Tonight looked ever so close to becoming a disaster. The Red Sox managed to mount a disconcerting ninth inning rally, closing a 5-2 deficit to 5-4 and having two runners in scoring position with 1 out in the ninth. It took all of the hidden talents of Jason Varitek and Julio Lugo to kill said rally before it could become a catastrophe.

It got me thinking, though, or more precisely, reminiscing about an event that occurred in Tropicana Field about two years ago now. Tonight, Brandon Moss hit what looked like it was going to be a routine fly ball, albeit one probably deep enough for Mike Lowell to tag and score from 3rd. But the strange configuration of Tropicana Field intervened. The ball hit the catwalk and landed in fair territory. Moss got a double, Lowell scored and Youkilis advanced to third on the play.

Two years ago, during a three game sweep of the Red Sox at the Trop, Kevin Youkilis hit a ball off the catwalk in left. There, the Red Sox were not quite so fortunate. Carl Crawford tracked the ball off the catwalk and caught it before it could hit the ground. Because of the ground rules, Youkilis was called out, causing him to throw a fit. Terry Francona at the time referred to it as "putt-putt golf stuff."

I remember this because I blogged about it at the time, back in the day when Sedition in Red Sox Nation used to blog about baseball from time to time. I ripped Youke and Francona for that at the time. I ripped them because it's beat to whine about something like that when it hurts your team but consider it one of the amusing little novelties of the game when it boosts your team.

Perhaps it is unfair of me to rip Varitek as a rally killer when he did manage to drive in a run with a sac fly in the ninth. That said, I have no real interest in being fair to Varitek, noted archdouche that he is. And had he gotten one of his base hits, which occur about as frequently as papal conclaves these days, he probably would have managed to tie the game. Of course, in order to do that, he would have to stop sucking and/or being a giant douche. And I'm not sure I'm believing in miracles this week.

Before I move on, I do need to rip into the Remdawg and his partner. After Troy Percival came up lame and had to leave the game, they were all excited at Francona's brilliance. Because Terry hadn't announced a pinch hitter to take Lugo's spot in the order, he didn't have to remove that offensive Juggernaut when JP Howell came in to finish the ninth. True, Lugo is a righty and Howell is a lefty, so conventional wisdom says that match up favors Lugo.

However, conventional wisdom would also tell you that Lugo sucks. Better to have any lefty up there than a guy who is a weak hitter to start with and is 0-3 (with one RBI, to be fair) in his career against Howell. I don't know why I'm complaining, after all Francona played the percentages right into a loss which put the team 1 and 1/2 games behind the Rays in the AL East.

Of course there is the possibility that MLB might be looking to overturn the result of the game and award the win to the Red Sox. After all, Papelbon was warming in the pen when the game ended in case the Red Sox managed to take the lead in the top of the ninth. And we all know that Papelbon is the greatest closer of all time, and would have shut the door on the Rays. So by the transitive property, even though the failed to score the amount of runs necessary to win the game outright, the Sox still won, at least by Red Sox fan logic.

Yeah, I haven't updated in over a week. So I am a bad blogger and a catastrophic failure as a human being. I have come to accept that about myself, which puts me on the path to enlightenment. The next step is to care that I am a bad person, and after that comes the actual process of doing something about my flaws. Of course now that I've done all that heavy-duty self-awareness type stuff, I might have to slow down and rest, lest I have too little energy to continue on the path to enlightenment as I get older.

So the Celtics won it all. Big effing deal. It's nice, I suppose, for the 8 people who stuck with the team through all the lean years. And it must be a great time to be an orthopedic surgeon or an acupuncturist in New England these days. God knows that 99.999999999% of those who defined themselves as Celtic fans as of this winter must have hurt themselves jumping on the bandwagon.

Or perhaps they have sufficient practice in discovering new found ancient allegiances to the local teams over the past several years that they can spring from bandwagon to bandwagon like Batman traversing the rooftops of Gotham City. And let's not kid ourselves, I am old enough to remember that prior to Bill Parcells coming to coach the Pats, games at Foxboro were routinely unavailable on local TV because the team had failed to sell a sufficient number of tickets and the NFL blacked the game out.

And Fenway is as much a place to be seen as it is to see an actual ball game. Can you honestly tell me that there aren't at least 15,000 people in those stands on a given night that haven't given more thought to what they might look like in high def on NESN or to what exact stupid, insipid and cloying effort to get some dap from the Rem Dawg they're going to put on some poster board and hold up like a meathead than they've given to who is pitching for the opponent and when Papelbon will finally join the ranks of the literate?

I'm not really a stranger to jumping on bandwagons, but I like to start early and I like to get in on the ground floor. And I don't have the facility of intellectual dishonesty or simple inability to appreciate irony that one must show to jump on a Boston bandwagon. Because no one here can ever admit that they jumped on the bandwagon.

Boston fans must instead prove that not only have they been fans for their entire lives, but every single last descendant of theirs down through the first to set foot on Ellis Island all the way down to the first homo sapiens in their family tree to hit the European continent in the last Ice Age rooted for every Boston team despite the notable handicap that Boston itself was a millennium or twenty away from being settled.

I've mentioned this before, every Red Sox fan who discovered the team right around the 1998 divisional series with the Indians will tell you that their fathers, grandfathers, greatgrandfathers and the missing link (since Red Sox fans represent a lower order of our species, they can trace themselves back only so far) all were die-hard Sox fans. And yet, somehow, when every American knew it was Ted Williams final game at Fenway (it was so clear that the writer John Updike who grew up in Pennsylvania and lived in New York came to Fenway specifically to see Ted's last game in that lyric little bandbox), only 10,000 and change were on hand to see his final at bat culminate in a home run.

Funny how that works for generations of die hard Red Sox fans. Hell, If Detective John MacLaine of the NYPD held himself to that standard in the film Die Hard, Die Hard's sequels would have revolved around Hans sitting on the beach drinking cocktails and earning 20% on the money he stole from Nakatomi while the feds sifted through the building's wreckage looking for him.

To make a long story short, I hate bandwagon jumpers who try to pass themselves off as legitimate fans. I haven't forgotten that Ainge, while he backed his way into a title thanks to Kevin McHale's turning the Minnesota Timberwolves into a China Syndrome instead of a basketball team, is still the same man who traded one of his best players for magic beans because of a petty, personal argument and, in so doing, turned a playoff team into a shit show. I just can't find it in my heart to be cool with that. Sorry.

That said, the NBA Finals blew. The games were on way too late, as everybody and their brother said. The officiating sucked. I don't know that a single player set a legal screen in the entire series. I could understand when Jordan got away with palming the ball the way he did, I wasn't crazy about it, but he was Jordan. Now the ball is palmed and carried and players take an obscene number of steps and get away with using multiple pivot feet to the point where you wonder why a rule book is even printed any more. But David Stern runs a tight ship, and the league is in great shape.

And in case you haven't heard, the NBA is trying to extract $1.4 million from Tim Donaghy, the ref who admitted to gambling on games he worked. Thanks for the smoke screen, Commissioner Stern. Because it all goes back to that situation, not the fundamental problems with games that start so late and last so long that even unemployed insomniacs start thinking twice about watching them and the fact that the one thing that keeps every fan from being fully convinced that the fix is in is that the officiating is so wildly inconsistent that no one could possibly have rigged it.

In spite of all that, the NBA makes money. I guess it goes to show you, the average American is a complete moron. And they trust these people to elect their own leaders...

In other news, there was a baseball game played tonight, and the Red Sox lost. At least that's the way the outcome stands at the moment. Rumors have it that the league will set aside the outcome, award the victory to the Red Sox and suspend Dan Harren for two months for the heinous offense of making the Red Sox lineup look ridiculous while simultaneously looking like a stunt double for one of the guys from "It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia."


Alas, the Red Sox are still in first place in the AL East. And there is a large portion of the season left to be played. But there are some encouraging signs. For instance, Papelbon has already blown more saves than he did in all of last year. Good thing for him he has his keen intellect and stunning good looks to fall back on should his arm burn out on him... Too bad he's a total meathead with an IQ that rivals that of a cinderblock and he looks like a lizardman from one of the old cartoons.

And then there is David Aardsma. So he pitched himself out of trouble in the top of the 9th this evening. Awesome. You did your job. But I think the fist pump he gave walking off the mound was a little excessive. First, it's not as though you somehow reversed the rotation of the earth and altered the fact that the D-backs were up a run. And perhaps more importantly, you pitched yourself into the trouble in the first place, letting up a hit and walking a guy (not counting the intentional walk).

Then there was Youke, his freak accident this evening had to be somehow related to his squabble with Manny Ramirez earlier. After all, Ramirez had to have been in the wrong, a veteran of his caliber and with his achievements daring to question Youke, who is the baddest badass on the planet, just ask him and he'll tell you in agonizing detail. I'm just amazed that Manny is still alive. In case you don't know all the real Chuck Norris facts are doubly true for Youkilis.

That said, as much as I think Manny can effect players like Youke and warmup throws from Mike Lowell with the Shining-esque powers of his mind, I have to think Youke got hurt because he's bald. My sources in the medical profession tell me that bald people, and in particular bald men, have tremendous difficulty with idea retention. The ideas simply waft into the ether because there is no hair to hold them in the skull. In extreme cases, it can also impact the portions of the brain that manage common sense, motor coordination and the section that governs the ability not to look like a total dumbass. And that is why Youke took a routine warmup toss off the noggin tonight.

Finally, Varitek got a hit to end his 0-24 slump tonight. Not only that, but it was an extra base hit as well. Unfortunately, his spot in the order came up at the end of the seventh, with the tying and go-ahead runs in scoring position with two outs. Even though Harren looked tired and the game was on the line, Varitek found a way to do what he does best, and the rally died in his arms. And so I dedicate this song to Varitek in memory of the rally he killed tonight and in the hope that he can find the magic to go 0-his next 24 or so ABs.

Ladies and gentlemen, I have an intriguing question to pose to you all. At what point in this evening's game did Kevin Youkilis look most ridiculous? Was it the foul ball down the first base line that he turned into a Keystone Kops moment? Or was it when he struggled through the introduction of the lineup, making Rocky's struggles in the commercial taping in Rocky II look like Olivier doing Hamlet on stage in London?

According to Joe Buck, Youkilis manages to look intimidating even when he introduces a lineup. Of course, I think that if you are Joe Buck, even my five year old niece looks intimidating, but that's neither here nor there. I think Youkilis is far from intimidating. Rather, he looks like the type of guy that desperately wanted to be a biker all his life, who gets the bike and the clothes and the look, but still can't make himself look mean. Perhaps Youkilis would have looked meaner in my eyes had he not waited until the team trailed by 7 in the 6th inning to notch his first HR and RBI of the ALCS.

The Youkilis bobble reminded me of a quote from George Orwell which I first applied to Mark Cuban. Orwell described one of England's peers as "looking rather more like a monkey on a stick than I would have thought possible for some one who wasn't actually trying." That sums up how pathetic Youkilis looked in misplaying that ball.

Over the course of the offseason, which now looks like it just might start a lot sooner than Red Sox Nation might desire, a great deal of ink will be spilled on the fact that Francona elected not to start Josh Beckett on three days rest. For my part, I have attacked Francona continually over the 18 months this blog has existed. But I don't think he made the wrong call. And it's not because I wanted the Sox to lose, for a change.

People love to point out that Beckett was lethal on three days rest in the 2003 playoffs. That was then, however, and this is now. Josh Beckett is the cornerstone of this team going forward. Is it, then, better to risk his arm for the sake of tying an ALCS or is it better to take your chances with Wakefield and keep Beckett as healthy as possible to extend the window for this team?

I took a great deal of grim staisfaction in seeing Wakefield, who was so good so long ago in the regular season, fall apart in the fifth inning of this evening's game. But up until this evening, he had never lost an LCS game. And it mattered little that he was pitching on 18 days rest. After all, were you really worried that his arm would be too live in tonight's game if you happen to be a Red Sox fan?

And while we're talking history, if we can remember what Josh Beckett did in 2003 on three days rest, why can't we remember what he did in the last LCS start with his team trailing 3-1 in an elimination game? That was Game 5 of the NLCS in 2003, and I hate to do this to my friend the Cubs fan, but Beckett shut down the Cubs as though it were a moral imperative that the Cubs should score no runs.

He threw a 2 hitter in that game. Not much attention is paid to it, partly because stifling the Dusty Baker-era Cubs wasn't exactly a miracle. And of course being on the wrong end of a 2 hitter in a game where you could have elimated the opponent isn't anywhere near as picturesque as some loser in glasses interfering with a fly ball down the left field line with 5 outs to go and a three run lead.

If Red Sox fans were honest (and let's face it, they aren't), they'd admit that starting Wake over Beckett wasn't exactly reminiscent of Joe McCarthy going with Denny Galehouse in the one game playoff against the Indians in 1948. Of course that presumes Red Sox fans know half as much as they pretend to about their team's history. Perhaps if the CHB gets off his posterior and has his interns burn the midnight oil, then the Nation might remember it as though it were yesterday the day after the column appears. But that's another story.

Before today's game, I got to thinking about that play where Ortiz managed to get in the way of Ramirez grounding out to shortstop. Seeing him run into that out in such surprising fashion reminded me of something at the time. I'm sure all of you good Red Sox fans who worry so much about what might happen to John Henry's ill-gotten gains in his pending divorce own the 2004 postseason DVD, so you can check it out for yourselves.

In case you don't remember, Cardinals pitcher and all-around loser Jeff Suppan managed to get himself trapped in a rundown at third base thanks to indecision on the base paths. I remember being livid with him at the time, not only because it was a momentum killing play that benefited the Red Sox, but because a National League pitcher has to run the bases from time to time and ought to have had better sense than that. To make a long story short, I think Papi might have killed the Sox momentum in this series with that play.

So the Red Sox are now poised on the brink of elimination. I cannot summon up a proper level of excitement about that, though. First, there is, as I keep saying, the lingering memory of 2004's comeback against the Yankees. And as I've said, I still don't like this Indians team. I do find myself wondering whether the layoff while the Rockies await the winner of this series might be the only thing that will kill the roll Colorado is on at the moment.

The home half of the fifth inning of tonight's game did reinforce an impression I've had of the Indians in this postseason. With the way they keep grinding out runs in all kinds of different ways with two outs, they remind me of a football team that simply can't get an opponent off the field on third down, like Notre Dame, or the teams that have fallen victim to Belichick's corrupt legion of minions.

And while I'm on the topic of things that have suddenly become clear to me over the last few days, I have one more this evening thanks to Bill Simmons. For a long time now, basically since the travesty of 2004, or maybe since he went to work for Jimmy Kimmel, Bill Simmons has been evoking an impression of something I couldn't quite explain. Calling him an aggressive sycophant summed up his persona, but it didn't resolve the question of that nagging impression.

Then Bill Simmons wrote this brilliant piece comparing being a Boston fan right now to waking up every day being George Clooney. And it hit me like a thousand of brick, to quote Rooster Cogburn. Bill Simmons reminds me of George Clooney. Not the looks, or the talent, but that vague, smarmy smugness that is all over the Gospel According to Clooney.

In case you don't know what I'm talking about, the writers of South Park did an excellent job of satirizing this particular aspect of Clooney's character in the smug epsiode. They got after Clooney for his inexplicable Oscar acceptance speech after he won Best Supporting Actor for Syriana.

In that speech, Clooney gave credit to Hollywood for bringing issues like civil rights and AIDS to public attention when the rest of America was silent. Now, I might be alone in not remembering all those movie and TV stars sprayed by fire hoses and attacked by police dogs in the South in the 50s and 60s, but I am that sort of guy. And it was a blow against racism when Hattie McDaniel won her Best Supporting Actress Oscar for Gone With the Wind, right up there with the I Have a Dream speech, right?

But that's a long digression to come back to Bill Simmons. He's a fraud, like Clooney. He sets himself up as the voice of the young sports fan from Gen X and beyond, and I wish it weren't true. After all, if he's the voice of that slice of sportsfandom, then sportsfandom must be even dumber than I want to admit.

In other matters, the Yankees brain trust convened in Tampa today to discuss the future of Joe Torre. No announcement was made, so I have tomorrow afternoon to try to squeeze in the analysis of the Yankee management situation before the decision is made.

It would take a Yankee fan to be naive enough to think that a three game sweep in this series means a damn thing. So what if the Red Sox had a chance to knock the Yankees out of contention in the AL East? So what if they had a chance to hurt the Yankees chances of getting the AL Wildcard? Dropping three straight games to your archrival is never a bad thing, right?

When you look at it, it's not as though the Yankees came in reeling from dropping three of four in Detroit. The Yankees threw their 1, 2 and 3 starters at Boston, while Boston countered with pitchers who weren't expected to win. And none of that would have mattered if Major League Baseball didn't pull a depressingly juvenile stunt in sending a representative to ensure that Terry Francona was wearing his uniform jersey while the Yankees had a man on base.

That one instance really cost the Red Sox the series. It had a major impact on the game played the night before and on this afternoon's game. Bud Selig owes the Red Sox an apology for that devious bit of trickeration. In all seriousness, while it was a strange incident, undoubtedly poorly timed and probably unnecessary, it's not really that big a deal.

If the Red Sox don't know how to play the Yankees with Jeter at second having faced that team 13 times prior to the game this season, then having their inspired leader on hand might not have been enough to help them there. After all, the team ought to know how to line up to defend Abreu or A Rod or Matsui in every conceiveale count no matter who's on what base. These guys in the Yankee lineup are fairly well known. The Red Sox see them on occasion, so nothing should disrupt their concentration on the task at hand.

However, nothing seems to be able to happen to the Red Sox these days that doesn't present complications. I'm not sure what to make of that incident which culminated in Joba Chamberlain's ejection. Yes, the Sox have hit A Rod a few times this season. But the Yankees don't seem to be the reactive type, or at least they haven't been in the Joe Torre era. Also, why Youkilis and why in the ninth with one out and a five run lead. It would make more sense to get him out as opposed to putting him on base and providing the Red Sox a spark to start a rally.

However, all that logic doesn't change the fact that he threw consecutive fastballs over Youkilis' head, entirely too close for comfort. I think the umpire made the right decision to eject him immediately after the second pitch. While I don't want to believe that Chamberlain was head hunting because it makes no sense in the situation, it's hard to argue with the fact that both pitches were essentially in the exact same location. One pitch can get away from you, but two is hard to explain.

Tonight, in the wake of a three game sweep at the hands of the Yankees, seems to be the perfect time for me to answer the recent attention that has been given to Red Sox Nation's presence in opposing stadiums. This is not a good thing. It's a symptom of the underlying problems in Major League Baseball.

Because the baseball season has devolved into a long, pointless tournament that only a very few teams can win because only they can afford to collect enough quality pieces to play at a high level, fans in a number of cities have long since given up on their local teams. Why pay to see a team that needs a series of major miracles to qualify for the postseason? So there are plenty of tickets to induce plenty of tools who have been priced out of attending games in Boston to travel to cities like Baltimore and Tampa and Kansas City.

Then there is the phenomenon of Red Sox Nation spreading like a virus through America. Since so many people can't afford to live in New England, there has been a diaspora of Red Sox fans. And since man businesses decided to forsake the expensive Northeast for cheaper regions, there are a ton of New England expatriates in Arizona, Florida, California and other such places. So the Red Sox have a small base in a number of other major league towns.

Also, this team and its myriad of vices draws to it with magnetic force every cutthroat, criminal, misfit, moron, hypocrite and douche in each city in which they play. Every person who thinks the infield fly rule has something to do with insects, every jackass who venerates the cliche fest that is Bull Durham, every person who always wanted to be a bully but never had the chance and every tool who thinks Bill Simmons is the lizard king is a potential Red Sox fan just waiting for the bandwagon to gather steam.

But those who remain and endure in New England are seldom any better than the new crop of Red Sox fans and the exiles. For every normal, sane, rational Red Sox fan that I know, there are at least ten that would sip the refuse at the Deer Island Sewage Treatment Plant if John Henry's crack staff of PR people broke the story that it contained vitamins and minerals. For instance, there is the fan who tells me things like JD Drew's numbers are comprable to A Rod's and Red Sox fans will regard JD Drew as a bargain next season.

And after 2004, there were those teary eyed losers who railed and raved about how much this team had meant to their ancestors of the nth degree that had endured all the losing but kept the faith. If one in thirty of that class of fan could prove an ancestor of theirs had been on of the 10,000 odd fans who managed to fill Fenway to 1/3 of its capacity for the final game of the single greatest player in the history of the franchise, then I'd be a little less vocal in my criticism.

For every fan (or informed adversary like me) who knows who Jackie Jensen was or has read the John Updike piece on Ted Williams' final game, there is a massive legion whose only connection to the days before Pedro Martinez came to town comes from nostalgia pieces by the CHB, Bob Ryan, Bill Simmons and others. Red Sox Nation is a waste of time and space. We would all be better off if they would shut up, and perhaps refrain from breeding.

What does not help is that the media, for the most part, coddles and even encourages these jackasses to even greater levels of jackassery. Bill Simmons, who ought to know better (but he's from Connecticut, so I make allowances), seems to enjoy this trend to an indecent level. Of course, I shouldn't be surprised the SPorts Guy feels that way, since these bandwagon fans seem to regard him as a spiritual leader and fall all over themselves to worship at his altar.

This piece from USA Today, which seems to have sparked this new wave of attention to Red Sox Nation, misses the key point that ought to be made about Red Sox fans. Red Sox fans are caught up in a connundrum that is all the more maddening for their inability to recognize and understand it. Red Sox fans have all of the vices of Yankee fans. They're loud, they bully people who don't see things their way, they're boring and they have an inflated sense of their own baseball IQ.

However, Red Sox fans have none of the virtues of Cubs fans, to whom they are often compared. Cubs fans are patient, they endure losing without the cynical, affected posture Red Sox fans developed and have not shed since 2004. Red Sox fans are much more like fans of the other Chicago team. Like the White Sox, the Red Sox lost for a very, very, very long time. And just as the stigma of being second team in second city has tainted the White Sox fans, constantly coming off worse than the Yankees year in and year out still wears on Red Sox fans, even in this post-2004 era.

For a change, I am not the only one railing against Red Sox Nation. Red Sox fans have become so arrogant and unpleasant that Jim Caple (author of The Devil Wears Pinstripes) has himself repented of being a Red Sox fan. Caple wrote this piece ripping Red Sox fans for the way they have comported themselves following the 2004 chamopionship run. It's really quite good. Not quite as good as a three game sweep by the Yankees, but still worth the read.

One more happy note before I sign off... The season series between the Red Sox and the Yankees stands at 8-7 in favor of the Bronx Bombers. Good times. Good times, indeed.

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.

I really didn't intend to post tonight. After all, I've been drinking for a long time now, and my drunken posts have been unmitigated disasters. But several things need be said about several topics and if I don't do it, who will? The Coast Guard? And the kick in the ass about blogging whilst somewhat intoxicated is that I do not know where to begin.

I suppose I'll start where I left off last night. I have been reluctant to talk about this particular subject, since I have a way of jinxing players and teams, but in the wake of last night's epic performance, I don't think I can jinx LeBron. Hell, even Bill Simmons is on board, and he's only permitted to notice trends which David Stern and Mark Cuban allow him to notice.

LeBron deserves at this point to hold the title deeds to every team and every property associated with basketball in the NBA's Eastern Conference. Every game he plays is a two-fold kick in the ass to the NBA league offices. First, he is triumphing in the face of the system. The Celtics since the Walker trade should hold themselves fortunate to depend on LeBron's mercy for the right to rebuild.

No one will admit it, but the NBA feeds on its superstars. And yet the league allows manifestly inferior players (like the entire Pistons roster, none of whom is fit to unfasten LeBron's oh so very unMessianic sandals) to flop and hack until the only player worthy of shaking hands with Bird, Russell, Heinshon, Cousy, Havlicheck, Jones, White or Cowens is shut out of the NBA Finals. So there are (and have been) two sets of Jordan rules. Superstars get most of the breaks, but when they don't it's OK to maul them in much the same fashion as a tiger mauls its dinner.

But tonight's was to be a baseball post. After all, the Yankees are back in town. And in my opinion, they should have erased not one but two games from the lead the Red Sox are oh so close to frittering away at this point. You may not have noticed, as it's Friday and all those with social lives were socializing, but the Red Sox managed to lose a game that should have been lost by a much larger margin.

In the early stages of the game, I found myself wondering if Chien Ming Wang had run over the umpire's dog. Red Sox fans might not agree, but Kevin Youkilis struck out in the bottom of the second. There is no way in God's Earth that the 2-2 pitch Youkilis took was a ball. It was at the knees and on the inside corner, a perfect pitch. In a logical world it was strike three.

Hell, Schilling would have thrown a towel over his head and wept as though he were trapped in the Old Testament Book of Lamentations until an ump gave him the call he felt the world owed him on a pitch like that. In a perfect world, some person would have emerged from nothingness to throw an hellacious beating on Youke for no apparent reason before he was called out on strikes.

Then, in the bottom of the fifth, Doug Mirabelli achieved one of the more remarkable feats one could imagine in a professional baseball game. He threw out a runner at third base who could not have done much to be safer. And any one who thinks Abreu was actually out is either a shameless Red Sox fan or a total and complete moron. Although, to be fair and to quote the Sinatra song at the same time, you can't have one without the other.

And there is very little that a Sox fan can do to try to answer my allegations. Not only because the average Red Sox fan barely has the intelligence to invilve him or herself in a "Less Filling" "Tastes Great" debate, but because the Lizard King of Red Sox Nation is on my side. If you watch the footage again, you'll see that the Remdawg agrees with me in both cases. The Sox got all the calls and still lost the game. And that's why I think the Yanks should have picked up an extra game out of this exchange.

I really don't like posting twice on the same day. It provides yet one more conformation that I have no life. When I saw that LeBron had yet to agree on the extension with Cleveland I just had to get something up on that topic. I'm also sorry that I didn't provide many links for my wild speculations. It was just something that occurred to me, and I thought I should run with it. I think I might just be the first guy to get anything on the possibility (albeit a very slim one at best) that LeBron could one day wear a Celtics uniform.

This post has been in the works since last night, and now that we've put basketball aside for the moment, I can return to attacking the Red Sox for an evening (which is, after all, the stated purpose of this site). This has been quite a series down in Tampa. The local nine have dropped three straight to the lowly Devil Rays. Bob Ryan says it's too early to panic, and he's right. But it still has to hurt a bit, especially when someone like me throws a little salt in the wound.

The Devil Rays may be better than you think. Weird things can happen in the course of a long season like the catch Crawford made against Youkilis last night. But the Red Sox were red hot, winning 15 of 16 before they came to Tampa. They had, prior to this series, lost 4 of their last 6 in Tampa. But the Devil Rays are a last place team. Unless of course they win tonight and the Orioles lose to the White Sox (or as they'll be called on this site henceforth, the Real Sox).

The Sox seemed like they had good reason to feel optimistic entering this series, with Josh Beckett starting the first game and Schilling starting game 2. I bet no one would have thought that the last line of defense against a Tampa Bay sweep would be Tim Wakefield. Of course, no one expected that the mighty Red Sox lineup would be 2 hit by Scott Kazmir. Or that Big Schill would allow 3 home runs. But these things happen.

As for Big Schill himself, I'm still waiting for his response to Mitch Williams. I hate to link to the androidsdungeon so soon after the whole Dr. Who episode, but it was the first place where I found the reference to Mitch Williams calling Schilling out. Quite literally. After the blown save that blew the 1993 World Series, Wild Thing took issue with comments Big Schill made. According to him, Big Schill had best borrow some guts and meet the Wild Thing outside. I am not commenting on the truth of this story, necessarily. I like to take things like this with a grain of salt. I just bring it up to be a thorn in the side of Red Sox fans. And, lest we forget, they say a charge not answered is a charge believed. For what that's worth...

Carl Crawford quite literally stole the show last night. It's not every day that you see a guy steal home. In fact, it hasn't happened to the Sox since 2000. It was such big news, it even made it into a nice little featurette in the KC Star, where Crawford revealed that no one had pitched from the windup with him on 3rd base until Schilling did it 2 nights ago. Then Jason Johnson, he of the notorious ability to lose games, did it. The rest, as they say, is history.

Then there was the wacky play where Crawford caught a ball that Kevin Youkilis hit off a catwalk in the outfield (see the bottom of this piece for "keen" analysis). The Greek God of Walks screamed bloody murder that he should not have been called out. Unfortunately, according to the ground rules, he was out. Francona called it "putt-putt golf stuff" and said it had no place in baseball. I disagree. Crawford made one hell of a play on that ball. To break back and catch a ball fading away from you after it hit a catwalk is worthy of an out.

And for all you Red Sox fans, before you agree with Francona and lobby for rules changes in Tampa, ask yourself whether or not you'd agree with Carl Crawford being called out had it been him at the plate and Manny Ramirez made a catch like that in left field. From time to time, a little intellectual honesty is good for the soul (for those few Red Sox fans that have one). I doubt you'd rally for justice had the shoe been on the other foot.

Meanwhile, I address my parting shot at Kevin Youkilis. In a somewhat ironic gesture, he threw a tantrum at the call. Without the field being miked, it seems that he may have done a bit more to get himself ejected than Jorge Cantu did, but that's neither here nor there. Of late at Fenway, Youke has been coming to bat to the dulcet and underplayed tones of "Jump Around" by House of Pain. And, work with me here Red Sox fans (I'll try to use simple words and write slowly, lest you think too hard and sprain something), here's where we reach the ironic part.

In the intricately composed opus with which Youkilis gets himself in the hitting zone, there is this line: "I ain't goin' out like no punk b----." In my way of thinking that is ironic, since that is exactly how he went out after that call.