Hardball Heaven

As the free world knows by now, it's official. Tom Brady is done for 2008 and will require surgery on his left knee. We don't know any specifics about the injury yet, but speculation centers on a torn ACL and possibly even more damage. The news came a little after 3 p.m. from Foxborough, and while we had all steeled ourselves for it, it still takes the wind out of your sails.

I don't know about you, but my emotions are all over the board today. I'm sad that our season is over before it begins. I feel bad for Brady, because you know he's the hardest worker on the team, and he won't get a chance to add to his ridiculous resume and avenge that lame Super Bowl loss in February. I actually feel some sympathy for Bernard Pollard, who - right or wrong - will go down in history as one of the biggest New England villains of all time. I feel a sense of 'what if?' As in, what if Sammy Morris had finished off his block of Pollard, or what if Kevin Faulk - a superb blitz picker-upper - hadn't been suspended for the first game because he got caught with some mary jane at a L'il Wayne concert. In all likelihood, he would have been in the backfield for that play and maybe things turn out differently. I've got some anger inside - mostly because I've made the mistake today of reading some comments on the web o'sphere, many of which are cheering this latest development. And then I catch myself, realizing that I've always rooted for injuries to befall Yankees, and for scorching line drives to be hit into the good seats at Yankee Stadium. And finally, I guess the only piece of optimism I can offer - and this is assuming Brady makes a full recovery - is that maybe he'll be hungrier than ever to win more Vince Lombardi trophies and get the Pats' name back into the same breath as the great Steelers, Cowboys, and 49er teams. I guess another positive is that this happened in Game 1 and not Game 14 or in the first quarter of Super Bowl XLIII.

We've been pretty damn lucky around here, and every now and then it takes a horrible thing like this to make us realize it. Ah, the fragility of it all.

In the meantime, we throw our support around Matt Cassel and, oh yeah, the Sox.