Ben Watanabe

Nov 24, 2023 | nesn.com | Adam London |Keagan Stiefel |Ben Watanabe

The Celtics likely will enter their Black Friday matchup with the Orlando Magic shorthanded after the team downgraded Jrue Holiday’s status to “doubtful.”Holiday is dealing with a right ankle sprain, which caused him to be listed as “probable” on Thursday, the day after Boston claimed a 119-116 win over the Milwaukee Bucks, Holiday’s former team. Either the injury was exacerbated overnight or the team was merely looking to get him some extra rest during their one-game road trip.

Nov 10, 2023 | nesn.com | Gio Rivera |Adam London |Ben Watanabe

Roush Fenway Keselowski Racing experienced a renaissance of sorts this year, and the pit crews deserve their share of praise for the team’s vault up the NASCAR standings. The pit crew for Brad Keselowski’s No. 6 Ford team earned such recognition Friday in the form of the Mechanix Wear Most Valuable Pit Crew Award.

Nov 8, 2023 | wp.me | Dakota Randall |Adam London |Gio Rivera |Ben Watanabe

Star-crossed baseball franchises aren’t unique to Boston. Across the Pacific Ocean, there’s another team with its own history of ineptitude stemming from a paunchy man with a penchant for fast food. Meet “The Curse of the Colonel,” Japan’s version of “The Curse of the Bambino.” Or, actually, bid it farewell.

Oct 2, 2023 | nesn.com | Sean McGuire |Gayle Troiani |Ben Watanabe

Sports can be a dirty world. In the era of Coach Prime and AAU, what was once the ultimate classroom for cooperation and sacrifice has too often become a me-first environment, where every triumph by your teammate is taken as a threat to your next contract, scholarship or playing time. Analytics boils down every individual to a number, calculating that a player either provides “wins above replacement” or, by definition, is replaceable.

Sep 27, 2023 | nesn.com | Sean McGuire |Dakota Randall |Zack Cox |Ben Watanabe

Before Terry Francona came to Boston, there wasn’t exactly darkness, but there wasn’t a whole lot of shining light, either. It’s difficult to sufficiently describe the feeling of being a Red Sox fan who was in the demographic of younger Generation Xers and older Millennials in the winter of 2003. We’d been told all our lives that the franchise was cursed, but no matter how many times the replay of Bill Buckner’s error in Game 6 of the 1986 World Series was shown, we held out a smidgen of hope.