Wilkommen bei den Schatten » team has 50 times your budget and

BOSTON -- Red Sox slugger David Ortiz was not in the starting lineup for Sunday nights series finale against the New York Yankees, a 5-4 victory over their rivals.The 40-year-old Ortiz, who announced in November that it would be his final season, was 5-for-10 with a homer and five RBIs in the first three games against the Yankees, all wins by American League East-leading Boston.Manager John Farrell said it was the right day to give Ortiz a break.When I talked to David after Friday nights game -- larger part because of the number of times he was on base and the extent to which he ran, a quick turnaround on Saturday -- we talked about the upcoming two days, yesterday and today, Farrell said. With the late arrival, likely 4 a.m., this was the day to give him down.Ortiz did come off the bench as a pinch hitter, striking out in his only at-bat of the game.?Boston opens a 10-game road trip Monday night, with the first of four against second-place Baltimore.Ortiz is hitting .318 with 34 homers and 116 RBIs this season. He leads the majors with 47 doubles.Earlier in the day, Ortiz went out for the coin toss as an honorary captain with the?New England Patriots?before their game against Miami. He wore a No. 12?Tom Brady?jersey before putting on a No. 34 with Big Papi on the back that was presented by Patriots owner Robert Kraft.Ortiz also posed for selfies with members of the officiating crew. Cheap Adidas NHL Jerseys . PAUL, Minn. Cheap Bruins Jerseys .ca looks back at the stories and moments that made the year memorable. http://www.cheapbruinsjerseys.com/ .ca! Hi Kerry, Its another day and here we are looking at another dubious hit to the head. In this case Blue Jackets forward Brandon Dubinsky elbowed Saku Koivu in the head about a second after he dished off the puck to a teammate, knocking him unconscious. Cheap Bruins Jerseys Authentic . -- Its been a long road back for Sean Bergenheim. Cheap Adidas Bruins Jerseys . DAmigo scored twice in regulation and added the shootout winner as the Toronto Marlies edged the San Antonio Rampage 5-4 in American Hockey League action. RIO DE JANEIRO -- When you are draped in red, white and blue and representing your country at the highest levels of international sport, you hope you never hear the U-word.You know.Ugly.On this occasion, though, such a label legitimately had a complimentary connotation for the United States mens basketball team. The Americans found themselves in a semifinal scuffle with Spain on Friday, suddenly struggling to crack the 80-point plateau while the coaches were planning on triple digits, when they hushed all the media noise about the cohesion they dont have by grinding out an 82-76 victory to clinch a berth in Sundays tournament final.This was winning ugly.And it looked good on the Americans.I prefer to use the word hard, Team USA coach Mike Krzyzewski said on his way out of Carioca Arena 1.Everything was hard today.At the interview podium moments earlier, Krzyzewski did concede, thanks largely to a rash of technical fouls in the first half, that it was the most different game Ive coached internationally for the United States.Yet it was ultimately left to star forward Kevin Durant to do the math and embrace the grime that had to be flung for this victory.?Know-it-alls like yours truly foolishly said the trip would largely be kiddie-pool stuff, but Durant admitted: Its made this journey a little sweeter ... now that were in the gold-medal game.Fridays final margin of six points was closer than Team USAs previous two Olympic duels with Spain -- wins by 11 and seven points in 2008 and 2012, respectively, to take the gold in Beijing and London -- but the truth is that Durant and his pals had more control of the second half than they did in those victories.Team USA actually led wire-to-wire in this one, hounded Spain into 38.9 percent shooting from the floor and 30.8 percent shooting from 3-point range and, best of all, achieved something neither of the Krzyzewski teams that preceded them could claim.These Yanks, once they got past all the techs, demoralized the Spaniards to the point that they willingly shifted into moral-victory mode.We need to be very happy even if we lost, Spain forward Nikola Mirotic of the Chicago Bulls said, because we compete. We play so hard. At the end of the day, they beat us by just six points. Its not a big difference.There will be no scolding coming from Mirotics coach for such an admission. Spains Sergio Scariolo embraced the David-versus-Goliath narrative with more gusto than any of his players.Its like, making a comparison [to] club competition, if a team has 50 times your budget and you manage to compete and to stay in the game until the very end, Scariolo said. Which is an accomplishment.He wasnt finished.When youre talking about a team that has such bigger potential than yours, Scariolo added, more than thinkking [about] what you missed to win, you have to be happy with what you did to reduce the gap.ddddddddddddYet it should be noted that Pau Gasol, not surprisingly, wanted no part of such talk.When asked if he felt that Spain had just squandered its best chance to finally beat the United States in the Olympics for the first time in 12 tries -- even with brother Marc Gasol absent through injury -- Pau didnt hesitate.I think so, he said. Thats just the way I feel. I dont think they are playing as well as other times they have played [in the Olympics]. Theyre still a very talented team individually. I just feel like if we would have been a lot sharper with our shots, move the ball a little better, if we would have boxed out a little more ... then youre talking about a whole different story.Gasol would have to settle for 23 points, eight rebounds and the warmest of wishes from Krzyzewski, who told Scariolo after the game that his fondness for both Gasol and Argentinas Manu Ginobili is boundless after coaching the Americans against those FIBA legends for the past decade.Pau, Krzyzewski said, is like the world statesman for the game.Coach Ks guys, meanwhile, move onto Sundays finale against Serbia at 7-0, making them the only unbeaten in the 12-team field. The average margin of victory thus far is a modest 21.4 points per game, but Scariolo sure made them sound invincible.Rebounds, blocks, intimidation, Scariolo said, citing what he saw as the main difference-making factors.Most of that, for the record, was sparked by DeAndre Jordan.Just one summer removed from the free-agent saga that earned him scourge-of-the-league status, Jordan played his way to the postgame podium next to Krzyzewski.Theres a strong chance, though, that itll be somebody else in Sundays final. With 10 first-time Olympians, including Jordan, there seems to be a different U.S. game-changer every time out, with this work-in-progress squad still learning to play through the pressure of knowing that a loss will never be forgiven back home.But heres the thing: Winning ugly is still winning.So maybe Krzyzewski was right the other day when he made the claim that no one will ask you anything else except if you won it all at the end of these Summer Games.Coach never says it like [outsiders do] ... that were not allowed to lose a game, Durant explained. If he says it, then Ill think about it. But he doesnt say it like that. We dont think about it like that. We dont anticipate sweeping through this tournament.Getting through it with unsightly stains and scratches and maybe even scars from those earlier scares -- but otherwise unscathed -- will apparently do. ' ' '