TAMPA BAY – Bruins fans are a bit like Sox fans before 2004: cynical, bitter, demoralized. They'll believe it when they see it, and they reserve the right not to believe it then, either. And that 3-0 fall-from-ahead choke job last year against the Flyers? Well that'll buy you another decade in fan jail, B's.

Good luck finding a fan that hasn't taken every Bruins leader to the mental woodshed over the last year or so. Zdeno Chara(notes)? Too unemotional. Claude Julien? Too unimaginative.

But both were heroes in Game 3, the perfect playoff road game for Boston. And both can be thanked for what could be a turning point in franchise luck, if not yet franchise love. It's kind of appropriate that as rumors swirled Thursday night about a franchise leaving one American city, Chara and Julien are closing in on cementing the renewal of a long-lost love affair in another.

Game 3 – a 2-0 victory for the visitors – was vintage Bruins. The Lightning, revved up to play on their home ice in the

For about an hour, it felt like the only place on Earth.

Scores of people young and old, fat and skinny, loud and quiet, local and foreign, bunched shoulder to sweaty shoulder on the tiny patch of land known as Amen Corner and watched the games of the world’s top golfers come together and implode.

They murmured and shouted, fretted and sighed, screamed and laughed – sometimes all at once. It was perhaps the craziest Sunday in Masters history, and so much of the craziness would happen right there, in the place named for a prayer.

It started with Tiger Woods.

He shot a stunning 5-under 31 on the front nine and everyone on the course knew that Amen Corner, the confluence of holes 11, 12 and 13, would be the literal turning point for the day and maybe history.

So they rushed there, some carrying folding chairs and some carrying children, some claiming a spot and some wandering like shoppers looking for their cars in a mall parking lot.

“Excuse me, sorry, excuse me, sorry.”

A bald man named

AUGUSTA, Ga. – Maybe we got Fred Couples all wrong.

The man they call "Boom Boom" has been one of the world's most beloved golfers for a generation for one main reason.

"He makes it look easy," said Davis Love III. "Fans love that."

Couples has always made it look easy, from the way he hits to the way he strolls up the fairways to the way he shrugs off good news and bad. Even his nickname, Freddy, is more suited to a teenager or a rock singer than a man 14 years from senior citizenship.

That's been his blessing and his curse, as Couples has disappointed many fans and pundits by making it look too easy. Some people think he just doesn't try hard enough, or that he coasts on his obscene talent. Only one major? Not nearly enough for someone who can blast the ball at age 51 like a man half his age. Even as the press waited for him to finish his incredible 4-under-par second round on Friday, one writer along the ropeline called him "the most underachieving player of the last 20 years."

But

ORLANDO, Fl. – The website stevemarino.com does not belong to the pro golfer.

It belongs to a hypnotist.

On the site, the other Steve Marino claims he “has enabled clients to reach their Smoking Cessation, Weight Loss, Stress Reduction and Athletic Performance goals.”

And therein lays the sad irony of Sunday’s final round of the Arnold Palmer Invitational. Steve Marino the golfer, who has squandered 54-hole leads in his career, couldn’t summon the mental fortitude to keep a three-stroke advantage on the final nine holes at Bay Hill.

He’s still oh-for-his-career.

Marino would have been a superb story on this day. He almost was. He shot to the top of the leaderboard halfway through his round with a lovely birdie on the 10th. He sprung off the green and seemed surprised when fans started cheering his name. He even allowed a grin to appear on his face as he walked to the 11th tee. This was only minutes after Tiger Woods had signed dozens of autographs without a single smile, amid

ORLANDO, Florida – A year ago, we thought we knew Tiger Woods. Then we realized we didn't know him at all. Then we struggled (sometimes comically, with the help of body language experts) to get to know him. And last week, via Twitter, we met him again.

"What's up everyone," he wrote.

That's a poor substitute for the "Hello World" slogan from another decade. This year has been Goodbye World – Tiger waning like the sun in a bad "Mission to Pluto" film at the local planetarium. He's disappeared from the leaderboards and he's also become even more remote personally. Oh sure, we see his face during tournaments, but that betrays nothing. We learned how he got away from his "core values," but we never learned what those core values are. And as long as Tiger's voice is the only voice we hear about Tiger, we'll never quite believe in him again.

In his over-rehearsed apology speech, Tiger pledged: "I know above all I am the one who needs to change."

Has he changed? Hard to tell. A raft of calls

These days, Detroit expects an occasional title run. These days, the city expects to dress up the Spirit of the City statue in a local team's jersey and hope for a parade down Woodward Avenue. These days, Detroit fans sleep well at night knowing there's more than three hours of highway between the Motor City and Cleveland.

But back when Sparky Anderson came to town, it wasn't like that. Not at all.

Back in the late '70s and early '80s, Detroit teams weren't even mediocre. The Red Wings were the ''Dead Things,'' winners of only one playoff series between 1967 and 1983. The Hockeytown label was far in the future, and things were so bad that the team had to entice fans with a chance to win a new car during intermissions. The Pistons were still scuffling in the Silverdome in suburban Pontiac and had not come close to a championship since they arrived from Fort Wayne in 1957. Between 1977 and 1983, the Pistons didn't even make the playoffs. And then there were the Lions, who had not won a

TALLADEGA, Ala. – The Big One didn't come, the winner didn't immediately know who won, and the Chase didn't break wide open. So anyone who came to Talladega looking for fireworks or finality didn't get a sniff of either.

But as Kevin Harvick showed Sunday with some bare bond tape and some guts, championships can certainly be won without a lot of exclamation points.

Most race fans and pundits expected a gigantic wreck to alter not only the Halloween race here, but the entire Chase for the Sprint Cup championship. The strategy among Chase leaders Jimmie Johnson, Denny Hamlin and Kevin Harvick was to avoid the carnage and sneak over the finish line without blowing the season.

And while all three had their share of drama – Hamlin lost the draft and went a lap (and nearly 100 points) down, while Johnson was abandoned during his late charge up front when teammate Jeff Gordon's overheating engine forced the No. 24 car to peel off – Sunday's big winner, ironically, ended up being the guy who

ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. – It took 50 springs and 50 summers to get to this Fall. It took the Texas Rangers 7,953 regular-season games and 4,206 regular-season losses to get to this Tuesday night. It took 35,632 runs to lead this cursed franchise to the brink of a postseason series victory.

And it took three of the strangest runs you’ll ever see to get them over the top.

This ill-fated ballclub has traditionally been led by bashers who could never quite get it done – guys like Buddy Bell, Ruben Sierra, Jose Canseco, Rafael Palmeiro, Juan Gonzalez and Alex Rodriguez(notes). Those were the large names with the large muscles in the state where everything is large. But the results have always been so tiny – negligible, really. All those runs on all those scorching Texas nights brought the Rangers one postseason victory in half-a-century, dating back to when they were the Senators. This team carried a big stick, but spoke softly.

And after all that stomping, the Rangers won a postseason series