Tossing batting practice….with my popcorn still ready, albeit a bit stale at this point……

Nothing quite soothes the sting of a typical Sox late game collapse in the playoffs quite like hanging damn near half a hundred on the Cowboys in Texas.
For all the whining and complaining the pansies in Dallas have for "running up the score" I have two points.
1. This is professional freakin sports, you don't want to see 48 on the board, do something about it, and don't go calling someone else's accomplishments a black mark and then expect them to take kind pity upon you when it's determined you are playing at the rookie level while we're playing at All-Madden.
2. If they were really trying to run it up, Brady would have dropped back to pass and get a sixth TD, instead they were trying to get a hard working guy at the bottom of the depth chart a touchdown, and a once in a lifetime memory, scoring a touchdown in Texas Stadium.
I see no problem with that.

So if the Pats annihilate the Colts, is Bill Polian going to institute some sort of handicap system for the competition committee to approve?
It can be like golf, where the Patriots are clearly at 0, while the rest of the league is right now at least a 17 handicap.

What's the early over/under for the Colts game? 90? 100? 120?

My favorite quote of the week so far has gone to Tim Floyd, while touting the virtues of O.J. Mayo especially his maturity. Somehow I think we'll be pointing to that in a few months and going "I knew it would go wrong right then and there two days after fall practice started…"

Almost 24,000 showed up for PRACTICE at Kentucky last week. (Allen Iverson likely not one of them) Just to watch a little dunk contest and a less than spirited scrimmage. I may be the vice president of the Billy Gillespie fan club, but even still the lavish praise cast upon him seems a bit much for a guy who's never made it out of the Sweet 16.
With that said, I can't help but see the comparisons to Beelzebub Pitino nearly two decades ago (wow?! I'm getting old).

Perhaps my favorite story of that whole Midnight madness thing was the fact that LSU's football team stayed in the hotel next door to Rupp that night, and could hear the noise all night long.
It sure looked like something affected them, as their vaunted defense gave up 44 points.

By the way is their any context in which you don't use vaunted as sarcasm?

I said Cal and LSU weren't going undefeated…..I just didn't think they'd lose the very next week.

It's old news that the system needs to be shaken up, but when it's clearly rewarding the three teams who went out of their way to schedule anyone who would play them, provided they finished the year before more than seven games below .500 it's time for a new idea.
The anti-John Calipari theory of scheduling…."Anytime, anywhere, any place…..as long as you suck."

I just can't help but feel at the present moment that this entire ALCS ended in the 11th inning on Saturday when the bullpen door swung open.
After getting shut down like they did the last five innings (and really outside of Manny Lowell and Ortiz the whole game) you just knew that Jake Westbrook was throwing a gem Monday night.

Until further notice, Papelbon is never ever allowed to be compared to Rivera again. I thought that’s why we babied him all year, was to have him as a weapon in the postseason.
With our bullpen empty, we needed one more inning out of him. It was the top of Cleveland’s order coming, if we had lost in 12 I would have said ok.

I think it's official Dustin Pedroia can't hit in cold weather. Maybe the Sox should send him to some kind of Winter Instructional League in Canada, or make him spend spring training practice with BC outdoors in February.

Tonight's game should have been determined carnival style. Bring both starting pitchers to a nearby school yard, place them 60 feet six inches from it, and give each pitcher 10 pitches.
Whoever can break the most windows with their pitches gives their team the win.

Wakefield gave you a typical Wakefield start, but we needed more tonight, and the fact he hasn’t pitched well since August didn’t make me like our chances too much.
Lastly…my thoughts on this series at the present moment go like this, and I’m a little bit worried that my father, who never agrees with anything I have to say when it comes to coaching thinks I’m right.

Coaching and playing in a short series is all about momentum, the Sox had it early, and basically had it all the way through until that fateful 11th inning. It was then that Cleveland breathed a giant exhale because they had gotten through Boston’s ace.
It’s always a boost when the ace/closer comes out of the game, and it proved to be for Cleveland.
In game 4 Francona had a chance to take the momentum back by putting the stopper back out on the hill. If they lose so be it, you went to the dance with who brung ya. But a win, and now Cleveland starts pressing because they know Beckett is looming in game 7 on full rest. It’s in their heads they have to win both games to have a chance, and that’s when bad things start to happen.
The Sox could have taken control back in this series, now Beckett could toss a perfect game Thursday, but it won’t matter because Cleveland knows that it can touch up the other two guys waiting next in line.
For them Thursday is a freebie, in an ideal world they would prefer not to go back to Boston, but if they do they do.
Cleveland is a young team with little postseason experience, they were going to thrive on momentum even more so than your average veteran team, it’s the old “their too stupid to know they should be nervous” axiom.

If Tito simply came out and said, “I remember what I did to Foulkie, and in my heart I knew I couldn’t do that to Paps or Beckett”, then I’ll respect his honesty. Otherwise there’s no real excuse.