Cursed To First - Sox and Pats forever.

Title Town

champs, originally uploaded by Drew Burton.

Congratulations to the Boston Celtics on their 17th championship. They were already one of the winningest franchises in professional sports, and have just ended the longest playoff game streak--26 games--without a championship. They're also proud owners of the biggest comeback in NBA finals history and, last night, one of the biggest blowouts. All in front of the home crowd, no less.

The Celtics Through Osmosis

My relationship, such as it is, with this year's Boston Celtics probably began with Andrew, a coworker of mine who, at times, has been solely responsible for keeping me sane at work. Andrew, a native of Dedham, is a fan of skateboarding, BMX, hip-hop and the C's. I, a native of Chelmsford, am a fan of the Sox, the Pats, and attempting to work myself to death (cf the last week, when I was incommunicado due to yet another business trip).

In addition to frequent IM-based primal scream sessions, Andrew and I have struck up a kind of cultural exchange, based on our different backgrounds and the sports teams we're passionate about.

Andrew is to the Red Sox as I am to the Celtics: he's aware of them, he'll see a game occasionally, but they're not his be-all and end-all. He and I keep each other updated on how our respective teams are doing, which is how I've understood why adding only two players to the team could have made such a difference, who KG and Ray Allen are, and--though he has to constantly remind me of this last one--their positions.

I've gotten to know the best nickname in sports--Paul Pierce's "The Truth"--and terms like fast break and one on four. Andrew doesn't need as many technical pointers about baseball, but I keep him apprised of the notable quotes from Beckett or Papelbon, the latest losing or winning streak, the latest high five from Manny to the fans.

Another friend of mine, Ryan, has also sprinkled updates on the "Celtiges" when we talk about the Sox or Pats. Most of the time this year, the Celtiges were kicking ass, and he wanted to explain to me how.

Little by little, I've been sucked in to the Celtics' world.

***

BEAT LA

BEAT LA, originally uploaded by ConfessionalPoet.

It would be ridiculous for me to claim to be a Celtics fan--to even say I've been casually following them this season would be charitable. But I'm still up tonight, watching the game. Matt Damon's got courtside seats, which means Boston's playing somebody for something big, and as SG has been known to put it, you have to rep your set.

So I'm in. Simple as that.

Whiskey! Tango! Foxtrot!

It is a weird time to be a Boston fan right now.

I'm on a business trip in Toronto, so I've only been able to piece together what happened with Sox through the blog rounds, Google searches, video clips and the breathless account of my dad, who called in despair when Jacoby pulled a Matsui in center field (no break, thank God).

The weirdness seemed to possess the whole team tonight, like when they got into a knock-down, drag-out brawl with the Rays, which wouldn't be the first time, oddly enough, but this was more than your average "hold me back" baseball fight. Mike Timlin was right at the center of the fray, toward the end, after sprinting in from the bullpen, which somehow makes me perversely happy.

In the meantime, up here my hotel room is jumping with the throwback chants of BEAT L.A.! as the Celtics play the Lakers in the NBA finals for the first time in 21 years. Paul Pierce went down with a knee injury that looked serious, but returned with a brace (and no doubt some Lidocaine) to absolutely blow up the crowd at the Garden by nailing back to back threes like a beast.

In the midst of this, I came across this classic post over at Center Field.

This was my personal favorite part:

It's official: this city is going plain old batshit insane.

And of all the weirdness, there is none more weird than the news I was alerted to just a few minutes ago that apparently Manny and Youk also had a dust-up of their own in the Sox dugout.

Reports the Courant:

Several players and coaches were required to hold back Ramirez while Youkilis yelled at him and was pushed away by first base coach Luis Alicea. It was not at all clear what prompted the Ramirez-Youkilis exchange.

Yet somehow, Terry Francona seems to know just what to say at such a moment:

"I went down to go to the bathroom. Every time I leave [bench coach Brad Mills] in charge, he either puts [Kevin Youkilis] in right or something. Coco got his thumb jammed on the [play] before. I missed the rest of it. I was trying to get my zipper up. It wasn't going as fast as I wanted it to."

500

I was half-hoping Manny would delay his 500th career home run by at least a couple of days so that he could hit it at Fenway Park next week, but I also knew that's contrary to the Tao of Manny. I knew Manny would hit it when and where Manny would hit it, and that was that. It's up to us to derive a meaning and significance to the place where it happened, if it exists; Manny hits in a vacuum.

So it happened that Manny hit his 500th at Camden Yards, meaning that my ideal of hitting it in front of home fans was at least partially realized--a majority of the crowd in attendance jumped to their feet, decked out in red, arms raised, immediately after the ball left his bat. Don Orsillo's ever-more-frenetic call was subsumed in their noise before the ball landed in the bleachers of right-center field. Once there, it immediately formed an impact crater of people bent down, wrestling for it in the stands.

Manny watched, as I knew he would, walking placidly partway down the first base line before breaking into a trot, double-high-fiving Luis Alicea as he rounded the first corner. When he reached the plate, he paused to hug Mike Lowell, and then sauntered over for more love from his teammates gathered at the top step of the dugout.

My favorite moment of the aftermath was when Papi enveloped both Manny and Julio Lugo in his arms and bounced them both up and down there in front of the dugout. That was just cute on principle, but even more endearing was how completely relaxed and exuberant Manny looked, with his cheek pressed against Papi's shoulder, leaping into the air.

It figures Manny would hit 500 today, touching off a Manny-fest. Today was also my Dad's birthday, and we were watching the game together after a birthday dinner. He'd already cussed Manny thoroughly over his two dropped fly balls in left field, and we were back in our familiar pattern of point-counterpoint on his merits as a human being before he hit the homer. When that happened, true to form, Manny came out of a game that had otherwise been a point in my Dad's favor with all sins absolved by the bomb.

After the game, the fan who caught the ball gave it back to Manny in the clubhouse. Manny was wearing what looked like a homemade t-shirt that said GOT 500? on it in big red letters; the kid and his friend were decked out in Red Sox gear. Seeing that they were both Asian, Manny bowed deeply to them when he walked over. Turns out, though, they both grew up in Nahant. D'oh.

Once again, the gaffes melted away as Manny faced the camera for his interview with Heidi Watney. Even if he's supposed to be looking at a person asking him questions, he can't seem to help looking into the camera when it's on him. During the meeting with the fans who had the ball, his eyes kept darting toward the camera; sitting down with Heidi, he just stared straight into it.

I don't recall much of what he said except that it was perfunctory and towed the public-relations line.I focused more on just looking at those eyes of his, fixed on the camera, unwavering.

Much is made of Manny's swing, but it's those eyes that have made him what he is. Every one of his 500 blasts out of the park has begun with his eyes judging correctly the trajectory of a pitch, in the fraction of a second it hovers between him and the mound.

Much is made of Manny's hair, the untamed dreadlocks that continually escape do-rags and caps, but those eyes are the most expressive and enigmatic part of him--bottomless, velvety brown, at once riveting and inscrutable. Charles P. Pierce wrote in a 2004 profile of Manny, "[His] is the face of a great silent comic, one that Mack Sennett would have cast on the spot. It is open and broad. Part of the appeal is the huge brown eyes and another part is the wild, brambly hair above them. But mostly it comes from the ability to reveal most of the humor without sharing all of the joke. "

As I watched him speak, with the seemingly permanent half-sheepish smile on his face playing against the eyes so focused and serious, I chuckled in spite of myself. It was partly affection, but it was also because of the ability Pierce pointed out, to make even the most innocuous moments seem mischievous. The sense he projects, that uproarious laughter is just around the corner.

And then I had the same thought about Manny some of his teammates have expressed, awestruck, when talking about his exploits with the bat--what must it be like to be behind those eyes? What must it be like to be who he is, to do what he does? What does he see as the ball heads toward the plate? What does he see when he looks out at all of us, through a shining pane of glass?

Jon-Jon's no-no

As Jon Lester put the finishing touches on his no-hitter Monday night, I was sitting on a coach bus in Las Vegas with about 80 other people, on our way to a group dinner as part of the conference I was attending. As we stepped off the bus into the blistering desert heat, a colleague of mine held out his Blackberry with the mlb.com story on the screen. "A no-no!"

"Who?!"

"Lester!"

"No!!"

"Yes!!"

And then it was time for cocktail hour, to be followed by appetizers, to be followed by dinner, to be followed by dessert, to be follwed by a few highlights of the game through half-lidded eyes later on in my hotel room, still before midnight local time but with my body screaming to me about it being 2 am. Tuesday: lather, rinse, repeat, plus redeye flight back to Boston. The blogging has had to wait.

Since getting home today, I've seen most of the game on TiVo. It's been a mystery to me why Jon Lester gets bopped all around the ballpark one start, and tosses gems like the one on April 29 and Monday's no-hitter the next. I mean, I understand that he's a young pitcher who's still learning, but I haven't been able to tell specifically what it is that hasn't been working for him.

In Monday's game, it became clearer, because of what what WAS working - a quick pace, a good mix of pitches and a fidelity to the strike zone, good velocity, and most of all a vicious, filthy, virtually unhittable cut fastball. He also seemed to get stronger as the game went on, fanning three in the sixth.

When the last out finally happened, Lester's reaction was much different from that of the last Sox youngster wer got to see pitch a no-no, Clay Buchholz, who looked stunned and uncertain what to do in the wake of his own momentous last out, even as Jason Varitek heaved him up into his arms and the rest of their teammates charged toward the mound. Lester had both fists in the air a split second after the final strike call, and as Varitek grabbed him, Lester grinned and hugged his head. Buchholz had seemed bewildered; Jon Lester, despite his similarly young age, looked like a man who knew exactly why and how he should seize the moment.

Though the reasons for the depth of emotion here were obvious, Texas Gal made a point I very much agree with, in her brilliant and much more timely post about the game, about the cancer storyline having been slightly overdone in some circles. It's not to minimize what happened to him or the fortitude he showed in coming back from it so quickly--it's just that to Red Sox fans who have watched him grow up, Jon Lester isn't just "the kid who had cancer". He's been one of the top products of the Red Sox farm system for years, and people were talking in epic terms about his upside long before lymphoma. After a while, there's a fine line between acknowledging what he's been through and reducing him to it.

That said, you can't discount the effect of what Lester has overcome on our reaction to this moment. In the second or two betwen hearing a no-hitter had been thrown and finding out who'd thrown it, I was hoping it had been Jon Lester. Among Red Sox fans, his already storied personal history has bonded us to him unlike any other player to wear the uniform. As I wrote last July:

I've seen people battle with cancer, and I've even seen a few lose the battle. But somehow, though each case is different, watching those who survive can still shine a ray of hope onto a subject that can seem dark and impossible. Thus Jon Lester has become more than a pitcher, and more even than an individual cancer survivor. He is proof. He is hope. He is a symbol of survival.

He may not want that role, and he never asked for it. Being a pitcher in Boston is aggravating enough without the onus of greater societal pressures. And yet through it all he's handled it with grace and aplomb beyond his years. He's made an incredible comeback, and despite the trade rumors that mention his name, I want him to stay in Boston, where we can see him grow after seeing him stricken. He is our prospect, our pitcher, and our survivor now--what he's been through in the past year has bonded me to him as a fan in a way I haven't been with any of his teammates. I think he should belong to us.

And he does. During the trade talks about Santana last year, I heard some people say they could part with Lester, but not Jacoby. I even had the thought myself, once or twice. But in the end, it feels like it would've been impossible to let him go--by now, it feels like he has become a permanent part of this place.

As Tito put it, "He's a wonderful kid, not because he threw a no-hitter. He's a good kid because he's a good kid," and the same goes for his victory over cancer. But there's an undeniably different tone to Boston's collective happiness about this no-hitter from the last one.

More on the baseball that's happened in my absence after the jump.

Dad's Opening Day Pictures

Finally smoothed out, originally uploaded by ConfessionalPoet.

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AFC Champions

(Globe Staff Photo / Barry Chin)

IT

(Globe Staff Photo / Matthew J. Lee)

NEVER

(Globe Staff Photo / John Tlumacki)

GETS

(Reuters photo...found, along with the others, at this Boston.com photo gallery, which is worth a gander in its entirety)

OLD.

What time is it? GAME TIME

ESPN sideline reporters have been keeping up this level of desperate hypitude amid the Martian temperatures at Lambeau Field since 10 am, God bless 'em. This particular hypothermia victim is demonstrating the type of head sock that may be worn by players, and perhaps even some fans. Riveting television.

However, ESPN also has Ray-Ray as one of the Sunday NFL Countdown commentators, which is a point very much in their favor. Who doesn't love watching Ray-Ray ad-lib on, well, pretty much anything? He's already discussed how he would, if his team were playing in this extremely cold game, get his teammates fired up to play by wearing a half-shirt to demonstrate his imperviousness to the elements. And the pep talk for the Chargers? Simply epic. Everything is better with Ray-Ray on the mic.

As for the Pats. I had a scare this week that our #1 offensive weapon was going to become persona non grata in the football world once again, but further information revealed allegations against Randy Moss leveled by a Florida woman to be spurious. And so I've since found his sheepishly grinning attempts to hold his own against a cavalcade of mic and tape recorder wielding reporters, well, oddly adorable.

I acknowledge that Randy Moss has, at times in the past, been a complete shithead, and I make no attempts to defend any of his previous behavior, with the exception of the 'mooning incident'. That was just downright funny, even though Joe Buck, anticipating the ire of the same uptight schoolmarms in the national audience who would later make Janet Jackson's partially-uncovered boob a nightmare for CBS, called it like the crash of the Hindenburg.

But really, I see the humor in Randy Moss. In fact, it's getting to the point where I kind of love him a little. He can be flippant, and irreverent, but he's not without intelligence, and has a certain carefree appreciation for the absurdity of his own most outrageous moments that I can't help but find charming.

Or maybe it's the way he catches 65-yard touchdown passes from Tom Brady. You know, either or. But let's just say the Moss has grown on me (yuk! yuk!) this season, and it was to my great relief that I heard what had first been characterized as a "domestic violence incident" turned out to be an accidentally sprained finger and a demand for $500,000. Pfft.

In retrospect, Moss notified Patriots management and ownership promptly, addressed the issue proactively in the press, and in general handled this latest 'scrape' with more aplomb than he's mustered in the past. Some light bulb, somewhere, has gone on since the Randy Moss of Minnesota. He still relishes the appearance of the outlaw, but it now seems he was also in earnest about wanting to do right this time around.

Meanwhile, one of the highlights of my week has been the outpouring of Patriots hype I've heard and seen while traveling around the northern-Massachusetts / southern-New Hampshire area. I've seen mailboxes shaped like Patriots helmets, elaborately decorated GO PATRIOTS homemade banners hung up on fences and trees and the sides of houses, innumerable flags and stickers and expressions of support on dozens of vehicles, inflatable yard decorations, a sea of Welker and Moss and Brady and Bruschi jerseys. I've heard constant chatter and conversation about "The Game." As in, "What are your plans for The Game?" "I'm gonna watch The Game with my buddies down the bar." "Dood, you psyched for The Game?"

I've seen a statistically significant drop in productivity across the state due to the time people are spending either creating or watching things like this:

It doesn't jibe with what I've seen this week, but for whatever reason, the Boston fan doesn't have a much better reputation than Moss in many circles now that our teams are winning; in many parts of the country, we're in the same vilified boat as our top-flight wide receiver. Yet, as with Moss's legal struggles this week, the scolding voices are fading mercifully into the background more and more the closer kickoff gets.

It really can't get here soon enough. And when it does, we in New England are all hoping for the same thing from the opening series: the deepest of passes down the sideline, hitting No. 81 in stride.

How do you like me now?

(ESPN.com photo)

I wish I could've found a photo of Peyton Manning literally being thrown aside by the Chargers on the run-back of an interception during their 28-24 victory at the RCA Dome today. That image would be a perfect summation of the game those two teams played, to say nothing of the personal satisfaction it holds for me.

Instead, I'll have to settle for the image above of Randy Moss's playoff press conference ensemble this week, which tops last week's outfit, despite the fact that I did not think such a thing possible.

Sort of like how, just when you think the Patriots can't get any better, they go out and switch from a high-flying passing offense to a balanced passing-running attack, and do the equivalent on the defensive side despite being rated near the bottom of the league in yards allowed per carry during the regular season.

It's all because of the Jedi mind-control Bill Belichick has over his players, clearly (except when it comes to their press-conference outfits, of course). You can read more about my armchair theories on that front, and find out what part a home-made sledgehammer played in yesterday's contest, over here.

In the meantime, I'd like to take this space to gloat about the Chargers' victory just a little more.You know what my favorite part was? The part where Peyton Manning was sitting on the bench (again, some more) and the CBS cameras zoomed way in on his Peyton Manning Face, and lingered there while his jaw muscle twitched. And then Dan Dierdorf said, "Boy, look at his jaw muscle twitching!" And I laughed. Because I am a bitter, vindictivie Patriots fan, and seeing the Postseason Peyton Manning Face is one of my greatest joys in life.