The 8 seed Dallas Mavericks beat the 1 seed San Antonio Spurs to even the series 1-1 and break their own personal 10 game losing against the Spurs. The Red Sox beat the New York Yankees behind 8 innings and 11 strikeouts from John Lackey. Yankee pitcher Michael Pineda gets thrown out of the game for using pine tar. The only thing that could have made this night better was if the 49ers beat the Seahawks and then Pete Carroll got mugged after the game and lost one of his eyes. Since that’s not possible, last night will have to do.

I don’t want to make a big deal about winning game 2 of a first round series but all I’ve read about this series is how the Mavericks were going to get swept because they were too slow, too old, too bad defensively. We may win in 5, 6, 7 or lose in 5, 6 or 7, but beating the Spurs at home by 21 is HUGE for this team. Plus Casual Dirk showed up in the post game press conference.

Casual Dirk doesn’t need multi colored sweaters or a bow tie and suspenders. He’ll answer your questions to be polite, then he’s got some jumpers to swoosh.

Also, this:

This 21-point home embarrassment will turn out to be the best thing that could’ve happened to the San Antonio Spurs.

— Skip Bayless (@RealSkipBayless) April 24, 2014

Oh really? Losing game two at home by 21 is better than winning game two at home and taking a 2-0 series lead? Go to hell asshole.

When the Red Sox get their shit together, and it will happen, we’ll look back at this game as one of the turning points. The Sox needed Lackey to come up big tonight and that’s exactly what he did. The bullpen was spent. They even optioned Nava to Pawtucket so they could add Alex Wilson as an extra arm. What does Lackey do? 8 innings, 11 K’s, zero walks. It’s especially important after Lester sucked last night, because if Lester and Lackey can consistently pitch like top dogs we’ll be fine. Always a plus when you find out your arch rivals have the dumbest athlete of all time on their pitching staff. Perfect sports night complete.

– Ryan