You probably read yesterday that Jonathan Papelbon will, in fact, be the Red Sox closer this year, and probably for years to come. Why they didn't just announce this at the beginning of camp, when we all suspected this was going to happen eventually, is beyond us. But we still love the idea of players blogging, if it means Dan Shaughnessy will fade further into irrelevance. The bad news in Fort Myers is that......

According to the Globe, our own Holy Cross was "prepared to get physical" against Southern Illinois in the first round of the NCAA tournament, but that's not quite how things turned out. According to other coaches, the Southern Illinois Salukis are absolutely terrifying. One guy said a team could imitate their defense if "We run down to the police station and we get all the German shepherd attack dogs and we just bring them onto......

We're eagerly waiting to see how our local NCAA matchups shake out. Boston College takes on Texas Tech and Bobby Knight tomorrow, and Holy Cross faces off against Southern Illinois on Friday. In the other big college basketball tournament, the NIT, the UMass Minutemen defeated Alabama in overtime 89 to 87. They'll advance into the next round to play West Virginia. So let's not forget the NIT in the face of March Madness. Speaking of,......

We refuse - flat out refuse - to get emotionally caught up in a spring training game. Even if it's Sox-Yankees. Especially if A-Rod, Jeter, and Johnny Demon didn't make the trip down to Fort Myers. But if you saw a nuclear-bomb-like flash to the south yesterday evening, it may have been the million flashbulbs trained on the first U.S. meet-and-greet between the two Japanese superstars: Sox' Daisuke Matsuzaka and the Yankees' Hideki Matsui. "He......