Hey, remember when the knock on the Celtics was their depth? Remember when everyone assumed Ghidorah would play great and then all hell would break loose when the second unit came in? Think Cleveland is remembering those predictions wistfully? The first quarter last night was a hangover from Game One. Ghidorah was still struggling (we were ready to call for a wheelchair to escort Ray Allen off the floor, if not a gurney). LeBron James......

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......

Well...that was fun. If anticlimactic. Pushed to Game Seven by a hungry Atlanta team - or dragged to Game Seven by their sporadic ineptitude, depending on which you believe - the Celtics turned on the gas and utterly annihilated the Hawks yesterday, 99-65, at the Garden. This was in every way what a big game between a 66-win #1 seed and a sub-.500 #8 seed should have looked like. It was thorough, and it was......

--The Greater Boston Food Bank needs your help. [Boston Globe, Greater Boston Food Bank] --Welcome back members of the 181st infantry regiment! [WCVB] --The JFK library received $2 million dollars to expand from the Irish government, as part of Bertie Ahern's visit. [Boston Herald] --Gas service in the North End and Financial District has been restored after the water main mess. [Boston Globe] --Some Harvard students decorated Dunster House with dead meat. Aren't Harvard......

Don't listen to the so-called experts. Kids LOVE pitchers' duels. Go up to any schoolboy and mention some of the great mound rivalries of the past - Koufax/Marichal, Gibson/Seaver, Palmer/Hunter - and, well, you'll probably get a blank look. But maybe you'll find a kid who knows what you're talking about, and chances are that kid appreciated the gem last night at Fenway. For the Sox, Jon Lester was throwing strikes (yay) and inducing groundouts,......

It wasn't a very good night at all for Boston teams playing south of the Mason-Dixon line. Not a very good night at all. We'll start in Atlanta, where the Celtics again brought their C+ game to the playoffs, and were shocked and discouraged to see the Hawks playing way above their heads to take Game Three of the first round. Atlanta was doing everything right - running a fast, efficient transition game, draining long-range......

When the rumor first broke that Bill Buckner was the mystery guest at Opening Day, we thought that sounded just right. A perfect chance for diehard Sox fans, or at least the Opening Day crowd, to say all was forgiven, if in fact any forgiveness was due to the man who had to flee to Idaho to escape the indignity of a loss that he symbolized even though his was far from the only tragic......

LAist listed a top ten list of sorts: things they hope not to see in Los Angeles in 2008. (one example, pictured above). Shanghaiist was surprised to learn that "godless," "atheist," and "commie" China is soon going to be the world's largest supplier of Bibles! Torontoist picked some of their favorite photos of 2007. Londonist was relieved to hear the fire at the Royal Marsden hospital didn't harm any of the patients even though......

Lest the world find Kevin Youkilis unsavory for signing up to market an energy drink named "SlumpBuster," which refers to an ugly woman a guy sleeps with to break a losing streak, the Track Girls called Youk's rep. Youk's rep informed them that SlumpBuster refers to the other "SlumpBuster": “Unfortunately, like many common sayings, the ‘slumpbuster’ term can also be twisted to having negative connotations,” said Youk’s agent, Joe Bick of Pro Star Management, in......

When an athlete gets famous, his or her image will be slapped on everything in sight. Remember Kobe Bryant's pre-scandal days when he was on jars of Nutella? Well, Red Sox Monster and BevNET are reporting that Kevin Youkilis has signed up to market a new energy drink entitled--ahem--"SlumpBuster." BevNET euphemistically stated that "SlumpBuster" was a "term widely recognized by athletes and fans." Indeed. According to the Urban Dictionary, a "SlumpBuster" is A promiscuous and/or......

The following is a public service announcement: The next time you steal a Red Sox's castoffs, particularly their sweaty cups, eBay would rather you sell them elsewhere. The Track Girls are spreading the word that SportsWorld, in Saugus, tried to sell Jonathan Papelbon and Kevin Youkilis' used jocks on their eBay store. Judging from how many times the Track Girls have written about SportsWorld and its Red Sox underwear sale, SportsWorld has been trying......

Enza Sambataro may not be a household name, but she inspires a passionate response from baseball fans. She's about to marry the beloved Red Sox player Kevin Youkilis. The Globe recently ran a light lifestyle piece about how Sambataro won't be the ordinary baseball wife. She dated Ben Affleck, she jokes about Yooooouk drinking too many margaritas, and she has a shoplifting record, around which the article danced delicately. Adam Reilly at the Phoenix detected......

For a day that featured not a single Boston professional sports team in game mode, Tuesday was jam-packed with sports news. And what made things even more ridiculous was the fact that, for a good portion of the day, one faced difficulty figuring out what news was legit and what was a sports scribe's attempt at an exclusive gone wrong (Tom Brady exclusive, anyone? Don't worry, we'll get it to it). We're going to sort......

8:00 PM - We're coming to you live! Not from Bostonist HQ, which is in the danger zone of potential postgame revelry, but from our outpost in Central MA (Worcesterist?) where we've been each week to watch the Pats game. The Pats, by the way, just beat Washington 845-7. Mike Vrabel caught eleven touchdown passes. FoxSports is showing Bill Buckner one last time, just in case there was one person left in town who didn't......

Game Seven was a perfect little microcosm for the 2007 Red Sox, wasn't it? It left you laughing, and crying, and reaching for the Mylanta, and reaching for the whiskey, and jubilant, and terrified, and when it was all over, you looked back and wondered how you could have possibly ever doubted the final results. The story coming into this was whether Daisuke Matsuzaka would be able to reach deep inside himself and find whatever......

Nothing makes the Cliche-O-Matic sputter and squeak like a Game Seven in the playoffs. Back to the wall. No tomorrow. Do or die. Now or never. All true, of course. So tonight, the Indians and the Red Sox will live the cliches. The Red Sox, of course, lived to fight another day on a supremely gutsy performance by Curt Schilling. Seven innings pitched, six hits, two runs, a thunderous ovation as he left the field......

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,......

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......

We don't need to tell you what happened. The Red Sox blew the White Sox off the face of the earth, then arrived in New York and started playing like a bunch of corpses. At least yesterday was an afternoon game, so we could do other things with our evening. Amid the carnage, we have to salute Curt Schilling, who pitched pretty well, considering he really looks like he's going on fumes these days. He......

It was a busy Friday in Boston sports - two Red Sox games, one Patriots exhibition game, baby news from someone other than Tom Brady...whew! We're just going to dive right in and give you the quick and dirty version of the Redux. Ready? Here goes: -- We've heard that Sox fans who attended the first game of the Friday Fenway doubleheader made sure to carefully tuck their ticket stubs away. We imagine that the......

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......

Oh, hindsight. What tricks you play on fans, coaches and baseball bullpens. It made sense, in some respects, for Tampa Bay pseudo-starter Jason Hammel to be pulled from Friday night's game during the sixth inning. Considering that Hammel, a reliever bumped up to starting rotation placement, had walked consecutive batters when the DRays were holding onto a precious 1-0 lead, the decision to turn to the bullpen was one that many baseball enthusiasts would support......

What a weird night at Jacobs Field on Tuesday - one that proves that no matter how much we can complain about the Red Sox offense over the course of the season, the team has a defense in place to win a 1-0 ballgame. Cleveland's C.C. Sabathia (you might know him as "that really big, scary pitcher for the Indians") limited the Red Sox offense to one run but still managed to walk away with......

Today's Redux is going to be short and sweet - let's face it, there isn't a whole lot of good news to report from the first in the Red Sox three-game visit to Detroit. Friday night was just plain ugly, a 9-2 loss to the Tigers that served as the proverbial "other shoe" from Thursday's Devil Rays slaughter. After tearing up Fenway the night before, it seemed the Sox had nothing left to start off......

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......

Jerry Remy summed it up perfectly last night: "Both are terrible." The Rem wasn't talking about the play on display Saturday night at Petco Park in San Diego (although at times, he wouldn't have been far off), but was discussing the throwback uniforms worn by the Sox and Padres last night. Memo to both teams: burn those uniforms now. It looked as if "The Wizard of Oz" had thrown up all over Petco Park. Boston......

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......

Seattlest has a talk with the photographer from last week's "Segway Mom" and then experiences some dissension in the ranks over the question of wine vs. beer. It's not West Side Story, but about as close as they'll get. They're also still waiting on some inbox relief after a spammer is arrested. As Chicagoist counts down the days to its third anniversary party, they found all-organic pizza to be underwhelming amidst the hoopla, tried......