If you were worried about the Celtics seeking motivation for a repeat, worry no more. Rajon Rondo blogged: "We have to repeat, because we have to go back to the White House to meet Obama." It may not have been the biggest win anyone recorded in the nation last night, but the Celtics took a step towards that next White House visit. They recovered from their stinker in Indiana to beat a Houston team that's......

First place was in their grasp. So close. Josh Beckett was humming, the Rays were putting up a line of zeroes, and even though it was only 1-0, the Red Sox had to feel good about taking first back last night. Until Carlos Pena solved Beckett and put one into the seats over a leaping Jacoby Ellsbury (shown here). Suddenly, it was Tampa Bay starter Andy Sonnanstine and the remarkable Ray bullpen that looked magical.......

While the Celtics are floundering out West, the Bruins have just finished an honest-to-goodness stampede through the South. And attention must be paid. Last night, the B's finished off a 4-0-1 Southern swing with a 5-3 win at Tampa Bay. Glen Murray scored twice, with Milan Lucic and Mark Stuart also scoring early. P.J. Axelsson took a Glen Metropolit pass and scored a shorthanded goal to put the Lightning away for good. Alex Auld wasn't......

Let's take a trip out to Phoenix, shall we? The Celtics for once found themselves n the other side of the equation, as the team trying to cool an ongoing Suns hot streak. Turns out that the Celts don't well handle such a situation, losing 85-77 to Shaq and his crew. The quick breakdown of dubious distinctions from the game? Lowest Boston total of the season, first third-straight loss of the season, really lousy ball......

A year ago, this particular Bostonist tore into Hot Stove, Cool Music with a ferocity most often seen perhaps in rabid dogs. An event billed as top-notch synergy between Boston's sports and music circles left us wondering if we'd missed the tabletop covered with Kool-Aid in Dixie cups, because we viewed the night as a musical an uninspired, over-hyped musical event. We refuse to believe that we've mellowed in a mere year's time, but it's......

Regardless of how you think he would have fared in 2006, one must admit that Bronson Arroyo was screwed over by the Red Sox organization. He plunks down money on a new house in Boston. He agrees to a hometown discount, $11.2 million contract (over three years) with the Sox, which was pretty much the one thing his agent didn't want him to do. And then the guy is promptly traded off to Cincy for......

Music The stove, the stove, the stove is on fire. But Bostonist will brave the heat as Theo Epstein, Peter Gammons, and friends rock for Hot Stove, Cool Music--keep an eye out for a review of the show. The Paradise, 8:00 pm, $40. Television Only one good thing came from this writers' strike--and that's the return of American Gladiators. LAist sat in on a taping and had this to say: "Original Gladiators: no water. New......

All right. Let's dispense with the false modesty and ersatz humility. The Boston sports scene was AWESOME in 2007. So many great moments, and so many great stretches that can't be summed up in a single moment. How do you make a top-ten list of near perfection? Well, we tried. 10. Back to back to back to back. It wasn't Clemens or Mussina. It was only Chase Wright, who began the year as a potential......

"I hope we have this problem every year," said Theo Epstein when asked about the final-out ball from the 2007 World Series. You may remember the fiasco and hurt feelings involved when the Sox and Doug Mientkiewicz embarked on their power play over the ownership of the 2004 ball. Last we heard was that Jason Varitek had slipped it into his pocket at Coors Field, then gave it to Jonathan Papelbon. Well, today it broke......

--Maybe Fung Wah isn't so bad after all. The local press picked up on a b0st0n LiveJournal story that a Peter Pan bus driver felt that his passengers on a trip to Boston should be punished and forced to stay on the bus in Framingham because one of them called the company about his poor driving. The driver's sorry ass is about to get fired. [WBZ, Globe, b0st0n Live Journal] --Female parking enforcement officers......

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......

We already know they must hate us in Minnesota. Once, they had David Ortiz, Randy Moss and Kevin Garnett. Now they don't. But they must really hate us in Denver these days; less than two weeks after their Colorado Rockies were vaporized in the World Series, the Nuggets came to Boston and fared just as badly. The Celtics (who said they'd need time to adjust to one another?) annihilated Denver almost from the opening last......

The details leaked to the media were changing by what felt like the minute today (or, as on-air talent at WEEI noted, "It's changing from one commercial break to the next!"), but now it's official: Curt Schillling is back for one more season with the Red Sox, a move that will likely end his baseball career here in Boston. "I’ve already heard from Josh and Wake, and am excited to know that my last year......

Bostonist saw today's "Rolling Rally," featuring the players riding duck boats across the city and relief pitcher Jonathan Papelbon dancing to the Dropkick Murphys, from two different vantage points--near the Common and at the Hynes Convention Center. Everyone clearly enjoyed themselves, especially Papelbon: Wherever you were along the parade route, it was simply madness. Of course, the Red Sox faithful turned out in their jerseys. Hundreds of little kids skipped school. College students sat down......

The Red Sox returned from a little trip of consequence out West on Monday and found several thousand fans waiting to welcome them back and get a taste of the victory parade planned for Tuesday. A caravan of buses rolled up to the park shortly after 5 p.m. Monday afternoon and those in attendance didn't have to wait long to see the hardware they'd been lusting after all post-season long: Tom Werner, John Henry, and......

If what they say is true, and Curt Schilling truly pitched his last game as a member of the Boston Red Sox last night... Let there be no mistake. The dividing line between the Sox' Era of Perpetual Failure and the current Golden Years can easily be geotagged; it's somewhere between Theo Epstein's Thanksgiving dinner in Arizona and the first time Curt posted on the SOSH message board. Somewhere in that stretch, the Red Sox......

Sox fans, the request has been made of you: dig out your reddest of red and wear it proud today. The Sox brass hit the television news airwaves on Friday and asked you to show the Red Sox that you're behind them - and show the Indians that in order to get to the World Series, Cleveland is going to have to get past our team AND our fans on our turf. Fans have added......

OK, we're as excited as anyone about the first game of the Boston-Anaheim ALDS. We'll get to that in a second. But let's begin by trying to imagine how thick the tension must have been within a conference room in the catacombs of Fenway Park recently, when Theo Epstein allowed Dan Shaughnessy to sit down and talk baseball. Seriously! After the columns and the gorilla suit, the jabs and the barbs, this was a matchup......

We're going to predict it now: regardless of how the coming weeks treat our local baseball team, the 2007 Red Sox season - sorry, 2007 Pennant-Winning Red Sox season - is going to go down as one for the history books. Years from now, there are going to be many people out there who exclaim that they never doubted that the Sox would win the division. They're going to talk about how they knew that......

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......

Remember J.D. Drew? David Jonathan "J.D." Drew, 31 years old, plays right field, graduated from Florida State? J.D. Drew hasn't generated much favorable buzz these days. The only things we've heard about him for the past month and a half has consisted of justifiable griping from fans and predictions from Theo Epstein that The Slump is only temporary. But Drew made his presence known on Friday night during interleague play in Arizona. Continuing his widely-known......

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 -......

If you watched the local news, you might have heard Neil Young's "Powderfinger" coming from Peter Gammons, Theo Epstein, and a host of local musicians for the Hot Stove, Cool Music benefit concert at the Paradise. The sight of Peter and the Hot Stove All Stars rocking the "Powderfinger" tickles Bostonist's fancy, and all media outlets, the Globe in particular, praised the overall musicianship of the event. However, VickieVictoria, who took this and other......

Boston.com is reporting that Dise-K is on a plane with Red Sox brass John Henry and Theo Epstein heading to Boston, for what most believe would be his physical. A source close to the negotiations is reporting that “You can assume that a deal is done or close."......

Believe it or not, its hot stove time, and that means time to start talking about the 2007 iteration of the Olde Towne Team. Ok, first off, let's get this straight... the Sox are paying the Japanese team the Seibu Lions upwards of 50 million dollars for the exclusive right to NEGOTIATE with Japanese fireballer and WBC MVP Daisuke Matsuzaka? So, assuming he gets Josh Beckett money (and, hopefully pitches better than Beckett), we......

Some thoughts while preparing for a sunny Memorial Day Weekend cookout… David Wells had some bad luck earlier this week, taking a baseball off his right knee. The 43 year-old lefty was pitching quite well until he took a Travis Lee line drive off his knee which knocked him out of the contest. Wells was pitching quite well, leaving after giving up 1 run on 5 hits (and no walks) over 4 1/3 innings. Although......

When we live in such a city as ours, where the professional athletes are our celebrities, Bostonist finds ourselves fawning over the younger athletes (and their managers), of course. You all know our feelings about Tom Brady, but we also think quite highly of Sox manager Theo Epstein. Sure, he might have broken some young teenagers’ hearts when he reneged his offer to escort them to their senior prom…and he did toy with all of......

Some tidbits, insights, slanted biased Bostonist type opinions, and other sports "knowledge" from the Bostonist's satellite office in Medford, on a lovely sunny Wednesday afternoon. It looks like Bostonist's last attempt at explaining the Vinatieri situation was incorrect. Take a look at the Herald today, where the transcript of the interview Vinatieri granted at the Greatest Bar in the North End, yesterday. It looks like Vinatieri NEVER gave the Pats an opportunity to match......

It feels like only yesterday when Bostonist wrote Jason Priestley and asked him to be our date to the junior prom. Unfortunately, Priestley never responded and after many unanswered phone calls to his agent, Bostonist decided to ask someone on the soccer team instead. It’s that time of year when teenagers get into a twitter over the upcoming prom season and two Maine teens decided to skip over all the average boys and go right......

Theo Epstein, the "Once and Future King" of the Red Sox front office, is now officially back on board with the team in a full-time role to be determined. Bostonist doesn't care if he's part of the clubhouse cleaning crew; it’s good to have Theo Epstein, the man that built three straight playoff appearances and the 2004 World Series win, back in a full capacity helping the Red Sox become a better squad and......