Sports Redux: Manny's In Fort Myers...

...All's right with the world!

This literary allusion comes courtesy of Manny Ramirez, and there's a sentence you don't read every day. The "enigmatic" slugger, fresh off the Classic Car Show controversy, arrived at camp with little fanfare and not a word to the press. Manny took three pitches from Matsuzaka, but didn't swing at any of them.

That's what passes for news in Florida, but it beats what's going on here. The winter of our discontent continued, with the Bruins falling 3-2 to Atlanta. The Celtics salvaged their Western trip with a sloppy, ugly 77-72 win over a Houston team sans Yao Ming and Tracy McGrady. So if they can just get all the rest of their opponents to sit out their two best players, we could potentially go .500 the rest of the way.

Of course, even a rare Celtics victory has a dark cloud. A reader at Universal Hub caught radio announcer Cedric Maxwell telling Violet Palmer (the only female NBA referee) to "get back in the kitchen" after a bad call. We'll see if there's any controversy over this, and we'll see if Max has the smooth self-confidence of a Keith Hernandez to weather any storm.

Finally, there's a buzz going around about Derek Jeter's 2007 Topps baseball card, pictured here. Apparently, someone was messing around with Photoshop, and no one checked their work before the card went to the printer. So the card features Mickey Mantle superimposed in the Yankee dugout, and George W. Bush waving in the stands. Topps is publicly amused, though we suspect someone's going to be punished...possibly by being forced to ingest 50 sticks of gum from a pack of 1983 Return of the Jedi cards.

Picture of Jeter & Friends from Sports Collectors Daily.