Monday morning odds and ends...

• Dan Shaughnessy had a piece in the Globe yesterday arguing that the various Red Sox debacles (1978, 1986, 2003) were bigger disasters than Super Bowl XLII. The wounds are still too fresh for me to go into this fully, which I expect I'll do some day (probably in therapy) but let me briefly address Dan's point.
  
  Hogwash.
  
  There has never been a "collapse"/"choke"/"disaster"/"disappointment" to match it. Certainly not in Boston pro sports. Never. Not no way, not no how. Not when the stakes are considered. No comparison.



• An absolutely fantastic win for the Celtics yesterday, beating San Antonio without their starting power forward, starting center and backup center. I'd been looking forward to San Antonio as a measuring stick game, which it wasn't - there were too many important pieces missing on both sides - but it was a great win for the team anyway.



• Does Nancy Pelosi even realize how foolish she sounds?



• Sometime in the next couple of weeks, I'm going to put together a brief essay on Lewis' The Abolition Of Man and the apparently rapidly approaching end of Western Civilization in Great Britain. Here's a comment from The Way (which is the second of the three essays which makes up The Abolition of Man.):
  

  The practical result of education in the spirit of The Green Book must be the destruction of the society which accepts it.
  

  C.S. Lewis

  
  Lewis was a brilliant man, a great writer, a deep thinker, and something of a prophet...



• I'm torn on the Clinton campaign. There's part of me that thinks that the sooner she's gone, the better. The rest of me is pretty sure that McCain can beat her in November, while Obama is a) likely to be just as bad a President and b) far likelier to win. I think that the best case, for Republicans and people concerned about National security, is for Hillary to win at the convention on the basis of superdelegates, alienating the members of the Obama cult of personality.
  
  I certainly could be wrong (and I usually am) but that would, I think, make for quite an entertaining spectacle, and a fatally wounded candidate.



• Chris Lynch thinks that Curt Schilling's done. I wouldn't be surprised if he is, I wouldn't be surprised if made 10-12 starts after the All Star Game. If we've seen him for the last time, well, we saw great things from him.
  
  My concern is not that it leaves a big hole in the rotation, because I don't believe it does. But it leaves something of a hole, as I'm certain that they want to limit the innings of both Buccholz and Lester this year, and with Schilling gone, that will require more management. They remain, in my opinion, the best team in baseball, with or without him.