I didn't see last night's alleged baseball game between the Boston Red Sox and the Texas Rangers, but for fans of offense, it had to be right up there with the Run and Shoot in football and the Wayne Gretzky Edmonton Oilers in the 1980's NHL.

Check out some of these numbers, stats that would make you toss your Strat-O-Matic in the trash assuming it was irreparably broken, if it ever gave you a game like this when you were playing it as a kid:

- Red Sox score ten runs in the first inning, and have to rally after falling behind in the game, to win 19-17! It would have been closer, but the Rangers pulled their goaltender late in the game and Boston was able to score an empty-netter to give them a the two-goal win.

- 36 runs were scored in a nine-inning major league game. In the entire history of the American League, there have never been more runs scored in a game that didn't go extra innings, and the last time this many were scored was almost six decades ago!

- Runs were scored in every inning, with the exception of the fourth, when batters were so winded from running around the bases that they refused to run out anything. Manny Ramirez would have loved it.

- Ten runs were scored in an inning twice in the game - In the first inning, when Boston scored ten, and in the fifth, when Texas scored eight and Boston answered with two.

- Jonathan Papelbon, Boston's closer, earned his 32nd save, undoubtedly one of the few times in history a pitcher picked up a save in a game in which his team scored nineteen runs.

- For the game, Texas batted .426 (20-47), while Boston was slightly off the pace at .425 (17-40).

- David Ortiz, Red Sox - Two home runs, and six RBI, in the first inning!

- Two players went 5-6 in the game: Marlon Byrd for the Rangers, who drove in three runs and scored four, and Dustin Pedroia for the Red Sox, who drove in two and scored five.

It was not immediately known how many pitchers sought post-game medical attention for post-traumatic stress disorder. Details as they become available.

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If you love fiction and have a few minutes to spare, check out my website, www.allanleverone.com

It has become standard practice for athletes of all incomes and all ability levels in all professional sports to endear themselves to the local fan base by exclaiming loudly and to anyone who will listen how much they are looking forward to finishing their career in that city.

Usually midway through the introductory press conference, the athlete in question vows, in between posing for the obligatory photos shaking the hands of the team's ownership and management (also known as the very same people he will be fighting tooth and nail against to get more money from come contract time) and holding up his new home jersey with his name on the back, that this is where he has wanted to play his entire career and he is looking forward to retiring from this lucky city.

The players inevitably say these words with the utmost sincerity, counting on the suckers...uh, excuse me...fans...yeah, that's it, fans...to eat it up like Rosie O'Donnell at the dessert table, which they inevitably do.

But Manny Ramirez has set a new standard for baboozling home-town fans, a mark which may never be broken. After stating in early summer that he fully expected to remain a Boston Red Sox until retirement, he orchestrated a trade out of town by performing in-game job actions that were so blatantly obvious they have inspired an investigation from the league office.

But wait, there's more! After donning mirrored sunglasses and wowing fans in L.A. by stating, within 24 hours of arriving in town, "I think that I'll play here for the remainder of my career," sources now say that what the man for whom the term "enigmatic" was originally coined meant to say was that he wants to sign a free agent contract this winter to loaf...uh, excuse me...play...yeah, that's it, play, for the New York Yankees until his retirement from the game.

Anyone can change his mind, of course, and it was a whole five days between Manny's oath of devotion to L.A. and the revelation of the latest city he's developed a crush on, but ultimately, it probably doesn't much matter, anyway. The guy will hit wherever he is, and chances are he's not going to be too sure where that is, anyway.

Besides, if the flirtation with New York doesn't work out, there are still over two dozen cities he can swear he wants to finish his career in, and that doesn't even include Green Bay, where Manny may or may not have volunteered to play quarterback. He's just hitting his stride!

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If you love fiction and have a few minutes to spare, check out my website, www.allanleverone.com

Anyone who has ever played sports at any level has probably heard this from a coach at one time or another: "It doesn't take any talent to hustle!"

I heard this repeatedly when I was playing baseball, telling me that:

A) The coaches appreciated my hard-nosed style of play, the fact that my uniform was always dirty, and the fact that I never gave up on any ball, no matter where it was hit, OR,

B) They recognized that I had no appreciable talent for the game.

Although it's kind of a backwards compliment, like telling your date she's the prettiest girl at the dance when you're the first couple to arrive, there's still a lot of truth to the statement - All it takes to bust it down the line on a ground ball is the desire to do so, and sometimes that little bit of effort makes all the difference in the world.

This is why I love the right side of the Boston Red Sox infield so much. Kevin Youkilis and Dustin Pedroia are both straight out of the Trot Nixon-Mike Greenwell mold. They will dive, run into and sometimes through walls, hustle out ground balls, and always give 100%, a rarity in the world of professional sports, where so many players seem to think it's more important to preen and showboat than to do their utmost to help their team win.

For Pedroia, a little guy who has a home run hitter's swing and yet makes consistent contact with the best in the league, that work ethic has produced a current streak of hits in 28 consecutive road games. Not that impressive, you say? No Boston player has a longer such streak since Tris Speaker in 1915!

To put that into a little historical perspective, the last time a Red Sox player had a longer road hitting streak than Pedroia, Woodrow Wilson was president of the United States and the country was still two years away from entering into World War One. We have had sixteen presidents since then, and at the time of Tris Speaker's streak, Arizona and New Mexico had only entered the union three years prior.

Babe Ruth was a 20 year old kid playing in his first full year in the big leagues, mostly as a pitcher, compiling 217.7 innings pitched and an 18-8 record. Oh yeah, he showed a little promise at the plate too, hitting .315 with four home runs for the Red Sox, who were still four years away from selling him to...well...you know the rest of the story.

Anyway, I bring up this Pedroia streak because the guy is one of those players you hate if he's on the other team but you love if he's on your team, because he's so darned pesky - he's like the bugs buzzing around Joba Chamberlain's head in the playoffs last fall - no matter how hard you try, you just can't get rid of him.
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If you love fiction and have a few minutes to spare, check out my website, www.allanleverone.com

You know you're stuck in the dog days of summer when it seems like all the sports stories are the same ones, recycled over and over. The promise of spring is gone for a lot of Major League baseball teams as they drop out of pennant races, the real college and NFL football games are still weeks away, and even though the Olympic Games are happening this year, there doesn't seem to be much sizzle.

So here, in no particular order, are the sports stories that would be banned immediately if I were King of the World:

1) Brett Favre - As great a player as Brett Favre was, and as poorly as his annual retirement sagas were handled (especially this year's), and whether he leads the NFL in passer rating and wins a Super Bowl with the Jets this year or whether he stinks worse than two week old tuna, can't we just let the whole thing go? I bet even Obama and McCain can agree on this one. Please, sports people everywhere, for the love of God, I'm begging you, just let the Favre thing go!

2) Manny Ramirez - Now the big story is that Bud Selig has asked a representative to look into how the whole Manny trade from Boston to Los Angeles was handled. Yay. What's he planning on doing if he doesn't like how it was handled? Declare the whole thing a tie? Let it go for crying out loud! Manny will hit like gangbusters and play hard until he decides not to and that's that. What you see is what you get with him. Always has been and always will be. Let's move on.

3) Redeem Team - Not to be cynical here, but sitting on the edge of my seat, trying to see if a bunch of multi-millionaires can beat another bunch of multi-millionaires to win a gold medal in what used to be the ultimate amateur competition just doesn't really do it for me. The outstanding United States Olympic Basketball Team will either win it all or they won't. What does redeeming have to do with anything?

4) Olympic athletes testing positive for banned substances - I guess I am getting cynical in my old age, but over the next three weeks or so we will see a few stories of courage and inspiration, a few genuinely interesting and exciting matchups in sports most of us only pay attention to every four years, and more than a few medal-winning athletes testing positive for banned substances and being stripped of their medals. They will immediately have the obligatory stunned and outraged reaction, proclaim their innocence, insist - through their high-profile attornies - that they have no idea how the substance got into their system and will fight these scurrilous charges until their dying breath, and then six months to a year down the line will give their medals back and serve their suspensions. Happens every four years. I can't wait.

Okay, I'm done now. Sorry for the interruption. I'd love to stay and chat but I'm off to the Jets website to read up on the latest Favre stuff.

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If you love fiction and have a few minutes to spare, check out my website, www.allanleverone.com

According to a story published August 6 by the Associated Press, United States Olympic champion swimmer Amanda Beard was forced to "launch her naked, anti-fur campaign poster outside the Athletes Village after Chinese authorities cancelled a planned unveiling."

According to PETA spokesman Jason Baker, "Amanda didn't want her voice to be silenced, so we went ahead and arranged something else."

I've never been accused of being the brightest guy in the room, even when I'm in the room by myself, but am I wrong when I assume that it's not Amanda Beard's voice the Chinese are worried about?

Anyway, the point of Ms Beard's little stunt, which is exactly what it was, undoubtedly is to draw as much publicity to her cause as possible. In that, the Chinese cooperated quite nicely. If they had simply ignored her, she would have "unveiled" her poster, everyone would have ogled it appropriately, or perhaps inappropriately as the case may be, and everyone would then have gone about their business after cluck-clucking about the horrible state of affairs in the fur industry.

Now, however, the fact that her dog and pony show got cancelled, or at least rescheduled, the whole affair becomes worldwide news, giving everyone the chance to: A) Google the naked poster of Amanda Beard, because, really, how can you discuss a news event you aren't intimately familiar with, and B) Discuss, around the water cooler, the issue of the cruelty or non-cruelty of using real fur as an adornment on your jacket.

Personally, I don't have an opinion either way, but I foresee a frightening trend developing. What happens when Brett Favre sees all the attention Amanda Beard is receiving for her naked poster and decides to unveil one of his own, wearing only his Green Bay Packers helmet, in order to force a trade? Or even worse, he poses in only one of those furry Viking hats with the horns sticking out the side? There's the whole thorny fur issue popping up again.

Then, to carry the ugly scenario one step further, Mike McCarthy sees Favre's tactics and immediately determines to fight fire with heartburn and release his own naked poster? I think you can see where I'm going with this, and I'm not sure it's a road anyone wants to travel.

So, thanks a lot Amanda Beard. As much as I'm in favor of you posing naked, whenever and wherever you wish, and pushing whatever cause you choose with your nakedness, you've opened up a can of worms; you've released a genie from the bottle that might never get put back in.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I need to get back to examining that poster.

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If you love fiction and have a few minutes to spare, check out my website, www.allanleverone.com