Some thought the road to the Celtics' 17th title was going to be a cake walk. But if the sports fans in Boston know anything, they know that it’s never that easy. The Celtics dropped another game last night to the Atlanta Hawks 97-92, tying the series at two games a piece. Ray Allen led the team and scored 21 points, and KG racked up 20. Garnett got into a little tussle after elbowing......

The Boston Phoenix's annual "Unsexiest Men" issue is one of their big events. Ever since they picked Gilbert Gottfried for the top of the list three years ago, they've earned national mentions for their audacity to call out guys for their ugly mugs. But the issue came out one week ago, and it was unsatisfying. So what went wrong with this year's list, which featured Roger Clemens on the cover? A quick glance revealed that......

--The Massachusetts House voted overwhelmingly in favor of preliminary approval to pour $1 billion into life sciences investment over 10 years. [WBZ Radio] --Of course Manny Ramirez would forget about $10,000 that the state of Massachusetts owes him. And if you think the state owes you some money, too, go to findmassmoney.com. [Boston Herald] --Is it just us, or is Bridget Moynahan looking better and classier than ever? Or is it just extended Super......

It looks like it's going to be an easy season for Red Sox beat writers. It looks like all they'll have to do is set up a microphone within half a mile of Jonathan Papelbon, and he'll come a-runnin' with enough material to fill a dozen Notes columns. More, if they can be padded out with 40-year-old rock lyrics (hi, Dan!). So it's the time of the season for Spring Training, and Papelbon held court......

The All-Star Break couldn't have come at a better time for the Celtics. It's a few extra days of rest for KG, of course, but after last night, almost everyone over 6'8" is in agony this morning and needs some time off. Brian Scalabrine fled the court with a groin pull very early, then Glen Davis went down VERY hard in the second half. He was in so much visible pain that they didn't immediately......

Look outside the window. Grimace. Then realize that somewhere, in a magical land known as Florida, spring is only one day away. Pitchers and Catchers Day is almost here, which means that spring is creeping closer to our frozen city. Ballplayers will be ready to welcome in the season when they finally get back to Fenway. The journey just happens to take them to Florida, Japan, Los Angeles, Oakland, and Toronto before spring finally reaches......

It was the rarest of rare occasions: a Beanpot final that didn't involve BU. Instead it was Boston College and Harvard, with the Eagles leading by two midway through the third period. BC almost blew it before taking control in overtime and winning on a Nick Petrecki goal. So two overtime wins for Boston College. And a very relieved Jerry York. BU beat Northeastern in the consolation game. Pitchers and catchers don't have to be......

Tim Duncan and the city of Boston have had an interesting relationship over the years. It looked like the big guy would be coming here as a reward for the dismal 1997 Celtics season; Rick Pitino [make evil eye sign, spit on ground] even took the C's coaching job assuming that he'd get to coach Tim. As we all know, the Spurs' tank-job paid off, Duncan went to San Antonio, and Pitino stayed. Just to......

The good news for the Celtics is that the Timberwolf portion of their schedule is in the history books. After surviving a 1-point game against Minnesota at home a couple of weeks ago, the C's went to the Twin Cities and pulled out a 2-point win. It started with a polite Minnesotan reaction for Kevin Garnett, who of course didn't play again but got a huge ovation from his former hometown fans. It continued with......

The Chargers sputtered for a while yesterday, but finally turned it on enough to beat Tennessee and ensure that the Jacksonville Jaguars will be the next team to come into Foxboro and try to spoil the Pats' Date With Destiny. The Jags, everyone's chic pick to make a wild-card run in the AFC, barely beat Pittsburgh, but the consensus is that they're well-suited to giving the Pats as tough a game as they've had all......

There are plenty of reasons to like Doc Rivers right now. Twenty-eight reasons, actually. But we wish we could kindly remind Rivers and the Celtics that you have to focus on winning the little games in order for the big games to mean anything. The Celts welcomed Memphis onto the TD Banknorth Garden floor on Friday night and nearly opened the door for the Grizzlies to win. Ray Allen struggled (two points overall) and, while......

Maybe some voters in Iowa had a tough decision to make; not so the AP NFL Coach of the Year voters, who swept Bill Belichick into the award with 29 out of 50 possible first-place votes. The other 21, we're sure, were dismayed by Spygate (why else vote against a guy whose team didn't lose?), figuring that any coach who had footage of 20 minutes of Jetball had an unfair advantage. Bill, we're sure, took......

One of the most remarkable things about the Celtics' remarkable turnaround is that NBA players actually want to come here. You may remember the lure of playing in Boston almost got Reggie Miller off his couch, and now there's talk that future Hall-of-Famer Gary Payton called his agent the other night and said he'd like to come to Boston. Now, this is amazing news for Bostonist. For years, our favorite non-Celtic players in the......

Roger Clemens is an unhappy man today. At least, his lawyer is. Attorney Rusty Hardin responded to Roger's prominence in the Mitchell Report by saying, "He is left with no meaningful way to combat what he strongly contends are false allegations." We remember something in the report about Mitchell requesting an interview with Clemens and being turned down. Perhaps that was a mistake. For Clemens and the rest of the names on the list, it's......

Unofficial leaked lists started hitting the Internet late this morning. Fearful and optimistic at the same time, we started scanning them to see who was allegedly going to be on the MLB Steroid Commission's "Naughty" list. But then the 400-page PDF report arrived in our browser, and some of the worst rumors turned out to be just rumors. The most popular list circulating this morning named Jason Varitek, Trot Nixon and Julian Tavarez. None of......

Well...that was a little scarier than it had to be, wasn't it? While Curt Schilling was completely dominating and mastering the Angels lineup, the Red Sox lineup took their sweet time getting around to dominating the game. So for a game that ended 9-1, there was an awful lot of fingernail chewing and knuckle whitening. The Sox did take the lead, insurmountable as it turned out, in the fourth, when Papi and Manny went deep......

In the bid to make 2007 the first season when all four LDS's were sweeps, the National League took care of business yesterday. The Rockies bid adieu to Philly, while the Diamondbacks went to Wrigley and broke Cub fans' hearts for the 99th straight season. Which, if you're a Red Sox fan, at least means that when we win the World Series, at least we won't do it on the back of long-suffering Philly or......

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,......

Well, on the bright side, Daisuke has nothing to complain about this morning in terms of getting run support. Before the last of the Blue Jays' traveling party had cleared Customs, the Red Sox had staked Dice to a 10-1 lead, the big blow courtesy of a 3-run shot by the red-hot Mike Lowell, [Editorial Insert to Whatever Front Office Types Are Reading This. There's going to be temptation this offseason to make a run......

In one sense, we all dodged a bullet last night. If Roger Clemens had thrown a no-hitter, you wouldn't be reading these words right now: rather, a six-paragraph string of bad words. It was that close. But it's not like there's much of a silver lining after the Sox dropped their second straight in the Bronx. Roger took a no-hitter into the sixth (thank you, Papi, thank you, thank you), which is bad. Manny Ramirez......

Were we sore baseball losers, we might snicker about how Johnny Damon's version of a home run is about as wussy as his arm. We could hypothesize about what Yankee operative snuck into the Red Sox clubhouse to tamper with the Icy Hot Manny Ramirez and Bobby Kielty were using to prevent their backs from seizing up during play. We might even politely ask Cameron Diaz to quit jinxing our team and instead focus on......

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......

Not every day can be that exciting in the sports world. Today will be pretty good: the Sox open a series in Baltimore, the Patriots play their first exhibition game, and Gillette Stadium is preparing for the Sunday arrival of David Beckham. Yesterday...nothing. Well, there was a little excitement. New Celtics Eddie House and Scot Pollard faced the media, and Bostonist already likes Pollard. "Getting Kevin Garnett here was a big deal, but with us......

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......

Fear of the number 13. As in, 13 innings. As in, losing in the 13th inning on an Ivan Rodriguez single off of Jonathan Papelbon. But don't blame Papelbon, on a night when the Red Sox had two runs after three batters, then took the rest of the night off. A night when the team left a platoon on base. A night when - well, it just wasn't our night. It started off well enough;......

We know the Rocket is scared of pitching against the Sox. He did something to his groin, or claimed he did, to get out of coming up to the majors to play earlier this year. And the imagined scene in 2057 he's already had his groin removed. And for some reason Steinbrenner resembles Krang. Yeah, Rocket Rodger is getting old. Roger Clemens 2057......

The nailbiting, the pacing, the swearing, the chainsmoking - they all end tonight. Except maybe at Tommy Heinsohn's house. Tonight, we find out the next step in the Celtics' drive back to relevance. Will Danny Ainge swing one of the deals we've heard about? Will we be welcoming Kevin Garnett (no way), Shawn Marion (probably not), Dikembe Mutombo (possible) or Bill Telfair? Or will Danny stand pat and actually use his #5 pick to draft......

Was it really just a few days ago that the sky was falling, the panic buttons were being hauled out of the closet, the kids were being reminded of their disaster-preparedness drills? Well, everyone can breathe easy for the moment, as the Sox dispatched the Giants for the third straight game, with a 9-5 win keyed by a rare Manny home run and a satisfying performance by Tim Wakefield. And the moment every Sox fan......

If you said the Red Sox lineup would eventually break out of its funk, you weren't alone. If you said it would be J.D. Drew and Dustin Pedroia who did their "Bash Brothers" imitation and got the runs home, please forward us tonight's lottery numbers. Terry Francona's gambit of putting Drew and Pedroia 1-2 in the lineup paid off bigtime last night, as the two combined to go 8-for-9 with 8 RBIs in the 10-2......

All right, it wasn't exactly "Our hallowed snake-skull-cracking day", but there aren't too many opportunities to play the Diamondbacks and break out all the old snake jokes. What it was, was a tough game against a young pitcher pitching way above his head, and the Red Sox were fortunate to get out of it with a 10-inning, 4-3 win. Julian Tavarez pitched well, with a couple of mistakes, including giving Arizona's Stephen Drew a chance......