall health of the sport. But they have the good manners to go about their business without trying to make themselves out to be victims.

The Red Sox are a papier-mache version of the Yankees. They spend every nickel they can to compete with the Yankees. In the long run, the Red Sox are as bad for the health of the sport as the Yankees. And they're worse for the overall well being of sports, since they spend what they can and expect pity because they won't build a new stadium. It's not Steinbrenner's fault that Boston is smaller than New York geographically and demographically. It's not his fault that he had a network making more money than NESN. It's life.

Charles I was executed on film, and the tyrant Red Sox fell on the field in Kansas City today. With any luck, they tyrant Gators will fall in Atlanta tonight. I will have a comment on that game and on Noah's future tomorrow.

In my spare time, I've been looking around for a new tool of the week segment. Unfortunately, I haven't been able to find a tool who stood head and shoulders above the run of the mill tools that make up a good 3/4 of the American population. Since it's been well over a week without a tool, I'm giving up for the time being and renaming it the tool of interest segment, or maybe the tool of note segment. I have some time to decide, since I don't need to run one for a while.

To fill the tool void, one need go no further than boston.com, where one can discover strong evidence that the tools among us haven't gone to sleep just yet. There is, after all, Dan Shaughnessy and his never-ending stock of shallow premises, faithful obedience to John Henry and half-assed attempts to be hip.

I know I spend a lot of time attacking Dan Shaughnessy in this blog. To be fair, however, he is a terrible writer with no redeeming vices. He's lazy, opportunistic, a shameless puppet of Red Sox ownership and for some reason has been waging a one man war against Manny Ramirez for some time now. In case you're interested, a redeeming vice would be a good sense of humor, the knack for incorporating an interesting or relevant external reference into his work once in a while or evidence of some effort expended to earn his paycheck.

In this recent effort, he dragged down the 1960s band Procul Harum by dragging their song into this piece of sycophancy (not really a word in common use, but it should be) directed at John Henry. It might seem, for an instant, that the CHB isn't giving his real boss a back rub. But when you look at all his tough talk, it's directed at Henry's partner in his racing endeavor, Jack Roush.

A legitimate columnist would have devoted more than three sentences to the fact that the Red Sox have the highest ticket prices in the land. It's small matter that they could charge more. Just because you can do something, that isn't moral justification for it. But John Henry is one sharp cookie, he reads about commodities and investments at 4 AM. I bet Warren Buffett is cowering in terror in his Omaha empire, just waiting for the day that John Henry becomes America's most renowned investor.

One would think that his status as Henry's mouthpiece would make him less likely to wage a crusade against Manny Ramirez. But then one must remember that Henry's regime has been characterized by a number of hints and hopes that Manny would continue being Manny in some other uniform. Rumors of trades and demands for trades have been floated so often, one no longer pays them much attention. It does seem clear that this team has been trying to make Manny expendable. Why else did they bring in JD Drew?

Consider it for a moment. JD Drew has come to a team at great expense to play the outfield. The team already has Manny Ramirez, Coco Crisp and Wily Mo Pena manning the outfield positions. Depth is an excellent thing to have, but is it a commodity to be purchased at the rate of $70 million over the next five years. One thing is clear, the Red Sox could never dare move Manny without a big name to fill the hole in the lineup and in the fan's hearts.

The real problem with Manny as a baseball player and a man isn't that he's eccentric. Rather, it is that he hasn't shown the proper veneration for Dan Shaughnessy, baseball expert, genius, writer and man. Instead of genuflecting and kissing the CHB's ring as though he were the Pope, Manny hustled even less after the CHB upbraided him for not hustling enough. I'm sure legislators the world over will finally get off their asses and make that a capital crime any day now, but until them, maybe the CHB will learn how to live with disappointment.

This article is a representative sample of the campaign against Manny. It begs the question, what does Manny Ramirez owe to the team, the fans and the media? He is paid to hit, and he does. If he lives in his own world, but produces big offensive numbers he doesn't need to live the way the CHB thinks he ought to. Ironically, a Red Sox outfielder who produced fantastic numbers but enjoyed a stormy relationship with the Boston media was the subject of a vast number of puff pieces written by our fickle friend the CHB.

Manny Ramirez isn't Ted Williams. He's not the player Ted was, not the patriot that Ted was and not the philanthropist that Ted was. But he shows up and hits for power and average, and he drives in runs. Beyond that there is no obligation he must meet. The CHB conveniently mentions that the rest of the team is furious with Manny, but doesn't dare criticize him. Without a player on record, either the CHB is making it all up, or the team is full of gutless frauds. Either way works for me, since a team full of gutless frauds won't win it all and I hate the CHB.

It's amazing to me that he can criticize Manny for shutting it down early last season while signing the return of JD Drew with bated breath. Apparently, Red Sox Nation is dumb enough to believe that this leopard will change his spots. JD Drew is selfish, injury prone fraud and he'll be inserted in the line up on Opening Day. Just wait until Red Sox Nation wakes up to find out that it missed Trot Nixon when Drew plays 100 games and has an even more mysterious injury than the one that felled Manny late last season.

It is entirely possible that this was part of the deal to net Matsuzaka, as many have speculated. And we all know that Daisuke Matsuzaka has already been engraved on the CY Young Award for the American League for the next 12 years. So it's win-win, even if Drew flops in Boston, as illogical as that seems to the man who isn't enamored of the Red Sox. Even if Drew never gets a hit, the Red Sox win twice because Matsuzaka will be the greatest thing ever to come to America.

Perhaps the optimism that surrounds a pitcher that has yet to throw so much as a pitch in North American professional baseball is so shocking to me because I was born a pessimist. Or maybe my hatred of the Red Sox has clouded my capacity for rational thought. Or it's possible that I'm right. Who knows. All I know it that the CHB is own way probably jinxed Matsuzaka in a misguided effort to be cute and folksy by calling him "Elvis Matsuzaka."

And Shaughnessy had to go and ruin one of my predictions. He ran a deathwatch column on a Red Sox alumnus and it wasn't Carl Yastremski. In my post where I introduced the idea, I predicted it would be Carl Yastremski because the only other Red Sox alumnus I could think of who might reasonably stir enough fan interest to excuse the laziness on the part of the CHB was Johnny Pesky. And if it weren't for the pole in right field and the fact that he hangs around the team day in and day out, who would even know him?

Of course, if I even thought about him, I would have immediately gone with Dom DiMaggio. Not so much because he was a star (he was good in center field, but not great), but because of the massive celebrity of his brother Joe. Knowing the CHB and his vanilla writing style and complete lack of creativity, I should have seen this sentence coming:

There were nine kids in the home of the Sicilian immigrants at 2047 Taylor St. in the North Beach section of San Francisco. Dad Giuseppe was a fisherman, mom Rosalie a former schoolteacher, and three of the five boys would become major league baseball players -- one of them rising to the level of American icon, celebrated in literature by Ernest Hemingway and in song by Paul Simon.

Wow, how cool is that. Not only did he have an intern look into DiMaggio's vital records, but he listened to Mrs. Robinson and might have perused The Old Man and the Sea. God help us all.

I had a hard time coming to terms with this year's Daytona 500. For the life of me, I could not figure out how the partnership between Roush Racing and the Red Sox owners did not produce a victory. After all the race should logically have ended up in a four way tie between Greg Biffle, Matt Kenseth, Jamie McMurray and Carl Edwards. That was the slate of drivers the team entered in the Great American Race.

It was an amazing finish. That's about all I watched of the race, I caught maybe the last half hour and a few moments here and there as looked around for something to watch. One segment I happened to catch showed me that NASCAR (and racing in general) is not a very good TV sport. With no TV timeouts, there is no logical place for commercials. So you run the risk of missing something important every time the network needs to show you a slate of "that thing got a hemi?" ads.

Today, the two leaders crashed (Stewart and Kurt Busch) during a break and all of a sudden you're back and the wreckers are towing two of the highest profile drivers who just happened to be running one two down the home stretch of the sport's marquee event all of a sudden fell out of the running while you were watching a promo for Stacey Keach's earth-shattering performance in the upcoming episode of Prison Break. That's no way to broadcast sports. But there is no way to help that, networks have bills to pay, just like the rest of us.

But Red Sox fans can take solace in the fact that no organization has ever won the World Series and the Daytona 500 in the same season, so Red Sox Nation dodged a bullet with the defeat of Roush Fenway Racing. I ought to clarify that sentence, that is, as far as I know it's never happened. It's late and I'm tired, so I'm not going to do my due diligence. I'd rather print an apology that try to hunt that trivia down at the moment. A very lazy attitude, but what can you expect from a guy who does this for free?

The road to the City Hall victory celebration has already begun for the pitchers and catchers. Soon, the position players will report. Early rumors from the Yankee organization have the team so traumatized by the mighty Red Sox lineup that they're going to give up baseball and take up the art of scrimshaw. Given that whales are protected species and obtaining the teeth in flagrant violation of US and international law, it is, apparently, still preferable to the humiliation they would endure at the hands of the new look Red Sox, who are eager to erase the atypical end of the 2006 season from their collective memory. Only time will tell about the Red Sox this season, whether or not they're as good as the fans think they are, or whether I'm right.

The NBA All Star Weekend is now over. Dwayne Wade won the skills challenge, Jason Kapono won the Three Point Shooting Contest, Detroit won the team shooting contest and Gerald Green redeemed one of the worst seasons in franchise history by winning the dunk contest. I must concede that I will be telling my grandchildren about that Dee Brown dunk over defending champ and amazingly good sport Nate Robinson, all while wearing a Dee Brown throwback jersey. It was the greatest moment of all time. Bar none. BAR NONE.

I assume Ainge is satisfied with a job well done. There was a time when making the playoffs and winning championships mattered more than accumulating lottery ping pong balls and winning frivolous All Star Weekend sideshows. That time has past. Now, the TNT commentators were talking about this "triumph" as a bright spot for the Celtics franchise amid all this gloom. When you set franchise records for the Boston Celtics, and those records are for futility, winning the Dunk Contest is no consolation. It's an insult to the fans.

If you don't believe me, think back to Dee Brown. I still can't believe that the people whom TNT pays to discuss basketball weren't a little bit more subdued as they talked about this dunk contest. It's a nice achievement, but when you reach back into the Boston Celtics past and pluck Dee Brown from the hat like some half-assed magician pulling a rabbit out of a top hat, you are reaching into one of the only eras of a celebrated franchise that isn't worth celebrating.

It was, strangely enough, an era very much like this one. A lot of young players with potential put together in a combination that choked potential rather than allowed it to grow. But this is just one more reminder that Ainge has to go. If he stays around, remember when it happens that you heard it here first. The Celtics will either waste a second round pick on undersized Northwestern forward Tim Doyle. He's too small to be an NBA forward and too slow to be an off guard, but I'm willing to be that he has one humdinger of a brain type, that and he has an immaculate head of hair at all times. That ought to be worth Brian Scalabrine money, at least, under Aingonomics.

And I hate to do this, I really do. Believe me. But the temptation is too strong. Read this story. Our little championship is all growed up now. It's not outside the realm of possibility that Tom Brady has knocked up his ex on his way out the door. And don't make any plans for next Saturday. If you have plans, cancel them. Sarah Silverman hosts the Spirit Awards (for independent films, in case you care). It could be the least funny awards show of all time.

But far and away the most interesting event of the All Star Weekend (far better than the Western Conference's laugher over the East) was the Barkley vs. Bavetta race. As you read here, Barkley won big. Bavetta gave it his all, including a dramatic dive as Barkley channeled the hare from The Tortoise and the Hare and backpedaled across the line. All in all, Sir Charles looked very good for an overweight guy who wears his bulk well (like me), until he tripped over an invisible obstacle and fell on his ass after he crossed the line. It's good to be right, once in a while. But I wish Barkley hadn't taunted the old bag of bones. As Dr. Kelso said after Dr. Cox coldcocked him: "At a certain point, you're just beating up an old man."

What can I say about the Red Sox in the last few days? It was nice to see them struggle so mightily against the Devil Rays Scott Kasimir (probably misspelled his name, but who cares?). Then there was last night's media circus for the return of Doug Mirabelli. Imagine if he'd been a .300 hitter or an every day player?

It was a big coup for America's Prom Date. I wonder how much it cost the city, and will John Henry reimburse the tax payers?

Of course, Johnny Damon returned to the Fenway for the first time, and was lustily booed. A lot has been made of whether or not this was justified, since he did contribute so much to the team in his tenure with the Red Sox. Personally, I don't think the fans owed him any more than he owed them. I do, however, wonder if there might be more than the casual fan (or the die hard who drinks 30 beers in the stands) perceives to this situation.

Could the dramatic attention paid to the return of a very average role player have been a smoke screen on the part of America's Prom Date? Could he have his own covert reasons for trying to distract the fans from Johnny Damon's first appearance in Fenway as a Yankee?

I couldn't help but notice that Damon, who I was told thrived in hostile environs as a member of the Red Sox, may as well have left his bat in the dugout when he went to the plate for all the good it did him and his team. He also played the field as though he'd never set foot in the stadium before. I don't know whether he'd have caught the Ortiz homer if he'd have been better positioned or took a better line to the ball, but at least it might have been easier to watch the ESPN shows today if he had.

Then there was the fly ball that Jeter overran. It was somewhat amusing to see Manny, whose defensive inconsistencies have been beaten to death by this point, helping Wily Mo Pena track down fly balls in center field. It was somewhat surprising to see Damon, who had enjoyed a reputation as a solid defender (except for the fact that he throws abysmally), found himself out of position at times and was less than helpful to his teammates. I imagine one could attempt to explain this by bringing up the fact that Jeter is a Gold Glove winner. He is also a veteran of many games in Fenway, whereas Wily Mo is brand new to the team, the stadium and a natural right fielder.

I don't mean to insinuate that he was part of some deep seeded conspiracy with America's Prom Date and John Henry (who would have some nickname based on his bizarre Howard Hughes like obsession with neatness on his yacht if I had the time to think of one). Actually, I do mean to insinuate that, but I mean it jokingly. He had a bad game. I imagine he was nervous coming back to Fenway, and the boos and money thrown in his direction rattled him just a little bit. I seriously doubt that Theo, Damon and JH are a new Trilateral Commission. Among the three of them, they don't seem to possess the intellectual capacity or the moral turpitude.

Every once in a great while, I find myself sharing something with the citizens of Red Sox Nation. This past offseason, it was a profound sense of disappointment that Johnny Damon was leaving town. I believed (and still do) that he was old and injured. I don't think he'll be the same player he once was. I really wanted the Red Sox to overpay for him. And then the Yankees got into the picture. I was not pleased.

I am not a Yankees fan, but I don't think they're the Evil Empire either. As a native Bostonian, I never liked New York teams, but because I hate the Red Sox and the vocal, oppressive contingent among their fans, I found myself warming up to the Yankees. The enemy of my enemy is my friend, as the old saying goes.

I also found it slightly hypocritical of Larry Lucchino to come out and call the Yankees the Evil Empire after they out-overpaid (not a word, I know, but sometimes flagrant abuse of syntax is required to remind Red Sox fans of recent unpleasantness) for Jose Contreras. Lest we forget that the Red Sox booked every room in the hotel where Contreras was staying to try to corner the market on him.

The Red Sox aren't exactly the Twins or the Pirates, after all. They spend as freely as their means allow, like the Yankees do. The real issue between the two teams is that Big Stein has a bigger stadium and better infrastructure for raising revenue from his team. And if you don't believe me, watch the bidding war that will develop over Clemens if the opportunity arises.

That is just one of the reasons I hate the Red Sox and the majority of their fans. They sit there and swallow the organization's hypocrisy as though it were their job. Like all hypocrites everywhere, I hate little more than I hate hypocrisy. I think the blanket generalizations and wild allegations I have made against the Sox in the short history of this blog are ample evidence of this. Nor do I anticipate that I will stop such behavior. But I admit that I am a hypocrite, which makes me less hypocritical than. At least that's what I tell myself.

Since I lost whatever narrative thread was supposed to tie this post together, I think it's time to sign off. But before I go, I think it's good to go out on a more positive note. I was watching the TNT Basketball Half Time Show tonight during the Chicago-Miami game, and I heard one of the best lines Charles Barkely has ever delivered.

Kenny Smith was wearing a velour suit with some kind of rhinestone trim. And whenever he moved in his seat, the things would bump into the desk and make noise. During one of Barkley's monologues, he was distracted by that noise. So Sir Charles turned to him and hit him with the line: "Where did you get that suit? Toys R Us?"

I thought it was quite funny. I also enjoyed the follow up: "What did you buy it at TJ Max?" And I think he hit the mark when he complained of some of the fouls called on Shaq by saying: "After all, this isn't the WNBA."

Good night and go Blue Jays.