Radio guy Sean Grande said it at one point in the second half; there were a lot of bloggers and NBA experts ready to go on the Internet and write that the Celtics really weren't for real. After the first quarter, they'd have had a serious case. The C's couldn't hit the broad side of the barn, and their vaunted defense was being repeatedly torched by Tony Parker and company. This looked bleak. The Celts......

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......

So much for the idea that the thrilling shootout win over Buffalo would spark the Bruins. They followed up that great win with an official stinkeroo last night, turning a 3-2 lead into a 6-3 embarassing loss at the hands of the Panthers. Zdeno Chara, Glen Murray (yay!) and Marco Sturm scored for the B's, but then the defense broke down and Tim Thomas stopped looking like himself for a while. Bad news all around.......

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......

Last night was one of the strangest games we've seen in a while at the TDBG. With the unremarkable Clippers in town, the second quarter had a playoff-like intensity to it, with technicals, an ejection, and some really scrappy play. The fourth quarter showed a surprising lineup, as Doc left the second unit (House, Powe, Davis, Posey, Tony Allen) in for almost the entire time. Most surprising of all - the bench played some fantastic......

Today, we're not going to talk about YouKnowWhat XLII. Because there's nothing to talk about. Today, we're going to celebrate two big wins from our two local winter teams. (We will remind you, however, that we'll be live-blogging YouKnowWhat XLII starting 7:30ish on Sunday. Get your commentin' fingers in shape.) The Celtics were facing maybe their toughest test of the season so far. There have been Negative Nellies all over the land saying that the......

We have a confession to make: we didn't pay a lot of attention to last night's Home Run Derby. Our tolerance for Chris Berman yelling "back back back" is low. Our desire to see kayakers crashing into each other in San Francisco Bay was present, but not overwhelming. And without Papi, what's the point? So congratulations to Anaheim's Vlad Guerrero, who won the Derby, despite the fact that no home runs landed in the huge......

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;......

The good news is, they got some hits. The bad news is, they didn't translate into nearly enough runs. Terry Francona tried drastic measures, moving the struggling (to put it charitably) J.D. Drew to the leadoff spot, possibly to cut down on his left-on-base numbers. That sure didn't work. Francona stuck with the scuffling (again, we're being kind) Julio Lugo, which means that either Alex Cora doesn't know how to play shortstop or is trapped......

One word sums up the spirit felt within Fenway Park on Tuesday night: confidence. The Red Sox returned home from its West Coast roadtrip exhausted (players, management and sleep-deprived fans alike) and with a 3-4 record. Offense had been shaky. The team continued to hit too many double play balls for comfort. And Tim Wakefield, who had struggled through a tough month-long stretch of starts, was slated to take the mound. And yet it seemed......

What a depressing ending. All of the characters were in place, the tension was building, the smell of a big finish was in the air, and then...nothing. Zip. Just like that, it was all over. We kept looking for some extra time, or some trick being played on us, or something to keep us from screaming, "That's IT?!?!?!?" Coco Crisp's line drive sailed right into Chris Young's glove in center, and it was over. Of......

The Red Sox have been living large off of the Foes' inferior bullpens all season. Sadly, what goes around came around last night. The unstoppable Okajima and unbeatable Papelbon were respectively stopped and beaten by the Yankees, who took 2 out of 3 from the Sox for the second straight series. This one was a typical Sox-Yankees seesaw affair. Josh Beckett pitched well, but spotted the Yanks a 4-0 lead. But the Sox got it......

Anybody who thought yesterday to charge $1.00 for blood pressure checks at Fenway can probably retire today a happy person. Where to begin? Both starting pitchers - Schilling and Mussina - looked human, and both seemed to get untracked by a half-hour rain delay. Which was bad news for Schill, but good news for the Red Sox, as it meant that the game would ultimately come down to the bullpens. So Yankee Scott Proctor wound......

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......

Trot Nixon's homecoming game at Fenway was one to remember. Not so much for Trot (1-for-3), but for the fact that this game had a little bit of everything. An inside-the-park home run for Kevin Youkilis (shhh...20 game hitting streak...shhh). A conventional home run for Manny, tying him with former teammate Jim Thome for 25th place all time. A controversial third-strike call in the ninth that brought both managers out for some earnest discussions with......

It's been said that tonight is going to feature the loudest and longest round of applause to hit Fenway in all of 2007. We disagree - we think it will happen either this weekend or in September, when Joe Torre comes to get Roger Clemens in the fourth inning - but tonight's going to be special. Tonight, the Sox welcome back Trot Nixon, stalwart of the 2004 Championship team and one of the core members......

We've now entered the portion of the 2007 Red Sox season where, frankly, it's not that big a deal if the starters struggle. How long this portion will last, we don't know, but we saw the Sox' offense rescue a queasy Daisuke on Friday, and they bailed out a shaky Wakefield Saturday to club the Rangers 7-4. Wake struggled in the fifth, giving up a two-run double to Gerald Laird as the lowlight of a......

No games last night of local interest. So let's take a spin around the country to see what's going on in the rest of the sporting world. We'll start in Arlington, Texas, where the Red Sox are about to begin a three-game set with the Rangers. Daisuke Matsuzaka goes tonight against Brandon McCarthy. Big D is still buzzing about this week's announcement that the Cowboys and their new stadium will host Super Bowl XLV in......

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......

The happiest Red Sox fans around have to be the ones who stopped watching baseball around 7:30 last night. They would have seen Game 1 of the doubleheader, a 13-3 Sox rout/Home Run Derby. They would have seen the Yankees' nightmarish loss to the Mets. But most importantly, they would have been spared Game 2, in which Atlanta demolished the Sox 14-0. A wild day all around. Game One was a laugher thanks in part......

It seems that Mother Nature didn't think the Red Sox's doubleheader sweep of the Tigers on Thursday was impressive enough - the first games after that two-fer will be tidily bundled in another dual-game gameday. The Sox called Friday's scheduled game against their Interleague Play Atlanta visitors pretty early, deciding instead to go the route of a 1 p.m./7:35 p.m. Saturday schedule. The pitching breakdown: Dice-K vs. Braves pitcher Anthony Lerew in the afternoon game,......

6-0. Sounds good, doesn't it? Well, it looked grim for a while for Josh Beckett and the Sox. Dan Johnson broke a 2-2 tie in the top of the sixth with an RBI single, but the Sox rallied off 2 off the Oakland bullpen in the bottom of the inning. Then Okajima and Timlin shut the A's down, and just like that, Beckett became the majors' first six-game winner in the 6-4 triumph. Bostonist hearts......

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 is a much better result for Daisuke. Instead of him pitching brilliantly and losing due to poor run support, he pitched a very average game, but was helped by a barrage of Red Sox home runs, including a team-record four solo shots in a row, courtesy of Manny Ramirez, J.D. Drew, Mike Lowell and Jason Varitek. Who was worried about Manny and 'Tek's slow starts? That was all well and good, but it was......

It seemed as if the Celtics were riding high when they finally beat the San Antonio Spurs this weekend and gave the Dallas Mavericks a run for their money. St. Patrick's Day had been kind to the Celtics, especially with anything regarding the state of Texas. However, the good luck was only on the court. News also emerged this weekend that the Celtics organization had "excessive contact" with a Texas VIP - University of Texas......

Georgetown took Boston College out of the NCAA tournament, 62 to 55. All in all, it wasn't a bad showing, especially since one of BC's big guns, Sean Williams, got suspended earlier in the season. We could wonder what might have been with Williams around, but it probably wouldn't have made a difference. Roy Hibbert, of the Hoyas, was just too much to deal with. The dude is 7-foot-2! But all was not lost in......

Ah, finally, a break from Aqua Teen Hunger Force … When the chips are down for the local sports teams, it's time to talk about what players, coaches, owners, and GMs are doing in their spare time. They're getting busy. In what would have been a major local story were it not for a certain cup, cluster o' fries, and a "meat wad," word leaked out that Red Sox GM Theo Epstein got hitched -......

Things are quiet now that the Pats won't be at the Super Bowl, so Bostonist took a little breather from the Redux. The Bruins are also off for the NHL All-Star Break. That leaves the Celtics and, if Bostonist stretches a tad, the retirement of Bill "Tuna" Parcells, former Pats coach and professional zinger-slinger. Celtics 89, San Antonio Spurs 93 (Monday night) – Beating the Celtics wasn't good enough for Tim Duncan. Apparently Duncan likes......