Free Republic

Green Bay Packers fans turned out in droves to welcome their Super Bowl championship football team back to town on Monday. Fans lined the city streets all along the Packers’ route from Austin-Straubel Airport back to Lambeau Field after the team’s plane landed around 1:45 p.m. The players and coaches traveled in a caravan of Green Bay city buses, and on some streets fans were lined up as much as five or six people deep, on both sides. The crowds grew considerably larger the closer the team got to Lambeau. Upon arriving at the stadium, thousands of fans were waiting...

Forget about strutting around in that ``Yankees Suck'' T-shirt next time you head over to Fenway Park to diss the Bronx Bombers. In a bid to restrain some of Red Sox Nation's more unruly fans, the Sox have begun a quiet policy of effectively barring display of the blunt T-shirts inside Fenway. Sox officials are strongly urging fans who show up with ``Yankees Suck'' shirts to turn them inside out. While declining to call it an outright ban, team communications chief Charles Steinberg claimed there have been no incidents where fans refused the team's request. Team executives rolled out the...

WESTON -- Among the few New Englanders dismayed by last week's collapse of the Evil Empire, Weston residents Mark Fishman, Ian Masotti and Tommy McCabe gathered to commiserate and prepare for a World Series without their beloved Yankees. ADVERTISEMENT The trio of fourth-graders is among roughly 50 students at the Field School who tested the patience of parents and coaches in this wealthy suburb this summer by forsaking the Red Sox and throwing their support behind the most successful franchise in baseball. While Red Sox Nation took to the streets Wednesday night in "Why Not Us" T-shirts, chanting, singing, and...

So, just why is it that the 2004 Red Sox are so much better equipped to silence the "1918" chants than their immediate predecessors? What is the reason, as Kevin Millar said last weekend, repeating a commonly held belief in the Sox clubhouse, that no one wants to play this team in October?

<p>ATLANTA -- When Manny Ramirez was asked about seeming to take it upon himself to replace "Cowboy Up" with a new Red Sox slogan -- "This is the year" -- he put it pretty bluntly. "This has to be the year," he said with a smile. "There won't be anybody left [afterward]."</p>

<p>HELL HATH no fury like a Red Sox fan spurned. For the past week, loud moans and other exclamations of disgust can be heard whenever the news comes on. In some households, people are tossing pillows and sneakers at their new flat-screen TVs.</p>

I started playing baseball when I was 5 and organized baseball when I was 7. My very first round of “catch” resulted in a broken pinky finger and a sprained “ring man”. I quickly learned the purpose of the glove. Some thirty-six years later I have come full circle – injured and playing 2nd base (on a men’s softball team). Along the journey I have enjoyed minor successes such as: little league all-star, high school relief pitcher, starting short stop on a small semi-pro league team, and a two day try-out with the Major League Scouting Bureau in 1983. My...

NEW YORK (AP) -- Wow, what a shot! Aaron Boone set off bedlam in the Bronx on Thursday night with a leadoff home run in the 11th inning to give the New York Yankees a 6-5 victory over the Boston Red Sox for a trip to the World Series and their 39th American League pennant. New York trailed 4-0 in the fourth inning and 5-2 in the eighth as Roger Clemens made an early exit in what looked to be the final game of his storied career. But the Yankees bounced back, rekindling all those painful memories that have haunted...

<p>Top 1st: J Damon grounded out to shortstop. T Walker singled to right center. N Garciaparra flied out to right, T Walker to second. M Ramirez flied out to right.</p> <p>Bot 1st: A Soriano struck out swinging. N Johnson walked. D Jeter fouled out to first. B Williams singled to shallow left, N Johnson to second. H Matsui flied out to center.</p> <p>Bot 3rd: K Garcia flied out to center. A Soriano struck out swinging. N Johnson flied out to center. (0 Runs, 0 Hits, 0 Errors) BOSTON 3, NY YANKEES 0.</p>

Pedro vs Roger. Two of the greatest pitchers to ever play the game. Fenway Park is rocking. Electricity is in the air. Here we go...

Why not? That’s what the thinking is in Boston this year. It’s as simple as that really. Simple as saying why not and believing it.      Every time the Red Sox rally in some miraculous way, as they did on Tuesday with a two-out, two-strike three-run homer by Todd Walker that tied the score in the bottom of the ninth, and a solo shot by David Ortiz the very next inning, they grow more sure of themselves. They grow more willing to say what the pessimists in New England always had an answer for. In the Red Sox clubhouse they...

<p>Granted, there is upheaval in the world and there are battles where a great deal is at stake -- life itself. All the more precious, then, the minor skirmishes on the home front that mean a great deal in a small way and remind us of how lucky we are to feel innocent hatreds, from summer to summer, at the ballpark.</p>

ArticleThe article says the People's Republic of Massachusetts has done it twice before.

Thirty years ago today, the Boston Red Sox sent relief pitcher Sparky Lyle to the New York Yankees for first baseman-outfielder Danny Cater. Lyle went on to save 141 games in a seven-year career, winning the Cy Young award in 1977, when the Yanks won their first World Championship since 1962. Some also credit Lyle for teaching Ron Guidry how to throw the slider. Cater played three years for Boston, batting .262 and hitting 14 homers. The Sox needed a first baseman, because the previous October, they had traded George Scott (and Ken Brett) to Milwaukee.