As October goes by without them, Manny & Big Papi lament the end of a beautiful friendship.

With Manny available, and currently at home in Florida, the two sluggers tawk comeback.

The Game 5 Comeback at Fenway turned into a Toga Party-by baseball standards it was debauchy-and now anything goes for the the rest of the ALCS. Yes, Tampa, we still want to show you our cucumber! It wasn’t over when the Germans bombed Pearl Harbor, and now the tough get going back to the turquoise haze of cowbell park. Nothing is over until we say it is! Where were you for Game 5, in 2008? Most of us had settled in for a long winter’s nap, but as the years go by people will say they watched the Red Sox do what they improbably did do. Toga Party? Toga Party!

Chin Up, Champs! For the last ALCS Game at Fenway, the Sox are joined by a few old friends.

Big Pop-Up misses Manny this time of year.

Boston sports fans and scribes have long held the rep to be knowledgeable and wise, even “smartest”. It was a hard earned distinction borne from the agony of defeat, which then lead to careful, reasoned off-season scrutiny by MIT seamheads, among other local geniuses-also know as “Hot Stove”. Yet two recent World Series wins have created an entitled, slightly inebrieted class of obnoxious new fans and scribes that howl at the moon after every loss, demand that this and that player/manager be shipped out regardless of yesterday’s heroics; they behave, frankly, like entitled Yankee fans. Stocks don’t always go up. That’s a free market for ya, and you can’t buy or demand championships, because it’s just a game. To quote the great Dominican philosopher Aristedes, “It’s not the end of the world.” So stay loose, and stay on the ball.

Papi’s charity golf tournament needs celebrities, not Tampa Bay nobodies.

The two MLB stars talk about Bud Selig’s ubiquitous marketing campaign.

When Manny comes back to Fenway, for the World Series, will he get the O.J. treatment?

“Baseball is war by other means”. No one ever said this, and currently there are actual military and economic wars occuring-perhaps one in the same-but the voting public will mostly pay attention in the next several weeks to a simmering rivalry and playoff series between the upstart Rays and the new world order of the Red Sox. A lot is at stake, out in the real world, but Sox & Rays fans will express themselves through sport; hoping, praying, yelling, screaming, crying, drinking, getting their hair cut into green stripes, in short, putting their time, money and mouth where the baseball is!