He says he feels better. He says he's actually felt pretty good for a couple of weeks now. But David Ortiz must feel great today, after his season-long slump ended with a Monster shot grand slam off the hapless Rangers to spark a 11-3 whupping. It was such a rebirth for Papi that his teammates gave him the "silent treatment" in the dugout usually reserved for rookies hitting their first homer.

Other offensive highlights: a Pedroia home run; an RBI triple from Ellsbury; 2-for-4 from young Jed Lowrie. The offensive outburst kind of masks the fact that Daisuke Matsuzaka again wasn't very sharp; he lasted just barely long enough to earn the win, even though he threw 101 pitches. "I feel bad that I've been a drag on the team," said Dice. Cue the Buckinghams. Lopez, Aardsma, and Timlin finished it off; Timlin even got his ERA below 20.

The Bruins hope that their third period flurry in Game Five keeps going, and that young Canadiens goaltender Carey Price will be shellshocked by the barrage, and choke tonight in for Montreal. "It might [motivate] guys to shoot a little more, too, and try to get a little more pucks on the net, especially early on," Marc Savard told the Herald, an attitude we applaud, but wonder what the hell the strategy's been up to this point.

The Devils were the second team sent home from the NHL playoffs; the Rangers punched their ticket last night, 5-3.

Finally, two sad stories out of the NBA. The owners voted 28-2 to murder basketball in Seattle and allow the Sonics to move to Oklahoma. Only Paul Allen of Portland (who likes the NW rivalry) and Mark Cuban of Dallas (who's just a generally cool guy, if insane) voted against it. There's still some legal messes to clear up, but David Stern wants to screw over Seattle fans for their government not paying $45 trillion to replace a 10-year old arena, so that's that.

Also, we mourn the inevitable firing of Isiah Thomas. Sure, he's been a trainwreck everywhere he's gone since retiring as a player, and sure, we can appreciate the plight of hardcore fans of an NBA cornerstone franchise watching their team swirl around the bowl for years, but as division rivals of the Knicks, we were kinda hoping Isiah would get an extension.

Photo by cardamom, from photos tagged "bostonist" in Flickr.