McEnroe

FOR WHAT IT’S WORTH

•Here we are, in the dog days of August, and things are breaking well for the Red Sox, not as much for what they are doing, but for what is going on around them.

The Yankees are real close to falling out of the race, to the point that Hank Steinbrenner was quoted this week assuring fans that the team is going to come back with a vengeance next year. Tampa Bay has lost Carl Crawford for several weeks, Evan Longoria is on the disabled list, closer Troy Percival is on crutches, and they face a difficult schedule the rest of the way.

The Sox do not.

In September, they will play 16 of their 25 games in Fenway, and if they can’t get into the playoffs with that schedule, they don’t deserve to be there.

•Only a cynic would say that the reason we get beach volleyball pushed down our throats every night is because the players wear bikinis, right?

•If you liked Hey Dude, Where’s My Car?, you’ll love The Pineapple Express.

•Which is another way of saying that it’s not exactly trying to be Citizen Kane.

•Let’s see, Manny’s been gone only a few weeks now, and already he’s said that he wants to play for both the Dodgers and the Yankees in the future.

•Speaking of Manny, the Dodgers apparently got their first real peek into Manny World when he was nowhere to be seen when the ninth inning started.

•But there’s no truth to the rumor that he thought National League games are only eight innings.

•Line of the Week comes from agent Steve Dubin, telling an Esquire writer in Los Angeles about to interview Tom Brady that both Gisele and Brady’s son were off-limits. “Tom is a very private person. They will not appear in this story. If you ask about his son, they’ll stop the car and drop you on the (expletive deleted) 405.”

•Maybe all we have to know about how ridiculous the Arbitron ratings seem to be is that one family in East Greenwich can dramatically influence them.

•From the “Rhode Island Roots” Department: Elizabeth Beisel’s grandfather, Milton Wolferseder, was an All-State football player at La Salle in the late 1930s and later played football at Providence College.

•Last year, Clay Buchholz threw a no-hitter and this year the Sox are worried about his “arm slot” on his fastball, and he now seems all messed up. Is that about it?

•You know it’s the end of an era when Mike and the Mad Dog are done at WFAN.

•The greatest movie star in my lifetime has been Paul Newman.

•You’ve got to love John McEnroe, who got thrown out of the Hall of Fame Championship in Newport on Thursday for multiple obscenities and supposedly giving an obscene gesture to the crowd, even if the word is that the fans there were more upset at the umpire for stopping the match than they were at McEnroe.

•And the line from a blog that said, “McEnroe tossed from geezer tournament.” You want tradition in sports? That’s tradition.

•I’m not sure the Texas Rangers pitchers could get anyone out in the Little League World Series, never mind Fenway Park.

•The world will never run out of boy bands.

•The Olympics aren’t the same without Jim McKay, who always lent both class and a sense of gravitas to it.

•And a great book about the 1960 Games is Rome 1960 by David Marannis.

•Jimmy Gilheeney, the former Hendricken pitcher now at North Carolina State, was named a third-team All-American by the College baseball Writers’ Association.

•There’s few things gloomier than a rainy day in August.

•Unless it’s the Yankees playoff chances.

•Which were officially labeled dead the other day on the front page of the New York Post, with a picture of a tombstone that said, “RIP, New York Yankees 2008 season.”

•Ed Shein, the former Brown star who has forgotten more about tennis than I’ll ever know, recently won the 60-and-over New England doubles championship with partner Chum Steele.

•You know it’s a strange world when the most popular athlete at the Olympics supposedly is Kobe.

•And you know you’ve seen too many concerts when you realize that Bruce Springsteen is now 58 and has a son who will be a freshman at Boston College.

•The U.S. men’s basketball players have been model citizens in these Olympics, the unofficial Redeem Team.

•Speaking of basketball, they’ve been playing it in China since 1895, brought there by the missionaries.

•Watching Michael Phelps is like watching history.

• Swing Vote is certainly watchable, but I wouldn’t be letting it plan my day.

•You need some therapy, Bunky, if you look at the betting lines on preseason NFL games.

•Why would anyone watch a reality TV show about people you would run from if they sat next to you in a bar?

•No sport has less margin for error than gymnastics.

•There’s no truth to the rumor that if Brett Favre doesn’t work out, the Jets are going to bring in Joe Namath.

•Or that the breeze you feel is the wind going out of the Rhode Island economy.

breynold@projo.com