Sports Redux: Coming Down the Mountain

The boys are back in town, the taco meat has been brought up from the cellar, and all of New England's non-essential personnel are taking the afternoon off for a parade. (Dude...Tuesday afternoon? Really?!)

The good news, for some people, is that Jonathan Papelbon's dance of spontaneous excitement and youthful exuberance has now been added to the Official Canon of Sox-Nation-Approved Quirks. The Duck Boats will slow down at predesignated locations so that Papelbon can dance. Does that seem a little weird to anyone else, too, or is it just us?

But today isn't a day to grump, and it's also not a day to worry and fret about whether Mike Lowell, Mike Timlin or Curt Schilling will ever be seen 'round these parts again, or whether Alex Rodriguez will. It's a day when the Red Sox are World Series champs, the Patriots are 8-0 and feeling good about smacking down their nemeses this weekend, and the Celtics are three days away from starting their return to glory. It's a day when Patrice Bergeron is home from the hospital, when BC is #2 in the country, and when the Revolution are in the playoffs. It's a day when people in New York are bitching and moaning because it's been seven long, lonely years since they've won anything.

It's a day to observe that David Ortiz has eight more fingers on those championship hands of his. That will fit eight more rings, by our calculations.

AP photo by Stephen Senne. Keep flashing those fingers, Papi.