Some alleged boneheads should have their Red Sox Nation cards revoked, and we're not talking about Hank Steinbrenner. In a scary incident reported in the Cambridge Chronicle, a man wearing Yankees attire got beat up outside the Cantab Lounge in Central Square early Sunday morning. From the Chronicle: The Yankees fan was transported to the hospital March 2 at 1:41 a.m. for medical treatment for head injuries, including swelling over his entire face and several......

It seems wrong, somehow, to be focusing on the Red Sox in December. But given the fact that all of the other Boston-area pro sports teams - the ones now playing and, you know, winning - found themselves with a day off, Boston sports fans were drawn to the glowing-red hot stove action unfolding within the Red Sox organization. All day on Tuesday, the word was that it was close, this business between the Sox......

Well, the Twins aren't cooperating. Instead of being excited about the chance for yet another Minnesota star to come to Boston, they're dragging their feet on the inevitable Johan Santana trade. They now want Jacoby Ellsbury thrown in the mix, to counter Hank Steinbrenner's throwing-in of pitching prospect Phil Hughes. The Red Sox say maybe on Ellsbury, but that would mean no Jon Lester. The Yankees say if they don't hear from Minnesota soon, the......

So Sheriff Beckett stared down the Cleveland gang last night. Once again, when the Red Sox needed Josh to be at his absolute best, he pretty much was. Sure, he gave up one more hit than he did in his Game One dazzler, but he only gave up one run - on a double play ball. Other than that, he struck out 11 Indians and gave 44,588 Clevelanders something to do with their towels beside......

Someone in the Red Sox front office deserves a bonus today. Someone must have found a loophole in American League rules that permitted Josh Beckett to pitch ping-pong balls at the Angels while John Lackey was forced to throw regulation-sized baseballs. He had to be throwing ping-pong balls. What other explanation could there be that the Angels, a good hitting team and champions of the West, were reduced to flailing around like overmatched patsies? After......

It was all going beautifully, in a manner that would make any Sox fan proud: Yankees roll into town for a late-season showdown. The Sox, boosted by a division lead and recent series of dramatic wins at Fenway Park, seemingly plunge their bats into the heart of New York baseball by taking a decisive lead in front of a riotous baseball crowd. After seven innings, Boston is five runs ahead and sitting pretty after a......

Sure, it was 147 degrees yesterday, but fall is in the air today. The Patriots are in New Jersey, the J-E-T-S are staring at them from the opposite sideline, and the game is on. All the question marks, fortunately, are fairly minor. Will Laurence Maroney step up to being the number-one option running? Will the secondary stay strong with Rodney Harrison in football purgatory? Is Randy Moss a ticking time bomb, or will the Pats'......

Sure, he's not in the starting rotation any more - how do you follow up a no-hitter? But the Sox learned last night that they can lean on Clay Buchholz when they're not strong, putting him out for three solid relief innings that kept Baltimore scoreless and allowed Jason Varitek to drive in the winning run of a tense ballgame. The Sox had given Tim Wakefield a 5-4 lead, mostly on the 3-run homer by......

Manny's still hurt. Okajima is cranky. Team officals are anonymously bellyaching that bringing back Mike Lowell next year might be too expensive. Boy, it's fun being in first place, huh? Last night vs. Toronto was a fairly ho-hum game, with a disappointing ending. Curt Schilling pitched well again (See? All is not lost.), but Manny Delcarmen and Okajima gave up killer home runs to Troy Glaus and Vernon Wells, respectively, and the Jays avoided getting......

Frankly, we'd like to know what Daisuke Matsuzaka did to alienate his teammates. Does he play "Gyroball" constantly in the clubhouse? Mix wasabi in with the Ben Gay as a lockerroom prank? There must be some reason why his lineup consistently fails to give him any run support, making him 1-3 against the Devil Rays to his 12-7 record against the rest of the league. Don Orsillo put it best late in the game last......

Clay Buchholz is coming! The Red Sox have groomed and nurtured their up-and-coming phenom, and will turn him loose on an unsuspecting American Leage this afternoon. Well, not entirely unsuspecting, since it's been pretty widely reported. He has explosive stuff (if no gyroball), good command, and a great attitude, says everyone who's worked with him in the farm system. And he gets his first crack in the bigs today against the [Your Municipality Here] Angels.......

Well, if your game against Tampa Bay gets upgraded to "must-win" status, you had better make sure Tim Wakefield is on the mound. Wake owns the Devil Rays. And Wake, last night, handcuffed, bound, gagged and threw the Rays into the river, giving up only two hits in an eight-inning masterpiece. The Red Sox' home run boycott continued, but they did give Tim more than enough run support. David Ortiz doubled in the first run,......

We here at the Redux are starting to get awfully cranky. You see, we are running out of ways to tell folks to keep the faith and stay off the Zakim Bridge. We've invested a lot of time in the act of reassuring Red Sox fans, asking them to refrain from hitting the panic button. You'd think the Red Sox would help us out and do their part to keep people calm. That would be......

As fans, we can afford to be capricious. That's why the Kevin Garnett-to-the-Celtics rumors, which seemed way too expensive back in June when we thought we were building for the future, have us a little giddier now. ESPN is reporting that the trade talks are starting to swirl around again; the deal would still involve Al Jefferson, Theo Ratliff (who is the Celtics MVP based on how much everyone lusts after his expiring contract), and......

Two previous games, two total runs. Thursday night, runs were scoring every time you turned around. 14-9 Red Sox. Such is baseball. Recapping all the runs chronologically would take forever, so let's look at a few highlights. Like Manny Ramirez: Two home runs, including a bomb in the second that landed near Akron. Mike Lowell: three-for-five. And (sit down) Wily Mo Pena (!), who went 4-for-5 (!) with a 3-run home run that blew the......

Part of us thinks that a team that's scuffling as bad as the Red Sox are right now deserves to have five guys named to the All-Star team. But we do recognize that the honor is bestowed upon players based on the entire spring's production, not just the last couple weeks of lousy baseball, so let's give credit where credit is due. Manny, Papi, Lowell, Beckett, and Papelbon are all going to San Francisco for......

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......

Take us to DEFCON 3. The Red Sox were pasted at Fenway last night. Somehow (we can't explain it), the game seemed closer than the 12-2 final score indicated, but you can't really find a silver lining in a cloud this dark. Curt Schilling and the bullpen kept giving up big hits, and the Red Sox kept not getting big hits, which has become a troubling leitmotif all month long. Two runs a game generally......

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......

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......

Think about it: Josh Beckett's been out of the Boston Red Sox lineup for a couple of weeks. He missed two starts and generated some genuine worry over the cut on his finger that taught a few million baseball fans what "avulsion" meant. One couldn't expect a super top-notch showing from a guy just getting back into the groove, right? Seven innings, seven strikeouts, one walk, three hits. Oh, and he's the first Red Sox......

ESPN has never met a story it couldn't drive into the ground. Remember Terrell Owens' "suicide attempt" last fall? Unfortunately, with the Red Sox off, we need something sporty to talk about, so enter the Worldwide Leader's hyping of Barry Bonds' chase of the home run record. Jayson Stark, probably the best non-Gammons baseball writer out there, is flummoxed that not as many people are against Bonds as everyone seems to think. We know people......

It's on. The Yankees announced today that Roger Clemens (left, lying down) has consented to spend weekends and holidays in the Bronx this year, for a princely sum of roughly $28 million. The Red Sox apparently made Clemens an offer, but the idea of bookending his career in Boston and accumulating major karma points apparently wasn't worth the millions that Steinbrenner presumably overbid. Bostonist never was quite sure how we felt about the idea of......

-- The discussion was running rampant on the WRKO Sox broadcast late Friday night: is Mariano Rivera hurt? Was he simply embarrassed by the performance he gave while the Red Sox trounced his team en route to an 11-4 win? Is there something more? While the on-air talent was busy ruminating, another question entirely was running through Bostonist's mind: after finally coming up for air after this week's Sockgate, isn't it refreshing to have all......

Finally, we can put the one-day wonder of Sockgate behind us. O's broadcaster Gary Thorne admitted he misinterpreted Doug Mirabelli's horseplay as a confession, and thus has no reason to believe that Curt Schilling painted his sock to look bloody. The lesson here, of course, is that horseplay has no place in a major league clubhouse. Curt took the opportunity to unload on the media; you get the feeling that parts of his diatribe were......

Bostonist has been watching all the Sox games recently and we have to admit that we are surprised by a few things. Youkilis has definitely been stepping it up from last season's performance on the field and although Coco is on the sidelines in a splint, we can't wait until he takes center field again. (Don't even get us started on the newest Sox tees to hit Yawkey Way (Chocolate brown "Red Sox" logo......

In most cases a lost series in New York would generate a blast-furnace of heat and outrage from Red Sox Nation. Watercoolers and the radio airwaves *should* be buzzing, but after looking back on the just-concluded series at the Stadium, this Bostonist came away with more of a smile than a scowl. The series, and road-trip, kicked off with a rather masterful performance by the Yankees' Aaron "Playing Anything But" Small, out-pitching the Sox's David......

We frequently feel that denizens of Boston spend too much time comparing themselves and their city to New York. Bostonist doesn't think this is necessarily a futile exercise - on the contrary, with every day we spend in this town, we become better acquainted with Boston's many unique charms and miss our native Brooklyn a little less. But Bostonians' penchant for measuring the Hub by the yardstick of another city can make them seem insecure,......