For all the hype and adoration heaped on Daisuke Matsuzaka, the fact is he's still technically a rookie, if a seasoned one. And rookies do things like get themselves into trouble. His last few starts, Dice has been prone to having one bad inning here and there, which combined with a lack of run support, has caused some trouble. Last night, fortunately, the offense picked him up and pulled him out of the fire. The......

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......

Forget the 2008 Presidential Race for now. The biggest decision any voter can make right now is the one forced on us by Major League Baseball. Since the All-Star game is in San Francisco, a National League park, the designated hitter is not an option. Which means the Red Sox had to designate David Ortiz to be in the First Baseman section of the All-Star ballot. Which means Kevin Youkilis is on the outside looking......

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......

Go ahead, admit it. We will. Going into this season, we were counting on Schill, Daisuke, and Josh to guarantee us a .600 winning percentage, and we'd take our chances with the other guys. Not so fast. That guy with the 1.35 ERA, that guy who had the Blue Jays flapping their wings ineffectively all night? That old guy? That's Old Reliable Tim Wakefield, who improved to 2-1 with another bloodlessly effective outing. "He can......

--Red Sox center fielder Coco Crisp is making the publicity rounds to remind everyone that he is back and ready to play after being hampered with a busted finger. He is also saying that he doesn't care what you, the fan, think about him: "I don’t care if people think I suck or they think I’m good. I just go out there and have fun, and hopefully the ball falls. . . . If the......

We were diligently writing today's Redux and thinking of lecturing Dan Shaugnessy for committing the major journalism fallacy of assuming everyone "stopped eating and sleeping" when Dice-K touched down in Fort Meyers. Not everyone is tracking every move of Dice-K. Everyone is actually obsessing over tracking every move of Britney Spears. OK, that's not true. But the 24-hour-cable-news channels are, anyway. You probably already heard about it - Britney Spears up and shaved her head.......

Could you rank sports cities — objectively, now — by the number of MVP seasons that city has witnessed?The above is the question asked by Curtis Edmonds on his Northbound blog in response to a recent WaPo article. The most valuable city is – drum roll – Boston. We're not talking passion, championships, or even money spent on professional sports. Pure statistical analysis of the Most Valuable Player awards awarded to players on the teams.......

Sometimes you need to clean yourself up, get serious, and move in with daddie for a few months before you head to Latin America for a new gig. The District bid's Jenna Bush adios. D.C.-based television shows have an elderly audience and DCist has some suggestions to fix that. They're also throwing Butterstick the panda bear a birthday bash. Yeah, we may have a few issues with our World Cup broadcasters here, but this......