Daily Sports: Boston Is The Focus On Friday

It’s all eyes on the Boston market tonight in the world of daily sports, as the feature game in both baseball and preseason football  will be in the Hub.

We can start at Fenway Park, where the New York Yankees come into town to face the Red Sox. The Yanks had a nice little win streak and still have an outside, outside shot of making one final push at the playoffs, and they’ll throw Andy Pettite tonight. The Sox have not played well of late, though they still had a two-game lead in the AL East and send underrated lefty Felix Doubront to the hill.

Game time is 7 PM ET and the coverage is provided by the MLB Network with Bob Costas on the call. Costas won’t have his usual sidekick, the outstanding John Smoltz though, with Billy Ripken doing some substitute duty.

The NFL world was in a tizzy a couple days ago when New England Patriots’ quarterback Tom Brady left the practice field after offensive tackle Nate Solder fell on his knee. Brady came back the next day and said he wants to play tonight against the Tampa Bay Buccaneers (8 PM ET, Fox), but we’ll see if the Pats use him or play it safe.

Another option is off the radar, but it’s on NBA-TV, and that’s two games involving contending teams in the WNBA. You can start at 7:30 PM ET, when Atlanta, in first place in the East, hosts lowly Connecticut. Then in an 11 PM ET nightcap, defending champion Indiana goes to play a good Los Angeles team. Indiana has struggled for much of this year with a key player being injured, but has started to collect themselves for another title push.

TheSportsNotebook will have MLB coverage on its mind today, as we take a look at the National League, see if its playoff race has any chance of tightening, look at the week ahead and the  injury report, and  then do a specific team feature on one of the contenders.