SeaSportsCamp - About Sports

With the Boston Celtics in the NBA playoffs it would be understanding if they were dominating Boston sports coverage. Not so with the Red Sox doing so well and writing new pages of Red Sox history.

The Boston Red Sox are managing to not only stay front and center, they are doing it with style. And here in Boston, front and center does not mean the lead sports story, it means the lead story on the paper’s front page. Jon Lester’s complete game no hitter was the lead story for the Boston Globe this morning. Lester becomes the second Red Sox pitcher in a row to pitch a no hitter on top of the Clay Buchholz gem last September.

Veteran catcher Jason Varitek also grabbed a little piece of history becoming only the 2nd catcher in MLB history to catch 4 no hit ball games (the other catcher to do this was Ray Schalk in 1914 (2), 1917, 1922).

2008 French Open on ESPN2 (times EST)

A slew of players ranked in the 20s and 30s make up the rest of the seeded contingent, most notably Alona Bondarenko, the No.2 seed. Bondarenko has had her strongest results of the year so far on clay, making quarterfinals at Amelia Island and Berlin, and taking out the likes of Dinara Safina and Svetlana Kuznetsova along the way.

"She's a young player with great potential, and I just didn't know how she was going to play," Jankovic said. "And of course, she wasn't the favorite. I was the favorite and had the pressure on me. I was defending my title and I'm glad I could cope with the pressure and win it for the second time."

It’s a little rough on the fans - every series going to 7 games. But that is the way it will stay unless the Boston Celtics relearn how to win on the road. I still contend that this in no a recipe for long term success through the playoffs - even if the Celtics are thus far proving me wrong…

I said going in that it was going to be tough to draw much value out of the Hamburg winner between Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal. And after Nadal’s topsy-turvy 7-5, 6-7, 6-3 win over Federer hasn’t changed my mind much.

If you are a fan of clay tennis, or really just tennis for that matter, you had to be impressed with the show Novak Djokovic and Rafael Nadal put on today in Hamburg.

From a historical standpoint, she is in the conversation with anyone who holds fewer than 10 major titles not named Monica Seles. It is difficult to compare players in “who would win?” questions across eras, even recent eras, due to changes in racket technologies, strong technologies and sports medicine. I do know I would have liked to see Henin and Steffi Graf play on any surface as Graf’s speed, slice backhand and devastating forehand would be nicely contrasted by Henin’s top spin backhand.

A business trip has gotten the better of me this week, so I apologize for being late on the topic of Justine Henin’s retirement, but it really is the big tennis news of the week. And I was really stunned to learn of it.

There aren’t going to be a lot of shiny new features over the next two months because I’m undertaking a major re-writing of the B-R architecture. Basically, I’m getting it onto the same platform as the other sports reference sites. This will speed up development (eventually) and also add a bunch of [...]