Now that the trophy has been shown off and the Duck Boats have moved through Boston's streets, Patriots fans out there are psyched. Baseball's over! Time to devote the sports news hole to the pigskin! Almost. We want to give patient Pats fans their due, so we'll breeze through the baseball news nice and quickly: - There was a victory celebration on Tuesday. Many people attended. - Joe Torre: out of New York, into Los......

The Red Sox were at home, facing down the Oakland A's on Tuesday night, but everyone had one eye on events unfolding in Florida. And wouldn't you know? Things worked out perfectly. The drama-filled Oakland game (only in September would one be able to string those words together) was decisively won by Boston and featured numerous reasons for the Fenway crowd to stand up and cheer. Tampa Bay managed to scratch together a 10-inning, 7-6,......

Update: Our Ist-a-Verse family called the individual in this story a "Boston Idiot." We would like to clarify; hence, the photo. Yet another hoser ran across the Fenway Park field yesterday during the Red Sox-Yankees game. In the seventh inning, the guy 20-year-old Charles Gendron, of Maine, ran across the field and grabbed the cap off the head of Robinson Cano, the Yankees' second baseman. NESN cut away from the action, but Bostonist saw......

The Red Sox will be a long way from home tonight when they kick off their four-game series against the Cleveland Indians, but there's one player in particular that deserves to know that he has the folks back home standing in front of their television, applauding his image on the screen. We'd like to imagine that Jon Lester will be able to hear a faint roar of Boston cheers, sound that has traveled the 638.22......

Remember May? When this kind of thing happened all the time? The Red Sox and White Sox played a close, competitive game for six innings. Then the Chicago bullpen melted down in a big way, and the good Sox found themselves on the right end of a 11-2 win. The Red Sox had a 2-1 lead going into the sixth, when a J.D. Drew RBI double and a Coco Crisp RBI single gave Kason Gabbard......

In a lot of ways, managing a baseball team is remarkably easy, compared to coaching other sports. The action is fairly linear: there aren't 11 defensemen or five matchups to keep an eye on at once, and a lot of the actual "coaching" is farmed out to the coaches. Plus, there's the 100-year-old unwritten "book" that tells you how to do your job, and if you stick to the book, you have a defense against......

For all the hype and adoration heaped on Daisuke Matsuzaka, the fact is he's still technically a rookie, if a seasoned one. And rookies do things like get themselves into trouble. His last few starts, Dice has been prone to having one bad inning here and there, which combined with a lack of run support, has caused some trouble. Last night, fortunately, the offense picked him up and pulled him out of the fire. The......

There's an old saying in baseball...well, there are a lot, like "Take two and hit to right", or "Don't bunt to break up a no-hitter", but there's an old theory that when you get lots of men on base, it's in your best interest to drive them in. A little crazy, to be sure, but it's a piece of wisdom that the Red Sox have been ignoring for some time. Not last night. The Sox......

Well, the Red Sox got to Felix Hernandez. That's the good news. Unfortunately, the Mariners got to Kason Gabbard, and really got to relievers Manny Delcarmen and Javier Lopez, and won a back-and-forth ballgame 8-7. Lopez, in particular, was victimized by a Richie Sexson home run in the sixth from which they never recovered. Manny got the day off, and his replacement (Eric Hinske) homered, so that's going according to plan. Julio Lugo got the......

The bewhiskered gent at right is General William Tecumseh Sherman, who split the South in two during the Civil War with his famous march through Georgia. Last night may not have been as deeply psychologically scarring for residents of the Peach State, but it was a pretty good whuppin' just the same. The Red Sox pounded the Braves 11-0, behind a slew of home runs and another great outing by the astounding Julian Tavarez. J.D.......

What a depressing ending. All of the characters were in place, the tension was building, the smell of a big finish was in the air, and then...nothing. Zip. Just like that, it was all over. We kept looking for some extra time, or some trick being played on us, or something to keep us from screaming, "That's IT?!?!?!?" Coco Crisp's line drive sailed right into Chris Young's glove in center, and it was over. Of......

Remember J.D. Drew? David Jonathan "J.D." Drew, 31 years old, plays right field, graduated from Florida State? J.D. Drew hasn't generated much favorable buzz these days. The only things we've heard about him for the past month and a half has consisted of justifiable griping from fans and predictions from Theo Epstein that The Slump is only temporary. But Drew made his presence known on Friday night during interleague play in Arizona. Continuing his widely-known......

Even though the Devern Hansack experiment went horribly wrong Saturday night, the Sox had no choice but to go to the Pawtucket well again Sunday. So they brought up lefty Kason Gabbard to start Sunday's rain-delayed tilt with the Braves. And it went as well as we possibly could have hoped. Gabbard cooled off the Atlanta bats, which were still steaming from Saturday's 14-run nightcap, to the tune of five innings pitched, six hits, two......

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......

-- Like many a Red Sox fan, Bostonist was feeling cocky at the top of the ninth inning in Tuesday's game hosting Oakland. Why wouldn't we? The Sox had a 4-2 lead and Jonathan Papelbon was heading in to finish out the game. It was ovah. Until Travis Buck hit that two-run shot to right field. It was a big hit in more ways than one: it brought Oakland back into a game that it......

Daisuke Matsuzaka Mania has already jumped the shark, and the season hasn't even started yet. The Globe had a long, loving look at how the arrival of Matsuzaka is going to juice up Boston's economy. (Better hide Pastor Wall's warning to tourists about the risks of getting shot around here.) We are anticipating Matsuzaka's official debut as much as the next sports fan. And we are tickled that one guy is expected to pump $14......

According to the Globe, our own Holy Cross was "prepared to get physical" against Southern Illinois in the first round of the NCAA tournament, but that's not quite how things turned out. According to other coaches, the Southern Illinois Salukis are absolutely terrifying. One guy said a team could imitate their defense if "We run down to the police station and we get all the German shepherd attack dogs and we just bring them onto......

As this is written the Red Sox are sitting in their clubhouse getting ready for one more home series until they jump on the road for a swing through Texas and Baltimore before the All-Star break hits. This weekend's series brings the Blue Birds from Toronto into town, no doubt hoping they can give the Red Sox more trouble than they really should. This year's Blue Jays are to the Sox what the Orioles were......