AROUND THE HORN

***SOX FINALLY BEAT THE YANKS***
Well, we knew they weren't totally inept. Lester is still one of the best pitchers in baseball and proved it last night. Burnett, on the other hand, is never just mediocre. He's either great or awful, as HE proved last night. Umpire Tim McClelland threw Girardi out last night for arguing balls & strikes. After such a disastrous job in the post season last year, I was surprised that McClelland was still working. Not only was his strike zone befuddling all night, his dramatic pauses before actually making the ball-strike call was annoying to say the least. It was like he was mentally flipping a coin before making a decision. I'm sure if the Yanks were ahead 7-2, it would have been Francona that was tossed. Okay, on to Detroit and a homecoming of sorts. Expect that with every hit Johnny Damon gets , it will bring on choruses of "Yanks shouldn't have let him go" from the ESPN announcers. The same with Austin Jackson.

***DALLAS BRADEN THROWS PERFECT GAME***
Glad to see he's getting recognition for something he did with his arm instead of his mouth.

***YA' GOTTA LOVE TERRY FRANCONA***
According to the NY Daily news, when asked if he thought there would be retaliation for Beckett's 'wildness' Friday night, Terry said he didn't think so. "Besides," he said, "we got them even. We had one of our pitchers hit Varitek."

***SEATTLE MARINERS FIRE THEIR HITTING COACH***
Yes, they did have one, but now he's gone. Alan Cockrell was fired yesterday by GM Jack Zduriencik for failing to make Jack's inept hitters into batting champion candidates. Zduriencik (who should reposition some of those vowels in his name) continued with his bad decision making after bringing in Chone Figgins (hitting .185), Casey Kotchman (.194) and Ken Griffey, Jr., who should have retired last year. What does Jack think Cockrell was teaching them: "Don't hit the balls too hard, we're trying to save money?"

***DWIGHT PERRY, ON THE OTHER HAND, HAD A GOOD DAY***
"The Yankees beat the Red Sox 10-3 and 14-3 in the first two games of their weekend series.
The defense is fine, Sox apologists insist, but they've just got to stop settling for field goals in the red zone."

"The latest sports fan to get tased — a 36-year-old man attending The Players Championship golf tournament — has been charged with disorderly intoxication.
In other words, he was too many shots over par."
Found this is Dwight's column, too:
"Brad Dickson in the Omaha (Neb.) World-Herald, on the retirement of longtime Cornhusker Trapshoot coordinator Rocky Hoffmann: "He was honored with a 13,000-gun salute."

***AND FROM JANICE HOUGH***
"Marc Ragovin comments “So it was 27 up, 27 down, in Oakland on Sunday. And by that I’m describing the entire attendance during the seventh inning stretch.”

"Tiger Woods apparently left the TPC tournament today with a sore neck. Makes sense, he’s had to swivel around constantly every few minutes since Thanksgiving to see if Elin is behind him with a nine-iron."

I told you other people were more interesting than me.

CP-