There will be no Ultimate Battle of Good Vs. Evil this year. Evil couldn't get past the first round. Ten men left on base, a useless home run from Alex Rodriguez (bet it will be bold-formatted on the resume), and a miserable start from Chien-Ming Wang had the Yankees calling for tee times by the fifth inning. For Yankee-haters, the fun starts now. Joe Torre has already been given the Dread Pirate Roberts treatment by......

Our long national nightmare is over. The polls are closed, the kind of people who care about this can cheer or mourn, and the rest of us (who think it's kind of ridiculous) can have a quick item to note on the offday between games 1 and 2. That's right, Red Sox Nation (shudder)! Jerry Remy is your new President! Deadspin has the best artistic take on the whole silly, silly business. It's still better......

No lead is safe against the Yankees. In case 100 years of bitter history hadn't taught you that, the fiasco on Friday night illustrated the need to jump on them, as soon as possible, and stay there. These guys have more lives than horror-movie villains. The Sox apparently remembered that lesson sometime between Friday night and Saturday afternoon, as they used a Josh Beckett masterpiece and a barrage of timely hitting to rout the Yanks,......

It was all going beautifully, in a manner that would make any Sox fan proud: Yankees roll into town for a late-season showdown. The Sox, boosted by a division lead and recent series of dramatic wins at Fenway Park, seemingly plunge their bats into the heart of New York baseball by taking a decisive lead in front of a riotous baseball crowd. After seven innings, Boston is five runs ahead and sitting pretty after a......

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......

Harry Doyle and the Friends of the Feathered are breathing a sigh of relief this morning. After two losses at Fenway, Chief Wahoo's Tribe turned on the juice Wednesday night, pounding out a season-high 18 hits and smacking the Sox 8-4. Boston gave Daisuke a 2-0 lead after four innings, but Dice had been living dangerously all along, and Cleveland finally started to make him pay. And pay and pay. The Indians score two in......

The fate of nations will be determined this evening in the meadowlands of New Jersey, and we don't mean the upcoming Tony Soprano/Phil Leotardo showdown. The NBA Lottery is tonight, and we'll know if the Celtics are about to take another chance on another unproven youngster, or land one of the two sure-thing prizes in this summer's draft. The C's have a 19.9% chance of landing the #1 pick (Greg Oden, and don't let anyone......

Even though the Devern Hansack experiment went horribly wrong Saturday night, the Sox had no choice but to go to the Pawtucket well again Sunday. So they brought up lefty Kason Gabbard to start Sunday's rain-delayed tilt with the Braves. And it went as well as we possibly could have hoped. Gabbard cooled off the Atlanta bats, which were still steaming from Saturday's 14-run nightcap, to the tune of five innings pitched, six hits, two......

Twins ace Johan Santana only made it five innings, but that was more than enough to send the Red Sox bats into a tizzy from which they never recovered. The Minnesota bullpen, if anything, was sharper than the starter, and the result was a 2-1 loss and the waste of a very good outing from Sox starter Julian Tavarez. Tavarez went six, giving up only four hits and two runs, while striking out seven. But......

First, the Patriots draft troubled but talented safety Brandon Meriweather. Now, they trade for talented but troubled wide receiver Randy Moss, for a fourth-round pick and a round of KFC Famous Bowls. Is Bill Belichick trying to start a gang? Or is he convinced that he can take these miscreants and ne'er-do-wells and mold them into a Super Bowl team? Our money is on the latter. "There's no such thing as a bad boy," said......

Something funny happened on the way to yesterday's anticpated Red Sox slaughter of the Yankees. Funny-odd, that it, not funny-ha-ha. Two batters into the game, Yankees starter Jeff Karstens left the game injured after being whacked with a Julio Lugo line drive. Eight innings of the Yankee bullpen? Final score's gonna be 24-1, right? Um, no. Kei Igawa, who was slated to be sent down to Scranton, if not Coney Island, came on in relief......