A few thoughts:

- Kudos once again to Manny Delcarmen and Jermaine Van Buren, who came up big in last night's 8-6 win over the Blue Jays. They combined for 2 and 2/3 scoreless innings to bridge the gap from emergency starter David Pauley (fresh from the Portland Sea Dogs) to Foulke in the 8th and Papelbon in the 9th. Pauley didn't pitch badly (you could make a very compelling case that his 4 and 1/3 inning, six run performance was the best of the three starts in the Toronto series), but he's pretty obviously not ready for the big leagues.

- Roger Clemens went back to the Houston Astros. I think Clemens simply found the idea of being close to home and the potential of playing with his son, who is in the Astros minor league system, too compelling. I'm sure the prorated $22,000,022 a season the Astros offered him was pretty compelling as well. Plus, I'm guessing that Roger liked the idea of facing National Legue lineups, with the pitcher and the ability to pitch around the #8 hitter a whole lot more than the prospect of facing the Toronto and Yankees bashers several times over the last few months of the season.

- Remember in Spring Training, when everyone was wondering what the Sox were going to do with all those starting pitchers? There were seven: Schilling, Beckett, Wakefield, Papelbon, Arroyo, Wells and Clement. Now Papelbon is the closer, Wells is on the DL, Arroyo is in Cincinnati and Clement is either injured or terrible. Arroyo would be looking pretty good in that #4 or #5 spot right now.

- An amazing pitching duel between Pedro and Brandon Webb last night. Webb went 7 scoreless innings and Pedro went 8. The bullpens then took over and no one scored until the Mets finally broke through in the bottom of the 13th on a game winning single by Endy Chavez.

- I don't comment often on the Bruins, mostly because I'm not much of a hockey guy. I probably couldn't name 30 non-Bruin players in the NHL right now. However, I have watched with facination as the Bruins totally screwed up their General Manager search, much as they have screwed up practically everything else over the last decade or so. They tried to get Ray Shero, who by most accounts was the best qualified candidate, but he decided he didn't want to deal with the Jacobs' and headed to Pittsburgh instead. So they got former Harvard hockey captain Peter Chiarelli from the Ottowa Senators instead. Of course, it cost them a draft pick and Chiarelli can't start until around the middle of July.

I hope this guy is good, because the Bruins can't afford to look like a bunch of chumps much longer. They totally misread the market coming out of the NHL lockout and missed the playoffs again this year. They have pretty much alienated the fan base, except for the relatively small group of Hockey Krishnas who keep buying the expensive seats at the Fleet Bank Shawmut North Garden Center each year. The Bruins are a heck of a lot closer to the Revolution than they are to the Red Sox and Patriots in terms of relevance to the average New England sports fan these days. That's a trend they have to reverse.