And so, let the not so dulcet tones of the Yankees Suck cheers ring in Fenway...

As famed New Englander (though a Californian by birth, I think we can call him a New Englander) and overrated archtool Robert Frost once wrote, two roads diverged in a yellow wood. Tonight, those roads are the respective seasons of the coiled, sleeping dragon Red Sox and the lumbering oaf on the verge of going over the cliff Yankees. The two teams meet in Fenway this weekend, and the Red Sox are poised to sweep.

Both teams have a 5-5 record, but the Red Sox are 5-5 because they're battling injuries. Beckett is going to get stronger with each passing start. Clay Buchholz is poised to have that breakout year we've been told by Red Sox Nation and its press cadre is all but overdue (even though he's a rookie and his inevitable late season heroics were derailed by a vague tiredness in his pitching arm). And Coco Crisp is hitting over .300 at the moment, so all signs point to the Yankees fading quickly and harshly.

After all, the Yankees are so desperate, they're forced to start their ace, Chien Ming Wang on normal rest. In any other club, and against any other team, this would be interpreted by any rational observer as business as usual. But this is the struggling .500 New York Yankees and they face the mighty .500 Boston Red Sox. Everyone who is anyone knows that the panic button is already pressed in the Bronx. Surely by this point tomorrow, the frantic phone calls to Scranton will begin in earnest.

The Red Sox, on the other hand, are so confident of victory in this series that they sent Mike Lowell to the 15 day DL this afternoon. The Sox didn't even make the move retroactive to speed his return. They don't need him in the lineup at the moment, given that Jason Varitek's batting .290 and has 2 homers. Given his recent track record, he probably does have two weeks of promise left before he remembers his bat was declared missing and presumed dead from the Red Sox lineup in late 2005. Rest assured, I will be updating this site frequently over the next three days or so to chronicle this spectacular instance of ships passing in the night in the offing.

For some unexplained reason, I signed up to receive the BU student newspaper at the alumni website one afternoon when I was killing time. I don't know what good I expected to come of it at the time, if any, but I never hoped for this. As those of you who read this blog have probably come to notice, I am a keen observer, almost to the point of paranoia, of the tools that walk among us. And today, thanks in part to the travesty of a student newspaper at Boston University, I have struck what just might be the Comstock Lode of tools of note. And in this instance, this picture is truly worth at least 1,000 words...



There is a movement afoot on American college campuses that must be revealed and ridiculed (gently, and without recourse to cyberbullying, of course, as this site condones neither real nor pretend violence) instantly. Tools of epic proportions across the nation are putting together an event called the Intercollegiate World Cup right under our noses. Perhaps I shouldn't have been so surprised when I discovered that this event took place at Middlebury College in Vermont, a school notorious even in a state filled with tools for archtoolery of every imaginable sort.

And the principal archtool (which would make him a pope of tools, or at the very least a cardinal) is a person called Xander Manshel, which, if it isn't an alias, is surely a terrible crime against taste on the part of this tool's parents and one of the great self fulfilling prophecies of all time. With a name like that, how could the kid have turned out otherwise?

And when I googled Intercollegiate Quidditch, wouldn't you know that the very first site that phrase brought to my attention, led me to yet another archtool whol blogs under the banner A Paperback Writer. I simply didn't want to devote any more time to discover further tools involved in or inspired by this event, so I am giving up at this point. But by now, I think you probably see why I referred to this as the Comstock Lode of tools of note. In case you don't know and are too lazy to look it up, the Comstock Lode was one of the richest mineral strikes in world history, and it was exploited perhaps too quickly and too haphazardly.

So, we're counting down to kickoff, and the inevitability of 18-0. It's not an inevitability that I particularly enjoy, but one that I have come to accept. I am tired of convincing myself that there are any one of a number of vulnerabilities on this Patriot team that any one of a number of opponents could exploit in any one of a number of ways.

It doesn't matter how slow and decrepit the Patriot linebacking unit is. It doesn't matter how dirty Rodney Harrison plays this week. It doesn't even matter that I don't think Laurence Maroney is a legitimate big time tailback in today's NFL. All that really matters is that Quentin Jammer, Antonio Cromartie, Marlon McCree, Clinton Hart and Eric Weddle have a better chance of being elected Pope than they do of containing Moss and Welker this week. And even if they could contain those two, what of Ben Watson, Stallworth and Kevin Faulk (who has been coming up big in situations where I didn't want him to come up big since he was at LSU under Gerry DiNardo's reign of terror)?

Yes, the Chargers managed to lead the NFL in takeaways this season. They also managed to beat Indianapolis twice this season, even winning in the RCA Dome last week. But they also suffered humiliating losses to the Patriots and the very, very, very average Minnesota Vikings this season. Playing on the road and in the cold in New England against the undefeated team that every one loves to hate, it's just not happening. I only hope LaDanian Tomlinson manages to be as entertaining with this year's round of postgame whining as he was last year.

Since this blog is supposed to be about the Red Sox, I would be remiss if I didn't pass along Mike Lowell's statesman-like response to potential testing for HGH in baseball. Mike Lowell is willing to take the test, provided that it's 100% accurate, but he's out if the test is only 99% accurate. I can't help but wonder if there's any room for negotiation there, since it seems very unlikely that any test for any substance will ever be 100% accurate.

Lowell also brought up the double standard issue. Baseball players, writers, coaches and so forth have been quick to point out the fact that Shawne Merriman was suspended for four games and still went to the Pro Bowl last year, and Rodney Harrison missed the first four games of this season for being implicated in an HGH scandal. But it is baseball that is in the cross hairs.

It's simple, as Lowell himself conceded in that article. Baseball looked the other way for a long time, refusing any kind of testing. The NFL, on the other hand, has had a ban on steroids for years. It might not be perfect, but at least football players have been suspended for violating the NFL ban on performance enhancers for years.

Mark McGwire admitted he took andro in 1998, when it was not banned according to the rules of Major League Baseball. It was, however, a banned substance in the NFL at the time. Roger Clemens is alleged to have taken steroids in years when none of the substances Brian McNamee and George Mitchell accuse him of taking were even banned in baseball. Baseball didn't even start testing or developing any kind of comprehensive policy until Congress got on their case.

I don't think there is a double standard here. Rodney Harrison and Shawne Merriman lost a quarter of the season and four game checks. Four games doesn't seem like much at first, but when you do the math it is the equivalent of 40 and a half baseball games. Considering the NFL developed and implemented this policy on their own, long before baseball got religion thanks to a Congressional hearing, I think it's more than reasonable.

I do think Merriman shouldn't have gone to the Pro Bowl, but I wasn't one of the people who voted for him. I think out of common decency, he should have declined the invite, but that's his business. It is, or at least it was, a free country. If people are dumb enough to vote to send a cheater to the Pro Bowl, that's their misfortune.

In other news, in my ongoing effort to make this blog more interactive, here's another gem of a comment from an anonymous reader. In a recent post I happened to bid the Seattle Seahawks a less than fond farewell from the 2007 season. As a part of it, I ripped Seahawk fans for ripping off traditions from Texas A & M and suggested they should play a song to commemorate every early exit from the playoffs the way A & M plays Taps across campus when an alumnus (or alumna) dies in the line of duty serving in the Armed Services.

I suggested "Follow the Yellow Brick Road" as Seattle stole the nickname Emerald City from the Wizard of Oz (Not very funny, but then I just might have overindulged with respect to beer at the time). Reader KobraKommander (in one of his rare instances of bringing things to the table) improved the suggestion with one of his own, offering "Goodbye Yellow Brick Road," which is pretty funny.

To make a very long, and pretty unnecessary story short, the anonymous commenter suggested "I'm an @#$hole" by Denis Leary. I bring it up because this is a bit ambiguous. I assume the commenter meant that I, the blogger, am the @#$hole. But it is open to the suggestion that the commenter himself could be the @#$hole. Or any Seahawk fans who might play that to bid their team adieu from the playoffs could be the @#$hole. And let's face it, the odds are that if you live in Seattle or root for the Seahawks, you probably are an @#$hole.

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.

What to think of this World Series? I find myself wondering whether it would be as painful to watch the Red Sox in the World Series if the FOX Network weren't carrying the games. I've mentioned a time or two that I can't abide Joe Buck and Tim McCarver, nor do I know a single person (and I know some contrarian SOBs) who thinks they add any value to the viewing experience.

Maybe it's me, and if I were a Red Sox fan I'd think differently. Maybe the Red Sox relief pitchers forming some sort of one-third assed percussion ensemble routine as their team rallies is really clever and cute and wonderful. I don't know, but it drives me crazy, and I could do without seeing it. But as bad as that was, the good people at FOX had to go and mic the bullpen, so now one can hear it. It was worse than I imagined it to have been when I could only see it.

Now I'm not particularly musical, and the audio doesn't come in well enough for a person of my tonal sensibilities to tell, but I find myself wondering whether Eric Gagne is off beat when the bullpen does its thing. I think we need some intrepid soul to investigate this phenomenon.

In somewhat related matters, I have, in the few times I've mentioned him in this space, been less than kind to Ken Rosenthal, baseball guru of FOX Sports. Of course if he wrote more pieces like this one, calling to our attention the fact that the leader of the independent commission investigating the abuse of performance enhancing drugs in Major League Baseball is a board member with the Boston Red Sox, I might be inclined to praise him.

First, I don't want to question the legitimacy of the Mitchell Commission. As far as I'm concerned, it's a total fraud, more in the line of an Easter Egg hunt than a witch hunt. Just think for a second how many superstars we firmly believe were using some sort of illicit substance to gain competitive advantage. And has any of the players suspended by the league been a household name? Hell, I bet some of them have close relatives who don't even know they were in the league.

Where an observer like Rosenthal errs is in assuming that because George Mitchell was, many years ago, Majority Leader of the US Senate that he is somehow above the fray and of such eminence that he can clean up the steroid culture instantly. Americans are always of two minds concerning elected officials. When they're in office and responsible for taxes and spending, they can't be trusted, but once they retire for a decade or so, they virtues which no one suspected they have suddenly become apparent.

Of course, we now have the added virtue that Mitchell was a Democrat and thanks to this administration, the Democrats now own integrity and honesty and general, overall moral excellence. Or at least they believe they do, and slightly less than half the nation agrees. That's why Mitchell can be trusted, but no one is mourning the retirement of Bill Frist and there are no ceremonial figurehead posts waiting for Trent Lott. But just wait until the Democrats get the White House and get a chance to create their own controversies, then people will miss Frist and Lott.

Most of the controversy surrounding Mitchell's position came out of the leaked story that Paul Byrd has taken HGH, particularly because of the timing, right before he was to start Game 7 of the ALCS. There are also some coincidences that are difficult to shrug off when one looks at them in this Mitchell mess. Mike Lowell comes to mind.

If you look at his career arc, Mike Lowell's stats dipped significantly from 2004-2005 when the heat was really on baseball. Congress was holding hearings, the media was investigating BALCO and it was the topic of the day. Now that these things have been shunted aside by the NFL and NBA grappling with player conduct issues, the NBA staggering from the Donaghy scandal and the NHL trying to come back from labor nightmares, who remembers that Mike Lowell is back from the statistical dead?

People have made much of the impact Dave Madagan has had on the batting technique of Mike Lowell and how that has turned him around at the plate. I might be overly suspicious by nature, but I'm not sure I buy it. I'm old enough to remember Dave Madagan baseball player, before he became Dave Madagan hitting guru to the mediocre. Madagan wasn't much of a hitter, in fact he was very, very, very, average. Perhaps it's a case of those who can't teach, but I'm not much on old sayings right now.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And like that, the Detroit Pistons are no longer in the hunt for the NBA title. Alas, I am not happy. You may rest assured, however, that it has very little to do with the fact that the Red Sox cam back to beat the Yankees today, thanks to Mike Lowell proing that he is the gutless fraud I always suspected him to be. Imagine if A Rod had maliciously attempted to hurt one Yankee and then succeeded in his second attempt.

Unfortunately, I am not pleased to see Cleveland advance. I want LeBron to win a title. I really do. But I don't want to see the NBA turn a blind eye to Manu Ginobli and Tony Parker running at LeBron to augment Bruce Bowen's "defense." The three of them will hack, flop, whine and coward their way to another ring that would be LeBron's if the NBA allowed basketball to be played by the rules.

The only reason the Spurs deserve to win is that Popovich has a defined rotation and a logical system to govern the way that rotation is rotated. That is not the case in Cleveland. For instance, tell me why Damon Jones has played the number of minutes he has played in the situations he has played them in this series. I am not saying he should have played more or fewer minutes. I just don't understand why he has played the minutes he has played; it never seemed to fit.

Why, then, is there even a series to be played? Why waste a young, healthy, impressive star like LeBron when the NBA has not had the guts to stop a machine that churns out bad basketball? Maybe it might sell internationally, but this brand of basketball annoys American audiences. We want to see teams run the floor. We don't want to see stagnant, let the superstar do it half court sets. But we don't want to see flopping, gutless whiners. So thanks for playing Dallas and San Antonio. Dave Cowens and JoJo White want you to man up before you step on the court again.

But I am scandalized and offended that Bill Russell was on hand to present the Eastern Conference trophy. Not so much because he did it, since this is a free country he can do what he wants. But he and LeBron were the only two people who had any business on the basketball court. Plus he's Bill Russell. The NBA should pay him money to be in Boston to remind Ainge and Banner 17 of the enormity of their crime.

I am also scandalized and offended that the Cavaliers put on such a display to celebrate a conference championship. There are still games to be played. You have to go to war with San Antonio. It isn't time to celebrate yet. No one should be allowed to celebrate a damn thing until the last basketball game has been played. Maybe I'm just old fashioned that way. But I must sign off, since I am running a 5K in West Roxbury tomorrow and I have to go to bed.