Sports Redux: It's Frettin' Time

Sometimes, there's a fair-to-lousy team that just has a good team's number. It happens. The Celtics saw it with the Wizards and Hawks last year. Even in the days of the lowly Devil Rays, they still rose up and beat the Sox and Yankees more than their share. So it's not usually the end of the world.

But now a bunch of lousy teams have had the Celtics' number in the last couple of weeks, and we're troubled. The defending champs flew out to the West Coast kings of the world, and come to the Garden tonight with NBA munchkins like Golden State, New York, and now Charlotte dancing around their felled body. The C's were again, alarmingly, out-hustled, out-worked, and out-defended by the Bobcats in overtime last night. Worse, the Celtics seemed flustered again, playing way too physical and chippy a game for a team that you wouldn't think even belonged on the same court.

"It'll be 82 Game 7's - every time we play, it's a Game 7 for the other team. On the nights we're not great mentally, we're going to have to get lucky or play way over our heads to win," said a glum Doc Rivers after the game. The good news for the C's is that the recent troubles have all happened on the road, and they're back home tonight to meet the Rockets.

But don't rely too much on hometown advantage. Just ask the Bruins. They now have a titanic (well, for them) 2-game losing streak, after being shut out for the first time all year, by Minnesota. Manny Fernandez got his first loss at the Garden, but when it's 1-0, you can't really blame the goaltending. Blame instead the Wild's choking defense, which limited the B's to 15 shots in the first two periods and basically bored the crowd out of the game.

Mark Teixiera gave his "this is where I always wanted to be" press conference with the Yankees yesterday, then let it slip that his wife told him to go there. So if you have tickets at Fenway this year and leather lungs, you may want to inform Tex that his wife wants him to hit into a 6-4-3.