New Orleans for Mardi Gras. Cancun for Spring Break. And now, Anaheim in October. These are the place you go to get loose, have fun, and live it up. The Red Sox made it 11 in a row over the Angels in the postseason, crushing the Halos with a dramatic 9th-inning home run by J.D. Drew. It wasn't that easy. Sure, the Sox jumped on Ervin Santana with four runs in the first. But Daisuke......

Are we ready to put last season's unpleasantness behind us? Are we ready to internalize that the exact number of wins doesn't matter, so long as it all ends with a three-game winning streak? are we, in the parlance of our times, ready for some football? The Patriots sure are. Steve Buckley says, "this will not be a season for calling off the dogs." Jim McBride crunches the numbers and says the Pats win 31-10.......

The most important part of looking good is feeling good, and when you do something good, you can’t help but look good in the end. Next week, Neiman Marcus at The Natick Collection will present Fall Into Fashion, a charity event with proceeds going to Kevin Youkilis’s Hits for Kids charity. The fashion soiree will feature the fall collections of some of today’s best known designers. Everything from contemporary couture will be represented, with men's......

Were the folks at Fenway disappointed last night? 24 hours after the zany madcap roller coaster 19-17 win, the Red Sox came back and dispatched Texas in a much tidier fashion. They did it by riding a Kevin Youkilis hit parade and a (mostly) solid Jon Lester start to an 8-4 win. Youk got three doubles, the big one coming in the third and scoring two runs to make it 4-0. Jason Bay and Jed......

Folks got their money's worth at Fenway last night. But what do you say to recap the game? We were set to write about the big-league debut of knuckleballer Charlie Zink. Then we were going to write about the titanic 10-run first inning (Bostonist was returning from a weekend trip, and the first inning alone got us from near Meriden all the way up past Hartford and to Vernon. That's a good first inning.) and......

Two Red Sox may have moved themselves off the "what's wrong with this guy?" list in Kansas City last night. Well, nothing's really been wrong with Tim Wakefield; although he went into last night 6-8, he's gotten miserable run support and has had to deal with the constant emotional roller coaster that is the lot of the knuckleballer. But he was awesome last night (6 innings, 4 hits, 1 ER, 6 Ks), even though Royals......

We'll run out of Jason Bay-related headline puns soon enough, we promise. But we'll use them when we can, such as when reporting on Bay's first home run as a Red Sox, a three-run blast in the first that helped set the tone for the 12-2 massacre of Oakland yesterday at Fenway. Jon Lester had surrendered a two-run shot to Emil Brown in the first, but his offense gave him the leisure to cruise through......

Relax, folks! Whatever happens now, the Angels aren't going to beat the Red Sox in October! Dan Shaughnessy said so, and like they say, "Hey, folks, when you're right 51% of the time, you're wrong 49% of the time." But the Angels sure can beat the Sox in July, and that's what they did, again, as John Lackey flirted with destiny in a 6-2 win over the lifeless Sox. The Sox waited until the ninth......

For most people, road trips are fun. Greasy burgers, fighting over whose iPod will play, diversions to see the largest rubber-band ball in South Carolina - it's a momentous event in anyone's life. Only the Griswolds and the Red Sox would disagree. The Sox are now 0-2 on their latest trip, and once again a pitching breakdown and a lack of timely hitting killed them. Josh Beckett cruised through six innings, but gave up a......

If the Red Sox are going to defend their title, they'd do well to respond to more losses like this. A day after flopping to the Orioles, the Sox put a whuppin' on the hapless Birds, combining a Kevin Youkilis RBI derby with a brilliant performance by Tim Wakefield for a soul-satisfying 12-1 clobbering. Youk's grand slam (first of his career) anchored a seven-run third inning that blew the game out of reach. He added......

...which makes it three gifts in a row for the Red Sox, from the Minnesota bullpen. Twin relievers' ERA for the three-game series: 25.50. Come back any time, guys! Josh Beckett quickly fell behind 3-0, but the Sox scored four in the third off Livan Hernandez (portly pitcher, 453 degrees, alternate dark blue uniforms, must have been a pleasant day for Livan) and chased him in the fifth with two more. Terry Francona whisked the......

The Red Sox got some good news yesterday, then went out last night and created their own bad news. Let's start with the good stuff. We guess. The All-Star rosters were announced yesterday, and the Sox will by far be the biggest clique in the locker room. David Ortiz (who won't play in the game, because he hasn't played since 2005, at least it seems that way), Manny Ramirez (maybe he'll swing the bat this......

"Sick of playing that game," said Kevin Youkilis when it was all done. And can you blame him? The Red Sox had to wait out a rain delay, wait out the surprisingly resilient Joel Piniero, overcome a Papelbon blown save, and endure 13 muggy, soggy innings to finally beat the Cardinals 5-3. Youk's second homer of the game finally sent everyone home. The Cards touched Jon Lester for two in the sixth, while the Sox......

NOTE: We're going to try to liveblog the Finals again tonight, so check in around 9 to make sure everything's working. It may get a little incoherent near the end. We hope so, anyway. With the Red Sox doing their Interleague Tour, Terry Francona has to juggle the lineup a bit, and give guys days off that they don't need or want, since they have to play by National League rules, which don't allow the......

Well, sending the JV squad out against Felix Hernandez didn't work. Noted. It still wasn't the full Murderers' Row on display at Fenway yesterday, but it was plenty enough, as the Sox' bats awoke to clobber the Mariners 11-3. The most important element of the lineup was Manny, who finally deigned to hit one in front of the Fenway fans. Number 504 gave the Sox and Tim Wakefield a 2-0 lead in the first, which......

One quarter of the way there. And in the matchup of the MVP versus the defensive team of the year, the Celtics shook off some first-half shakiness to put the defensive hammer down on LA, flummoxing Kobe Bryant and company and taking Game One of the Finals 98-88. As electric as the Finals atmosphere was (most of the drunks and pink hats seemed to have been replaced by actual basketball fans), the Garden was treated......

Hey, remember when the knock on the Celtics was their depth? Remember when everyone assumed Ghidorah would play great and then all hell would break loose when the second unit came in? Think Cleveland is remembering those predictions wistfully? The first quarter last night was a hangover from Game One. Ghidorah was still struggling (we were ready to call for a wheelchair to escort Ray Allen off the floor, if not a gurney). LeBron James......

Yesterday, we gleefully noted that Yankee superstar Joba Chamberlain blew the ballgame on Tuesday night. Well, the wheel of karma moves swiftly and decisively, so today we must report a blown save and a loss for Jonathan Papelbon. Stupid wheel of karma. It was a roller-coaster of a game, with the Tigers chasing Clay Buchholz out early. The Sox hung around though, as homers by Kevin Youkilis (twice) and Mike Lowell eventually tied it all......

Well...that was fun. If anticlimactic. Pushed to Game Seven by a hungry Atlanta team - or dragged to Game Seven by their sporadic ineptitude, depending on which you believe - the Celtics turned on the gas and utterly annihilated the Hawks yesterday, 99-65, at the Garden. This was in every way what a big game between a 66-win #1 seed and a sub-.500 #8 seed should have looked like. It was thorough, and it was......

--The Greater Boston Food Bank needs your help. [Boston Globe, Greater Boston Food Bank] --Welcome back members of the 181st infantry regiment! [WCVB] --The JFK library received $2 million dollars to expand from the Irish government, as part of Bertie Ahern's visit. [Boston Herald] --Gas service in the North End and Financial District has been restored after the water main mess. [Boston Globe] --Some Harvard students decorated Dunster House with dead meat. Aren't Harvard......

Don't listen to the so-called experts. Kids LOVE pitchers' duels. Go up to any schoolboy and mention some of the great mound rivalries of the past - Koufax/Marichal, Gibson/Seaver, Palmer/Hunter - and, well, you'll probably get a blank look. But maybe you'll find a kid who knows what you're talking about, and chances are that kid appreciated the gem last night at Fenway. For the Sox, Jon Lester was throwing strikes (yay) and inducing groundouts,......

It wasn't a very good night at all for Boston teams playing south of the Mason-Dixon line. Not a very good night at all. We'll start in Atlanta, where the Celtics again brought their C+ game to the playoffs, and were shocked and discouraged to see the Hawks playing way above their heads to take Game Three of the first round. Atlanta was doing everything right - running a fast, efficient transition game, draining long-range......

When the rumor first broke that Bill Buckner was the mystery guest at Opening Day, we thought that sounded just right. A perfect chance for diehard Sox fans, or at least the Opening Day crowd, to say all was forgiven, if in fact any forgiveness was due to the man who had to flee to Idaho to escape the indignity of a loss that he symbolized even though his was far from the only tragic......

LAist listed a top ten list of sorts: things they hope not to see in Los Angeles in 2008. (one example, pictured above). Shanghaiist was surprised to learn that "godless," "atheist," and "commie" China is soon going to be the world's largest supplier of Bibles! Torontoist picked some of their favorite photos of 2007. Londonist was relieved to hear the fire at the Royal Marsden hospital didn't harm any of the patients even though......

Lest the world find Kevin Youkilis unsavory for signing up to market an energy drink named "SlumpBuster," which refers to an ugly woman a guy sleeps with to break a losing streak, the Track Girls called Youk's rep. Youk's rep informed them that SlumpBuster refers to the other "SlumpBuster": “Unfortunately, like many common sayings, the ‘slumpbuster’ term can also be twisted to having negative connotations,” said Youk’s agent, Joe Bick of Pro Star Management, in......

When an athlete gets famous, his or her image will be slapped on everything in sight. Remember Kobe Bryant's pre-scandal days when he was on jars of Nutella? Well, Red Sox Monster and BevNET are reporting that Kevin Youkilis has signed up to market a new energy drink entitled--ahem--"SlumpBuster." BevNET euphemistically stated that "SlumpBuster" was a "term widely recognized by athletes and fans." Indeed. According to the Urban Dictionary, a "SlumpBuster" is A promiscuous and/or......

The following is a public service announcement: The next time you steal a Red Sox's castoffs, particularly their sweaty cups, eBay would rather you sell them elsewhere. The Track Girls are spreading the word that SportsWorld, in Saugus, tried to sell Jonathan Papelbon and Kevin Youkilis' used jocks on their eBay store. Judging from how many times the Track Girls have written about SportsWorld and its Red Sox underwear sale, SportsWorld has been trying......

Enza Sambataro may not be a household name, but she inspires a passionate response from baseball fans. She's about to marry the beloved Red Sox player Kevin Youkilis. The Globe recently ran a light lifestyle piece about how Sambataro won't be the ordinary baseball wife. She dated Ben Affleck, she jokes about Yooooouk drinking too many margaritas, and she has a shoplifting record, around which the article danced delicately. Adam Reilly at the Phoenix detected......

For a day that featured not a single Boston professional sports team in game mode, Tuesday was jam-packed with sports news. And what made things even more ridiculous was the fact that, for a good portion of the day, one faced difficulty figuring out what news was legit and what was a sports scribe's attempt at an exclusive gone wrong (Tom Brady exclusive, anyone? Don't worry, we'll get it to it). We're going to sort......

8:00 PM - We're coming to you live! Not from Bostonist HQ, which is in the danger zone of potential postgame revelry, but from our outpost in Central MA (Worcesterist?) where we've been each week to watch the Pats game. The Pats, by the way, just beat Washington 845-7. Mike Vrabel caught eleven touchdown passes. FoxSports is showing Bill Buckner one last time, just in case there was one person left in town who didn't......