If you looked at the Red Sox schedule at the beginning of the season, and someone told you there'd be a series in the first week of July with first place on the line, you'd probably assume it was the weekend series in the Bronx. You'd be wrong. So wrong. The Red Sox find themselves on the last day of June in second place, looking up at the Tampa Bay Rays and heading into St.......

We, to be honest, had the exact opposite of high hopes for last night's game. The Lakers were going to be in front of their home crowd, energized, with the referees desperate to be on their side to avoid another four-hankie Phil Jackson press conference. And if you'd told us before the game that Paul Pierce would be a train wreck, KG would be way off his shot, and Rondo would get hurt, we'd assume......

This was borderline ugly. And for about fifteen minutes, there was no borderline. For much of the first half, the Celtics looked like every dire prediction about them was going to come true: they were bound to let a home game slip away, nobody had the guts to take a shot, LeBron was eventually going to step up and start carving through them. But late in the second quarter, Ubuntu kicked in. Rajon Rondo, who......

This is the week we've had circled on our calendar since the Celtics' blistering start. We knew at least three of the four games would be tough, but now every team between the Mississippi and the Pecos has their eyes on the NBA Finals, and since the Celtics want to be there to meet them, these four games are huge. It starts tonight in San Antonio against the defending champs, who have a shocking 2-game......

Want a picture of what Red Sox Nation feels like this morning? The best way we can describe it is the scene in Airplane! when Elaine gets on the PA, tells the passengers to remain calm, then asks, "Oh, by the way, is there anyone on board who can fly a plane?" The next scene is in the cabin with passengers going berzerk and men swordfighting in the aisle. That's what being a Red Sox......

We here at the Redux are starting to get awfully cranky. You see, we are running out of ways to tell folks to keep the faith and stay off the Zakim Bridge. We've invested a lot of time in the act of reassuring Red Sox fans, asking them to refrain from hitting the panic button. You'd think the Red Sox would help us out and do their part to keep people calm. That would be......

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......

Big shock - American League wins the All-Star Game! Who knew? Who could have predicted? How could one have expected that the mighty National Leauge would fall in a 5-4 game at AT&T Park? Ten straight, friends! Excluding the tie, of course. Sure, it's become almost boringly expected that that AL is going to come out on top when the two leagues clash, but we were seriously worried about the pesky NK underdogs on Wednesday......

It's always a good sign when the only two elements of suspense to a ballgame are (1) will we get to the fifth inning before the rain comes, and (2) will the starting pitcher's arm get stiff from sitting in the dugout for a long time while his offense scores bunches of runs. Fortunately for the Sox last night, the answers were yes and no, respectively, as the Sox pummeled the Devil Rays to a......

Word began to spread on Tuesday night that Hideki Okajima, our lights-out middle-reliever, was in the top spot in vote-getting for final bids to the All-Star game. In the spirit of giving proper credit to a pitcher that has amazed thus far this year, we wanted to make sure to get you voting for the guy. Tallies are close - and if Daisuke Matsuzaka is getting his friends and family back home in Japan to......

Part of us thinks that a team that's scuffling as bad as the Red Sox are right now deserves to have five guys named to the All-Star team. But we do recognize that the honor is bestowed upon players based on the entire spring's production, not just the last couple weeks of lousy baseball, so let's give credit where credit is due. Manny, Papi, Lowell, Beckett, and Papelbon are all going to San Francisco for......

One word sums up the spirit felt within Fenway Park on Tuesday night: confidence. The Red Sox returned home from its West Coast roadtrip exhausted (players, management and sleep-deprived fans alike) and with a 3-4 record. Offense had been shaky. The team continued to hit too many double play balls for comfort. And Tim Wakefield, who had struggled through a tough month-long stretch of starts, was slated to take the mound. And yet it seemed......

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......

-- One down! After the five-game pounding that the Red Sox took from the Yankees at Fenway last August, Friday's matchup was more than just a game. It was more than just the first rivalry game of the season. It was about avenging the embarrassment that continued to smart for Sox fans over the winter and into the early season. The game itself was a battle of the best kind: one in which we came......

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......

Did pitcher Daisuke Matsuzaka reveal his "Ultimate Galactic Dragon Gyroball Pitch Power Explosion" in the Red Sox game against Boston College? No. But, in Dice-K's own - translated - words, he did okay. He played two innings, and a BC player scored a double off his very first pitch. (Did that player's stock go up, or what?) After that, Matsuzaka decided he wasn't going to mess around, and no one else scored. Also, we were......