New England Basketball Relies On Bronx, NY

With the Final Four in place Homer Ball was thinking about the team representing New England.  The University of Connecticut is a proven powerhouse in NCAA Hoops.  UCONN is being led by Kemba Walker.  Walker was born and raised in the Bronx, NY.  It’s unfortunate New England can’t produce its own players.

However this is not something new to New England Basketball.  After all the Boston Celtics are led by some who was born, raised and STILL lives in Los Angeles:  Paul Pierce.

For all the hoopla around Boston about being such a ‘great’ sports town it’s unfortunate that we always need outsiders to carry our teams.

Drop Kick Murphys: The wanna be Bostonians

With St. Patrick’s Day around the corner and the usual, predictable concert by the Drop Kick Murphys at the House of Blues it got Homer Ball thinking about the hype around this group.  After some not so extensive research it turns out Drop Kick Murphys are not even from Boston!  They are from Quincy.  So the next time this song gets played at a Bruins, Celtics or Red Sox game and you see some drunk fool singing along it’s safe to assume that the drunk fool is not a TRUE Bostonian.

Drop Kick Murphys are from New England so this rule does not apply at Patriots games…

Happy St. Patrick’s Day!

Mark Wahlberg slights Boston?

With the Oscars recently taking place and the hype around Boston raised Mark Wahlberg‘s performance in The Fighter it got Homer Ball thinking about Mr. Wahlberg.  Marky Mark (minus the Funky Bunch) is the executive producer of a hit show on HBO titled Entourage.  The show is loosely based on Marky’s experience in Hollywood.  The four main characters in the show are from Queens, NY.

This made Homer Ball wonder why Marky did not have the characters be from Dorchester or Southie.  Marky obviously feels that having the characters from NYC would be a greater draw and he would be able to make more money than if the characters had been from Boston.  As a Boston resident, at first, I found this disrespectful and border line ‘selling out’. However after reading the following about Marky, I changed my mind:

“When he was 16, Wahlberg approached a middle-aged Vietnamese man on the street and, using a large wooden stick, knocked him unconscious (while calling him “Vietnam fucking shit”), he also attacked another Vietnamese man, leaving him permanently blind in one eye, and attacked a security guard (again using racist language).”

And if that wasn’t bad enough, Marky has no regrets!:

“I did a lot of things that I regretted and I have certainly paid for my mistakes.” He said the right thing to do would be to try to find the blinded man and make amends, and admitted he has not done so, but added that he was no longer burdened by guilt: “You have to go and ask for forgiveness and it wasn’t until I really started doing good and doing right, by other people as well as myself, that I really started to feel that guilt go away. So I don’t have a problem going to sleep at night. I feel good when I wake up in the morning.”

Between these acts and producing the Funky Bunch, Mark Wahlberg is an embarrassment to my city.  I am glad he did not have the characters in Entourage be from Boston.

Luckily Boston has changed a lot since Wahlberg left for Hollywood.  And that change is for the better.  The South End, Jamaica Plain, South Boston, Charlestown and parts of Dorchester have much better residents now.

-An Actual Boston Resident

Red Sox Fans’ Obsession With Payroll

If I had a nickel for every time a Boston Red Sox fan said “The Yankees buy their championships” I could almost afford a ticket to Fenway.  Let’s take a deeper look at Red Sox Nation’s ‘payroll’ argument.

Many Boston Red Sox fans subscribe to the theory that you can buy success in baseball but Homer Ball is here to debunk that theory.

In 2008 the Red Sox payroll was over $133 million.  The Tampa Bay Rays payroll was under $44 million.  So when the Sox and Rays met in the ALCS most Sox fans were surely thinking…”Hey we have almost triple their payroll.  We should sweep.”  Well, it turned out you need more than money to win as the Rays beat the Red Sox in 7 games.

Theory debunked!

Conclusion, you need more than money to be successful in baseball or else the Sox would have beat the Rays in 2008 and the Mets and Cubs would have won at least 2 or 3 World Series in the past ten years.

Rondo is a cheater but gets a free pass from the Boston media

During the Miami Heat vs Boston Celtics game yesterday Rajon Rondo creeps up to the Miami Heat huddle during a stoppage of play.

Of course the Boston Globe, local television outlets and Celtics fans sold this as Rondo being ‘creative’ and ‘strategic’.  Imagine if Kobe or Lebron were the ones trying to cheat?  The uproar around here would have been louder than a bunch of drunken Sox fans singing Sweet Caroline at Fenway.  Homer Fans.

Boston wishes it was Milwaukee

In true “Ray Borque” fashion Boston is riding the coat tails of another city’s success. 1,920 of Ray Allen’s 3 pointers came in while he was playing the Seattle Sonics and Milwaukee Bucks. That is approximately 75%. It’s a shame Boston sports fans are such homers that they would try to claim this record as their own.

Everyone in The Garden can sit down now.

Pettite Retires, Boston Obsesses

We all know how obsessed Boston sports fans are with the Yankees, Lakers and Canadiens. One would think that after 2004 the obsession would go away but apparently not. Today Andy Pettite announced his retirement and The Boston Globe’s website determined that this was ‘Breaking News’?!  This has turned into something like Fatal Attraction: