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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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



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

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

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

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

I wonder now, whether this season's inevitable pennant looks ever so slightly less inevitable now. It might only be one game, early in a long season, but cracks might just start appearing in the facade of the 2007 Boston Red Sox. It would have been much easier if the Red Sox had just sent the Yankees a memo that the home team was expected to lose the game under the standards of modern decorum. How dare they find a way to win?

I have a habit of noticing things before they become apparent to Red Sox Nation. For instance, is it terribly unreasonable to wonder whether this series might mark a turning point in the respective fortunes of the Yankees and the Red Sox? Sooner or later, old age and summer heat will take their toll on Mike Lowell, Sox fans can only hop that his mother's little helpers can continue to make miracles. And on the horizon is the inevitable return of Roger Clemens.

Think about the series the two teams played last month. The Yankees were the ones scrambling to put together a series of spot starters; now the Red Sox are wondering if Josh Beckett's finger boo-boo might place too great a burden on the collection of spare parts waiting in the farm system. Granted Gabbard pitched the single greatest five inning start of this generation, but Sox fans must be sweating the fact that blisters and loose skin might stop their young ace from winning 30 games.

I think every one who is any one realizes that tonight's pitching performance from Chien Ming Wang was, if not exactly a miracle, then a good sized country wonder. He still has a long way to go before he will have earned the right to buy property right behind the Great Wall (on the good side, of course). Mike Mussina is allegedly healthy, and it might be possible that he could pitch to form for the first time in a long while. God knows he'll have to, nothing but the finest effort of a quality pitcher can beat a horse like Julian Tavarez.

The Schilling vs. Pettitte matchup on Sunday shapes up to be very interesting, since Pettitte probably should have beaten the Sox twice already this year. There was the bullpen collapse in the first game between the two back at Fenway, and then the short relief stint when I felt he had another inning in him, even though it was his side day. I know Andy's not as young as he once was, and it's a long season, but he seemed like the best chance the team had for winning that game when the Yanks needed to slow down the Red Sox momentum.

But even more than Wang's performance, the fact that Hideki Matsui could not have been worse today unless he used his bat to throw a beating on the entire Yankee pitching staff shows me that the Yanks just might have turned a corner as a team this season. I got the feeling as I watched them in April and earlier this month that if one guy (e.g. Abreu) went cold, the entire team would panic if he came up in a big situation. Then they'd go into a funk, and every player went cold.

Tonight, Matsui went 0-5 and left 7 on base. That was the type of performance that would have crushed morale and crippled momentum at any point prior to tonight. But his teammates picked him up, they put up 6 runs. Wang scuffed, shined and spat his way to holding the Red Sox to two runs (You know he must have cheated to keep that potent lineup to under 30 runs in 6.1 innings of work). If these Yankees can pull together as a team, with help on the way, I think we'll be looking back on this lead the way paleontologists look back at the dodo.

It is entirely possible that I'm seeing signs that aren't there because this recent Red Sox winning jag has been depressing me to the point that I have to clutch at straws, but I get the feeling that the Sox lead will be back down around 4.5 games come June 15th. This is the biggest lead in the division the Sox have had since what? 1995? The Red Sox were foundering until a late trade in 2004, so maybe this lead on May 21 isn't a good thing.

In other matters, why didn't some one tell me that Sunday was the 10th anniversary of Bill Simmons' first online column? Truly that was a date which will live in infamy. His recent "effort" to explain why he dislikes Dane Cook actually made me begin to like Cook. So what if Dane Cook showed up to a Crank Yankers taping wearing a Yankee cap, even though he came from Arlington, MA?

Obviously, I'm not going to criticize any resident of New England who doesn't feel obligated to root for the Red Sox on account of a coincidence of geography. But I do wonder when Bill Simmons became the arbiter of what attire from which teams residents of particular areas can rock in a free country? Then there is an issue stemming from a visit Cook made to the Jimmy Kimmel Live set while Simmons was a writer, where Dane struck the Sports Guy as a hypocrite and a fraud for being scandalized by bathroom humor before going on to carve out a niche for himself on film with similar material.

I find that particularly shocking, considering Simmons seems to love ripping guys like Isiah Thomas and then wilts when Isiah threatens him with a street beating. And when the Sports Guy plays the victim with aplomb when blogs like Deadspin and the Big Lead treat him harshly, it sends him lamenting the state of the internet. Alas that the internet allows people to do to Simmons what he has done to so many others as he built himself into the institution he is.

And then there's this story, which I devoutly hope is false. There is a rumor kicking around that Donovan McNabb might become a Chicago Bear. While the part of me that hates the Philadelphia Eagles would like to see them make a mistake like turning the team over to Kevin Kolb, who just might become the worst second round pick of all time, the part of me that become emotionally invested in the Bears NFC Championship season last year knows McNabb devotes most of his pregame preparation to fashioning a plausible excuse as opposed to finding a way to win. More on this later in the week...

Julian Tavarez is a lucky man. On a day when I ought to be focusing most of my energy denouncing him for being a complete buffoon, I must waste some time attacking some bozo from Cornell and a possibly even bigger bozo from the University of Pennsylvania. A study has been released in the New York Times, on the front page of the "Paper of Record" claiming to prove that white referees call more fouls on black players than they call on white players in the NBA these days.

This is surprisingly irresponsible sensationalism on the part of the New York Times. Unfortunately, it is also the kind of sensationalism that will most likely assure tenure for all those involved in the "research." Looking at their methodology, as it is articulated in the Times, leaves me unimpressed. As the Times piece presents it, here is how the study was conducted:

"To investigate whether such bias has existed in sports, Mr. Wolfers and Mr. Price examined data from publicly available box scores. They accounted for factors like the players’ positions, playing time and All-Star status; each group’s time on the court (black players played 83 percent of minutes, while 68 percent of officials were white); calls at home games and on the road; and other relevant data."

As far as I can tell, the people who did this study read newspaper box scores and learned everything there was to learn about everything pertaining to officiating a professional basketball game. Leaving aside for a moment that no box score I've ever seen tells which official called what foul on which player for what offense, and in fact does little more than relate the number of fouls called on a given player in a given game, the real problem is that it massively simplifies a complicated, fluid event like a basketball game and tries to shoehorn it into an academic setting.

What exactly does comparing players' positions tell you, for instance? Look at a power forward like Elton Brand, who is one of the last guys at that position that plays with his back to the basket and doesn't prefer to be a perimeter guy. Shouldn't he then be more likely to be called for charges than Dirk Nowitzki who makes his living shooting more outside jumpers than make moves in the low post?

This study purports to detect a bias in NBA officiating, but what it reveals about its authors is more interesting than its specious results. There is a certain overly sensitive impulse to detect a bias that may not, in fact, exist. After all, the majority of white NBA players in this day and age seem to be perimeter guys, players looking to shoot jumpers rather than drive to the hole. They also seem to be shakier defenders, more likely to be concealed in a team's defensive scheme rather than given difficult assignments.

The study doesn't take into account the million subtle factors that have a ton of influence over how games are played over the course of an 82 game season and a marathon playoff run. For instance, how did long road trips impact the way teams played in these games? Were officiating patterns at all effected by teams showing fatigue in the second of back-to-back games? Were players playing hurt more likely to commit fouls than players who were fresh and healthy? Did particular teams or particular players have more fouls in games against particular rivals?

Then there is the fact that none of the three experts brought in by the Times to review the data and compare it to a package the league offered to defend itself was a basketball man. No officials, no players, just academics. With ten human beings battling for 48 minutes to put a round ball through a round hoop on a confined court watched over by three people who are supposed to be impartial, there is a hell of a lot going on on the court during any given NBA game.

Reviewing box scores compiled over a fourteen season span is not sufficient to get an accurate picture of what happened in each game. As Charles Barkley said on the Dan Patrick Show today, it's asinine. Even worse, it's academically irresponsible. They have a study on basketball written by a business professor and an economics grad student who never played the game, reviewed by economists and statisticians. Was there even a chaos theory expert among them?

Basketball is a complex and dynamic system, after all. It makes me a little sick to my stomach that this is treated as though it were legitimate scholarly research and not blind guesswork. But now it's time to get to the real point of tonight's post.

Julian Tavarez has a lot to say on the possible return of Roger Clemens to the Boston Red Sox. None of it is particularly pleasant, or insightful, but it is entertaining from my perspective. The first problem, as you might expect, is that Tavarez hasn't listened to the CHB reminding us that Clemens is tied at the top of the team's career wins list with the legendary Cy Young whenever he appears on TV or the radio. I am still surprised that that revelation did not inspire Clemens to offer to pay John Henry for the privilege of surpassing Cy Young. But that's neither here, nor there.

Julian Tavarez says that the Red Sox are set in the rotation, they have no need for Roger Clemens. None of this is motivated by the fact that Tavarez would be the odd man out in the Red Sox rotation. Instead, it is the product of one of the few keen and penetrating baseball minds of this generation. If the current rotation cannot shoulder the load this season, reinforcements are already available in Pawtucket in the form of Kaisson Gabbard and Jon Lester.

Of course any fan who would prefer Clemens over those two fora stretch run this season is crazy. Twenty years from now, Lester and Gabbard will both have won so many games that no one will speak of Clemens and his paltry 341 victories. I don't know who would dare question Tavarez's perception and ability to evaluate talent, so I accepted it without complaint when he predicted that Jon Lester will be the second coming of Sandy Koufax for all of about 13 seconds.

Sandy Koufax? Just because he's a lefty doesn't make him the next Koufax. It might be smart to set the bar a little lower than the best left handed pitcher of the last 50 years for a young pitcher who really hasn't been tested in the Major Leagues yet. At least that way if he fails, it might not be as hard to accept in the end.

I'm not as depressed as you might think today. Based on last season (which was the single greatest season in the history of modern relief pitching, at least by the standards that made the late not-so great Dick Radatz a regional media icon) and the title of this site, you might think that the local authorities had to talk me down from the ledge this afternoon. Jonathan Papelbon has returned to the bullpen for the Boston Red Sox, and the American League East is clinched with only 162 games remaining.

I bet those of you who read this space on a regular basis are expecting me to provide a cynical take on this move, to harsh the proverbial buzz of Red Sox Nation. I was fully prepared to do so, until I read this piece in the Washington Post. Jonathan Papelbon and Terry Francona were losing sleep over the turmoil in the bullpen. Can you imagine? The horror, the horror. I don't think I can summon up the energy to go about my daily activities until I find out with absolute certainty that the two of them are no longer running for the shelter of their mother's little helpers.

If you read the Boston Herald (and you do so at your own risk), you will find inspired analyses like this, praising Papelbon as a lights out closer and celebrating his new old role. On ESPN, there was some speculation that this could cause consternation in the Bronx. Somehow, I can't help but think that if Big Stein and Joe Torre are soiling their union suits, it has more to do with general issues of incontinence and less to do with the dazzling return of the greatest closer of all time after 102 career innings.

Looking at Papelbon's career stats, he had a very good season in terms of numbers last year. But he also blew six saves. At the end of the day, I am not too worried about his impressive WHIP or .OPS allowed. Maybe I'm just a casual observer and not a hard core baseball man. Or maybe I'm the world's oldest 27 year old. But I don't dig on stats as the measure of a baseball player. At the end of the day, all that matters is who wins it all. And as much as I hate the little hustling overachiever David Eckstein, I have a lot more regard for him than I do for Papelbon because he submitted a clutch performance in a World Series.

I am not the only person who isn't getting their hopes up for the return of Papelbon. Ken Rosenthal on FOX Sports does a nice job presenting all the questions swirling around this move. It is a fair point to speculate that the Red Sox are making a panic move here, because none of the stop gap solutions they imported this offseason showed any sign of panning out. After all, if they went into the season with Papelbon in the rotation and a gaping hole at the end of the game, Epstein would be running for his life from the fans and the media.

It can't be very encouraging for a Red Sox fan to consider all of the precautions the team plans to take with Papelbon. They're going to limit him to one inning appearances and keep him out of back to back games as much as they can. They aren't going to warm him up without putting him in the game. This is a long list designed to safeguard the arm health of a 26 year old entering his second major league season (the 17 appearances from 2005 don't count).

Hearing about these plans got me thinking about Mark Prior. He was another can't miss pitcher who burst onto the scene, but developed arm problems and for lack of a better term missed (at least to this point). Papelbon was supposed to be the future of the Red Sox rotation. Only 26 years old, with just over 100 innings pitched to this point and supposedly electric stuff, he was a bright beacon of hope to all the tools in the Nation.

His career is by no means over, as of today. But he's a 26 year old pitcher with a shoulder problem. So many things could go wrong. Either the joint isn't properly healed. Or he may develop a mental block, so he never unlocks his full potential. I wouldn't worry too much about the latter scenario, since it seems that his somewhat less than formidable intellect lacks the capacity to construct a mental block. But it's possible.

I think that this move to the pen and the talk about the precautions being taken is something of a smokescreen. After all, I'm not buying that closing is tougher on Pepelbon's shoulder than starting would be. As a closer he'll throw maybe 80 innings. As a starter, he'd throw somewhere in the vicinity of 200 innings. There are those who would place more emphasis on the stress of pitching the 80 innings while trying to hold a lead, but I'm not convinced. With proper warmup and the fact that Papelbon is not sufficiently intelligent to comprehend stress, it shouldn't be an issue.

Remember, Papelbon wasn't exactly dominant in his first spring training start. On the plus side, from the team's point of view, this calls a lot of attention away from the fact that every fifth game, the Boston Red Sox are going to be relying on Julian Tavarez to hold the fort. Between that and the fact that this team is relying on contributions from primetime players like Julio Lugo and JD Drew, I get the feeling that this is going to be a good year for Sedition in Red Sox Nation. Of course, I have been wrong before.

In other matters, I think Texas A and M got boned by the officials tonight. According to NCAA rules, as long as there is more than 4/10 of a second left on the clock, a team can catch and shoot off an inbounds pass. But one guy touching the ball on an inbounds pass 3 inches from the sideline managed to take 1.1 seconds off the clock. At that point, the officials might just as well have ended the game there, maybe buffed Coach Cal's no polish manicure. That would have been about as fair.

I must say that Memphis impressed me. I assumed that they were ripe to be upset even before the Sweet 16 when I saw the bracket. After all, who is left in Conference USA now, outside of a few branches of DeVry, ITT Tech and a University of Phoenix campus in suburban Kansas City (Kansas, not Missouri)? So, like almost every other observer, I laughed at Memphis. Plus, when has a Coach Cal team not underachieved in the tournament? I was amazed they were that close to Texas A and M down the stretch. I just wish the game could have ended without the controversy.

Also, I have to extend some sort of congratulations to Miami-Dade Community College. Their chess team recently upset Harvard, Yale, Dartmouth and Northwestern. Up until today, I didn't even know that there were formal intercollegiate chess competitions. I wonder what the nerds on the Harvard, Yale, Dartmouth or Northwestern chess team will experience when they return to their nerderies after losing to a community college. I bet they have to hand over their pocket protectors in shame.

About an hour ago, it looked like this was going to be a very melancholy post this evening. I could take a Red Sox win in extra innings, and maybe I could take Dallas beating Miami big. I wasn't sure that I could take both on the same day.

And then, things went far better than I could plan. Julian Tavarez melted down like only he can. Without any Devil Rays in the immediate vicinity for him to punch without provocation, Tavarez let up a walk-off grand slam in the bottom of the twelfth. Just like that, it went from a 1 run lead, two outs away from a series opening win to a 5-2 morale crushing defeat. Good times.

I was much more pleased with the end of the Miami game. I am sure blogMaverick will contain a laundry list of reasons why the Mavericks should still be shooting free throws right now. Unfortunately, no one else has the rose colored contacts Mark Cuban wears to each game. The horribly cruel and capricious system of officiating has conspired to delay the just reward for Cuban's investment again.

What is even better is that the law of averages struck again. When you make 90% of your free throws, you miss 10% of the time. Too bad for Dirk that his miss had to come when his team trailed by 1 with 3.4 seconds to play. Then he went down and fould Dwyane Wade a bit harder than the situation probably required. Of course Wade committed at least 3 separate lane violations and 4 variations of loose ball fouls on the play in Mark Cuban's mind.

I don't like Dirk. I have hated him since he came into the league, and I'm sure I'll still hate him when he slinks back to Germany without winning a title, God willing. I must confess, I am mildly xenophobic. I hate the French and I hate Germans, other than that I don't have any specific dislikes where foreigners are concerned.

I hate Germans because they made David Hasslehoff an international singing sensation. Baywatch was inspired TV and Knight Rider sort of didn't suck at times, but Hasselhoff is a total cheese ball and a terrible singer. And yet German people love him. And Dirk has said that he sings "Lookin' for Freedom" to himself when he stands at the foul line. A tool of that magnitude deserves to fail in pressure situations.