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Time goes backward at warp speed

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Times Staff Writer

They’ve gone giddy in Boston.

The Celtics got Kevin Garnett, the Patriots have Randy Moss and the Red Sox were eight games ahead of the hated Yankees on Friday morning.

Some people are ready to plan the parade route past Boston Common. But as the headlines on Boston Globe columnist Bob Ryan’s Celtics stories read: “Title for Celtics far from a done deal” and “Please sober up.”

Even the sports section seems a little tipsy, running a list of top 10 reasons it’s great to be a Boston sports fan right now, and publishing 20 more from fans.

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Matt Cooney of Duxbury, Mass., couldn’t help but think of the Celtics’ last NBA title, in 1986.

“It’s like we found Michael J. Fox’s DeLorean, and get to live 1985-1986 over and over for the next five years. Only we don’t have to listen to Huey Lewis and the News or drink Pepsi Free,” he wrote.

But it isn’t all about who’s in Boston that makes it a great sports town, wrote T. Bolton of Nashville, Tenn.

“Barry Bonds is 3,101.58 miles away, according to Mapquest.”

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Trivia time

What Chicago Cubs second baseman won the National League rookie of the year award in 1962 before dying in a small-plane crash at 22 in 1964?

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Enough already

All the hullabaloo over who will or won’t be at his record-breaking game finally got to Bonds, the satirical site TheOnion.com reported.

“ ‘Hank Aaron, Bud Selig, all these guys making a big deal over whether or not they’ll be in the stands when Bonds finally does it -- I think I’m starting to know how they feel,’ Bonds said. ‘Hell, I don’t even like the guy that much. If the team allows me to sit that one out, I just might.’ Bonds admitted that he would, however, watch the historic moment on television, albeit with the sound off.”

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Fancy fungi

Some of those racehorses whose trainers add a mushroom powder to their diet keep turning up in the winner’s circle. On Sunday it was Kentucky Derby winner Street Sense, who won at Saratoga in his first race since being beaten by a head in the Preakness.

The makers of Mushroom Matrix -- the powder being used by Street Sense’s trainer Carl Nafzger -- are eager to point out that their mushrooms, unlike some mushrooms, are never grown on manure but on a sterilized mix of wood chips, corn cobs, grains and other agricultural waste.

That’s just one more reason a horse’s diet might be safer than your latest bag of groceries.

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Lava Man’s hero

You don’t hear this every day: There will be a charity poker tournament Aug. 16 at the Del Mar Hilton to raise funds to purchase a prosthetic arm and pay rehabilitation expenses for Noe Garcia, the groom for the popular horse Lava Man.

Garcia’s left arm was severed when a drunk driver hit him as he drove to work at Del Mar in the early morning hours last month.

For more information: www.lavamanshero.com.

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Those yellow bracelets

The folks at TheOnion.com have come up with a knockoff of the Livestrong bracelet, this one inspired by all those Tour de France riders involved in doping scandals.

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“Cheat to win,” it reads.

At only $2.99, it’s perfect for the cheater in your life.

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Trivia answer

Ken Hubbs, a Colton High graduate, also won a Gold Glove in 1962, playing 78 consecutive games without an error.

Thanks to reader Bob Kadden for the submission.

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And finally

Amid the moralizing about Bonds and the Tour de France, Washington Post columnist Sally Jenkins takes a contrary view, pointing out that doping essentially began with the ancient Greeks.

“Maybe we shouldn’t ask athletes to live up to ideals that, let’s face it, are unsupported by the chronically weak performance of human nature.”

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robyn.norwood@latimes.com

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