There's nothing like a loud, baseless Herald story to get the morning started right. Today's tabloid trumps Heath Ledger's death with, "BUSTED! Deval Casino Plan's Just Like Michigan's... And They Lost $10M Last year." This Bostonist happens to be wearing a Detroit Tigers cap and sweatshirt as we type this, but we don't need Michigander bias to be dismayed by the lack of evidence in their piece. The story's only statistic-backed argument is that......

When you're a kid, one of the fringe benefits to playing Little League or soccer is that you often got to stop at McDonald's on the way home. Win or lose. We're not sure if Major League teams have a similar policy, but if the Red Sox team bus stopped at a Mickey's outside of Detroit, no one on the team would be allowed to supersize today, after a miserable weekend getting swept by the......

Fear of the number 13. As in, 13 innings. As in, losing in the 13th inning on an Ivan Rodriguez single off of Jonathan Papelbon. But don't blame Papelbon, on a night when the Red Sox had two runs after three batters, then took the rest of the night off. A night when the team left a platoon on base. A night when - well, it just wasn't our night. It started off well enough;......

Today's Redux is going to be short and sweet - let's face it, there isn't a whole lot of good news to report from the first in the Red Sox three-game visit to Detroit. Friday night was just plain ugly, a 9-2 loss to the Tigers that served as the proverbial "other shoe" from Thursday's Devil Rays slaughter. After tearing up Fenway the night before, it seemed the Sox had nothing left to start off......

The nailbiting, the pacing, the swearing, the chainsmoking - they all end tonight. Except maybe at Tommy Heinsohn's house. Tonight, we find out the next step in the Celtics' drive back to relevance. Will Danny Ainge swing one of the deals we've heard about? Will we be welcoming Kevin Garnett (no way), Shawn Marion (probably not), Dikembe Mutombo (possible) or Bill Telfair? Or will Danny stand pat and actually use his #5 pick to draft......

James McNeill Whistler – creator of the iconic painting nicknamed "Whistler's Mother"* - is getting his very own bobblehead. Lowell's minor-league baseball team, the Spinners, is honoring the painter, who was from their home base, by giving away the bobbleheads tonight during their game against the Oneonta Tigers. The first 1,500 people to make it to LeLacheur Park will get a free bobblehead, and a woman will portray Whistler's Mother, watching the game from her......

One word sums up the spirit felt within Fenway Park on Tuesday night: confidence. The Red Sox returned home from its West Coast roadtrip exhausted (players, management and sleep-deprived fans alike) and with a 3-4 record. Offense had been shaky. The team continued to hit too many double play balls for comfort. And Tim Wakefield, who had struggled through a tough month-long stretch of starts, was slated to take the mound. And yet it seemed......

It seems that Mother Nature didn't think the Red Sox's doubleheader sweep of the Tigers on Thursday was impressive enough - the first games after that two-fer will be tidily bundled in another dual-game gameday. The Sox called Friday's scheduled game against their Interleague Play Atlanta visitors pretty early, deciding instead to go the route of a 1 p.m./7:35 p.m. Saturday schedule. The pitching breakdown: Dice-K vs. Braves pitcher Anthony Lerew in the afternoon game,......

Any time you can sweep a doubleheader against the defending AL Champs and the second-best team in the league, you have to view that as a pretty good sign. So plenty of smiles all around at Fenway yesterday. The first game was all about the pitching; Julian Tavarez went seven innings, giving up one run on four hits, and then Okajima and Papelbon sealed the deal, vaporizing the Tigers for an inning apiece as the......

With a miserable rain forcing the postponement of last night's Sox-Tigers game, our thoughts turn to geography. Yes, they really do. Specifically, to a subject we've been noticing a lot lately: the fact that the Red Sox seem to attract a large number of players whose last names are also the names of towns in our fair Commonwealth. So let's hit the road and take a tour of Massachusetts, Red Sox-style. Close to Boston, we......

Let's give a hand to WEEI caller Pauley, who aptly summed up Tuesday's Sox home game against the Detroit Tigers during the Planet Mikey Show with, "It was a drinking night tonight." It wasn't a pretty showing at Fenway on Tuesday, despite the presence of the brilliant-this-season Tim Wakefield on the mound. The Sox endured a 7-2 pounding that was led by Tiger pitcher and 2006 AL Rookie of the Year Justin Verlander (7 2/3......

The complete game is a dying art in the States. In the age of relief specialists, managers tied to pitch counts, and Papelbon, there aren't a lot of occasions when a manager wants to leave his starter in any longer than necessary. And last night, in fact, Papelbon was warming up when the Sox blew the game open in the 8th, taking a 7-1 lead and giving Terry Francona an excuse to leave Daisuke in......

The outlook wasn't brilliant for the Mudville nine that day, The score stood four to two, with but one inning more to play. So begins Ernest Thayer's immortal "Casey at the Bat". Mudville flops in that poem, as we all know, but the situation was even more grim for the Red Sox going into the ninth on Sunday. Orioles youngster Jeremy Guthrie was firmly in control of the ballgame, and the score at Fenway stood......

The Bruins seem to have rolled over and played dead. Only a short time ago, they had a shot at the playoffs, and now it seems as if they just don't want to deal with the pressure. Or they couldn't take the pressure. Yesterday, they lost to the Philadelphia Flyers 4 to 1. And the Flyers are in the NHL basement, which says way too much about how the Bruins are playing. In baseball, spring......

The Red Sox continue to steal our hearts and build our confidence. Last night's 12 inning win over the Phillies rounded out a sweep of the series and extended the winning streak to nine. Tonight the Olde Towne Team faces the Mets for more inter-league play. In the overall standings the Sox go into the competition one game back from the Mets – who follow only the Tigers and the White Sox in the overall......

Animal Collective, Avalon, 2.21.06 Avoiding misnomers and labels and subverting expectations, Animal Collective performed a mix of sounds and songs that were incredibly familiar to Boston fans in attendance. Last year at the Middle East downstairs, the foursome worked through material that would become one of the finest albums of the year, Feels, as well as a choice or two from Sung Tongs. That show was veiled in a blanket of shadows and sweat, with......

Bostonist has seen that Sox pitcher Curt Schilling is a religious man. As he scribbled down notes and prayers after pitching each inning against the Yankees in last year’s post-season, we could see that he believed that religion could help him and his bloody sock win games. When the Sox defied all odds last season to come back from four games behind New York, some fans believed it could only be something bigger than us......