More than any other game this season, last night's Celtics game resembled an episode of Full House. There were a lot of laughs at the beginning, some serious moments towards the end, but it all wrapped up very neatly, complete with an "awwww" track from the studio audience. Aside from the cheeseball 90's sitcom aspect, this one had trouble written all over it. A hungry Rockets team (even without Tracy McGrady), and the first game......

The Red Sox won their last seven games. The Celtics have a six-game winning streak. The Patriots haven't lost in - well, we can barely remember. Even the Bruins stopped Atlanta yesterday. So every local team finished 2007 on an up note (yes, Revs, we know, and we're sorry). The B's were headed for another stinkeroo for a while, but they finally found their offense, and pelted the surprised Thrashers. Dennis Wideman and P.J. Axelsson......

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......

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......

This Japanese Word of the Day will, we hope, be brought to you by Daisuke Matsuzaka, who will try to use his houri to send the Yankees packing tonight. The Red Sox took game two of the latest Ultimate Regular Season Series yesterday; Josh Beckett recovered from a couple shaky innings to hold New York in check. David Ortiz provided the big hit, as he is wont to do, with a two-run homer around......

We saw some serious ex-Red Sox Sports Blotter Action yesterday. Former pitcher Ugueth Urbina was sentenced to 14 years in prison in Venezuela for attempted murder. And not just any attempted murder. Urbina doused five of his own employees with gasoline and paint thinner and went after them with a machete. Somebody clearly just watched Reservoir Dogs. Only 14 years for wailing on people with a machete? Sounds like a light sentence to us. Urbina......

Boston beat Seattle 118 to 103. And Al Jefferson is playing like a star, scoring 31 points in the game. The team also appears to have finally caught on to some basic defensive principles. On the downside, the Celtics are carrying more injuries with Ryan Gomes having a busted left foot and Delonte West still feeling the affects of the concussion he sustained against the Rockets. But the Celtics were able to beat the Sonics......

Last night, the Garden saw some serious ugly. After winning a few, Celtics fans had cause for optimism. However, they were facing the Houston Rockets, fifth in the West and fully stocked with Yao Ming. Even though the Rockets didn't exactly deliver a pitch-perfect performance, the Celtics collapsed quickly and never caught up. The final score was 111 to 80, and the Rockets made 15 three-pointers. The performance was so bad that we thought we......

So the Celtics won a game against an injury-depleted Houston Rockets. That's swell and all, but the real sports news involved a man named "Cornbread." As the Sports Redux noted yesterday, Dave Adams at Universal Hub overheard WRKO Celtics announcer and former NBA player Cedric "Cornbread" Maxwell say of female referee Violet Palmer, "Get back in the kitchen!" Apparently he didn't like one of her calls. Adams writes, "Max's partner, Sean Grande, tried to throw......