Summer is back ... at least for one day. It should make for quite the interesting Patriots Day in Boston. Already the word is out that runners in the Boston Marathon are being offered the chance to skip the event and push their registration ahead to next year ... and there will be mid-summer conditions at Fenway when the Red Sox host the Rays in the final game of their four game series this morning starting at 11:05.
The Sox have had quite a weekend so far ... and you have got to wonder if the weather conditions have anything to do with it. With summer-like conditions ... and the wind blowing out ... the Sox bats have looked like summer-like bats. They have put up 33 runs in the first three games of the series. We'll see what they can do today against Rays ace James Shields.

There is playoff hockey ... where intensity is a given and fights are often a part of that ... but then there is what we saw yesterday in Philadelphia ... an ugly game filled with cheap shots. And what was most surprising about it ... it was the Penguins who seemed to be the main offenders. Pittsburgh came into the game in desperate straits ... and came out of it in even worse shape ... but what they did yesterday did nothing to help their reputations. Ugly ...

And give the Celtics credit ... they found a way to deal with their back to back to back weekend on the road. They gave Pierce, Garnett and Allen all the night off last night for the final game of the busy stretch ... in fact they didn't even bring them with them to Charlotte ... and they still beat the Bobcats.