It's hard to work up a frenzy against the Cleveland Indians. They seem like a bunch of polite, plucky kids who we'd be pulling for in almost any other circumstance. Gone are the enemies of the mid-to-late-90's: villains like Roberto Alomar and Manny Ramirez. Gone are the mockable stars of that magical 1988 team: colorful characters like ex-con Rick Vaughan and voodoo worshipper Pedro Cerrano. Trot Nixon, who you may remember as one of the......

Anyone who questions that old phrase "idle hands are the devil's tools" ought to take a look at what happens in sports cities when the games are in desperately short supply. When no one's playing, people get ansty. They start speculating. Guessing. Predicting. Complaining - and no good can come of that. We need sports action, people! Thank goodness the Bruins are set to answer the call tonight, when they face off on the ice......

In the bid to make 2007 the first season when all four LDS's were sweeps, the National League took care of business yesterday. The Rockies bid adieu to Philly, while the Diamondbacks went to Wrigley and broke Cub fans' hearts for the 99th straight season. Which, if you're a Red Sox fan, at least means that when we win the World Series, at least we won't do it on the back of long-suffering Philly or......

It looks like just might be a higher power looking down on the MLB postseason. He/She/It is a Red Sox fan and, judging from the sight of Derek Jeter slapping like mad at the bugs descending upon him at the Jake on Friday night, any higher powers out there have a wicked sense of humor. On a Friday night that gave us fire (well, on the T here in Boston), locusts cleverly passed off as......

OK, we're as excited as anyone about the first game of the Boston-Anaheim ALDS. We'll get to that in a second. But let's begin by trying to imagine how thick the tension must have been within a conference room in the catacombs of Fenway Park recently, when Theo Epstein allowed Dan Shaughnessy to sit down and talk baseball. Seriously! After the columns and the gorilla suit, the jabs and the barbs, this was a matchup......

It was a virtual tie trying to pick which movie we were going to use today to compare the Red Sox to. All About Eve, with its famous line, "Fasten your seatbelts; it's going to be a bumpy night", got the nod over Deep Impact, which we considered because of all those scenes where President Morgan Freeman has to address the nation and tell everyone that the nukes and the missiles have failed, and the......

Eric Gagne, the reliever recently acquired by the Red Sox, hasn't exactly been burning up the field. Fans have been grunting and growling, and one fan in particular communicated his frustration Friday night by throwing a water bottle at the pitcher when Gagne muffed while playing the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim. The fan probably made a better pitch than Gagne has been delivering, but the BPD wasn't impressed. The Red Sox Nation can......

There are days when the Red Sox remind us of the Justice League of America - that inspired creation of D.C. Comics where a number of their best superheroes ally to use their unique talents, banding together to fight evil. Sunday was one of those days. Not that the Angels are evil, per se, but they clearly represented a menace to all that is good and just, or at least to the Red Sox' division-title......

Boy, this one had "thrilling comeback" written all over it, didn't it? After the Red Sox pulled Tuesday night's game out of the grave, they spotted Tampa Bay a 6-0 lead yesterday afternoon. (Oh, inconsistent, Daisuke...what's to be done with you?) The Sox then started chipping away as they've done so many times. Jason Varitek's 2-run homer in the seventh chased starter Andy Sonnanstine to the clubhouse, then Crisp walked and Lugo followed with an......

The stage was set perfectly. Curt Schilling was making his comeback, adding the final link to the Sox' solid rotation. He pitched very well, had good stamina, gave fans confidence...but didn't win the game. Oops. Schill went six-plus, and kept the Anaheim bats in check for the most part. Casey Kotchman singled in two runs in the fourth, which could have been avoided if Curt had been quicker on the draw to cover a double-play......

Sometimes, we in Boston take our Sox for granted forget how good we've got it. That's why every so often, the Bostonist Sports Department likes to hit the road and investigate the conditions at other ballparks around the land. So we found ourselves in Pittsburgh this weekend, watching the woeful Pirates play the hapless Reds at the sublime PNC Park. We forget just how lucky we are, when we hear mutterings from a Pittsburgh......

We have a confession to make: we didn't pay a lot of attention to last night's Home Run Derby. Our tolerance for Chris Berman yelling "back back back" is low. Our desire to see kayakers crashing into each other in San Francisco Bay was present, but not overwhelming. And without Papi, what's the point? So congratulations to Anaheim's Vlad Guerrero, who won the Derby, despite the fact that no home runs landed in the huge......

When you're a kid, one of the fringe benefits to playing Little League or soccer is that you often got to stop at McDonald's on the way home. Win or lose. We're not sure if Major League teams have a similar policy, but if the Red Sox team bus stopped at a Mickey's outside of Detroit, no one on the team would be allowed to supersize today, after a miserable weekend getting swept by the......

In the winter of 1846-47, a party of 33 settlers, led by brothers Jacob and George Donner, ran into a snowstorm in the Sierra Mountains. After a few months of ox-slaughtering and shivering, fifteen of them set off to find some help. They, of course, famously got caught in a blizzard and had to resort to cannibalism to stay alive. This historical tidbit is meant merely to provide perspective, and reflect that this week's Sox......

Trot Nixon's homecoming game at Fenway was one to remember. Not so much for Trot (1-for-3), but for the fact that this game had a little bit of everything. An inside-the-park home run for Kevin Youkilis (shhh...20 game hitting streak...shhh). A conventional home run for Manny, tying him with former teammate Jim Thome for 25th place all time. A controversial third-strike call in the ninth that brought both managers out for some earnest discussions with......

We've now entered the portion of the 2007 Red Sox season where, frankly, it's not that big a deal if the starters struggle. How long this portion will last, we don't know, but we saw the Sox' offense rescue a queasy Daisuke on Friday, and they bailed out a shaky Wakefield Saturday to club the Rangers 7-4. Wake struggled in the fifth, giving up a two-run double to Gerald Laird as the lowlight of a......

We know you're Red Sox fans. We know that, much like every home is supposed to have emergency supplies (flashlight, bottled water, etc.) close at hand at all times, every good Red Sox fan should know where the panic button is. Just in case. Don't press them yet; just make sure everyone in the family knows how to get at it if the worst should happen. Yes, it's only one game. And yes, it's only......

The happiest Red Sox fans around have to be the ones who stopped watching baseball around 7:30 last night. They would have seen Game 1 of the doubleheader, a 13-3 Sox rout/Home Run Derby. They would have seen the Yankees' nightmarish loss to the Mets. But most importantly, they would have been spared Game 2, in which Atlanta demolished the Sox 14-0. A wild day all around. Game One was a laugher thanks in part......

Any time you can sweep a doubleheader against the defending AL Champs and the second-best team in the league, you have to view that as a pretty good sign. So plenty of smiles all around at Fenway yesterday. The first game was all about the pitching; Julian Tavarez went seven innings, giving up one run on four hits, and then Okajima and Papelbon sealed the deal, vaporizing the Tigers for an inning apiece as the......

On a day when Daisuke looked mortal, and the bullpen was in a state of flux, the Red Sox turned to Manny Ramirez to get them out of trouble. And so he did, hitting a 2-run homer in the 4th to give the Sox a 7-5 lead, then a solo shot deep into right to give them their 8-7 win. Daisuke struggled in the first, no thanks to two fielding muffs by Alex Cora Julio......

Finally, we can put the one-day wonder of Sockgate behind us. O's broadcaster Gary Thorne admitted he misinterpreted Doug Mirabelli's horseplay as a confession, and thus has no reason to believe that Curt Schilling painted his sock to look bloody. The lesson here, of course, is that horseplay has no place in a major league clubhouse. Curt took the opportunity to unload on the media; you get the feeling that parts of his diatribe were......

The brouhaha over Curt Schilling's sock is heating up. We're still waiting for the man himself to chime in, but Baltimore broadcaster Gary Thorne, suggesting that Curt painted on fake blood, has really gotten the Sox to circle the wagons. Dr. Bill Morgan performed the procedure, which fixed up Schill's ankle with toothpaste, popsicle sticks and duct tape, and said that he is utterly convinced that the blood was real. Doug Mirabelli, who, being Italian......

--Today is the 60th anniversary of Jackie Robinson's debut with the Brooklyn Dodgers. Coco Crisp was scheduled to honor Robinson by wearing the number 42. Big Papi and third-base coach DeMarlo Hale were also planning to wear Robinson's number. The game has been postponed, so we imagine that they'll make up the tribute soon. --The Red Sox took down the Orange County Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim yesterday 8 to 0. Yes, we know their......

Last night, the Red Sox absolutely tore up the Orange County Angels - whoops, the Anaheim Angels of Los Angeles, 10 to 1. The Wakefield-Mirabelli machine was in top form. Pitcher Tim Wakefield pitched a beautiful game, allowing only one run, and catcher Doug Mirabelli surprised everyone, hitting a home run. That homer galvanized the Red Sox, and everything went downhill for the Angels. When Jonathan Papelbon arrived at the plate mound to close, he......

Adam at Universal Hub first brought this to our attention, then we heard it on WBZ in the car: it's a brilliant Gil Santos mashup in which he simultaneously announces the opening day games of all four of our local teams. That Zdeko Brady Matsuzaka is a hell of an athlete, leading the league in assists, RBIs, and completion percentage. The Red Sox joined the growing number of MLB teams who've had to cancel games......

Have we pretty much run out of Japan-themed headlines? Almost? OK. After all the hype and promise, Daisuke turned out to be everything Red Sox Nation could have hoped for. Of course, he gave up six hits and a run, so there's room for improvement, but Dice was firmly in control of the hapless Royals in the 4-1 victory. Which puts the Red Sox alone in first place, and makes us feel a little silly......

OK, OK, Bostonist feels a lot better about the Old Towne team, and not just because of a man whom will be known in these parts for a time to come (and maybe longer?), as Dise-K. (And please, don’t' go with D-Mat. Sounds like doormat, and who wants to be named after something that one would use to wipe off their dirty shoes. Wouldn't you want to be named after a nasty, distasteful, comic that......

Last week Bostonist was all in a tizzy over the idea that the Red Sox wouldn't be able to work out a deal to keep General Manager Theo Epstein here in Boston. His contract for the past three years was going to end today, but there was lots of negotiating the past few weeks to have Theo stay with the Sox. Well, Bostonist awoke this Monday morning to see a nice article stating that according......

Orlando Cabrera, our time together was too short... Anyone witnessing the end of the Yankees season last night had to notice the incredible play of the Los Angeles Anaheim California Angels (or whatever they are this week) shortstop, and former Red Sox World Champion, Orlando Cabrera. Cabrera was a catalyst in the victory last night over the hated NYY. Cabrera was only 1-4 with a run scored, but there were two critical plays involving the......

The logical part of Bostonist's brain understands why it is OK not to have a one-game playoff with the Yankees to determine who is the champion of the AL East: No matter who wins, both teams will be in the playoffs, and fighting over who gets to play Anaheim and who gets to play the White Sox is like, um . . . metaphors fail us; it's obviously dumb. But baseball is not logical -......