BSPN

"Welcome to SportsCenter. I'm Rich Eisen with Steve Levy. Tonight we'll take a look at the Boston Celtics. Just how good can they be? Could they be the best team in basketball? Maybe the best team of the last twenty years?"

"And we'll look back on the World Champion Boston Red Sox and what each of the players on that team is up to. Could they win five more championships before all is said and done? Or is it more likely eight?"

"But we start with a look at the New England Patriots. Here, just look at some photos. My God, they're manly. Oh, sorry, Steve, I'm drooling on the desk."

"That's okay, Rich. I was lost in admiring Tom Brady's throwing motion and didn't notice."

"It is gorgeous, isn't it?"

"And just look at Randy Moss jump."

*silence*

"Wow."

"I don't think there is any question, this could be the greatest team in the history of organized athletics."

"Steve, I wouldn't be surprised to see them challenge UCLA's record 88 consecutive wins."

"I agree, Rich."

"In other news, there are some teams outside the Boston area playing, as we can see from the shot of the scoreboard behind Kevin Garnett's head. We'll freeze the frame for a second so you can look at the scores, then we'll have ten more minutes of Celtics coverage followed by Lee Corso asking whether Boston College can get back in the BCS race."

*commercial for some mobile phone featuring Peyton Manning*

Fun With Neurotic Red Sox Fans

As previously reported right here in this blog, John Henry, owner of the Red Sox, actually did buy half the NASCAR Roush Racing team this winter, and now the partnership is coming to fruition. The target? None other than 2005 Nextel Cup 2nd place finisher Carl Edwards. Carl got a full makeover last week, his car and helmet repainted in Red Sox team colors, complete with a Red Sox logo on the hood and doors and the 9's redone in the font that Ted Williams wore on his jersey. Carl even got to drive his car into Fenway Park and threw out the ceremonial first pitch for Saturday's game vs. the Rangers.

As you might have heard, the Red Sox are doing pretty well this year. Best record in the majors, even. Carl's also having a pretty good year after missing the Chase last year - 7th place, pretty solidly in the running this year, and completely dominating the Busch Series by an astounding 784 points. It's far too tempting to draw comparisons between the two, as if Carl was an avatar for the Red Sox's season. Same ownership, right? Similar situations. As you can guess, this only served to further prove that Red Sox fans' psyches are about as formidable as Glass Joe.

Carl finished 2nd in Saturday's Busch race in Loudon, NH. Not so bad, right? Except for the fact that his car failed post-race inspections, and was fined and docked 25 points. Things seemed bright for Edwards in the Sunday Nextel race as well, racing towards the front of the pack and leading a few laps. Towards the home stretch of the race, Edwards pitted. As his tires were being changed, his car slipped and fell off the jack, taking up valuable time - 47 seconds worth, over twice as long as the average pit stop. He got back on the track a lap down and his day was over, finishing 13th.

Cars rarely fall off the jacks in NASCAR. It's a pretty rare flub for a team to have to go through. To make an analogy, it's almost like a routine grounder dribbling through an infielder's legs. It just doesn't happen very often.

I'm sure the Red Sox will be just fine this year.

Rotoworld Gets Their Sarcasm On

Rotoworld is a very interesting site. Like many people (but unlike most of my fellow contributors, as far as I can tell), I have a fantasy baseball team or five, and it's indispensable for news on my current players and pretty open about sharing information. There's a sidebar on Boston Dirt Dogs for Rotoworld information about the Sox, and occasionally they put out a really funny blurb. I think that's why I like them more than other knockoffs like Rotowire, KFFL, Stats Inc, etc. Plus they've got a nicer website. Anyway, some faithful Rotoworld readers compiled a list of really funny ones themselves, so instead of blatantly steal like I usually do, I'll just link. I particularly like the David Terrell and Taco Wallace ones. The reason for this post, of course, is because I came across a particularly cutting and amusing one tonight:

Kason Gabbard - BOS
Kason Gabbard issued two of his six walks with the bases loaded in the first and gave up four runs in 3 1/3 innings Tuesday against the Mariners.
It should have been worse, but Manny Delcarmen bailed him out of a bases-loaded jam in the fourth. The Red Sox just butchered this one tonight. The first mistake was going to Gabbard against a team that is quite a bit better against lefties. They watched him almost completely blow the game in the first. Besides the walk, there was also a bases-loaded HBP in the frame. Then the Red Sox trotted out their worst relievers one-by-one. Perhaps the most incredible moment of the season so far came in the sixth. Lefty specialist Javier Lopez, in his second inning of work having already given up a two-run homer to Richie Sexson, intentionally walked the only left-handed hitter in Seattle's lineup (Ichiro) before being removed from the game. That it worked out hardly made it any less bizarre. Judging from Lopez's presence in the contest in the first place, we can only assume that Joel Pineiro passed away last week and no one bothered to alert the media.

This, of course, is quickly followed by:

Joel Pineiro - BOS
Joel Pineiro has been unavailable the last two days because he rolled an ankle working out on Monday.
So it wasn't his time after all.
Source: Boston Herald

Classic.

The Joys of Sox

It's 3 months into the baseball season, right? And this is a sports blog, right? And I am a massive Red Sox fan, right? And the Red Sox are currently leading the AL East by 10.5 games, right? Right. So why hasn't there been any Red Sox-related posts from the most rabid Red Sox fan on this site?

Well, for one, pretty much every news site/blog/major television network just keeps talking about the Red Sox/Yankees ALL THE TIME. Give it a rest, guys, or else this old lady is totally going to gently ask you to tone it down.. after she gives you some of her home-made brownies, of course.

For two.. Sox fans are big believers in karma, which is amusing considering Yankees fans, as a general rule, are complete akarmaists. Gloating about a big lead is just simply bad karma, and I don't want to tempt fate. I like our team a lot, and think we're going to win the AL East this year. (Gasp!) And yes, every Red Sox win and every Yankees loss makes me happy - not because I like to see the Yankees suffer, but because it means our lead is more and more secure. The most gung-ho about it that I'll get is my response to someone teasing me about whether I'm scared now - "Ask me that again when the Yankees are closer to 1st place in their division than Washington is."

I went to two Boston games at OaklandMcAfee Coliseum a few weeks back just so I could say I actually attended a game or two in this hopefully historic season. We lost both games pretty easily. (Yes, we lost the first one in extra innings, but we all knew Terry Francona wasn't too interested in winning when he paraded out Joel Piniero, J.C. Romero, and Kyle Snyder in order in a close game.) In fact, Schilling had to pitch an entire game himself just to keep us from getting swept. I should have felt upset at their performances, but I just can't. They're too lovable.

They're a great team to watch, especially since they have so much fun playing the game. They have a ton of chemistry, unlike another certain unnamed team that is pretty much a collection of All-Stars. It starts from the top, with Manny Ramirez selling pretty much anything he can get his hands on and grooming his teammate in the dugout and David Ortiz hugging the other teams' players, on down to Mike Lowell wanting to start up Manny's blog and Julian Tavarez.. well, where to start? Wearing a "Manny Being Manny" T-shirt? Dreaming of being a porn star? Even long-time announcer Jerry Remy is getting into the act, pulling a little air guitar on the air with predictable results and playing Zapruder in the case of the flying pizza. This clip is just about the funniest Red Sox-related thing I've seen all year. Enjoy. I know I am.

Part 1:


Part 2:

Please, Get All Up In Manny's Grill

Manny Ramirez is apparently selling his AMAZING grill on eBay. =] I don't know about you, but I've always wanted to purchase a $4,000 game-used grill from a future Hall of Famer. I do have some concerns before I put in my bid though: will it only half-cook my burgers? If I have a big barbecue coming up, can I be sure it won't arrive a week late? Will it still work in October? I can see it now: serving half-cooked hot dogs and burnt burgers to my friends, I will have no other defense than to say, "Eh, my grill is being my grill."

Barry Bonds Seeks To Join Sport Where Additives Are Encouraged

In other miscellaneous Red Sox news, NASCAR team owner Jack Roush is in continued negotiations with Red Sox owner John Henry to sell part of the Roush team to Henry's Fenway Sports Group. Roush's team includes NASCAR drivers Matt Kenseth, Greg Biffle, Carl Edwards, and Jamie McMurray. The deal would likely result in marketing and sponsorship opportunities from the largely untapped northeast market, who care about NASCAR generally about as much as most people care about ESPN2's broadcasts of the National Spelling Bee or World Scrabble Championship. Additionally, it may result in one of Roush's cars being painted Red Sox colors, and maybe one of their drivers will don the Wally the Green Monster costume during the race. Who knows. Regardless, it'd be a win-win for both teams, considering NASCAR could have the Red Sox stump for them in the northeast and the Red Sox wouldn't have to revenue-share their NASCAR marketing earnings. Granted, first talk of negotiations between the two surfaced in February of 2005, and the latest article says it "could be a while" before the deal is finalized. So, maybe not.

And that's where I share my dirty secret - despite being from Massachusetts, I actually do enjoy NASCAR quite a bit. In fact, I like nearly anything that can be called sport and contains competition and winners. (Which rules out things like hunting and fishing - murder isn't quite sporting. Now, if the hunters got mauled every so often, that would be a much different story.) NASCAR is especially good as background on those lazy Sunday afternoons where I'm puttering around on the internet and completely wasting the remaining vestiges of my weekend. You don't really have to pay attention, and the times you do there's usually loud crashing sounds or the announcers get all excited. Those tight races and daring passes towards the end are, ok, exciting. I don't have a favorite driver or anything, so I default to my usual "root for the underdogs and newbies" rule. That means I get excited whenever anyone I haven't heard of is in contention, or relative newbies like Biffle, Edwards, and Denny Hamlin are doing good. And I've always had a soft spot for Matt Kenseth because he's a good driver and I feel like his 2003 championship, whose consistency apparently bored everyone into instituting the Chase, was unnecessarily disparaged.

So, if you're looking for sports coverage about sports you don't usually see blogged about, I'm your guy. There's some Super Bowl thing coming up and we'll probably be typing our thoughts on that over the next few days, so I'll probably take the time personally to research more into curling, badminton, and professional pillow fighting. I'll leave you with a little of what NASCAR hopes to bring to New England. Good luck, boys!