We always look for someone to blame, don't we? You look at the Red Sox' 2-1 loss in New York yesterday, and immediately start preparing to blame an anemic offense, or timely bad pitching, or something. Well, it doesn't work today; the fact is, the Yankees climbed on the backs of two old war horses and came away with a win that (sigh) they deserved. Warhorse #1 was Mike Mussina, who looked ready for the......

Yesterday, we gleefully noted that Yankee superstar Joba Chamberlain blew the ballgame on Tuesday night. Well, the wheel of karma moves swiftly and decisively, so today we must report a blown save and a loss for Jonathan Papelbon. Stupid wheel of karma. It was a roller-coaster of a game, with the Tigers chasing Clay Buchholz out early. The Sox hung around though, as homers by Kevin Youkilis (twice) and Mike Lowell eventually tied it all......

It was a lot closer, anyway. That's about the best thing we can take from the Sox' 7-4 loss in Toronto that ended the worldwide road trip and sent the boys home 3-4 and in the AL East cellar. The big difference was that Toronto ace Roy Halladay pitched like an ace for the most part, while Sox ace Josh Beckett pitched like a rusty, easily-tired version of himself. He hung in for a while,......

--67 Boston clubs might be forced to shut down by Thursday if they can't install sprinkler systems. [Boston Globe] --Myron Stovell, the Pop Warner coach who was shot in the leg by a teenager, has announced that he is praying for his attacker and wishes he could have helped him. [Boston Herald] --Red Sox shortstop Julio Lugo is cool. [Boston Herald] --Your laugh for the day: Gameday to show Williams-Amherst game. [Sports Hernia] --Your......

Bostonist saw today's "Rolling Rally," featuring the players riding duck boats across the city and relief pitcher Jonathan Papelbon dancing to the Dropkick Murphys, from two different vantage points--near the Common and at the Hynes Convention Center. Everyone clearly enjoyed themselves, especially Papelbon: Wherever you were along the parade route, it was simply madness. Of course, the Red Sox faithful turned out in their jerseys. Hundreds of little kids skipped school. College students sat down......

8:27 p.m. - Hello and welcome to Bostonist's first live blog of the World Series! We've just returned from Blogtoberfest and we're good to go. First pitch and it's a strike! Foul, but foul is a strike. FOX, which not surprisingly is already displaying its season-long anti-Red Sox bias, is telling us that Colorado should be able to hit Schilling tonight. 8:31 p.m. - Schilling is trying to keep Colorado honest - or missing his......

Fox 25 sportscaster Butch Stearns was either plumb dumb exhausted after the Red Sox won the ALCS, or he lost his mind. Via Universal Hub, we learned that after the game he interviewed Julio Lugo. Post-game interviews are always awkward because the players so clearly want to go drink, have a sandwich, bathe in champagne, or dance if they're Jonathan Papelbon. Lugo was no exception--he was celebrating by puffing on a stogie. In the video......

So Sheriff Beckett stared down the Cleveland gang last night. Once again, when the Red Sox needed Josh to be at his absolute best, he pretty much was. Sure, he gave up one more hit than he did in his Game One dazzler, but he only gave up one run - on a double play ball. Other than that, he struck out 11 Indians and gave 44,588 Clevelanders something to do with their towels beside......

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......

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,......

We're going to the playoffs! Sure, it's been an awful September, for the most part. And sure, the Red Sox still very much have to somehow finish off New York, and ideally fend off the Angels and Indians to secure home-field advantage throughout the postseason. But the first step is officially taken, as the Sox rallied to beat the Devil Rays 8-6 and ensure they would, at the very least, beat out Detroit for the......

Yeah, baby! We all know that the Red Sox should be thumping the Devil Rays, but it's hard to argue with two consecutive hard-fought, come-from-behind wins from a lineup that's been painful to watch for stretches this season. Last night, the Sox surrendered four early runs to Tampa Bay, with starter Jon Lester throwing 65,431 pitches and only making into the fourth inning. Rays starter Edwin Jackson, looking like a Cy Young candidate (the Sox......

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......

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......

Well, if your game against Tampa Bay gets upgraded to "must-win" status, you had better make sure Tim Wakefield is on the mound. Wake owns the Devil Rays. And Wake, last night, handcuffed, bound, gagged and threw the Rays into the river, giving up only two hits in an eight-inning masterpiece. The Red Sox' home run boycott continued, but they did give Tim more than enough run support. David Ortiz doubled in the first run,......

Where to begin? When it comes to baseball, most of the news that came out of Tuesday was dreary, almost as dreary as the skies over Boston this morning. It felt as if it took ages for Barry Bonds to take the final steps in his journey to become baseball's new home run king, but on Tuesday night, the San Francisco Giants slugger did it. Shortly before midnight Eastern time, at a time when many......

Let's give a hand to the Boston Red Sox: they're on the cutting edge. During a late (to us, anyway) Friday night game in Seattle, the team continued to show fans the new dance craze that's poised to sweep the (Red Sox) Nation: the Third Base Shuffle. It's easier than the Frug, more athletic than the Lean Back and only slightly more annoying to witness than the Macarena. All you have to do is wind......

Jonathan Papelbon and the Red Sox decided to add a little drama to their regularly-scheduled win over the Devil Rays. The Sox gave Jon Lester, in his second start returning from his cancer surgery, a 5-2 lead going into the seventh-inning stretch. The lead was built on a well-balanced sprinkling of hits and timely run-scoring offense, exactly the kind of thing we were constantly yearning for a few weeks ago. Was there really a time......

Perhaps the blue shirts calling the shots at Fenway Park on Friday night were just bitter that they couldn't hang out in Harvard/Hogwart's Square with several thousands of their closest Harry Potter fans. Maybe they were concerned that J.D. Drew would further aggravate his hamstring by running all the way around the bases. We'd even like to think that they were just curious about whether Terry Francona would get himself thrown out of a game......

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......

Did the good vibrations work yesterday? Are the Red Sox going to start the second half with the take-no-prisoners attituted that got them through April and May? Well, last night was a good start. With a good performance by Tim Wakefield (pause for palpable sigh of relief) and the Sox' big sluggers looking active again, the Sox cruised to a 7-4 win over Toronto. Maybe "cruised" is overstating it a bit, since the Sox 5-1......

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......

You'd think that the story of last night's Red Sox/Devil Rays series kickoff would be the glorious-yet-atypical change of character demonstrated by DR pitcher Scott Kazmir. Sure, we'll get to that, but c'mon - something huge happened. Julio Lugo safely hit the ball! And then he did it AGAIN! It had been a long, rough road for our offensively challenged shortstop - a road with 33 seemingly untravelable off-ramps along the way. Different spots in......

After three innings last night, the mood at Fenway was as good as it gets. Josh Beckett was on the mound, and the Sox had staked him to a 4-0 lead. The team was hitting well, including superprospect Jacoby Ellsbury, who got his first major-league hit by zipping down the first-base line to beat the throw on a routine ground ball. The Sox even had a helper monkey named Ayla throw out the first pitch.......

The nailbiting, the pacing, the swearing, the chainsmoking - they all end tonight. Except maybe at Tommy Heinsohn's house. Tonight, we find out the next step in the Celtics' drive back to relevance. Will Danny Ainge swing one of the deals we've heard about? Will we be welcoming Kevin Garnett (no way), Shawn Marion (probably not), Dikembe Mutombo (possible) or Bill Telfair? Or will Danny stand pat and actually use his #5 pick to draft......

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 good news is, they got some hits. The bad news is, they didn't translate into nearly enough runs. Terry Francona tried drastic measures, moving the struggling (to put it charitably) J.D. Drew to the leadoff spot, possibly to cut down on his left-on-base numbers. That sure didn't work. Francona stuck with the scuffling (again, we're being kind) Julio Lugo, which means that either Alex Cora doesn't know how to play shortstop or is trapped......

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......

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......