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.

MAX MERCY HALL OF FAME #5

I didn't want to do this, but I feel I owe it to intellectual honesty. Jason Whitlock has to be inducted to the Max Mercy Hall of Fame. It's difficult for me because I really like his writing in general. I was glad to link his piece ripping the Mavericks and Dirk Nowitzki for all the whining they did following their collapse against the Heat two NBA Finals ago. But no one can write a sentence like this: "No one in America writes more provocatively and intelligently about football than yours truly."

If George Orwell (who wrote more provocatively and intelligently than any other writer about everything) had written about sports, he couldn't make that statement and look himself in the mirror. If Chinua Achebe (not dead, but my favorite living black author) wrote about sports, he couldn't make that statement. If Dr. Martin Luther King had written about sports, he couldn't make that statement. If Frederick Douglas had written about sports, he couldn't make that statement. No one who writes about sports can make that statement.

Hell, no one who writes about anything can make that statement. No one with any sense of propriety or intellectual moral rectitude can say that they write anything about anything more provocatively and intelligently than every other writer in America. How big does your ego have to be to make a statement like that?

This is obviously a delicate area for me, not so much because Jason Whitlock is the first African American writer to receive this dubious honor, but because I am calling a writer's ego into question when humility is not one of my virtues and when I have devoted a shocking amount of space in a blog primarily about the Boston sports landscape to defending Terrell Owens who has quite an ego of his own.

I think the difference between TO's man crush on himself and Jason Whitlock's boasting is that TO has to step out on a field and prove his worth against 11 guys on the opposing team who want to rough him up every time he touches the football. Jason Whitlock has to type up a column, get it past an editor and hope emotionally stunted people with social problems stumble across it on the Fox Sports website. There are objective criteria against which TO's performance can be measured to see if he is earning the right to his arrogance. That isn't exactly the case for Jason Whitlock.

The sad thing is, if you took the time to comb through all 194 posts on this blog, I'm sure you'll find instances where I did basically the same thing. Particularly if I'm whining about the CHB or Mariotti being paid handsomely to write garbage whilst I labor in obscurity. Of course, my standard defense is that I abhor all forms of hypocrisy but my own. Even more depressing, I published my 100th post in early March of this year. So in those 5 months and 10 or so days, I've published 94 times. I really need to get a life.

I don't know if you happened to catch any of the Tigers Yankees game this afternoon. I was grievously offended that MLB allowed Clemens to return from suspension and overshadow Curt Schilling's quest to win for the first time since coming off the DL on August 6th. And as for that nifty little play where Clemens struck out the batter at the plate and then Posada deked the runner on third into the third out, that was but a silly little farce. Varitek and any of the Red Sox pitchers could do that at will if they weren't about such tactics which pervert the spirit of the game, or if they had the brains to think of something like that.

Ladies and Gentlemen, this was a very good weekend. With a family wedding, bachelor party and a golf match I haven't spent much time sober over the last several day, hence the lack of posts. God knows, the times I have posted while intoxicated haven't worked out for me. I'm rambling, incoherent and hostile and it kills my traffic.

But I predicted that the Red Sox would have a lot of trouble handling the Detroit Tigers should they meet in the postseason. I believe that the Tigers have better pitching and a deeper offense. And there's always Gary Sheffield who seems to take a personal interest in seeing the Red Sox suffer. It was nice to see them sweep the
BoSox this weekend, or at least to know that they swept the Sox since I missed the games Saturday and Sunday.

I think this picture of our dear friend Jonathan Papelbon proving himself a better match for an inanimate object like the water cooler than he was for the Tigers lineup sums up the weekend.

It will probably sum up the season for the Red Sox when it all ends in tears (to paraphrase Marvin the Paranoid Android from Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy). The Red Sox are great bullies, they can front run with the best of them, but they have problems when a team isn't intimidated by Tito's tools.

But the wedding was far more interesting than any mere baseball game. I got smashed beyond all possible recognition. The wedding reception was held at the bride's house, which was surprisingly less disastrous for the most part. Right up until the shots of Irish Mist, Bailey's and Bushmills got together and took me down, I was doing fine. Of course when they did get together, I ended up chasing the bride's young cousin who took my suit coat and shook me down for $10 to get it back.

I didn't want to pay him, so I tried to chase after him to get it back. Unfortunately, I managed to blow through the screen door on the bride's deck. I broke through it as though I were the Kool Aid Man crashing through the wall. Unfortunately, I did not have the presence of mind to shout "Oh Yeah" as I blew through the door. I was also informed that I managed to insult two or three of the bride's cousins.

Even better, the two people who ended up stuck driving me home were reluctant to do so because they were afraid that I was going to vomit in their car. I answered them as I staggered and swayed as though I were out with George Clooney and Mark Wahlberg when the three weather systems collided to form the perfect storm that I had eaten a full pizza and a plate of chicken which the bride's sister cut up for me as though I were a small child. My rationale was that I had at least 35-45 minutes before I'd throw up and it was only a ten minute ride. For the record, I never threw up. I held my liquor, I might not have handled it well but I held it.

Of course I didn't know this until this morning when a few of the other wedding guests told me what I had done and said as they laughed at me. I had the feeling I did something colossally dumb because I had to drive over to the bride's house to pick up somethings I'd left behind. As I turned down the street to get to the house, I had that creepy, horror movie type feeling that I was walking into the scene of a crime.

Then when I got there, the maid of honor (who turned out to be the one who cut the chicken for me) informed me that I owed them a new screen. Thankfully, the bride's cousin, the diary farmer from Ireland managed to repair the screen. And when I ran into the bride's cousins whom I insulted, they accepted my apology and said it wasn't a big deal. It could have been much worse. I expected when I woke up and realized that there were large chunks of the late hours which I couldn't account for, I fully expected someone to throw a beating on me because I am, as my mother says, an obnoxious drunk. So this was a good weekend in Cincinnati Kid Land.

I know it's been a while since I last updated this blog. I've been more than a little depressed by this World Series. The Cardinals winning is not good for any one. I think we can all agree that no one in St. Louis really deserves to be happy. When your chief landmark is a big freestanding arch with no particular significance (I know the arch represents the gateway to the West, but it's still pathetic), you live in a loser town. No way around it. Given the choice between living in Missouri and death, I'm taking death.

A lot of people wonder why the World Series ratings are so low. Part of it may be the fact that the Tigers and the Cardinals did not get the national TV exposure during the season that the New York teams received. Part of it may be the fact that the Cardinals were dreadful this season. They finished two games over .500, and they went on an amazingly boring run in the playoffs. Part of it might be that baseball is no longer America's pastime. The NFL is the big sport now.

One thing that has not received enough attention is the network itself. FOX does an atrocious job of packaging and presenting baseball as a television sport. It is difficult to make baseball work as a TV sport, there is a lot of dead time in a baseball game. Do we really need to see managers spit and scratch themselves while the pitcher and catcher sort out the sign, the hitter steps in and out of the batter's box and boring announcers try to be amusing and fail miserably? But that is what we get. There are those who maintain that the beauty of baseball is that there is no clock. I disagree. With a clock there might be more consistent urgency, more motion and more action. Is that a bad thing?

Joe Buck and Tim McCarver have no business broadcasting games, together or separately. Think about it. Ask your friends (provided, of course, that you have any). Find some one who is willing to admit that they like these guys calling games. Is there one person in America not related to Buck or McCarver that looks forward to their brand of broadcasting? They have no charisma, they are boring, predictable and dragging the games down. The network attempted to bring some life to the booth for the championship series by including Luis Gonzales. That was a colossal failure.

Then there is Scooter, the annoying (to say the least) animated baseball endeavoring to explain the various pitches to the casual fan. Will any of us who saw it ever recover from Jeff Suppan's ill fated appearance with Scooter, rebroadcast during Game 3? I think not. I know he was trying to be funny, but I can't forgive him for failing so drastically. And if my name were Suppan, and you called me Soup, there would be both consequences and repercussions.

Baseball is really dying before our eyes. Yeah, they set an attendance record this season. That's nice, but when your marquee event's TV ratings decline year after year you have a serious problem. Crowning 7 different champions in 7 years may point to parity and competitive balance, but have teams leveled up or leveled down? I think baseball has leveled down. There are no great teams, and very few great players. There are even fewer compelling stories. When we look back on this postseason, will we remember it for having one of the weaker champions of all time, or for it bringing the demise of Steve "Psycho" Lyons?

As I type this, FOX put a fitting signature on this evening's broadcast. Joe Buck finally revealed the ultimate mystery of baseball. His final thought: "There can be only one champion." No way! Really? I was under the impression that there could be 13 or 14 or an infinite number of champions. And as the credits roll, what does FOX play? A cover of U2's One. And a very bad one at that. Apparently they couldn't get the Kenny G cover of Juicy by the Notorious BIG (I am aware that was also a cover).

This World Series was terrible because the media built up the Tigers until we were sick to death of them. And then the Tigers, whether because of the layoff, the team buying into the media coverage and letting down or a combination thereof, bombed and bombed badly. Now we have the Cardinals as a reigning World Series champion, and who cares? No one likes the Cardinals because they are eminently dislikeable.

Maybe Albert Pujols is the best hitter in the world, but he has no personality. He's not marketable the way Jeter or Ortiz or even Manny can be marketed to the masses. He has all the charisma of the Frankenstein monster in the original cinematic version. Then there is Jim Edmonds, the least likeable centerfielder since Ty Cobb. Duncan, Taguchi, Belliard, Molina, Rolen, Spezio. Those names don't exactly leap off the page, do they? Even with that stupid red beard on Spezio.

David Eckstein, the All American boy (Jim Leyland's words, not mine)? More like that hall monitor that always ratted you out for breaking whichever of the insipid rules elementary schools use to thwart the creativity of the individual (I was less than a model student as a youngster), without, of course, the bear mace and religious fervor that made Cartman such a success in a recent South Park. And if proud NH product (as though that weren't a massive contradiction) Chris Carpenter ever despairs of living free, I won't miss him should he try the other half of New Hampshire's glorious motto.

If you can't tell by now, I wanted to see the Tigers win. Alas, Placido Polanco didn't want to hit. The Tigers pitchers didn't want to field their positions correctly. And Curtis Granderson wanted to play centerfield like a drunken sailor in Game 3. There is more blame to go around, as is always the case with a catastrophe of this magnitude, but there isn't enough time to get into it now. I'll just have to deal with my disappointment.

Before I sign off, I think this point must be addressed. Jim Rome, among others, has discovered a disturbing trend in America today. Shawne Merriman tested positive for steroids, and it isn't as big a deal as the baseball steroid witch hunt. This double standard exists for two reasons. First, we expect more violence from our football players so we are willing to look the other way when they enhance their natural gifts with banned substances. We also focus so much of our energy on our fantasy teams and football gambling that we look the other way in these cases.

There is another way to look at it. Perhaps we reacted to the Merriman suspension the way we did because the NFL has a history of suspending players for steroid use that goes back more than two decades, and not until Congress wasted time and millions of dollars in a farce two years ago. I'm sure I'm wrong though, because my way of thinking would require Jim Rome and his followers to step down from the soap box and spare us the anger of the righteous. I don't think any of us want to live in world like that.

If I were the type of blogger in the habit of giving titles to posts, I guess I might call this one Damn Yankees. The Yankees fans might be consoling themselves with the dulcet tones of Crowded House in their hit "Don't Dream It's Over." I wanted the Yanks to win, not as a Yankee fan, but as a Red Sox hater. But I like Jim Leyland as a manager. I think he radiates an old school, more competent, less snakebitten Pop Fisher (the manager from the Natural) vibe. I've never been able to summon up any negative feeling against the Tigers, which is strange for me since I hate so many things with so few reasons.

The Yankees assembled one of the great paper champions of all time this season. But like another team I hoped would best a squad from Michigan this fall, they were ready for every eventuality but one. In case you're wondering or you don't read my blog regularly, I'm referring to the Notre Dame loss to Michigan. I still don't know whether the Irish are better than the Wolverines, I believe it but I'm biased. The Yankees seemed to deflate when Detroit battled back to win game 2.

It's just me talking, but I got the sense that the Bronx Bombers expected Damon's 3 run shot to put the kibosh on the Tigers. The whole team seemed to be looking around for some other one of the All Stars to step up and get the big hits. Unfortunately, no one stepped up against Bonderman or Kenny Rogers. I don't want to diminish the excellent pitching performances both gentlemen submitted. But the Yankees of 6,7 years ago with a lesser galaxy of stars made a living out of surviving against excellent pitching performances.

This Yankee team just seemed like it lacked guts in huge moments. The Tigers seemed more like the Yankees of old than this edition of Yankees did in this series, and it decided the series. Read this article from the Tigers website. It tells me that it's go time for Oakland, and in the immortal words of Marvin the Paranoid Android from The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy: "This will all end in tears" if your Billy Beane. Or at least another Bonderman inspired tantrum where he throws a chair into the wall.

Alex Rodriguez has to go. He's a great talent, I can't deny it. He says he wants to be part of the solution in NY, but I just don't think he can do it. The big stage and the pressure seem to eat him alive. It might be self-inflicted, he might take the pressure the media and the fans and his teammates put on him and internalize too much of it. But he has an absolute knack for saying the wrong thing at the wrong moment. First there was his infamous war of words with Trot Nixon a couple of years ago. In the recent Sports Illustrated piece, he complained that people didn't like him because he was biracial and good looking. That seems odd to me, what with the fact that the average Yankee fan would take a bullet for Derek Jeter, who is both good looking and biracial.

I looked at his Wikipedia page, and you who read this tell me that a Red Sox fan wasn't at this. I didn't know that ARod was openly gay. I didn't know he was gay at all. Somehow, with the amount of ESPN I watch and the sports articles I read, I think I would have heard that one of the most famous players in the game swas gay. Not that I care, because it's not my business, but it presents a chance to try Red Sox Nation. Are you really so petty, and pathetic that you need to call a high profile Yankee a homosexual to feel better about yourselves? Even homophobes should be horrified by this trend.

Some other team will take him if the Yankees pay a big percentage of his salary, and he'll fill seats for them. Any other team will be glad to make the postseason, and he just might make a difference (think Magglio Ordonez, but much more talented). In New York, a Yankees championship is not the amazing event that it is elsewhere. Even winning the World Series there has a "Nice work, you did what you were supposed to do, now shut up" feel to it. Outside of the New York pressure cooker, his errors will likely drop and his offensive numbers will probably go up.

The Yankees can afford to pay him to play somewhere else. They might be better off as an organization, as strange as it seems, to pay him to play for another team. He won't be a focal point, no more pressure, no more controversy. The Yankees will have a hole in the lineup, and they'll need to find a third baseman. Aaron Boone is available, since the Indians declined his option. He'll be a cheaper alternative, with less power, but the power numbers weren't there for any Yankee in this series. It's time for the team and the player to go in a different direction, and Red Sox fans surely share my fond memories of Aaron Boone's home run to end the 2003 ALCS.
Gary Sheffield will likely be gone from the Bronx next season too. His option is too expensive for the production one can expect from him. I'll miss him. His massive swing and his if looks could kill expression were pretty cool. I remember Bill Simmons saying that Sheff looked like the last guy you see when you get too deep in the hole with your bookie (I'd link the specific article if the ESPN archive fee weren't too steep for the limited budget of this blog). He didn't look good at first base today, and is he a better option in right field than Abreu (who is most definitely under contract for next season)? Big Stein spent a boatload on the two, but he can afford to cut his losses. And as the Walrus said, the time has come to talk of other things...

I think it was unfair to talk about this Yankee team as the best offense ever assembled. Obviously they weren't, when you look at the fact that Giambi, ARod and Sheff managed three hits among them in the ALDS against the Tigers. There are, or were, two factors oft overlooked in the rush to overhype and overanalyze this Yankee team.

First, it is insane to compare any team from this era to the Murders Row Yankees of the late 1920s and early 30s. In case you may have forgotten, let me remind you that in the dark ages, pitchers hit every day. There was no DH until the 1970s. So there was a weak link in the lineup every day for those Yankee teams.

Most people who know that Curt Schilling and Josh Beckett would have submitted the two most dominating pitching performances that the human mind can conceive understand that I am fabricating the second factor from thin air. Unfortunately for Red Sox fans, they spend too much time looking at the world through rose colored glasses or perhaps the bottoms of empty glasses. But the second reason I think it is pointless to compare the current MLB players to their far distant antecedents is this: they lowered the pitcher's mound after Bob Gibson (who disappointed me by not throwing a hellacious beating on scribes who compared him to Pedro Martinez in the mid to late 90s) ruinated the MLB hitters in the 1968 campaign.

I haven't even mentioned the other peripheral issues one ought consider in such a comparison. Advances in nutrition and exercise regimens altered the physical dimension of even the average American, so what has it done for pro baseball players? And then there are the ball parks. Back in the day, what is now Monument Park in Yankee Stadium was in play. The centerfield wall was 450 feet away. I'm surprised no one else mentioned anything like that on ESPN. That has to be like 12, 13 minutes of talk on Baseball Tonight. Perhaps it's too intricate for the average fan.

I think the Tigers will win it all. Right now, they have a serious team of destiny vibe. Kind of like the Red Sox had the vibe that they were destined to be swept by the Yankees in a pivotal five game series. Heads had to roll for this season, and they did. The path is now paved for a title run next season. Ron Jackson and Dave Wallace will not be joining us for the rest of their lives (to borrow a phrase from my favorite movie villain, Hans from Die Hard).

It seems like only yesterday that Ron Jackson was the genius who undid the singles hitter mantra the Twins tried to instill in David Ortiz and turned him into one of the most feared power threats in baseball. We live in a what have you done for me lately world, and apparently when they reckoned the account on Ron Jackson, the answer was not enough. Francona (or Francoma, as the Red Sox fan who told me he'd be happy with a 12-7 split in the season series with the Yankees calls him) is still in place for the time being, but like Nebuchadnezzar's kid, the writing is on the wall. I'm thinking of betting that he'll be looking for a job come next November. I take no joy in it, I merely use it as one more avenue to pour salt into the wounds of Red Sox Nation.

This offseason will be an interesting one. Will the Red Sox spend to compete with the Yankees? Or will they weasel out and rely on the dwindling reservoir of goodwill from the travesty of 2004? At some point, Red Sox fans might cowboy up and kick back against a team with the highest ticket prices in baseball, a penchant for charging nitwits $12 to tour an empty stadium and $9.95 for citizenship in Red Sox Nation, a skewed concession economy that leaves fan with a colossal thirst paying over and above the cost of a 30 banger in a packie for a round of watered-down Bud/Bud Light and an front office devoted to misinformation (OK, so I made that last one up, can you find it in your heart to forgive me?). Third place in the AL East sticks going down, even if they did win the title two years ago, and fickle friends in New England won't take it again.

Remember, you heard it here first. The Yankees will win it all next season if they sign Roger Clemens. I dreamed it two weeks ago, now we'll see if it becomes reality. I believe in mysticism and dreams and that irrational stuff. It's fine with me if you don't, but that's how I roll. I feel so strongly about it that I'm willing to be that guy and provide a link to my own post where I initially mentioned the dream. I hate the self reference, but just so you know that the Yanks were still alive when I dreamed it.

Notre Dame did what we expected them to do today. They beat Stanford, and I actually felt badly about it. I hate Stanford, I root against them all the time in every sport, but they looked like a high school team out there this afternoon. It was like me arm wrestling my four year old niece. Dallas plays Philly tomorrow. I'd be rooting for them anyway, but I have TO, Bledsoe and Jason Witten in fantasy. Poor drafting, I know, but I was drunk.

What did we learn from the rest of the college football games this week? Michigan beat Michigan State pretty badly. Last week Illinois upset Michigan State in East Lansing. Today Illinois lost a shootout at home to Indiana. The Fighting Irish needed a miracle comeback to beat the Spartans. So Notre Dame might get through the remainder of their schedule unscathed and face USC with a 10-1 record, but then again they might be in the weeds if Illinois or Indiana decided to pull a fast one and ambush them WWE style.

While it might be intriguing to see a team that had game planned for one opponent suddenly be surprised by another team jumping into the stadium without warning, that's simply not football. And I doubt the NCAA would approve. It might happen one day, with the degeneration of sports fandom. Hopefully, I won't live to see it. I think Michigan still isn't quite as good as they were on that day in South Bend, and Notre Dame wasn't that bad. But the long and short of it is, Michigan has national title hopes, and they killed Notre Dame's chances of competing for that stupid crystal football.

The first day of the Divisional Round is now behind us. And it was a good day. Of course any day that teams are playing playoff baseball, and the Red Sox aren't one of them, is a good day in my world. Not quite good enough that it gets me referring to myself in the third person, but close.

I'm not sure who I want to win at this point. Obviously, it will depress the Red Sox organization and their fans if the Yankees win. That should make me happy because I am a sad, small person in many ways. But I admit that about myself, which makes me a better person. So it all evens out in the end.

I do know one thing. I don't want any of the National League teams to win. I hate the Cardinals. For several reasons. First, they lost the 2004 World Series to the hated Red Sox in depressingly short order. Secondly, they are owned by Anheuser Busch, and I am a High Life drinker (although in the interest of honesty, I must confess that I will drink Bud Light if I'm not buying it and I do like Bud Select). I think my anti-Bud stance can, in small part, be traced to the movie Rooster Cogburn and the Lady (the not entirely disappointing sequel to one of my all time favorites, True Grit), and the sentiment that Rooster Cogburn and his alcoholic cat did not like St. Louis beer.

I don't really care about the Padres, even though they have former Red Sox like Todd Walker, Mark Belhorn and Josh Bard (even though he was on the Sox for about 3 weeks). I have to root against the Dodgers and Grady Little. I don't know what would have to happen for me to root for a team with Nomar on it. I still hate him just as much now as I did when he played for the Sox. I hate the Mets too.

In the AL, I wouldn't mind seeing either the Yankees or the Tigers emerge. I hate the Twins (and all Minnesota teams) because I hate the Vikings. I guess it's like a transitive property of petty hatred. Unless of course my math analogy is incorrect, then it's some other property of hatred, still petty, though. I also hate the As. I think there ought to be a moratorium on declaring a baseball GM a genius until he's won a World Series. In the end of the day in the harsh world of professional sports, the runner up is just the king of the losers. Only this and nothing more. So I guess the guy who can't get out of the first round is like the jack of the losers.

So I guess those of us who wish minor misfortune on Red Sox Nation must back the Yankees. After all, the new commercial for playoff baseball with Tommy Lasorda coaxing a reluctant Red Sox fan from her room to root against the Yankees should provide ample motivation. I imagine it it could be worse. At least it's one more spot where a network isn't showing the "Go, boy, go" Dockers ad and Peyton Manning isn't in it. I guess I should be more grateful for small favors.
PS - To those few of you who read this, I offer the following disclaimer. If you're under 21 and you decide to drink because of this post, it's not my fault. You're a moron. If you're under 21, 21 or over 21 and you undertake to get a cat drunk because of this post, it's also not my fault. You're an even bigger moron. At some point, you have to be responsible for your own decisions.

Before I begin, I think I have to clear up a matter that confused at least one of the people who reads this blog regularly. He wondered whether I intended to demean Bill Russell and KC Jones when I said that Prince and Ben Wallace are their evolutionary versions. If I did demean the two Celtics' legends, I apologize. I intended to criticize the way the NBA allows its players to play, at times, a full contact brand of a non-contact sport.

A certain amount of phyiscal contact is inevitable on a basketball court. Every play shouldn't be whistled, but the level of physicality should be controlled a bit more than it is. The thing that bothers me the most is the late whistle. A play is either a foul or it isn't. It doesn't suddenly become a foul merely because the shot in question didn't fall.

Another practice that ought to be regulated is the nasty habit certain players have (among many, I have noticed Kobe, King James, Rip Hamilton and even my man Toine doing this) of picking up the basketball and carrying tucked in their elbow like they were Jerome Bettis plowing for the goal line. I'm pretty sure that is illegal. There probably should be a better definition of what is and isn't continuation. In game 5, I swear Prince was fouled at least two steps and one dribble before he dunked. And yet it was still ruled a 3 point play situation.

To make a long and meandering story short, basketball has indeed come a long way since the rugby scrums of the 1990s, but a few minor practices must be curtailed in the interest of playing a better team game. That's why Prince and Wallace are the evolutionary KC and Russell. If the Celtics dynasty teams could get away with what NBA players get away with now, they might have let up 25 points a game and scored in the 130s.

On to the stated purpose of this site...

The Red Sox took 2 of 3 from the Tigers, so it's fairly safe to assume that they'll be celebrating their 2nd championship in 3 years this fall. The Tigers do have the best record in MLB right now (4 months before the season ends, let's not forget). And they beat that kid Spurling, whose name I only remember because it called to mind that bald tool who was not only the president of the Hair Club for Men, but also a client.

They did win game one thanks to the late night heroics of the man with the worst soul patch since that theoretical tool with the soul patch of many colors who appreciates art from a recent post. But there are some alarming signs, Kenny Rogers handled the mighty Sox pretty well, until Doug Jones got into the charity business in the 9th. Imagine if the Sox had faced Maroth or someone not making his first career start today. SO don't get too optimistic Sox fans.

Also, since the Last Boy Scout is on TNT and I must go watch it because I have no life, there are three things that will be discussed in this space in the ensuing weeks. First is the fact that you have to pay for the privelige of official citizenship in Red Sox Nation. Second is the mystery of the hairlines of the NESN broadcast crew. And as for the third, well I guess I won't ruin the surprise...