No local games yesterday. The Celtics spent yesterday catching their breath, and in Brian Scalabrine's case, wishing the fans wouldn't single him out so much. Top draft pick J.R. Giddens, who hasn't been seen on the court yet, is on his way to Utah to get some minutes with the Celtics' D-League team. The Bruins still feel good about themselves even after their winning streak was snapped. "It wasn’t like the circus was back in......

The Hawks are real. We knew they took the Celtics to seven inexplicable games last year, and we knew they were undefeated when they arrived at the Garden last night. And then the game started last night. Sans star Josh Smith, Atlanta relied instead on killer shooting and some crisp passing, hung 31 on the C's in the first quarter, and built a 16-point lead at one point. So it was time for Ghidorah to......

It took a little while for the Celtics to find their rhythm yesterday. Maybe it was the tough Houston game, maybe it was getting used to a new arena, maybe it was recovering from the whirlwind afternoon tour of Oklahoma City. We may never know. But even though the C's started off a little (OK, a lot) flat, they turned up the D when it mattered and wound up pretty much cruising to a 96-83......

On the way to Tropicana Field, Terry Francona announced his starting rotation for the ALCS! And it's...a continuation of the rotation from the first round. That was anticlimactic. Daisuke will start Game One in St. Petersburg, Beckett Game Two, and Lester and Wakefield will take the first two games in Boston. Tito says he has equal confidence in all three of his big guns (even after Beckett's stinkeroo last week), and says the order doesn't......

Remember Manny Ramirez? Bill Simmons does, and he's spent the last two months on a roller coaster of emotion about what went wrong (coughScottBorascough), what could have been done to fix it, and what it all means. The result is a 750-page analysis that's well worth the hours it will take to read it. Manny is still going strong, and so is his team, as he homered again to help the Dodgers wallop the Cubs......

Cause and effect? While the Red Sox were jetting off to Toronto, they found themselves a half-game closer to first, because the Rays blew an 8-6 lead and lost to the Twins. So as long as we're not playing the team we're trying to catch, maybe we can catch them. Sound right? You've probably already heard that Curt Schilling isn't signing on to write a fawning biography of Manny Ramirez. The big guy told WEEI......

The people that sit in tollbooths make an average of $70k per year!? Oh, and layoffs are being considered. [Boston Herald] Former Mayor Flynn collapsed at a speaking engagement last night. Did we mention it was in a bar? [Patriot Ledger] Can a week go by without a Boston firefighter getting arrested? [Boston Herald] Over 3,000 people became citizens yesterday at the first naturalization ceremony held in Fenway Park. Unfortunately Red Sox Nation citizenship......

Why doesn't the NYT have any LOLgalleries? England FTW. [Guardian] Manny may soon be Manny, but dreadless. [Globe] It ain't just hacks that threaten the T--they might want to look into more traditional modes of security. [MetaBoston] We knew the lack of sun was killing us. [Globe] A Plymouth man has invented a notepad... for the wrist. Can we wear these during tests? [Herald] Russia agreed to a cease-fire with Georgia. [NYT] Photo tagged......

-- Justin Timberlake is casting for a new reality game show where you run around trying to find a ringing cell phone called "The Phone." If this show's a hit, you can be sure "Honey, Have You Seen My Car Keys?" will be next. [Loaded Gun] -- NKOTB might not be the only group fulfilling all your post-preteen reunion fantasies. It's time to get funky. [The Beantown Bloggery] -- When a fellow Bostonian is......

Hank wasn’t there to get the crowd going and the normally loud crowd at Gillette seemed to have taken a Quaalude before the game. But then again, it’s not a real game. Nothing was at stake; even Tom Brady was bundled up on the sidelines like Nanook of the North. (Tom, it was 70 degrees.) Maybe it was the cool crisp air that got to the Pats, but even a push at the end didn’t......

Manny Ramirez and Tom Brady: a match made in... er... heaven? [Boston Daily - with freaky new interface!] Roller sandwiches from Roche Brothers and Sudbury Farms may be contaminated! [Dept. HHS] Split verdict on bin Laden's former driver. [NYT] Baby flamingos: not all that pink. [Globe] Gillette makes "cuts" in Mass. [Globe] Silk flowers photographed by AntyDiluvian......

Image tagged Bostonist by tprussman Iraq has $79 billion to burn. That could fund about 7 months of war. All right! [NYT] Young Iraqi Rakan Hassan, treated for US-inflicted gunshot wounds in Boston in 2005, has died after a bomb exploded in his hometown, Mosul. All wrong. [Globe] Brookline is really, really into The Dark Knight. Like bat-infestation really. [Wicked Local Brookline] DeVal Patrick signed a bill to fund bridge repair. [Globe] Kidnapping may......

Was this team really in turmoil four days ago? (Yes.) Were we convinced that the swagger was gone for good? (Yeah, pretty much.) Did we think that losing a Hall of Fame slugger would come back to bite the Red Sox in the butt (We still kind of do, to be honest.) Whatever the future holds, let it be known that the Red Sox righted the ship in record time after the Angel sweep and......

We'll run out of Jason Bay-related headline puns soon enough, we promise. But we'll use them when we can, such as when reporting on Bay's first home run as a Red Sox, a three-run blast in the first that helped set the tone for the 12-2 massacre of Oakland yesterday at Fenway. Jon Lester had surrendered a two-run shot to Emil Brown in the first, but his offense gave him the leisure to cruise through......

The Manny Ramirez sycophants are still chirping, but whether they like it or not, the Jason Bay era has begun. Bay arrived in Boston and although, he didn’t get the police escort that Doug Mirabelli got when he returned back to Boston; he did receive a hero’s welcome. Not bad for a guy who’s been playing for a team that no one cares about. Last night, Bay and the Sox beat the Oakland A’s 2-1.......

In honor of the sun setting on the Manny Ramirez era; this pink sky shot by splityarn......

Well, that's over. As you've probably heard by now, the Red Sox ended their relationship with Manny Ramirez, sending him to LA in a three-way deal that landed Jason Bay from Pittsburgh. Of course, to grease the wheels, the Sox had to send Brandon Moss and Craig Hansen away too, and they're still paying the rest of Manny's 2008 salary. There's not a lot of doubt who the motivated seller was here. Dan Shaughnessy says......

Manny Ramirez has been traded to the LA Dodgers, where he can spend his evenings commiserating with the rest of the 2004 Red Sox over the front office shenanigans that brought them to the west coast. Update: Unconfirmed blog reports Reliable mainstream media reports say that Manny went to the Dodgers, Matt Kemp 3B Adam LaRoche went to the Pirates, and Jason Bay went to Boston. Wikipedia already has Bay listed as a Red Sox.......

It looks like the Manny Ramirez trade is dead. The latest news has the deal stalled over the Pirates' concerns that they were the pegboy of the Pittsburgh Three-Way. And Bostonist can't help but agree with them. The deal has the Pirates trading away an All-Star caliber left fielder with a monster on base percentage for a bag of magic beans. Insiders also claim that some in the Red Sox front office weren't really down......

"The Red Sox don't deserve a player like me," Manny Ramirez said yesterday. We're not sure; at this point, it seems like a match made in heaven. Last night was either Manny's last game in a Sox uniform, or it wasn't, and either way it was pretty pathetic. Trailing 3-2 after five, the sixth hit the fan once again, and when the dust settled the Angels had a 9-2 win, a sweep, and some legitimate......

One of the series of Fang Friends by Fangela Fangula. Bostonist does not endorse playing baseball on pterodactyls and strongly urges children not to follow Fang Friend Manny's example.......

Relax, folks! Whatever happens now, the Angels aren't going to beat the Red Sox in October! Dan Shaughnessy said so, and like they say, "Hey, folks, when you're right 51% of the time, you're wrong 49% of the time." But the Angels sure can beat the Sox in July, and that's what they did, again, as John Lackey flirted with destiny in a 6-2 win over the lifeless Sox. The Sox waited until the ninth......

It wasn’t that long ago when the Angels swept the Sox and with the Manny being the topic of every sportswriter’s columns across the country, the fans weren’t sure what they'd see last night. Would it be the shining star that makes the great catches and drives in runs two or three at a time? Or would they get the Manny we knew a few years ago who wouldn’t run out a grounder, or......

If you can't work out a way to have the Mariners on your schedule whenever you've got a losing streak, you can at least take comfort seeing Sidney Ponson strolling out to the mound for your opponent. Despite having achieved knighthood by the Queen of the Netherlands, Ponson's name has to enter an conversation involving "Worst Pitchers Of Our Lifetime That Seem To Keep Getting Work Somehow". (Relax, though, Wasdin. You're safe for now.) He......

We don't want to write any more about Manny Ramirez, any more than you want to read it. He played, under thinly-veiled threats of suspension, and he was awful. Which makes him an official member in good standing of this weekend's Red Sox. Because the Sox did it again yesterday, losing 10-3 to the Yankees. The Yanks unloaded on Tim Wakefield, Justin Masterson and Craig Hansen, while the Sox "hitters" let Andy Pettitte off the......

It doesn't take long, does it? All the Sox needed were three chances to whup the Mariners, and the bitter taste of the sweep in Anaheim is gone. True, the Sox did clock a little overtime yesterday, but the end result was a satisfying 6-3, 12 inning win. The Sox loaded the bases in the top of the twelfth on an Ellsbury single, a JD Drew walk, and an error. Mike Lowell brought two home......

Maybe it's the fact that the Mariners are 24 games under .500. Maybe it's the healing waters of Puget Sound. Whatever it is, after 48 hours in Seattle, the Red Sox look like themselves again. Daisuke Matsuzaka became the second straight Sox pitcher to blow away the hapless M's. Dice was in complete control through seven innings, striking out six and walking only three. They did get to him for two runs in the eighth,......

Manny Ramirez was given a talking-to this weekend for jaywalking against the direction of a traffic cop. This was in Seattle, where they actually obey traffic laws (novel, we know), and may not understand that Bostonians will walk (and drive) wherever we want, whenever we want. Manny got off with just a warning, but the Sox might want to watch themselves in other, more law-abiding cities in the future.......

If the Red Sox are going to defend their title, they'd do well to respond to more losses like this. A day after flopping to the Orioles, the Sox put a whuppin' on the hapless Birds, combining a Kevin Youkilis RBI derby with a brilliant performance by Tim Wakefield for a soul-satisfying 12-1 clobbering. Youk's grand slam (first of his career) anchored a seven-run third inning that blew the game out of reach. He added......

...which makes it three gifts in a row for the Red Sox, from the Minnesota bullpen. Twin relievers' ERA for the three-game series: 25.50. Come back any time, guys! Josh Beckett quickly fell behind 3-0, but the Sox scored four in the third off Livan Hernandez (portly pitcher, 453 degrees, alternate dark blue uniforms, must have been a pleasant day for Livan) and chased him in the fifth with two more. Terry Francona whisked the......