60 Minutes

Who else just watched 60 Minutes and found the gangster story much more interesting than the Clemens interview? Had the John Martorano story run a few months earlier Clemens could’ve hired him to take out McNamee. Oh well.

I can’t say I’m surprised but the Clemens interview didn’t sway me in one direction or the other. What Clemens needed to do to help his case was give a satisfactory answer as to why his friend McNamee would lie, yet when asked that question his response was along the lines of “I don’t know”. Given that this was the most important part of the interview I wish that Mike Wallace (like Theo Epstein, Bob Kraft, and myself, a distinguished graduate of Brookline High School, by the way) had spent more time on it. As it is, I am still not 100% convinced that Clemens is guilty, but if I had to bet on it I’d say he was.

tick…tick…tick…tick…

Celtics better than the West?

After the Celtics finished off the Pistons yesterday I pointed out to my friend Colin, a Chicago Bulls fan (he grew up in 90’s and likes the Bulls, Cowboys, and Yankees; needless to say he is not at all “beyond the bandwagon”), that the Celtics could very well break the Bulls’ single season win record. At this point my other friend John suggested that they would have an easy time since the Eastern Conference is weak. While the East may be weaker than the West I disagreed with this notion, since the East has several good, and two very good teams. John countered that Dallas, the Suns, and the Spurs were better than any team in the East, including the Celtics. Given that much is made about whether the Celts are as good as teams in the West I have decided to take this notion on.

First and foremost, the Celtics are 10-0 against Western teams. What’s that you say? They haven’t yet played any of the elite west teams? Fair enough, but lets see what those “elite” teams have done against the same Western competition. The Celtics have played Denver, Golden State, Houston, LA Lakers, Memphis, Sacramento, Seattle, and Utah (the Lakers and Kings twice). The Spurs are a pedestrian 9-5 against those teams, Dallas (who amazingly have played those conference foes only the same number of times as the Celtics) are 8-2, and the Suns are only 7-4. A combined 24-11 is not a bad record, to be sure, but its certainly not 10-0, and shows that the teams the Celtics have beat can win against tough competition. The Celts don’t play any of those teams until Dallas comes to town on January 31, but until then they’ve proven to be as good, if not better, than the good Western conference teams.

Jim Rice to the Hall?

There is a lot of talk swirling that this may be the year Jim Rice finally makes it into the Hall of Fame, given the weak competition for votes. I can’t say I had ever done do much analysis on this, and having been too young to see Rice’s career I had no first hand experience, but I was always skeptical just looking at his career numbers that he belonged in the Hall of Fame. After reading this column on ESPN, however, I am convinced that he does; it is a good read for those of you that have not seen it.

That’s it for now, I hope everyone has had a joyful beginning to 2008, its looking to be a great year for New England sports.

P.S. In case you’re scratching your head at the title of this post, read it to the tune of the Bernie and Phyls jingle. Fine…it still sucks. F*** you.