Movie mogul Samuel Goldwyn once famously said of preachy movies, "If you want to send a message, call Western Union.". Well, Western Union is now out of the telegram business, so the Celtics had to send a message to Detroit some other way, playing stifling defense, fundamental offense, and grinding out a win that - well, that sends the message - that they just might actually be the best team in the East. Everybody chipped......

It was about a week ago when we noted that the Bruins were in 6th place in the Prince of Wales Eastern Conference, which was a decent place to be, thus drawing the winner of the weak-sister Southeast Division. In that week, the B's have solidified the 6th spot, but are now officially in spittin' distance of bigger and better things. They've won blowouts this week, they've won shootouts, they've won at home, they've won......

It's easy now to sit back and bask in the glory that has been the Boston athletics scene in 2007. World champions in baseball, undefeated in the NFL regular season, second place in Major League Soccer, packing crowds into the TD Banknorth Garden for the Celts and (to a lesser degree) the Bruins...we have it good. But it's our job to remind you that there were days where hats were thrown, hands were clenched, and......

Major League Baseball has decreed that managers will be fined if they wear pullovers over their uniform tops. The rule seems to be pointed squarely at Terry Francona, who loves his pullover. Deadspin beat us to it when they joked, "You're next, Belichick!" Like hell. The NFL will have to pry that hoodie out of Belichick's cold, dead hands before he'll let it go. What's the big deal? Baseball players are not exactly beauties.......

Apparently there is such a thing as the "sexiest fan alive," and the dudes who take their tops off and paint their chests don't count. Chris Piela, of Boston, is a Red Sox fan who is leading in a People Magazine/Major League Baseball poll to determine the "Sexiest Fan Alive." His wife nominated him, and other voters are agreeing. His wife's pitch about why he should win is pretty good, but we're dinging him a......

The MLB is no fun! A kind tipster just gave Bostonist the heads-up that the Chris Dodd Red Sox Raffle is now OFF and that anyone who donated will get a refund. The e-mail from Dodd HQ states, We have some bad news. Major League Baseball has asked the campaign to end our contest you entered to get a chance to go to a Red Sox game with Chris Dodd. Apparently, Post-Season tickets are different......

Congratulations, Sox fans! You made it through approximately three minutes of the Red Sox Rally Monday festivities at City Hall Plaza before the first chants of "Yankees Suck" filled the air. New record! Well done! A few thousand fans descended upon the plaza early Monday afternoon to cheer on their hometown baseball team (and decry the arch rivals) for the Boston version of the shindigs going on across the country. Rally Monday was a tradition......

When Bostonist were kids, pitching the tennis ball against the chimney for five hours straight, we often dreamed of the day we'd get called up to the Red Sox, in the heat of a pennant race, tabbed for a sudden start, and then go out and throw a no-hitter in our big-league debut. Clay Buchholz is a slacker. It took him until his SECOND Major League start to have a piece of memorabilia suitable for......

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......

Londonist are starting to think their city is getting just a little bit too expensive, when even Christian Slater can't afford to go out there. And there's no escaping, as local singer Lily Allen discovered when she was barred entry to the US. The British mapping agency caused further bad karma, by blocking a 3-D representation of London in Google Earth. But the smiles returned to Londonist's faces as they interviewed Baroness von Reichardt,......

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......

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......

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......

Dave Zirin reads from Welcome to the Terrordome: The Pain, Politics, and Promise of Sports on Wednesday, June 27, at 7:00 pm, at Brookline Booksmith. At first, sports seems like a welcome escape from the day-to-day grind of politics. Most people would rather talk about their favorite team than the state of the war in Iraq. But, although the talking heads on ESPN rarely utter the word "politics," sports is nothing but politics – people......

It's hard to believe there's a Major League team we know less about than the Diamondbacks, but there is, and they're coming to town starting tonight. Who and what are these Colorado Rockies? The popular conception is that the Rockies are a team loaded with sluggers, who benefit from the thin air of the Mile High City. That may have been true a decade ago, but right now, they're a young team full of promise......

Forget the 2008 Presidential Race for now. The biggest decision any voter can make right now is the one forced on us by Major League Baseball. Since the All-Star game is in San Francisco, a National League park, the designated hitter is not an option. Which means the Red Sox had to designate David Ortiz to be in the First Baseman section of the All-Star ballot. Which means Kevin Youkilis is on the outside looking......

The outlook wasn't brilliant for the Mudville nine that day, The score stood four to two, with but one inning more to play. So begins Ernest Thayer's immortal "Casey at the Bat". Mudville flops in that poem, as we all know, but the situation was even more grim for the Red Sox going into the ninth on Sunday. Orioles youngster Jeremy Guthrie was firmly in control of the ballgame, and the score at Fenway stood......

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......

There are two types of people in the world: those who are willing to slog through rain, wind, possible snow (hey, you never know) and agony to complete a marathon, and...the other kind. Bostonist freely admits to being the other kind. But to everyone who wills their way through this, we tip our hats, raise our glasses, and count our blessings that we'll be home watching you on TV. If you have time to fiddle......

Major League Baseball has its share of problems, to be sure: the steroids scandal, the delicate maneuvering they'll have to do to pretend to be excited about Barry Bonds breaking Hank Aaron's record, having to politely say "bite me" to any fan who can't afford or use a satellite dish but might want to watch more than just the hometown team. So with all these issues, baseball's finally getting serious, telling Red Sox all-around legend......

--Eric Gillin, writing for Deadspin, posted one of the best summaries of the upcoming Red Sox season. Why was it so good? The author found a way to parallel each Red Sox player to a character in Major League II. Here's a taste of the article that compares Pedro Cerrano (a bulked-up Dennis Haysbert) to Willy Mo Pena and Manny Ramirez: "After not winning the ALCS, Cerrano returns to the team as a completely different......

Sure, you can spend your time dealing with the celebrity implications of Tom Brady's recent...prolific spree. But at Bostonist Sports, we're really looking forward to that 2031 NFL Draft. We can just see Mel Kiper III now, projecting that 12 of the first 13 picks will be quarterbacks with Tom Terrific's championship DNA. (The other pick will be the Detroit Lions, who will still be looking for a top-flight WR for Charlie Batch Jr. to......

Jake Halpern will be reading at Brookline Booksmith at 7:00 pm on Wednesday, January 10. Why were many Americans fixated on the scandal swirling around Miss USA Tara Conner? Why do celebrities constantly complain about the pressure of fame yet keep coming back for more? And what is the long-term impact of society's focus on fame? Author Jake Halpern, whose new book Fame Junkies will be released on January 10, tries to answer all of......

OK, so maybe that 4th Super Bowl is a bit further away than Bostonist originally thought. The Pats were, sad to say, trounced by division rival Miami Dolphins on Sunday, 21-0. This one was ugly folks, from the jump. Alas, Bostonist should have had a bit of a clue that this could be coming, with Tommy's record down in Miami (a place he is under .500, 2-4 career) and the injuries the Pats were......

www.keepmanny.com. That says it all. Trading him is ludicrous. There is no one to replace him, and it essentially marginalizes David Ortiz. These right-handed world class hitters don't grow on trees, and J.D. "Injury" Drew isn't exactly Manny Ramirez. Actually, according to Elias Sports Bureau, he is a lot like Trot Nixon, numbers wise... hmmm.. doesn't Trot at 5, 6 mil make a lot more sense (platooning with Wily Mo) then 15 Mil per for......

Sampaist is on the scene in São Paulo beginning this week to become the only ist south of the Equator. Editor Leandro M. Pinto leads the paulistanos down there. You can protest someone at his office, sure, but when the whistle blows at the end of the day can you follow him home? D.C. has sports fans, apparently, and elephants aren't really cut out for zoos. There's this trick where you can read information from......

Good news for Sox fans and Sox players alike: Terry Francona, Sox Skipper, has signed a 2 year extension as manager of the Boston Red Sox, meaning he will remain in charge through the 2008 campaign. The extension is well deserved for Tito, who brought the Sox their first World Championship in 86 years in his first year as manager in the unforgettable 2004 season, and won 95 games a year ago leading the Red......

After Wired ran a story documenting the GoogleCenter of the United States a bunch of ists jumped on the opportunity to figure out their own middle. Gothamist, Chicagoist, Bostonist and Seattlest all zoomed in on their creamy GoogleCenters. A crack cartography team is hard at work determining the GoogleCenter of the Ist-a-verse as you read this... Austinist read a book about Olympian Bode Miller and liked it. They also took a few pictures of the......

The Olde Towne Team, which in recent months has been in GM hell, has finally begun wheeling and dealing this off-season in preparations for the 2006 campaign. Peter Gammons of ESPN.com is reporting that the Boston Red Sox have tentatively agreed to a deal with the Florida Marlins (pending physical examinations) that would send stud starting pitcher Josh Beckett and contract liability Mike Lowell to Boston for 2 top prospects (Hanley Ramirez SS, and......

Intrepid researchers at MIT have released results of their study which threatens to shatter the serenity that is paranoid schizophrenia. Nothing says crazy like a tin foil hat. Admittedly, there are quite a few things that say crazy just as nimbly. The tin foil hat has become a sort of pop-culture icon representing someone who’s taken it a little too far in an attempt to thwart mind readers. Be it the Governments or Major League......