Free Republic

DEVELOPING: The son of a Boston police captain was an ISIS supporter who planned to set off an improvised explosive device and was arrested after illegally purchasing four firearms on July 4, according to the AP and a Justice Department press release. Authorities say 23-year-old Alexander Ciccolo, who also went by the name Ali Al Amriki, spoke about setting off an explosive device “in places where large numbers of people congregate, such as college cafeterias,” and was seen purchasing a pressure cooker similar to the kind used by the perpetrators of the Boston Marathon bombing.

The Boston Red Sox alumni took the field Friday, from Jim Rice to Carl Yastrzemski, from Johnny Pesky to Pedro Martinez, all in a graceful celebration of Fenway Park's 100th birthday. If Frank McCourt had had his way, the party never would have happened. McCourt tried to buy his hometown Red Sox in 2001, with a plan to build a new ballpark on his Boston waterfront parking lots. He had the right idea. Luke Scott of the Tampa Bay Rays took a lot of grief last week for calling Fenway "a dump." He had the right idea too. The Angels...

It was Friday, Aug. 18, 1967, and the town was alive because the Red Sox were in an honest-to-God, late-summer pennant race for the first time in 17 years. The fourth-place Red Sox (3 1/2 games back) were playing the fifth-place Angels (four back) in the first of four and it was baseball as baseball was meant to be until that awful moment in the bottom of the fourth with Tony Conigliaro batting against California righthander Jack Hamilton. The sound. Rico Petrocelli will never forget the sound. ``It was a `squish,' " recalls Petrocelli, the on-deck hitter, ``like a tomato...

The New York Yankees are probably the most famous sports franchise in the world. They are also, without question, the most hated franchise in the world. Across the country and around the globe are millions of people who probably wake up hoping the Yankees will meet some horrible defeat that day on the diamond. Almost two thirds of the time, their hopes will be crushed. This tends to cause a great deal of hostility and rage directed at the Bronx Bombers. I am one of those frustrated with fury. It was not always the case. For most of my childhood...

This is the kind of September we are supposed to have with the Yankees and the Red Sox. This is the way it is supposed to be, a series like this at the Stadium this weekend, then another one next weekend at Fenway Park. It wasn't supposed to be as easy as the Red Sox made it look in April. It wasn't supposed to be the kind of knockout punch the Yankees threw at Boston at the end of June, that three-game series when Derek Jeter, in addition to everything else, seemed to have taught himself how to fly. It...

The Yankees and Red Sox are mortal enemies on the field — but they may wind up in business together by merging their lucrative sports networks, The Post has learned. The management teams at the Yankees and the Red Sox are exploring a plan to merge the YES Network and the Red Sox-owned New England Sports Network, according to sources familiar with the matter. The deal would create a super regional sports network that would air both Yankee and Red Sox games. Talks between the two sides are not advanced, said a source, but "there's a desire of both ownerships...

The Bronx Bombers and their big spending boss, George Steinbrenner, are closin in on a deal with city and state officials to build a gleaming new Yankee Stadium in a park next to the House that Ruth Built. The team is in the final sages of planning for a new $700 million "state of the art" stadium, a source close to the Yankees said yesterday. But the team denied a story in Crain's New york Business that an announcement can be expected in the next two weeks.

Yankees Cut Cracker Jack From LineupBy COREY KILGANNONPublished: May 19, 2004 o much for that well-known line in the old song "Take Me Out to the Ballgame." The Yankees have quietly retired a longtime stadium starter, Cracker Jack. Now, young fans will have to ask, "Buy me some peanuts and Crunch 'n Munch," which is the popcorn snack the Yankees have chosen to replace Cracker Jack."It's sacrilege," John L. Donahue, a Yankees fan and stockbroker from Huntington, N.Y. , said yesterday. "How do I explain this to my little boy when I take him to his first Yankee game? If...

Oh no, the Parrotheads are coming. The Parrotheads are coming. Lock your doors. Put bars on the windows. Call the cops! Why is it that Boston, which has delusions about being a world-class city, every now and then behaves like East Podunk? Latest case in point: two proposed Jimmy Buffett concerts at Fenway Park. Now it's no great secret that for Buffett fans - Parrothead Nation - the concert itself is only half the fun. The real event simply must include a little tailgating in the Margaritaville spirit. (How else to properly show off those wild and crazy Hawaiian shirts?)...

<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>

Welcome news comes out of Yankee- land this week as one of the team's great players of the last two decades returns: Don Mattingly will be the Bombers' hitting coach next season. The Yankees certainly need his assistance: For the second time in the last three years, the team failed to hit during the World Series (news - web sites). If there's one thing Mattingly knows, it's hitting. In a career sadly cut short because of back pain, Mattingly was, in his prime, a virtual hitting machine. In 1985, he led the league with 145 runs batted in. He followed...

Play Ball!

<p>You are not going to watch the Democratic presidential candidates debate on TV tonight. I know it. You know it. They know it. You wouldn't watch if they all changed their names to "Pudge," put black grease under their eyes, then spit tobacco juice on the floor after each question. Or do they do that already? It doesn't matter. They are visiting our city, and, as good hosts and good Americans, we have a patriotic duty to fake interest. At least until the ballgame starts. Or the pregame show. Or the beer commercials before the pregame show.</p>

<p>I have this feeling that the Chicago Cubs or Boston Red Sox are going to win the World Series this year. Actually, that's not quite accurate. I have this fervent, desperate, oh-please-if-there's-a-merciful-God-in-heaven-let-it-happen desire for the Chicago Cubs or Boston Red Sox to win the World Series this year.</p>

Pennant fever is sweeping the area. With both the White Sox and Cubs in first place or close to it, fans are dreaming of a Windy City Series. Using the suitable clinical terminology, this is just plain nuts. The Sox, well, maybe. It’s been dry on the South Side for a long time, but there is a genuine possibility. Not a great possibility in all likelihood, but one nonetheless. The story on the North Side is different. The Cubs have a long tradition of defeat. And not just being beaten, but losing in the most ignominious ways. Assorted explanations have...

<p>Come Sunday, Roger Clemens may be the last American League 300-game winner -- ever.</p> <p>The Favorite Toy, a statistical method devised by sports-numbers pioneer Bill James, predicts that the Yankee may be able to host Post-Millennial 300 Club meetings in a single room at a Holiday Inn.</p>

<p>Close to where his legendary home run cleared Fenway Park's left-field wall a quarter-century ago, Bucky Dent was tormenting the Red Sox faithful all over again.</p> <p>"Were you bitter?" the former New York Yankee shortstop asked one fan in a Sox cap, while flashing his diamond-studded World Series ring. "Do you still hate me?" he inquired of another, hopefully.</p>

<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>