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Browner said he and O’Shea “hugged it out” after the flap, and that he respects O’Shea because he’s a coach. In addition, it’s clear he’s developed a level of respect for Thompkins, who he’s been lined up against frequently since the pads went on. “KT has got routes at the line of scrimmage that are unmatchable,” he said. “Some guys are not as quick as that dude. It’s been real competitive going against that guy. It’s only going to make me better.”

Talk about huge props for the sophomore wide receiver. I think we'll see big things out of Thompkins this year. http://itiswhatitis.weei.com/sports/newengland/football/patriots/2014/07/30/brandon-browner-turns-up-intensity-in-heated-exchanges-with-coaches-teammates/

Meanwhile, my grandiose writing projects were all going nowhere for the same tedious reason. The minute I tried to commit them to paper, or otherwise turn them into something tangible, my imagination coughed and sputtered like the cheap Renault convertible my girlfriend drove in college. I’d write a bit of dialogue using that miraculous software that automatically formats it into a screenplay for you, and I’d be instantly paralyzed from the neck up. Here was incontrovertible evidence that I wasn’t half as good as I imagined myself to be. The voices I heard so clearly and powerfully in my head became inert and alien on the page. I was surprised by how mortally embarrassed you can be by writing something nobody else will ever read. Even looking back over those one- sentence descriptions of TV ideas in the first paragraph of this essay, I am humbled by how inadequately they convey the vividness they had as I conjured them. It’s like hearing a recording of my own voice. That can’t be how I sound. Oh, but it is.

Penned by Hugo Lindgren, editor of the New York Times Magazine. I couldn't agree more.

But on Tuesday, during the first extended interview in several years, Lackey said he had no regrets about coming to Boston and vowed to change the narrative. “I thought this place would be good for me,’’ Lackey said. “I’m a guy who likes competing and showing some emotion and that is what they want. When I’m pitching well, I think it’ll be a good thing. And I’m going to pitch well. This thing isn’t over.”

After bruising years, Lackey ready to take mound - Baseball - Boston.com

I really, really like Lackey's attitude here. And I think he's dead on. If he pitches well, Red Sox Nation will love him. If he doesn't, he could be on his way out just like Josh Beckett a few months ago.

But Abraham is hardly the only problem these days. The Boston sports media, once considered one of the country’s best and most influential press corps, is stumbling toward irrelevance. The national media not only seems to break more big Boston sports stories than the local press, but also often features more sophisticated analysis, especially when it comes to using advanced statistics. To put it bluntly, “The Lodge”—as Fred Toucher, cohost of the 98.5 The Sports Hub morning radio show, mockingly refers to the city’s clubby, self-important media establishment—is clogged with stale reporters, crotchety columnists, and shameless blowhards. Their canned “hot sports takes” have found a home on local television and talk radio, but do little but suck the fun out of a topic that’s supposed to be just that. And we haven’t even gotten to Dan Shaughnessy yet.

The Fellowship of the Miserable: How Boston Sportswriters Got So Awful

An interesting read. I don't want to say I agree with everything, but there are some valid points and some not-so-valid points.

"NORTHAMPTON, Mass. — Two men are being held on charges they stole nearly $400 from a group of Girl Scouts selling cookies at a store in Massachusetts. An adult supervising the Scouts suffered a broken nose and arm injuries trying to stop the men. Authorities say 22-year-old Nicholas Taverna of Greenfield and 25-year-old Cassidy Michalski of Deerfield were held on $5,000 bail each at their arraignment Tuesday on charges of unarmed robbery, assault and battery with a dangerous weapon and shoplifting. Police say the suspects stole two cellphones from the Walmart in Northampton on Saturday and tried to trade them for drugs in Holyoke. When that failed, they returned to Northampton where they had seen the 11- and 12-year-old Scouts earlier, and stole their cash box."

2 men charged with stealing nearly $400 from Girl Scouts selling cookies at Mass. store - The Washington Post

Really?

"You guys know J.D., kind of laid-back. I’m laid-back, but probably hold a little more emotion on my shoulder," Drew said. "At the end of the day, me and J.D., I’m a different person than J.D. and J.D. is different than me. I told people coming into it, J.D. plays right field; I play shortstop. I’ve got a little more pressure playing in the middle of the infield and kind of dealt with that. I’ve always been under my two older brothers. It’s nothing new to me."

Welcome to Boston, Stephen Drew! I'm one of the few J.D. fans in Red Sox Nation. Glad to see another No. 7 named Drew. ... Extra Bases - Red Sox blog

mlb

Cardinals. Giants. Who wins the NL? Preview.

rcbooth-blog

Yup!

No wonder Game 2 of the ALCS featured thousands of empty seats, like Game 1 before it, and like the do-or-die Game 5 of the ALDS, too. New Yorkers understand a fraud when they see it. They pay for expensive seats, drink overpriced beers, buy exorbitant merchandise and fund a $200 million joke, a team that for the second straight game couldn't score a measly run off the Detroit Tigers' Nos. 3 and 4 starting pitchers. These Yankees earned every last boo.

Yahoo's Jeff Passan on the "fraud" Yankees. I love that word. Fraud. So powerful. It means so much. The Yankees are frauds and their fans are, too. What a shame to see that stadium so empty for an ALCS game.

#yankees #yahoo #passan

It is not an exaggeration to say this could be the most well-rounded offense they have had in the Brady/Belichick era, and yes, that includes 2007. The running game won't match what they had in 1976 or '78 in John Hannah's heyday, or even in the mid-80s with Craig James and Tony Collins. But it's a heck of a lot better than the tap-dancing Laurence Maroney gave them five years ago, and it could be the best they've had since Corey Dillon was at the peak of his powers.

The Globe's Chad Finn on Stevan Ridley and the improved Patriots running game. If you haven't figured it out, Ridley is a serious NFL running back. He's got the skills to be a perennial 1,000-yard rusher. He's explosive and he fights for every yard. Those are the kind of backs I love.

#patriots #globe #finn

Smile! You're Brandon Lloyd, and you have awesome hands. Thanks for that.

#patriots #photo

The batters were scared of Johnny, who was just wild enough to fire an occasional fastball under their chin and remind them of God.

Pat Jordan looks back on his life as a baseball player. A really great story from SB Nation. This line has nothing to do with Pat himself -- just one of his rivals -- but I love the line so much. "... and remind them of God." Beautiful sentence.

#sb nation #longform

The Sox clinched the cellar late Tuesday in the Bronx. They are officially the last-place Red Sox of 2012. They have lost seven in a row, 12 out of 13. They are 25 games out of first place. They are 23 games under .500. They are the worst Boston baseball team in 47 years. Oh, and remember the 7-20 record of last September? That’s now what we call, “the good old days.’’ The 2012 Red Sox are 7-21 since Sept. 1. In the immortal words of the late Ned Martin . . . “Mercy.’’

Mercy. It'll all be over tonight.

#red sox #Shaughnessy

The report said that Valentine ended up with his bicycle at the bottom of a ditch after “he had to swerve to avoid the umbrellas of two French tourists walking in front of him. The bike skidded, and he lost his balance and went careening head over pedals down the side of the hill by the road.” Valentine suffered minor injuries to his knees and hips. “I shouldn’t have been reading a text while I was riding. That’s the wrong thing to do,” Valentine said, according to the Times. “But at least I was wearing my helmet.”

No, this isn't a story on the last day of the Red Sox's season about Bobby Valentine crashing a bike while swerving "to avoid the umbrellas of two French tourists" and reading a text message from Dustin Pedroia. Right?

#red sox #bobby valentine

At this point, it's become time for the league to put its tail between its legs, apologize profusely, and ask the locked-out referees to come back under a deal of the NFLRA's choosing. There's no reason the referees should accept the same terms they would have offered two weeks ago; after a weekend dominated by the replacements, the real referees have more leverage than they had even a week ago. In fact, the only reason the league might want to push an agreement back further is that they have no leverage whatsoever. It's hard to imagine the replacements being quite as noticeably bad as they were this week.

Grantland's Bill Barnwell on the mockery of Monday night's game between the Packers and Seahawks. This has gone way over the top.

#grantland #football

. The Period Deadspin, Gawker, and GQ's Drew Magary, author of the recent novel The Postmortal: "I'm a big fan of the period, because it means that I can take a little breather. Michael Chabon wrote a novel recently that had a 12-page sentence. Why would you do that to a reader? What kind of asshole doesn't give the reader a break once in a while? Get me to the period so that I can take a moment to digest and go eat a Pop Tart or something. Withholding that period from me is a real dick move. I also like parentheses because I can do whatever the hell I want inside of them. Commas are the worst because eight billion people have eight billion different ideas about where they're supposed to go."

You stay awesome, Drew Magary. (Writers' Favorite Punctuation Marks)

#writing #editing #journalism

Heading into 2010, things had to change. And who knew what the Patriots were going to be able to get out of Welker after ACL surgery? Just like he does after every season, Belichick stood in front of his staff on that lousy January day and distributed the postseason tasks: study your group, and find out a way to get better. ASAP. For quarterbacks coach Bill O’Brien, who was the de facto offensive coordinator, that meant a total retooling. When it comes to coaching and philosophy, Belichick is not stuck in his ways. He is open to new ideas.

Great story from The Globe's Greg Bedard on how the Patriots went from being a five-wide shotgun offense to a two tight-end offense.

#patriots

"I want to be a Red Sox my whole career," Pedroia said. "I want to be here during the World Series times, during the September collapse, the biggest trade, and I want to be here when we're world champs again. I want that. I've been through times when not a writer said a bad thing about me, or the talk show hadn't said a bad thing about me, and I want to be here when they say a bad thing about me. I look in the mirror every day and at the end of the season I'm going to look back and say I did everything I could to help us win. Were there parts I regret? Yeah, without question. There were a lot more than in the past, but I learned from those things. It's going to make me better, I believe that. Yeah, I have to believe that. It's going to."

I don't know how anyone could EVER forget that Dustin Pedroia is the heart and soul of this ballclub. Watch him play. That guy wants to win. There's a reason why he's sacrificing his body all over the place and is emotional. He wants to win.

#red sox

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