Mini-Tourney Round 3 Preview

Baseball Town, Danny.

Just as the local nine begin their annual cool down, the remaining 8 tournament contests start heating up! #synergy

Region B
3 Rob Bradford vs 4 Steve Perrault

Just a couple of massively annoying 50 something year old guys with a penchant for wrinkled haberdashery. Bradford wins the smirkoff.

Don’t you just want to smack him?

Region V
1 Gabby Starr vs * Lou Merloni

First there was a tie:

Then there was still a tie:

When a tie – or a strike – needs to be broken there’s only one man to call. Lou DAMN Merloni!

I wasn’t a rat. And Steff wasn’t a danm dancer.

Lou has an unfortunate history of falling for women on poles, but today he will fall to a woman in a poll.

Lou? Lou is a colleague. But he’s going down. Like from Boston to Pawtucket? Because that happened to him? At his job?

Region N
1 Jared Carrabis vs 2 Tony Masserotti

When Matt McCarthy drags his balls across your face it may be time to reevaluate things.

But it should also guarantee you a Regional N victory. Carrabis will tattoo Mazz in this lightweight match up.

Region T
1 Pete Abraham vs 3 Mike McCarthy

The Hobbit devours McTeethy for his second breakfast.

The Philadelphia Phillies organization regrets to inform you that the Phanatic has died from AIDS

Patrick is from Andover del Norte.

Mini-Tourney Round Two Results!

Upsets in Region B, and a tie vote in Region V create some excitement. High seeds still lurk in the lower Regions N & T. With there being no winner in the Tom Caron/Hogdale tilt, the Committee has decided to call in a replacement player: Framingham Lou Merloni.

Round Three, an important number in baseball and in tournaments will start tomorrow, Wednesday July 23rd.

What could this mean?!

Mini-Tourney Round 2 Preview

Welcome to the first ever Summertime Sour Sixteen! If you like new media and Red Sox broadcasters, or more importantly if you don’t like new media and Red Sox broadcasters, then this is the competition for you! We’ve got six podcasters, seven current or former members of Red Sox radio/TV broadcasts, two crusty old newspaper men and one weepy grifter. (Sung to the tune of The Twelve Days of Christmas)

Region B
1 Dave O’Brien vs 4 Steve Perrault

O’Brien wasn’t bad on radio play-by-play. However, he is so bad on TV that he actually makes people long for the days of Don Orsillo. Now that’s bad. Perrault is just one of the Carrabis’s many forgettable goofball sidekicks. O’Brien walks it off.

2 Chad Finn vs 3 Rob Bradford
Hairy vag faced Bradfo will smother Wax Pack Chad under a pile of wrinkled t-shirts.

Chad should have stayed in the safety of internet free Mid-coast Maine

Region V (aka The Section 10 free region)
1 Gabby Starr vs 4 Justin MLB

Here’s a tip for any of you looking to participate in next year’s Mini-Tourney. Put “MLB” in your twitter handle, it will set you apart from your average run of the mill baseball fans named Justin. Gabz won’t even need to come back from one of her many in-season vacations to dispatch Mr. Gonzalez.

2 Tom Caron vs 6 Hogdale
The Hogriders came out in force and pushed their hero into Round 2. They may have misunderstood the assignment though. How could anyone not appreciate the passion that Grant Huckvale brings to the role of “Hogdale”? It’s always a tour de force performance. Grant is matched up with milquetoast Tom Caron. No matter how many hair plugs Caron gets, it will never be enough to mask his Megamind Forehead. Dr. Tom Leonard’s least successful client moves on.

His comb over is much more lustrous now

Region N
1 Jared Carrabis vs 4 Coley Mick

Jared Carrabis is a better more knowledgeable fan than YOU. Sorry, just deal with it losers. “Coley Mick” is a lace curtain Irish dunce. “Car Rubbish”® will mash that bloated spud in the Section 10 showdown.

2 Tony Massarotti vs 3 Will Fleming
It seems unfair to have the March Sadness runner up in the Midsummer Mini-Tourney, but that’s baseball. Maybe if Will Fleming starts speaking Spanish, Tony will run away and hide. Unfortunately the only Spanish Mazz will hear from Fleming is “No Más“.

Region T
1 Pete Abraham vs 4 Tyler Milikin
This match up should be introduced by Dale Dorman as part of the Creature Double Feature. Sentient garden gnome (Abraham) takes on an obese two legged centaur (Milikin). The winner may depend on what country you live in.

Avert your eyes… they’re both hideous!

2 Tyler Broadman vs 3 Mike McCarthy
Is Mike McCarthy the pudgy bearded millennial doofus who figured out you can lose weight by eating salads, or is he the pudgy bearded millennial doofus with horrible teeth, or is he the pudgy bearded millennial doofus who couldn’t successfully book flights for his honeymoon or is he McBone? It’s hard to keep track of all these wacky call screeners.
Tyler Broadman may turn out to be a decent play-by-play man once he completes puberty, but his fake radio voice and Connecticut School of Broadcasting cadence make me want to ram my score keeping pencil in my ears. This a tough one, but McCarthy squeezes by.

07/16/2025 Cleaning Out the Sports Junk Drawer

Schwarbsy. Good player. Missed locally.

It’s bittersweet that Dick Flavin isn’t around to commemorate this 10-game Red Sox winning streak with a terrible poem.

Alcaraz might be a greater non-sweater than Federer, which is really saying something.

Ken Lofton Jr is the definition of a bull in a china shop.

One thing that I will always hate about the MLB Draft is that teams don’t just draft the best players on their board.

I saw Felger on the Nantucket Ferry. He looked scared.

As someone who needs to be reminded the times were living in…a guy who has the last name ..Sinner ..won.wimbledon ..what’s next a man whos last name is judas wins the masters ?

Jerry Thornton has more dead relatives than Daenerys Targaryen.

David Ortiz fans chant, “Who’s your Papi?” Do fans chant, “Who’s your Dumper?” For Cal Raleigh?

It must be exhausting pretending to be an expert on everything. And also being 400 lbs.

Fan mail sent directly to my house will not be opened. It will be thrown out.

Cakes are cooking for Margaret Smith Court, Jimmy Johnson, Cyndy Garvey, Stewart Copeland, Michael Flatley, Gary Anderson, Terry Pendleton, Miguel Indurain, Charles Smith, Claude Lemieux, Chip Lohmiller, Jyrki Lumme, Will Ferrell, Barry Sanders, Daryl Mitchell, Rain Prior, William Van Landingham, Chris Thomas, Corey Feldman, Aaron Glenn, and Adam Scott.

For the record, Claudia Bellofatto is the only Big Dumper I recognize.

“Where does this walk-off rank in THE PANTHEON? Let’s go to the phones,” I say to my concerned wife and terrified children. Their reaction? I’ll let you know, after the break.

I’ve attended somewhere around 100 events at TD Garden between games and shows. Last night definitely cracks my top 5. The Caitlin Clark experience is legit and she is box office.

The terrible irony is that if Bob Kraft had spent the past decade and a half trying to get Stanley Morgan into the Hall of Fame they both would be enshrined in Canton by now.

Showing up in person as a fan to watch the MLB draft should land you on some kind of federal watchlist.

Jelly Roll looks like he does heroin in a Canobie Lake bathroom.

Red Sox kept the better Raffy.

Drew Bledsoe doesn’t get nearly the credit he deserves for his toughness. The man was a warrior.

Blue Line Update: No trains currently stuck under Boston Harbor.

Sox stockpiling arms in the Draft.

Jannik Sinner is Italian?

Cool to see Ben Affleck and Jennifer Garner sitting front row at Fenway. Always a special atmosphere when big names show up at the park.

The bunnies and the squirrels have an uneasy truce in place.

Hey gang of squids who barely got through Navy basic, this week’s Phrase that Pays is, “Just buy some calamine lotion, you cheap fuck.”

@MarkDondero don’t sell yourself short mark

Hit up Strega after my North End stroll yesterday. This prosciutto-stuffed veal chop was phenomenal as was the octopus appetizer.

I would like to apologize if I sounded like I wished harm upon either Hardy Boy..

Honk if you remember Rick Dee’s, “Into the Night”.

Memo to WNBA announcer: Don’t call a layup (or lay-in) a “lay.” Nobody is having sex out there.

Respectfully: Keira Knightley looks like a billion dollars.

With one breath, with one flow,
You will know synchronicity.
A sleep trance, a dream dance,
A shared romance, synchronicity.

[Chorus]
A connecting principle,
Linked to the invisible,
Almost imperceptible,
Something inexpressible.
Science insusceptible,
Logic so inflexible,
Causally connectable,
Nothing is invincible…

It has rained for quite a few Heritage Nights with the Red Sox. Just saying….

They Saved Hitler’s Brain somehow went from a cheesy 1964 sci fi movie to a billion-dollar 2025 AI project.

Imagine having two phones.

Almost-a-Scout Bedard is miffed Belichick didn’t take a big chance on him.

During this heat wave don’t forget to check up on elderly neighbors to make sure their whole house fan is in good working order.

I think Jerry Trupiano needs to do an All-Sentence Music Fest headlined by Teddy Swims and Billy Strings.

Jerry Thornton wanted Up With People to perform at the All-Star Game.

Summer League is physical.

So the Sox play relatively clean for a couple weeks and suddenly that’s all the info from the last four years that we should acknowledge? Okay.

If Angel Reese didn’t exist it would be necessary to invent her.

Best bet for the weekend: Bostonians converging on Elwood Blues’ listed address.

Did we do this to Mike? We did, didn’t we?

Material from interviews, wire services, Twitter, Meta, other writers, league and team sources, and the members of #the15 were used in this column. Don’t tell the director I said so but are you safe, Miss Gradenko?

And happy birthday to retired model & actress Phoebe Cates, whom you may associate with a song by The Cars.
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