Month: April 2002

ESPN.com Page2 has a feature today listing the 10 worst championship teams of all time. Weighing in at # 6 is….you guessed it, your 2001 New England Patriots. The last line in their paragraph…..”Is anyone betting on a repeat?”

Interesting little snippet from the Philadelphia Daily News. Apparently Larry Brown spoke up during Sunday’s game and asked the Officials *not* to throw Paul Pierce out of the game.

If you’re eagerly awaiting the release of the newest Patriots DVD “Three Games to Glory”, you probably want to know just when it will be available. You can pre-order it on Patriots.com, as mentioned here earlier, however, no where on the site does it give the release date. After consulting with someone from the Patriots Proshop, I was told it would be coming out “Mid May”. If you pre-order now, your credit card will probably be charged right away, but expect to wait 3-4 weeks or so before you actually receive the DVD. This is a first for NFL Films, is a limited edition, and should sell out quickly.

Derek Lowe made the rounds yesterday, appearing on WEEI and WWZN back to back in the afternoon, then going on NESN’s “Extra Innings” following the Red Sox loss last night to Baltimore. On WWZN he mentioned getting a nice note from former GM Dan Duquette, who said he “loved” Lowe’s new change up. Lowe might be the only one in the Red Sox organization to be glad to hear from Duquette. In John Molori’s latest “Media Blitz” column in the Eagle Tribune, (You have to search for it) he included this snippet from opening day: “The Werner-Henry group is trying to erase the negative paranoia of ex-GM Dan Duquette. They even erased Duquette himself. Wrobleski said that on Opening Day, Duquette tried to enter the Red Sox luxury suite, but was escorted away.” Ouch. “escorted away”?

The Patriots will be wearing “classic” jerseys when they take on the Lions on Thanksgiving day this year. In the Patriots Usenet Newsgroup, there was a recent thread entitled “Media Bias” You can check it in the Google archives. The Patriots Fans have some interesting comments on the various writers covering the Patriots.

Red Sox try to break out against those pesky Orioles tonight at 6:05 on NESN.

Almost the exact moment Jose Offerman was hitting into a game ending double-play, the Canadiens scored the game winning goal of tonight’s season ending playoff loss. Not great viewing for the Boston fan. There’s one wrong prediction and boy do I hope I’m wrong on my other one from today.

A rough Sunday/Monday. Celtics lose a tough one yesterday, Migraine today. Coincidence? The series is going 5 in my book and I think the Sixers pull it out in game 5 at the Fleet. That is not what I want, but just a bad feeling I have. I really hope that the C’s can rebound from this loss and end it in game 4, but I just have a bad feeling. I’m not usually a pessimist, either.

The Boston Herald’s Celtics coverage page has a section where you could search for articles related to the Celtics-76ers matchups over the last 10 years or so. If you try it, be patient, it takes about 15 seconds to load the articles, and then get your wallet out, as you’ll have to pay to read them. The Bruins coverage page on the Herald has the same feature for Bruins/Canadiens.

The Bruins try to stay alive tonight in Montreal. (7:00 UPN 38) I don’t claim to be a Hockey expert, but I think the B’s will actually win this series, pulling out the game tonight and then winning game 7. No promises.

Red Sox will continue their homestand, opening a series with Baltimore tonight at 6:05 on NESN. Dale Arnold will be disappointed to know that because of the rainout yesterday, Pedro Martinez has been pushed back to Wednesday. The WEEI midday host is taking Sport Illustrated’s Peter King to Fenway tomorrow night, and had hoped to get to see Pedro.

Friday, in looking towards this weekend’s sports events, radio hosts were rating all the things that would be happening. The Bruins – Canadiens game seemed to be the hot topic, then the Celtics – Sixers game 3, then, as an afterthought there was the Red Sox. I think it was Steve Buckley who commented something along the lines that too bad these Red Sox games were going to be of such “low” quality. Well, what happens? We see some quality Lowe. A no hitter. The first at Fenway since 1965.

The Herald wasted no time in posting Tony Massarotti’s story on the game. The Globe’s Boston.com page said there was a story, but all I got was a 404 error.

The Bruins lose, and are on the brink of elimination, but here’s hoping the Celtics can finish off the series tomorrow. With the rain expected, we should see the largest Celtics TV numbers in this region since the days of # 33.

Drew Bledsoe has taken out an ad in the Boston papers to thank the fans of New England.

Another big night for Boston. 3 games, 3 wins. First of all, it seems the outage on Fox Sports NE was limited to the seacoast area of NH-ME. Viewers in Massachusetts had no such issues. The feed was not restored until close to 11:00 PM during some post-game activities. The picture going out was during the streak in the 4th when they fell behind, and was about the same time Kyle McLaren decked Richard Zednick. During the Red Sox game yesterday, WEEI.com also had it’s on air stream going for at least the first 3 innings of the game. It’s supposed to be cut off and only MLB subscribers able to listen, but we’re not going to complain about being able to hear Pedro.

Sports pages are busy this morning. The legendary Red Fisher calls McLaren’s hit “The mother of all cheap shots” Kevin Paul Dupont says the rivalry is once again bitter. Steve Buckly somehow manages to compare McLaren to Carl Everett.

Dan Shaughnessy thinks he’s back in the old Garden. Bob Ryan says Pierce is a good guy to have on your side“. Ya think, Bob? NBA Commish David Stern claims to be happy that the Celtics are back. Stephen A. Smith reports that after the game Celtics broadcaster Cedric Maxwell made a throat-slashing gesture and declared the series over.

Jim Baker examines the trend of putting sportswriters all over the airwaves. He suggests that they are on because they’re cheap programming. TV’s answer to Sports Talk Radio.

Oh yeah, Pedro pitched a one-hitter and struck out 10 in 7 innings yesterday. Gordon Eades says he’s back in perfect rhythm. It speaks volumes of how far things have come, that Pedro’s comeback isn’t top news these days.

Instead of talking about all this sports action last night, D&C is devoting multiple segments to Michael Chiklis, appearing in studio. The Massachusetts native and star of the “Commish” is currently starring in the FX series “The Shield”. While Chiklis is interesting, WEEI is a “sports” station, and after last night, you’d think they would stick to what they’re supposed to be all about. People want to talk sports this morning. Should be interesting to see what spin Dale and Neumy put on the McLaren hit, as you know they’ll devote much of their 4 hour shift to it.

Seems the people at Fox Sports NE had some problems up in Southern NH during the 4th quarter of the Celtics game tonight. Big Problems. No picture. Seemed to coincide with the Celtics hitting a cold streak in the the 4th. With the game blacked out on TNT, there was no picture available to Celtics fans during the biggest game in years. If you had digital cable, you could tune to NBA.comTV and at least hear the TNT audio.

A lot of time this morning on WEEI is devoted to the National Anthem “scandal” in Montreal. It’s thought by some that the rendition of the U.S. Anthem played before the Bruins/Canadiens Tuesday was done sub par and notes missed on purpose. They’ve even replayed the US anthem and the anthem for Canada that were played and compared them, and there does seem to be a difference in quality. Whether it was done intentionally is another story. It seems unlikely that something like that could be done. The fear expressed is that something in “retaliation” could be done in game 5 back at the Fleet.

A babbling appearance by Bill Walton affirms his place as the weirdest figure (should that read “eccentric”?) in broadcasting. He went on and on, waxing poetically about the Celtics, Larry Bird, The Dead, His sons, his injuries, his current tour of 30 NBA games in 30 days, and living in Boston.