Results tagged “mikelowell”

On the outside looking in. After losing two out of three in Texas, the Red Sox are out of the playoff picture for the moment. It's a troubling time. Out batting is ineffective, our pitching (beyond Beckett and Lester) is shaky, and by our unofficial count, the Sox are 2-75 on the road this season. Not counting Baltimore.

Wow, that dismal weekend in New York seems like a long time ago, doesn't it? Back at home and spurred on by Kevin Youkilis' charge on Tuesday (OK, that wasn't a total success, but what's done is done), the Sox continued pounding the Tigers, 8-2. Most of those runs were admittedly superfluous, as Josh Beckett had another Josh Beckett game, allowing only three hits (well, two of them were solo HRs) over seven innings to pick up his league-high 14th win.

Well, Junichi Tazawa got his first major league win in his first major league start. All he had to do was touch off a series of events that landed somewhere between "difference of opinion" and "international incident", hang on for the minimum five innings, and wait for Mike Lowell to swoop in and save the day.

Are we in the pennant race yet? Because whatever it is the Red Sox are racing towards, it doesn't feel like a pennant. They're 3-8 in their last eleven games, they're failing against an Oakland/Baltimore portion of the schedule that seemed designed to give them some momentum coming out of the All-Star Break, and they're exposing serious flaws in almost every aspect of the game that isn't named Josh Beckett.

The newest Celtic hit town yesterday. With his three-man recruiting committee by his side (we wonder how much guts it would take to turn down a job when Paul, Ray and Kevin come to your interview), Rasheed Wallace met the press and said everything we like to hear when a new guy comes to town. WEEI has a transcript of most of those things. He says he felt Boston gave him the best chance to win, he's looking forward to playing with KG every night, he (for the moment, anyway) doesn't care whether he starts or how much he plays. Sheed will wear #30 for the Green, which has had a really rough stretch since M.L. Carr took it off in 1985. Mark Blount and Sebastian Telfair were the latest to wear it. We hope Wallace does better things, but frankly, we don't see how he couldn't.

Sure, if you win the Stanley Cup, you get your name engraved on it, you get to take it home for a day to do whatever you want with it, and kids from Yellowknife to Halifax go to bed dreaming of it. But still, when your year is over, you usually have to give it back. Usually to the Red Wings.

Friday was all about the player comeback and, in Boston's case, players' happy reunions with the teams that have missed them.

We're running out of ways to say this. The Bruins are beyond hobbling. Beyond struggling. They've lost 46 out of their last 45 games (to be fair, that's a rough estimate) and not one of their 35 shots made it past goalie Steve Mason as the B's fell 2-0 to the Blue Jackets in Columbus last night.

If Sox fans were looking for something to get out of bed for this morning, a pair of our other local teams were ready to provide plenty of reason to go on. Monday Night Football! Bruins home opener! Who needs a World Series?

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.

We didn't really think there was going to be any Wally Pipp-ing of the injured Red Sox (well, maybe one of them). Even though the kids have been on fire, the Sox welcomed back Josh Beckett from arm trouble and Mike Lowell from a strained oblique with open (if sore) arms. And the two of them chipped in, in an 8-1 ripping of the Rangers that pulled the Sox within 2 1/2 of the AL East lead and probably caused a sleepless night or two in Ray Country.

We've got one pitcher down, and one pitcher out. Not a great day for the Red Sox in Chicago yesterday.

Via Red Sox Monster, this video shows Mike Lowell stealing what appears to be a fan's cell phone during Monday's game. According to news reports, the phone was later returned. Awesome prank? Just plain weird? Exactly what the Sox need to get back on top? We're not really sure. Here's a closeup video if you're interested.

Outnumbered? Well, if you count Motown Steve Javie as wearing a Detroit jersey over his referee's uniform. Endless moaning about the refs is for losers and Spurs, so we'll keep it brief. We'll just say that if you have the desire to send Richard Hamilton any fan mail, just address it to the free throw line at the Garden; it's the one place he's sure to be found.

Hold your horses. Put your plans to start drinking at 6 AM on hold. The Sox plane to Japan is sitting empty on the runway.

According to sources, Buffy the Vampire Slayer star and Watertown’s own, Eliza Dushku is reportedly dating Seth MacFarlane , creator of Family Guy. Dushku use to date Dodgers pitcher and former member of Alyssa Milano’s baseball harem, Brad Penny. (Has everyone dated Alyssa Milano, or what?)

All right. Let's dispense with the false modesty and ersatz humility. The Boston sports scene was AWESOME in 2007. So many great moments, and so many great stretches that can't be summed up in a single moment. How do you make a top-ten list of near perfection? Well, we tried.

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.

Given that there were no local games to be had on Tuesday evening, we here at Bostonist wanted to dig below the surface, uncover some little-known facts about the local sports scene and its ripple effect. And did we* come up with some gems for you! -- Mike Ditka Doesn't Like the Pats! As we mentioned Tuesday afternoon, Ditka spoke out after Sunday's Pats win and said that Tom Brady was as wrong for acknowledging...

That's right; we almost had to go in the closets for a rare winter activation of the Panic Button. The Patriots were struggling on offense, dropping passes left and right. The defense really struggled, allowing Raven Willis McGahee to run amok for three quarters. Don Shula was up in the booth with corkscrew in hand. But somehow, the game stayed close. And Tom Brady had a chance to go up the field with 3:30 to...

In Los Angeles, LAist most definitely celebrated Thanksgiving like no other. After all, one has to keep up all the energy to keep on walking the line at the Writers Strike and fighting the unfortunate return of the wildfires in Malibu, which single handedly destroyed over fifty homes within the first 24 hours. National outlets may be covering the fires, but CNN also found it is easier to buy a gun than fruit and...

No matter how old we get, the more we get a kick out of the immature, downright gleeful sensation of zinging another city's team. Case in point: Toronto on Tuesday night. The Maple Leafs hosted Boston, who in turn officially introduced the NHL to Tuukka Rask. Rask, a mere cub at 20 years of age, then made 30 saves and led the Bruins to a 4-2 victory over the Leafs. The zinger? Bruins fans know...

The Sox got the message. After making decisions that led to the breakup of the 2004 champs, like letting Pedro (which we grudgingly understood) and Johnny Damon (hey, how's that working out for you anyway, Johnny?) leave, Sox fans stood as one and declared that if they didn't bring back World Series MVP, great fielding, clutch hitting, hard working, popular Mike Lowell, we'd...be pretty unhappy. So Mike Lowell will be right where he belongs next...

Josh Beckett got to hoist the championship trophy, ride down Boylston on the duck boats, and will get a huge ring in the spring. He earned the Sports Illustrated commemorative issue cover, the champagne and beer showers, and the reputation for serving as the ace among aces in October. He had a rich season, so we're hoping that such a reminder helps as C.C. Sabathia is toasted as the American League's newest Cy Young winner....

You'd think that a day on which we learned that the Pope would rather celebrate mass at Yankee Stadium than anywhere near Boston would be a grim one. Let's face it, that's kind of like George Steinbrenner holding a press conference to announce that Yankees fans are guaranteed eternal salvation, but Red Sox fans will be hitting the highway to hell when their times come. But hey - let the Pope do what he will....

The details leaked to the media were changing by what felt like the minute today (or, as on-air talent at WEEI noted, "It's changing from one commercial break to the next!"), but now it's official: Curt Schillling is back for one more season with the Red Sox, a move that will likely end his baseball career here in Boston. "I’ve already heard from Josh and Wake, and am excited to know that my last year...

Now that the trophy has been shown off and the Duck Boats have moved through Boston's streets, Patriots fans out there are psyched. Baseball's over! Time to devote the sports news hole to the pigskin! Almost. We want to give patient Pats fans their due, so we'll breeze through the baseball news nice and quickly: - There was a victory celebration on Tuesday. Many people attended. - Joe Torre: out of New York, into Los...

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...

The boys are back in town, the taco meat has been brought up from the cellar, and all of New England's non-essential personnel are taking the afternoon off for a parade. (Dude...Tuesday afternoon? Really?!) The good news, for some people, is that Jonathan Papelbon's dance of spontaneous excitement and youthful exuberance has now been added to the Official Canon of Sox-Nation-Approved Quirks. The Duck Boats will slow down at predesignated locations so that Papelbon can...

Not only is Red Sox third baseman Mike Lowell the MVP of the World Series, but he's also real sexy, at least according to Kevin Millar and Jonathan Papelbon. In the following video, Papelbon asks former Red Soxer Millar to evaluate the sexiness of individual players: Surprisingly, Millar said that Beckett was the ugliest, even though Beckett has enjoyed dalliances with country singer Danielle Peck and Alyssa Milano. Millar also got in a dig at...