I finally got a good night sleep Sunday…”Mr. Baseball” let the world know where he’ll be calling home this summer. No, it’s not with his family in the comforts of Houston. Nor will it be in the place where it all began back in 1984 – the friendly confines of Fenway. No, in the end, it really wasn’t about family, or completing his baseball lore in Boston, or even going out a champion. Like always, it was all about the money.The Sox supposedly offered a pro-rated $18M and the Yankees a pro-rated $28M. Enough said. Hey, I’m a capitalist too, and would probably follow the money myself. However, we need these over-paid, self-absorbed, coddled athletes to stop with all the clichés and insulting our intelligence. It’s ALWAYS about the money.

The Yankees opened the bank because their need was greater than the Sox. Injuries aside, the Yankees rotation was also in need of a fourth starter. Wang, Pettitte and Mussina are a formidable top three when healthy. Adding Clemens as their #4 can only help … or will it? Clemens will be a good addition as long as the Yanks can get their top 3 to go 7-inning on a regular basis. Their bullpen isn’t as bad as it appears. They’re burnt-out because of poor starting pitching. If their starters can’t eat up innings, then Clemens’ 5-6 inning act will only add to their bullpen woes. And, since Roger will no longer be in the NL Central Division, don’t count on more than that.

But in the end, other than Yankees or Red Sox fans, does anyone really care? Well, maybe FOX Sports. Take a look at the schedule. Saturday, June 2, Fox game-of-the-week? Yankees at Red Sox. Any bets on who’ll be pitching?

For a meager $54.95, one can bear witness to boxing’s resurrection when “The Golden Boy” Oscar De La Hoya faces off with “Pretty Boy” Floyd Mayweather, Jr. on Saturday.

Or at least that’s what some are saying, one in particular being CBS Sportsline’s Mike Freeman. But rather than focus on how great this bout, these fighters and the “sweet science” are and can be, he decides to inform readers of how boxing - despite its pitfalls - will always be far better than, “the worst league ever invented, the UFC.”

What transpires is a piece eloquently titled “De La Hoya-Mayweather will separate boxing from thuggish UFC.”

This coming as he boasts of a fight built up - marvelously I’ll admit - by HBO’s “24/7″ series in which Floyd Mayweather, Jr. tossed out as many F-bombs as jabs with his young son right next to him and his uncle Roger Mayweather proudly compared his courtroom triumph to OJ Simpson’s.

While just about every paragraph in the piece is infuriating to mixed-martial arts fans and common-sense supporters alike, it is one in particular that is simply disgraceful.

“Mixed-martial arts will never be as good as boxing on its worst day. Many of the ultimates are nothing but thugs and ruffians. All that league has done is take a few former nightclub bouncers, knuckle crackers and parolees, put on some fancy TV graphics and told them, ‘Kick the other guy in the nuts,’” he writes.

The old high-school jock in me wants to retort by saying someone should kick Freeman in the nuts - and then raising my hand. But the journalist in me is simply embarrassed by the fact that I share the same job title as this guy. I’m really nothing special, I scrape by as a sports editor for a small paper and have been privileged enough to write for Hall of Fame along side journalists whose resumes I couldn’t duplicate in my wildest dreams. Nonetheless, I take pride in writing, in particular, writing about sports.

People, sports fans, they’ve a long history in tossing out unfounded insults that couldn’t be further from the truth. Writers on the other hand have an obligation to at least attempt to be responsible in what they print - even if it is an opinion piece.

And in the aforementioned paragraph, that most certainly is not the case.

For starters, boxing on its worst day has seen death, rape charges atop never-ending lists of criminal charges, fighters who can’t speak coherently and riots - one that I can remember being caused when one fighter kept punching, “the other guy in the nuts.” Hence, casting “many” of the combatants in mixed-martial arts as “thugs and ruffians” and “former nightclub bouncers, knuckle crackers and parolees” is ludicrous enough, but when comparing them to boxers, it’s just plain stupid.

Chuck Liddell has an accounting degree. Tito Ortiz is a savvy businessman. Randy Couture is a former Olympic alternate.

Growing up watching boxing matches on HBO and wherever else you could find them, 90% of the fighter profiles seemed to be about guys who would’ve been in jail or dead if they weren’t getting swindled for millions by Don King as pro fighters.

Of course they’re not all like that. De La Hoya is pure class. I’ve talked with his trainer for the fight, Freddie Roach, and he’s about as nice a guy as you’ll find.

Not everyone associated with boxing is a criminal, but if you’re going to compare MMA and boxing, boxing’s clearly winning the orange jumpsuit battle. And Freeman, who at one point refers to himself as being part of the mainstream media, clearly is comparing the sports.

Of the impending bout-to-save-boxing, he bellows: “It is good vs. evil, Halle Berry vs. Courtney Love, true sport against the mosh pit of sweat and bloodied skull fractures known as ultimate fighting.”

Nope, it’s just De La Hoya vs. Mayweather. One is elegance, the exception to the rule in boxing, and the other is Mayweather, the best in the ring and the worst display of respect out of it. It’s going to make a whole heckuva lot of money, people will have boxing on the brain for a while and then it’ll fizzle out again. The UFC won’t though. It’s here to stay, just like those who call it barbaric and will never understand its appeal.

Freeman uses gross and unfounded stereotypes rooted in ignorance and false assumption. Not all boxers are crooks and not all mixed-martial artists (none that I’ve come across as a matter of fact) are anything like he colors them.

Not all sports writers, or members of the mainstream media, are out of touch when it comes to the athletic world they cover, either. But every so often an irresponsible article like this comes around to make the general public think the contrary.

Whether people want it to or not, Saturday’s fight probably won’t save anything, but any fight fan - boxing, MMA, you name it - should be looking forward to it. I’m excited to see it. I’m just not going to shell out the $55 bucks to see one fight and an unheard-about undercard. I’ll just wait three weeks, pay $15 less and watch Liddell and Quinton Jackson duke it out, right along with a bunch of other “thugs” and “parolees.”

Many like to call sportswriter and sportscaster Peter Gammons “The Commissioner” because of the intelligence and wit he brings to his analysis of the national past time. I’m honored to know the guy. I read him in the Boston Globe as a kid growing up in Maine; I met him at the paper when we worked there together, and he was moving on to ESPN. And then we’ve re-met again at many charity-rock-baseball functions. As many know, Peter Gammons, who’s in the Baseball Hall of Fame, survived a serious medical situation a while back after a cerebral aneurism, but is now A-OK, I’m happy to report.

As many also know, Gammons is a very good amateur guitarist, and he’s put out the CD, “Never Slow Down, Never Grow Old” - a pipe dream for players and rockers alike – on which he plays acoustic versions of those songs with Boston Red Sox GM/guiarist Theo Epstein and members of his band -Mike Gent, Ed Valauskas, Pete Caldes and Brett Rosenberg. Proceeds from the CD sales go to Theo’s A Foundation to be Named Later, which serves disadvantaged Boston youths. By the way, in Bill Nowlin’s new book, The Impossible Dream 1967 Red Sox: Pandemonium on the Field, Gammons has a piece written in 1992 that best encapsulates the thrill of that season and what it meant. Anyone have any 1967 Impossible Dream stories? Send them along to the HOFMAG.com blog.

Let me set the record straight from the outset. I’ve been a Boston Celtics fan since the Bill Russell dynasty-days. It was an era that will never be duplicated in sports – never mind the NBA. 11 Championships in 13-years. Russell, Cousy, the Jones boys, Heinsohn, Sanders, Frank Ramsey – the original 6th man, and the perpetual man-in-motion John Havlicek.

The 70’s brought Dave Cowens. As a graduate of Jacksonville University in Florida, I followed Dave’s college days while at Florida State. I remember his battles against my friend and fraternity brother, Artis Gilmore. When the Celtics drafted Cowens, I was probably the only one in Massachusetts looking forward to the redhead’s presence at the Garden. I knew his intense game would quickly win-over the Celtics fans.

Then came 1980…the Larry Bird era. Without doubt, the most enjoyable basketball I’ve ever watched. Nothing can compare to the Bird-Magic, Celtics-Lakers games. It was the NBA at its best. While there were more gifted athletes to play the game than Bird, I’ve never seen a more pure ‘basketball player’ than Larry. Shooting, passing, rebounding, team-defense…he was the consummate team player.

This brings me to my point. I knew Larry Bird. I met Larry Bird. Dirk Nowitzki is no Larry Bird. I began hearing the foolish comparison last year. It came from, of all people, Celtics radio analyst and former Bird teammate, Cedric Maxwell, who stated, “I think Nowitzki is better than Larry.” I nearly fell off my chair when hearing that absurd comment. C’mon Cedric … you can’t be serious. Then, from the overbearing Stephen A. Smith came, “Nowitzki is the closest thing to Larry Bird since Larry Bird.” Please Stephen A.; wait until the guy wins something before you compare him to one of the NBA’s all-time greats. Larry has three championship rings, three MVPs (in consecutive years), two playoff MVPs, NBA first-team nine consecutive years, and twelve all-star game appearances, just to name a few accomplishments. What the hell has Dirk accomplished? I know one thing … a Bird team wouldn’t be loosing to the eighth seed in the playoffs.

So, please no more comparisons. And, by the way, if I’m picking first … it would be a tough choice between Russell and Bird.

This “Oil Can” doesn’t need oil to shine. All he needs is a baseball. And a team. And if that team happens to include Marquis Grissom, and Delino DeShields and a dozen other of African-American players, all the better for Dennis ”Oil Can” Boyd.

A year ago when I last spoke with “Oil Can” before he pitched the home opener for the Independent League Brockton (Massachusetts) Rox, his body was about to take the mound, but his mind was elsewhere. His plan he told me, from behind diamond glittering eyes and thick glasses, was to spend the winter fielding a team in the spirit of the old Negro league barnstormers. The intent, he said, was to revitalize baseball in the inner cities, especially among black kids who have turned away from the national pastime.

I tried to turn his attention back to the ‘86 World Series and his dazzling performance against the Mets in the cold and drizzle of Fenway Park. But “The Can” would have none of it. He kept talking about the kids, bobbing his head the way he does, his two golden earrings keeping time.

So the triple play of Dennis “Oil Can” Boyd, Marquis Grissom and Delino DeShields are now taking a positive strategy to revive baseball in the inner cities. Their plan is not only to succeed through the barnstorming tour – Oil Can Boyd’s Traveling All-Stars – but through their newly formed Urban Baseball League, which will begin 2008.

“When I was a kid, and I know that was some long time ago, every kid played baseball, country and city,” said Boyd. “I mean the black, kids, the white kids, it was baseball all the time, right up to the major leagues.”

Their plan is to also promote independent professional baseball in predominantly African-American cities with the model of the old Negro Leagues and the hopes that successful black community members will purchase franchises. In turn, inner-city kids will learn the game Boyd, Grissom, and DeShields can’t leave.

The big league numbers confirm the precipitous drop off in black players in the last two decades. Last season, only 8.4 percent of Major League players were African-American, almost a 10 percent drop from 10 years earlier – and nearly a 20 percent drop from the peak in the 1970s. The percentages taken through the years read like a reverse curve, with the present inching downward toward 1947 when Jackie Robinson made his debut with the Dodgers.

This summer’s barnstorming tour will include a multi-racial team of 21 players, including occasional appearances by Boyd’s former Red Sox team mate, 60 year-old Bill “Spaceman” Lee. Look for both Lee and Boyd on the mound when the team plays the Brockton Rox in Brockton, Massachusetts on May 16th, and I would not be surprised if Rox owner Bill Murray gets in on the act.

The team will sport uniforms reminiscent of those in the Negro Leagues and already have lined up exhibitions against many independent minor league baseball clubs. The Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico, Japan and Europe have expressed interest in the traveling baseball bonanza.

At somewhere between 45 and 50 – Boyd winks at questions about his age – “The Can” is still throwing hard. And like a contemporary Satchel Paige, he says he hopes to be buried under some pitcher’s mound. But not for a while. Dennis “Oil Can” Boyd still has work to do with that knee-buckling hook, and miles to go before he sleeps.

“Oil Can” Boyd and his barnstorming All-Stars will next play in Pittsfield, Massachusetts on June 19th at 7p.m. vs. Team USA at Wachonah Park. ESPN will be taping the game for future broadcast.

July 27th Delino DeShields and Oil Can Boyd will be keynote speakers at the 4th Annual Bobby Bonds Symposium in Montgomery Alabama

July 28th Delino DeShields and Oil Can Boyd will be guests of Jim Mudcat Grant’s BLACK ACES book signing at Alabama State.

July 29th The All Stars will be playing a double header against local Alabama all-stars at a site to be determined.