Bogarting the Wild Card

Hippies. Among other things, hippies are about sharing, and open possibilities.

Clinching a postseason berth is very anti-hippy. It's not sharing, its grabbing and holding, clinching tight. It's staking a claim, planting a flag, putting up a fence and asserting 'its mine.' Clinching closes off possibilities, stomps on all the different ways the future might be, confines them to the path must taken. No sunny optimism this, the future is determined, its been staked out in advance, the bidding is over. We claim this space, and this time, for ourselves, for our conquest.

This time of year, sharing is for losers; the yankees can share 4th place and golf clubs if they want. And 'wait till next year' too, the refrain of open possibilities; that's the wedge between the determined, excluding territory of the here and soon, what's clinched and held tight as ours, and an open ended vague hopeful tomorrow to share with anyone who can dream.

It's hippie stuff for the Yankees.

Mattingly, shave those sideburns.

(Once More) Unto the Breach

Ok, so I'll grant that Yankee Stadium at least deserves another blog post before its demolished, especially considering that two dyed-in-the-wool Sox fans have spoken eloquently in its defense.

Here's an excerpt of what my friend Maggie wrote:

"am i the only person who is angry and dumbfounded with the closing of yankee stadium? WHY ARE THEY CLOSING THEIR DOORS???? last night i felt a lump in my throat watching the festivities, listening to yogi and whitey ford, watching the clips -- even seeing bernie williams made me teary. that is sacred ground, and the yankees should play there forever. no one should have wanted to close its doors, but since some people are truly evil and actually wanted to for eventual financial gain, they shouldn't have had the chance -- it should be a historical site, protected by the national government.

when i am forced to have a conversation with a yankee fan, the way i get beyond my knee jerk distaste for them is by talking about not what makes us different (NYY vs BOS) but what makes us the same. what on earth could that be, you ask? our LOVE OF BASEBALL. and one of the most beautiful parts of baseball is its long and rich history...a history packed full of memories and moments that have been passed down for more than a century.

i hate the yankees more than anyone, and yet i am so so so sad they are leaving such a precious place. there aren't that many physical locations in the world where so much history has taken place...

and why didn't yankee fans protest this like they would in boston if they tried to tear down fenway park? didn't they all freak out when they renovated it in the '70s? you'd think this would bring even more criticism. us new yorkers are paying $70M of our tax dollars for this project. i feel so dirty to be involved.

i just think this is a crime. last night felt like a televised execution to me.

on the plus side, how cool would it be if the yankees never won another world series again after the move? long live The Curse Of The New Stadium!"

And my friend Marc wrote (in comments to yesterday's post)

"I have to say...it's a real shame for the place to go. Damn the infinite Sinatra loop, but that's a Yankee fan thing, not a Yankee Stadium thing. Same for the beer tosses; same for the asshole fans. You'll see: all that crap will follow the team across the street, but the stadium and its history will not. The history, the ghosts, the center of baseball's true capitol...that stuff is that stadium; it is in itself the closest connection to its past. Without all of that mystique, there would be no significance to that place; and if you can appreciate what has transpired there, the great well of baseball drama and lore that has sprung from that field, then you should mourn its demise at least somewhat. It's a symbol of baseball's great past, the site of the great blossoming in baseball's history, and it's an American landmark. That stadium served to represent so much about The Game, and that city, and none of it will be quite the same without it."

And that's two Sox fans.

Which makes Maggie's question- "why didn't yankee fans protest this like they would in boston if they tried to tear down fenway park?"- all the more salient.

Exactly. These are yankees fans we're talking about. i just googled 'save yankee stadium', and there's very little evidence of any public support. remember all those 'save fenway park' bumper stickers in the early'00s, and the public outcry? i've never noticed anything at all like that here. i don't remember anyone here saying the yankees shouldn't move. i've never seen one t shirt or bumper sticker or anything that indicates there's any public sentiment against moving.

this is entirely fitting with the yankees character; they know that they'll make more money in a new stadium, so the fans are in favor of it- that's what they care about. For the Yankees, 'meaning' is just 'money' spelled wrong.

Now, whether the park itself should be protected as a landmark, as Maggie suggests, upon the team moving out is a distinct question from whether the team should move out at all. Apparently, the building itself doesn't get protected landmark status due to the consensus that the renovations in the 70's so dramatically altered the recognizable features that it's virtually not the same park anymore. City agencies aren't even giving the issue a public hearing; if the public was clamoring that this was outrageous, I'm sure they would.

But this prompts the question as to what extent the stadium is 'owned' by the public, specifically Yankees fans, such that the fate of the park should be determined by such dubious entities as public sentiment or rancor, or whether the right thing to do would have to be independently discerned and executed independently of their desires. Perhaps Yankees fans, in their insatiable quest for escalating payrolls and third place finishes, are happy to molt their old stadium as befitting the snakes they are. (zing.) Or perhaps they should be saved from themselves; Marc is certainly right that they'll take their jerkiness with them to the new stadium, and aren't likely to change of their own accord. Perhaps History belongs not just to Yankee fans but to everyone, in which case the Yankees are being particularly selfish in hording it for themselves. Perhaps its not 'their' park at all. Why should they be exclusively proprietary over history? Why shouldn't Sox fans get to complain; it's our history, too, even it's lousy history.

The points about a common baseball history are well taken; even Joe Dimaggio counts as 'our' history, as Baseball, aka The Game, is a higher unity that transcends even sox/yankees division. And so the provincial history of the Bronx borough is lower in the hierarchy of Forms than is History, which in turn must defer to Baseball, aka The Game, as the ultimate in meaningful ideals which subsumes them all. And it would be just like the Yankees to think they're bigger than The Game, and to abandon History for the sake of a $250 million payroll and a 4th place finish (as naturally payroll and standings are inversely related, I induce.) So I can admit to feeling the twinge in the demolishing of even the hated Yankee Stadium, insofar as it is subsumed by its place in the Game, and I can even happily continue to hate the Yankees for thinking its theirs to destroy, and for Yankees fans for failing to stick up for the larger issues at stake, and place party, or team, over country, or sport.

On the other hand, its just so in character; the evil empire needs a new Death Star. How can we take that away from them? They wouldn't 'be' the Yankees if they couldn't do whatever they possibly could to be as corporate and tramply as possible.

Imagine: It would be funny if they were penalized for their success; suppose that because so much history took place there, they became prohibited from ever moving out, and in another 100 years when every other stadium figures out how to compress seats like microchips and have 1 million capacity stadiums, and the yankees have a fraction of that and become the lowest payroll team as they'd still be restricted to a 20th century analog stadium, and then they'd become the scrappy low payroll underdogs who'd we be forced to cheer for because of their pluck and gritty hard nosed play...

What a strange future that'd be. Maybe this is for the best.

Unto the Breach

I have attended three games at Yankee Stadium; I shan't be attending any more. The Sox' record in those games? 0-3. The Sox' record in October in those games? 0-3.

Below are the box scores for those 3 losses- Game 2 of the 2003 ALCS, Game 7 of the 2003 ALCS, and Game 1 of the 2004 ALCS. (click to enlarge.)

Next, the Aaron Boone Game; I had seats in the top tier, and exiting after the trauma involved descending spiraling ramps and hearing 'new york, new york' on an endless loop; a circle of hell indeed. I got hit in the head with beer.

Next year, out for revenge, Schilling gets bombed and injured, and Mussina took a perfect game into the 7th, the Sox explode for 5, comeback falls short, I got hit in the head with beer.

I did not have many happy moments there. I can't say I'm sad to see it go.

Sense for a dollar?

So I get back from vacation and Pedroia's batting cleanup and hitting bombs. Makes sense. Drew, Lowell, and Beckett are on the DL, and the Sox are taking names. Also makes sense. It's September, and Tampa Bay has the best record in baseball, and an 11 game lead over the Yankees in the division.

???

Some sympathetic to religiousish worldviews dwell on the very fact of existence- isn't it amazing that anything exists at all!?!?, they wonder. It doesn't seem to make sense. Often, they think that the question 'why is there something rather than nothing?' demands an explanation called 'god'. And either that makes sense, or else it makes such much no sense that it must go beyond all sense and reason, and be true.

Others, though, have a handle on facts, and think that there is anything at all is no big whoop, as I used to say when I was 8, (the expression, not of the universe), or that labeling some mystery 'god' is no explanation at all, or that those other guys should just get over it- this whole existence thing- and stop dwelling on unanswerable questions and do something practical, like increasing bandwidth or cleaning in those hard to reach places.

But me, I can't help but dwell at the amazingness of this tampa bay leading universe in which I find myself. And that involves repeating facts, but this time with exclamation points. 11 games up on the Yankees! Best record in baseball! Existence! Something! Not nothing! Pretty amazing stuff, really. I can't get over it, and I just can't make sense of it.

Others, though, would simply point to a Tampa team ERA of 3.70, and a bullpen ERA of 3.41, and a Yankees team ERA in August of 5.09, among many other things that would serve as a perfectly reasonable explanation of the phenomenon in question.

Not me, though. It's inexplicable, really. Tampa Bay!

And yes, the Yanks beat Tampa today, and even have 8 wins vs. Tamper on the year. And that makes it all the more amazing- Yankees beat the Rays in September, with one team out of the running, and the other tuning up for the playoffs.

Makes sense after all.

Hope Stick

Everyone's got that warm heartfelt emotional meaningful vs. cold logical mathematical dispassionate dichotomy going. So while the numbers assure us- the Sox lead the Yankees by 6 games in the wild card race with only 29 games remaining, and according to some metric listed on the ESPN standings page, the Sox have an 87.6 percent chance of making the playoffs, whereas the Yankees have a minuscule 2.3, this 3-2 Yankees come from behind win gives the Yankees warm heartfelt emotional hope.

And when there's hope, the numbers be damned. Hope, optimism, determination yielding the miraculous, spring in your step joy in tomorrow. Yankee fans shouldn't have that. Though the odds are against them, they're not dead yet. The Sox missed their chance to put the nail in the coffin, to bury the Yanks along with their stadium. Though the numbers may hold up, for one day, at least, the Yanks get to transcend the numbers, to feel, to hope, to dream, to revel in the alleged meaning of their legacy, to ignore the cold hard numerical financial reality of leaving their traditional home.

Yet somehow the YES network got the whole emotional heartful meaningful vs. cold numbers thing wrong. During the 8th inning, they played a promo for Yankee stadiums' final hurrah with maudlin music and clips of Yankees legends with angelic auras gazing meaningfully into the distance, towards the end of which Kay's voiceover says 'come celebrate the final season of Yankee Stadium with Yankees calculator day. The first 15, 000 fans get a Yankees team calculator...'

Nothing says 'meaning and sentiment' like a calculator. And of course, they'd need one to calculate the astronomical discrepancy between the payrolls of the yanks and rays, the team taking their place in the postseason.

But I bristle. I can't get over Francona giving them hope; you just can't pitch to Giambi as a pinch hitter with two outs as the tying run in the 7th with first base open. Walk Giambi, you put the tying run on base, yes, but it's Damon up with two down, and then potentially Jeter, and neither home run hitters. Against the Yankees, I'm always defensive. Minimize the catastrophe; avoid the agony. Don't gamble on getting Giambi to pop out, even if that's the likely scenario. Against the Yankees, do whatever you can possibly do to avoid the worst case scenario, the humiliation. If your OBP is less than .500, the number says you're more likely to get out than not. But you can't give them hope, the hope that goes over and above the numbers. It's the Yankees, goddam it. I just can't stand to let them have a hero, to be dramatic, to beat the odds, to put dollar bills in the thongs of Mystique and Aura. Those women should put on reasonable clothes and take a nice desk job, by the book. Maybe some number crunching. Nothing too exciting.

Something To Believe In

Karl Popper thought Marxism and Freudianism weren't genuine scientific theories, as they were often believed to be, because proponents of those systems did everything they could to interpret whatever they saw as confirmation of their -ist beliefs. For Popper, what made a belief scientific was the willingness to see that belief falsified, and not clinging to a belief despite evidence to the contrary.

Former catcher and current Yankees color commentator John Flaherty started with the simplistic belief that when Wakefield's knuckleball is up, it's hittable, and when it's down, it's not, and implied this hypothesis had predictive power- it looks like a good night for the Yanks, he suggested in the top of the 2nd.

In the 5th inning, after many high knuckleballs weren't hit, and some low one's were, Flaherty amended his statement, slightly, analyzing that now Wake's knuckleballs were hittable because they were falling down into the lefthanded hitters' zone, and they had no lateral movement. Ahh. How scientific.

Many philosophers think booing doesn't state a belief so much as express emotion. Yankee fans, no scientists they, expressed their displeasure, much to my satisfaction, booing A-Rod after he grounded into a double play with the bases loaded to end the 7th inning, keeping the Yankees down 7-3, and just moments after they had given a standing ovation, anticipating a heroic moment. But this theory was proven wrong. Clinging to their belief in A-Rod's talent, they were disappointed. Yankees play by play jerk Michael Kay said something to the effect of 'it looked like the crowd had the electricity pulled out of it', and that they were 'stunned' and filled with 'incredulity.'

Incredulity- disbelief-, the not-so-scientific response to reality contradicting expectation, theory, and prediction. I don't suppose scientists boo the petri dish when their cells don't culture. Though maybe they should. Or perhaps they could reinterpret the recalcitrant evidence; 'it's not the wrong enzyme, it just doesn't catalyze in the clutch.'

Man, A-Rod played such a shitty game. That's awesome. A K looking in the 1st, an inning ending double play in the 3rd, as the tying run in the 5th with 2 runners on- a fly out, as the tying run in the 7th with the bases loaded- an inning ending double play, and a K swinging to end the game. That's an 0-5, with 0 bases gained and 7 outs made. And he also committed an error. He was booed mercilessly in the 7th, 8th, and 9th. During the broadcast, Kay said that in the 8th and 9th innings in 2008, A-Rod has 2 RBI, contrasted with 31 in '07. ESPN said A-Rod is 0-7 this year with the bases loaded and 2 outs. David Ortiz, naturally, had 2 walks and 2 doubles. Ortizism is empirically sound; Rodriguezism is bunk.

Meanwhile, Michael Kay was looking forward to Wednesdays' starter Sidney Ponson coming to believe that his was a big game, a necessary game, a season saving game, and that he should prepare accordingly. Al Leiter strongly disagreed, and said that that kind of stuff doesn't enter the players' mind; a player can't have such different beliefs and attitudes about a big game than a regular one. Instead, he's got to keep it out of his head, clear his mind of beliefs about his place in the game, the season, the context. Kay challenged Leiter, in disbelief, asking that when Leiter started Game 7 of the 1997 World Series, he really wasn't believing it was such a huge deal? When Leiter said 'no', he had to stay in the zone, or some such, Kay responded, disappointed and a little afraid, that it sounded "robotic." Kay's theory of humans as nervous meaning-sensitive clutch warriors remained unaffected.

The inning ended. And after the commercial break, Kay returned to the subject with one of the greatest not great lines I've ever heard. He said to Al Leiter, "Al, it's not that I don't believe you. I'm just incredulous."

I can't say I know what Popper would say about that.

Occam's Razor- Giambi's Slump Not Due To, But Despite, Mustache

I have to admit it. There was one thing about the Yankees I could not bring myself to hate, not in a million cliches.

Jason Giambi's mustache.

Even when Giambi's weak glove rode the bench, that 'stache could never take a day off. It was business all over. All the time.

But now, alas, it's gone. Giambi, in a bit of superstition, has shaved off that gruff, solid 'stache, and gone back to his plain old thong-wearing self.
As a philosopher, I have a special affection for mustaches. Here's me around two years ago, being all wisdomy, broody and mysterious-looking at a Barnes N Noble cafe, where all the world's serious thinking gets done.
Notice how in touch with the profound truths of the universe I am? Can't you tell I'm cogitating nature's most abstract secrets?

And here's me, sans 'stache, more recently, a normal, not especially philosophical regular guy, still in front of books, but now less sure he comprehends them, and mostly thinking about which dry cleaner to go to.

I didn't treat my mustache with the respect it deserved, and now it's gone. And now I have even more reason to hope Giambi's slump continues; he lost faith in the power of the mustache, and the cosmos should let him know this is no small transgression, as it did with me.

I'm sad now. I'll leave you with two great philosopher mustaches- Nietzsche and a young Bertrand Russell.


And a ballplayer.

Yankees Acquire Name and Brand of Ivan Rodriguez, for Kyle Farnssomething

The Yankees today acquired a brand name 36 year old catcher for a relief pitcher, the lowest form of baseball celebrity. Baseball's extras, really, is what they are.

This brand name catcher had an road OPS of .686 last year and .671 this year (with only 7 XB hits) away from his home park , which the Yankees, in related talks, failed to acquire.

The current replaceable Yankee catcher, a man so not famous that he's easily confused with two of his brothers, only had a .581 OPS this year, but Molina- whichever one it is that catches for the Yankees- had nabbed 47.3% of attempted base stealers this year, better than the Great Famous Original Pudge's average of around 34 % over the last 2 years.

The Yanks of course extended their largesse in return for the Famous Catcher in the form of Kyle Farnssomething, who before his most recent outing had held opponents scoreless in his 11 appearances. Farnswhatever had filled up the hole in the bullpen that had been opened by the move to the starting rotation of the Very Famous And Hyped Fat Prospect.

But as the Yankees retain the option of simply playing commercials during the 8th inning, this was deemed not to be a problem.

On Our Rug, In Our Universe; Yanks Win 10-3

Some people use the word 'philosophical' to mean 'stoic', and 'stoic' to mean 'able to withstand an asskicking'.

And though transitivity implies that I'm getting a degree in being able to withstand an asskicking, which I surely am not (since I can't), I'll temporarily accept the appellation 'philosophical' in regards to how to take today's 10-3 drubbing at the hands of the resurgent M F-ing Yankees (who since the break have won 8 straight, and have posted an .858 team OPS and a team ERA of 1.56.)

Today's game was a real gutshot. Shots like these do have to be suffered. And if you can make it through with your dignity intact, and without vomiting, you earn the glory you achieve later. Champions- teams and their fans- have to be able to take a punch too. (But we know that.)

The long view cosmic scheme of things stoicism is justifiable; The Sox are the defending champs, Ortiz is back, we (yes, we) have the best run differential in the American League at +88, 46 ahead of Tampa and 30 better than the Yanks. This is something to bite down on, you know, to be philosophical.

But this was also the kind of game that makes me check the movie listings and resort to posting homoawkward pictures that have probably circulated the interweb twice over by now.

(photo by Stuart Cahill)

You heard it here third. Lester's the stopper tomorrow.

Red Sox (Indig)nation; Umpire K's Lowell

I hate losing. And I hate the Yankees. And I really hate losing to the Yankees. And yes, the crappy whole is greater than the crappy parts.

I also hate injustice. And I know there are starving people in lands of plenty, and crooks get away with it, but blown strike calls are injustice too. They pervert truth and put a penny on the tracks of destiny.

With one out and the tying run on first in the bottom of the 9th in a 1-0 game and Mike Lowell at the plate, Mariano Rivera and human umpire Marty Foster teamed up to punch out Lowell.

Admittedly, the level-headed-give-peace-a-chance-let-science-have-its-say part of me wasn't a thousand percent sure of this salt-in-the-eye-Mr.-Fuji-tag-team-machination until after the game, because the so called 'My 9' television station in New York- a station, I assure you, of which I own none and which I have no right to prevent others from using- didn't see fit to replay the pitch from any angle other than the crooked one from which they first showed it.

But according to MLB Gameday, it looked like this

See that, pitch number 8? You know, the one that's belt high, oh, 3 or 4 inches off the plate inside? You know, the one that made temperate-tempered Mike Lowell jump up and down and then look like this?

Yeah, they called that strike 3. Lowell, up to that point, had a righteous AB, fouling off tough cutters away. Al Leiter and David Cone astutely pointed out Lowell's ability to turn on the inside pitch, and Rivera pitched him away. That Lowell would get punched out on his strength- the inside fastball- was particularly unjust, and egregious. He was cheated, the natural conclusion of his at-bat interrupted. He was made to look weak precisely where he is strong. That's not justice.

Neither was this.

I'm still bitter. Indignation doesn't expire.

Yankees Suck; Metaphysics, not Physics or Subjectivity

Everyone knows the Yankees Suck. Some people think saying it is rude, or stupid, or old hat. But it's true.

Today, another boring article claiming that people shouldn't state what they know to be true oozed from the Globe, and great reaction here and here.

What I enjoy most about the fact that the Yankees Suck is that it is a metaphysical fact, and not a physical fact. You see, as a philosopher, I worry that there are few distinctly philosophical facts that go over and above scientific or physical facts. And this- the Yankees Sucking- is one of them.

That is, obviously the Yankees don't suck in the physical sense; they're good at baseball. (Usually.) No, they suck in the metaphysical sense.

They really do, but we have to be careful about the reduction-to-taste interpretation. For example, in a blog linked to above, Red Sox Chick wrote "'Yankees Suck' is shortened version of 'Good God I hate the Yankees and their obnoxious fans and big-mouthed owner' or some other similar phrase."

But I don't like this interpretation because it changes a statement about the Yankees to a statement about a Sox fan. And that changes everything.

To say beauty is in the eye of the beholder is to remove the beauty from the object, and put it in the subject. When philosophers want to deny that there are moral facts or moral truths in the universe, they attempt to reduce statements like 'torture is wrong'- putatively about a state of affairs in the world- to 'I disapprove of torture' or 'boo torture!', which now only express sentiments of the person making the statement, and leave the rest of the universe alone.

The real problem with this is that it makes feelings arbitrary; if the painting isn't actually beautiful, then the perception of it as beautiful can't be entirely due to the properties of the painting. If torture isn't actually wrong, that you feel it to be wrong comes from you, and not from it, and perhaps it's only because of your faulty wiring or arbitrary upbringing that you feel the way you do.

And as a result, those feelings can't be true. If the wrongness isn't in the torture, then it's not true that torture is wrong, though it may be true that you don't like torture. Instead, the only way to guarantee the truth of the perception of beauty or wrongness is to have that property reside in the object of that perception or feeling.

So I don't prefer to think that the Yankees have only a bunch of physical properties pertaining to their baseball-playing abilities, and I generate, on my own, feelings of antipathy that another observer, observing the same physical properties, wouldn't have if he were from New York or were himself sucky. No, I prefer to think of the Yankees actually sucking, as a metaphysical truth about them, not merely as an expression of my own arbitrary tastes and dispositions

The Yankees actually have the property of suckiness, and if you do hate the Yankees, you have that feeling in addition to the suckiness the Yankees actually have.

The Yankees Suck, in a metaphysical sense, and there are philosophical facts distinct from physical scientific facts.

Hooray!

That Old Familiar Feeling; Sox Comeback Falls Short, Lose to Yanks 2-1

Entering the 9th down 2-0 to the Yankees, against a Hall of Fame closer, scoring 1 and loading the bases with NOBODY out and stranding them there?

Now that's a classic Red Sox loss. And by 'classic', I mean a good ol' fashioned pre-2004 rip-your-heart-out-edge-of-total-victory archetypal Red Sox catastrophe.

I forgot what that felt like.

These days, it's all take the long view this, we'll come around come October that.

But this was a throwback, even without the old uni's. It has a familiar trajectory. The Sox are outplayed. 2nd best seems assured. The upcoming loss is accepted with a numb melancholy. But then a big hit, an opponent stumbles, and the numbness starts to wane. Hope emerges. Another hit. Hope becomes expectation. And just when the Sox couldn't be better positioned to win, when miraculous victory becomes not just possible but probable, they collapse, and fail.

I would have been fine, taking the long view, waiting for October, losing 2-0 on a random July afternoon. You can't expect to win 4 straight in the Bronx. But that's post- "Queer Eye" Red Sox talking. That's the 'of course we'll win 3 in a row down 3-1 in the ALCS- We're the Sox!' But they forfeited the long view by fighting back. They trigger all those old memories of being One Strike Away, of coming so close, just to fall short. They played the Red Sox. Classic Cubs is losing 2-0. Classic Sox is doing just what they did; coming back, having the bases loaded and NOBODY out, with the tieing run on 3rd, and not scoring. 3 times. To lose. To the Yankees.

This being a classic Red Sox loss, it triggered that long dormant bitter and reactionary psychology that I thought had been cured with victory and Zoloft. Instead of the ol' 'you fail 7 out of 10 times in this game and you're great' line, or falling back on lame non-explanatory cliches like 'you can't expect to win 4 straight in the Bronx', I'm screaming for Crisp's head, wanting to bench Varitek and cut Lugo.

Because, as everybodywho's ever seen baseball before knows, ANYBODY would be better than those guys. ANYBODY.

That's classic Sox talking. That's calling up WEEI and saying 'trade him for a bucket of balls'. That's the anger and the depression and the desperation, the losers' complex. That's not the attitude of a team that is just out of the division lead despite lacking their most powerful hitter for over a month, or the attitude of dropping a game on the road with the number 5 starter matched up against the opponent's ace.

Man, I haven't screamed that someone should be cut since, oh i don't know, Chad Fox or Rudy Seanez. Or Curtis Leskanic the shirtless mechanic.

I even hate it when I lose to the Yankees in a video game. I guess I'm just not totally over them yet. Minds aren't that malleable. Scars don't always heal. You can forget them, but they're there. Sometimes it takes until the next generation. Scars aren't heritable, I don't think.

Unless, of course, these are your father's Red Sox.

Free range shortstop

From the Archive: February 23, 2008

Its been known for some time that Jeter sucks in the field.

People have a hard time with this conclusion because he looks good at short, in that he's fluid and makes athletic plays, and because the scientific approach involves hypothesizing about plays he should have made, but didn't get to, and comparing him to others in similar situations that of course aren't observable at that moment from that same seat in the ballpark (or on the couch).

More generally, its another case of the battle between objective (observer-independent) detailed statistical analysis versus a subjective anecdotal perception, a.k.a science versus religion.

So that's always fun.

But I’ve often wondered why Jeter has such poor range- after all, he's a speedy baserunner, and an especially brilliant basestealer- check out his percentage of successful steals. One would think such things would translate into fielding range, but I guess they don't.

Sucks for him, that asshole.

2/3 of the way to the moon is good enough, I guess

From the Archive: May 6, 2007
[the return of the Rocket]

I don't need, or mean, to start a whole trash talking yankee thing. but I do feel the need to explain why I'm not that concerned about the Clemens acquisition, even though I am admittedly annoyed by it (for historical reasons)

Last year, Clemens averaged less than 6 innings per start (113 IP, 19 GS)

He made only 5 starts with exactly 7 IP, and never more.

Of the remaining 14 starts, in 6 he went less than 6 IP; so he actually went fewer than 6 innings more frequently than he went 7 (and again, never more than 7)yet despite these low innings totals, he still averaged 97 pitches per start.

So what the yankees have gained is a 6 inning pitcher who throws 100 pitches. that is, a 6 inning 100 pitch pitcher in the national league, with no DH, and in a particularly weak division, (last year of his 7 wins- 2 vs milwaukee, 2 vs pittsburgh, 2 vs cubs)

And he is now another year older and has to face patient lineups like boston and toronto, who are far superior to those above mentioned clubs. i'd be pretty suprised if he ever goes more than 5 innings against the sox.so say hello to mr. vizcaino, bruney, and henn.

[yankee fan 1 replied:]

The fact that you actually felt the need to write a preemptive email is clearly indicative that this is already in your head jonah. always a bosox fan and always an inferiority complex. we'll talk about the merits of this signing in october.

[yankee fan 2 replied]

So it's the contention of the redsox nation that roger clemens is past his prime? rationalize much?

[My response:]

Hey hey. I admitted I was annoyed by the clemens signing. but just because of symbolism, history, etc., which is all essentially off the field stuff. on the field, you have what was described above; a guy who as often as not won't go 6 innings. is he better than igawa? I guess so, though the only game this year the yanks won vs the sox was when an injury forced torre to start igawa in a game he wasn't supposed to.

the basic point is that yankees are not adding a halladay or a santana, but a middle of the rotation, guy, and clemens will not help the yankees by taking away innings from their middle relief corps.


and its not about whether clemens is past his prime- whether he used to be roger clemens or jaret wright or smokey joe wood- all that matters is who and what he is now, on the field, apart from the marketability and name-brand value associated with his logo (I mean, his name.)

the numbers don't lie; clemens labored to get through 6 innings against n.l. central teams for half a season. he won't pitch for the yanks for a month, and then he's got to deal with the a.l. east. So yes, of course we'll see what happens. and what will happen, often enough, is mike myers pitching to david ortiz in the 6th inning.


[yankee fan 1 replied:]

and jonah, in response to everything you have said...statistics can always be used to prove a point, whatever that point may be. but more importantly you have no idea who roger clemens is now until he pitches THIS season. so let's can the talk of his numbers last year, because according to your own statements his numbers from last year ought to be irrelevant, as it is the here and now that matter most.

[my response:]


If the past is irrelevant, what makes you think the yankees are getting a good pitcher? why aren't the yankees signing me? if you ignore my past, which largely consists of 78 mph fastballs and sitting on the couch, maybe, for all they know, I could go spin a 2 hit shutout tomorrow.

last years stats are relevant because, presumably, they describe the abilities of a player physiologically similar to the player who is about to start pitching in a yankees uniform. his stats from toronto in 1997 or pawtucket from 1984 do not satisfy this criterion.

that being said, of course there is always an air of indeterminacy about the future- as they say, that's why they play the games. But players really do exhibit a great deal of consistency; the sheer sample size and extended duration of baseball virtually guarantees it. and players rarely, without illegal drugs, get better after the age of 32, let alone 45; at his age, the previous year's statistics are a reliable indicator of the following year's ceiling, and so suggest a certain degree of decline, as well.

sports blab, volume 21, issue 1

From the Archive: April 23, 2007

there are disadvantages to growing older, of course. there's less hair on my head than there used to be, for instance. and more hair other places. but I can gruffly use phrases like 'in all my years of such and such...' in a variety of contexts. in this case, I can even glibly refer to my 21 years of watching baseball, and expect the fact to command some sort of respect on its own.

so that being said, I don't think that in my 21 years of watching baseball i've seen a pitcher with such an explosive fastball as papelbon has. he really gets an elevation on the pitch that no one else has that i've ever seen. and that splitter- tonight clocking at 90 mph- is just absurd. (though damon put on an impressive at bat, almost taking the splitter for a hit the other way). and papelbon knows how to pitch- after walking abreu- who himself was just barely able to check his swing and lay off a high rising fastball on the 3-2 count- it is tempting to try and come back with a first pitch fastball to get ahead. that's what a-rod, the potential go ahead run, was thinking, and who then was rewarded by waiving at the first pitch slider- 83 mph- at the knees. this was a pitch papelbon hadn't yet used in the outing; there's just no way anyone could have seen that coming.

and that first outing of his, geezum crow- the 5 out save in texas- wow. striking out michael young- one of the league's top hitters- on 3 pitches; two fastballs up and in, and then freezing him with a fastball painting the outside corner at the knees for the called third strike.

and of course he's got a made for tv punim what with that wwf stare down.

now lots of closer have a short run of dominance, but few really last. and papelbon's fastball, as great as it is, may not ultimately measure up to mariano's cutter, which must be considered the single greatest pitch of all time, as he's a hall of famer who only throws the one pitch. but papelbon really has a chance to be historically great, and he's just so much fun to watch.

this weekend was great theater; so many dramatic moments. yes, the sox swept, but I hardly think this is reason to write off the yanks. They had two minor league starters going- no wang, mussina, or pavano, and posada and matsui were out, and damon had a day off, and is banged up, and we barely won each game. and the yankees hit well off our three aces; both dice k and beckett had their worst starts of the year, and schilling pretty much matched his stinker from opening day. so yeah, great theater, and it is always great to humiliate those jerks, but this thing ain't over, as i'm sure they probably say when at a loss for a more eloquent way to put it.

2004 ALCS Finale: Everything Was Beautiful, and Nothing Hurt

From the Archive:

October 22, 2004: Accounts and Experiences of the ALCS; Sox win Series 4-3, advance to World Series for first time since 1986 (“Everything was Beautiful, and Nothing Hurt”)

It was an absolute joy to read the New York papers this morning. Saturated with phrases such as 'most humiliating loss ever,' 'colossal collapse,' 'choke artists,' permanent stain on the Yankee record', 'curse reversed with reverse sweep,' boy, was that ever satisfying.

There’s so much to talk about I don't even know where to begin. So I think I’ll just talk about the whole thing.

I stayed up all night last night. I had to teach at 8 this morning, and there was no way I was sleeping. I took the subway home from Brooklyn, and talked smack about the Yankees with the various sox fans I met on the train. Loud.

I got home and devoured every article online I could, I watched the highlights over and over. I want this shit burned into my memory, I want every sight and stat and fact and feeling indelibly marked in my mind.

So on no sleep, I wander on down to jimbo's hamburger palace at 6 this morning, and spent a wonderfully pleasant hour, casually eating french fries and bacon, drinking coffee, with my hands on a fresh new copy of the day's New York post. As usual, I’m the only white guy in the place, and along with my bacon, french fries and sadistic pleasure in the humiliation of the Yankees, I get to listen in to some great stories about Negro league baseball and owing money to bookies, the hot topics with the senior citizen crowd at jimbos.

I caught the subway to queens, giddy with grease and greatness. New York is beautifully quiet in the morning, all the more so when you like where you're going and everyone else is miserable, and the Yankees just lost and you can even see a frown on the buildings, collapsing on the weight of their shackled, impotent pride.

I got to class early, because I hadn't done the reading that I was supposed to lecture on. Thursdays class goes for 2 hours and 15 minutes, and I spent that whole time talking about James and Sartre on freedom. I think I did a good job, considering I don't really know about them and I hadn't really done the reading.

At one point, I asked something of the class, and got a response 'because the Yankees lost.' a couple of students with whom I’ve talked about baseball (in the context, initially, of metaphysical continuity- what makes something the same over time is interestingly illustrated by turnover on baseball teams), and they didn't know I was a sox fan. I couldn't contain my grin, laughing at these teenage Hispanic kids from the Bronx and queens. So I stop talking about Sartre and existential despair, because, frankly, I think that's one thing I don't have to worry about on this morning, and I told them they don't want to know where I grew up, because that might sidetrack the lecture. 'You’re not from Boston, are you professor?' they asked aghast, the first glimmer that perhaps I was indoctrinating and not teaching, planting evil seeds in their malleable little heads. 'Oh yes,' I responded, grinning like a Cheshire cat on nitrous. 'You’re not just a bandwagon fan?' a student named Carlos Gonzalez asked, still hoping that it just couldn't be, and that a weak moral character in regards to allegiance would be better than a strong devotion to evil, to which I responded, while a Ms. Lopez waited patiently to ask a question about Sartre, 'you name the year, I’ll give you the starting lineup... so when Sartre says 'existence precedes essence, the view that he is attacking is...'

What fun. What fun.

But let's go back a bit in our journey, for as we know, it wasn't all kibbles n bits.

I attended game 1. About the 6th inning, I remarked, 'y'know, I think the highlight of this game was when Damon struck out leading off.' this was my first day back to the stadium since Grady’s choice, and I couldn't make a peep. Mussina’s throwing a fucking perfect game, and if imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, schilling's fucking toasting Christopher reeve out on the mound.
But as the sox got their first hit, and then their first run, and then varitek hit the dong to make it 8-5, I started to stand, then yell, then represent. That’s when the peanuts came a'flyin. To indicate my disregard to such an onslaught, I turned around and made sarcastic boo hoo motions, rubbing my eyes and acting as if they hurt. Then I’d turn back towards the field and give everyone behind me the finger. Well, two of them.

So, of course, more peanuts.

A peanut got caught in my collar, so I picked up it up and did my best Damon-throwing impression back at them, effeminately throwing the peanut about 2 feet, and then giving them the finger.

Ire was raised.

And so about this time, Ortiz hits a triple to make it 8-7. I scream as loud as I can, 'MVP, MVP!!', to which the carefully worded and logically impeccable response, 'shut the fuck up you Boston faggot' was delivered. More peanuts. etc. I, of course, turned around, (and remember, this is in the tier of Yankee stadium, where people are towering above you) and screamed up at everyone "MVP, MVP!", even louder than before.

So, of course, Rivera comes in, and Millar pops out. And that's when smack, right in the back of the head, a full beer. I’m drenched. Some of the falloff gets a Yankee fan in front of me, who had requested earlier that they stop throwing peanuts. He, unbeknownst to me at the moment, leaves his seat to go get the cops. Knownst to me was that I turned around, and in a rage, yelled 'who the fuck threw that?' and when no one answered, I screamed, at maximal ire, 'you fucking pussies! You throw beer at me when my back is turned, and now you're not man enough to admit who threw it?! You’re a bunch of fucking pussies, all of you, a bunch of pussies!' Not knowing the culprit, I made eye contact with as many suspects as I could, all of whom were bigger than me, and I called them pussies, and gestured for them to come down and fight.

You know why they didn't? Because they're pussies. And that's a good thing. You know why I smelled worse than usual? I was covered in beer.

And I had so many zingers lined up. Earlier, before operation peanut turned into a genuine beer conflict, someone had yelled at me, when I turned around, 'nice hair.' so I retorted 'nice job'. I had so many directions I wanted to go if they took the bait. 'I can tell by looking at you that you hate your job.' or, if they had asked me what I did I was going to say 'it doesn’t matter, we're not hiring janitors.' And after launching the 7 dollar beer, I wanted to say, 'I hope your food stamps pay for that,' or, 'you've wasted all that money, now I’ll have to pay your mom extra to clean my toilets.'

Going to Yankee stadium is no fun. I’ve now been there 3 times, 3 alcs games vs. the sox. Games 2 and 7 last year, game 1 this year. You know, it's no fun.

God, I wish I was there last night.

Game 2 simply sucked. I don't know if I can ever forgive Pedro for that daddy comment. Whatever infinitesimal leverage we have when arguing with Yankees fans was completely ripped away when he said that. And to hear them ridicule our hall of famer like that was a stab in the heart. The fact that I paraded around the streets of Brooklyn chanting 'who's your daddy' last night, at the top of my voice, did do something to assuage that. At the time, however, that was a mere daydream.

Game 3 sure seemed like a must win at the time. All day long, I was doing great work. In my spare time, I’ve been working on this paper that's not for class, but I’m hoping is my first published paper. Its up to about 50 pages, and I think its good. I was having great insights, making great progress, feeling really good about myself, and then 8 o’clock rolls around. Time to get my heart stepped on and kicked in the balls. Fantastic. I’m supposed to stop my brain in the middle of its actualization and revert to primitive tribal emotions, only to be destroyed and humiliated? 19-8? Are you fucking kidding me?

As a result, I guess I kind of bailed. I admit it. It just didn't seem fair that I should stop all this great progress I was making, work that was uniquely my own, and emotionally submit to a situation over which I had no control. I had to block it out, I just had to.

So I watched game 4 under my blanket with the sound off. Not hearing the silence of fenway, not hearing Joe Buck call another Yankee hit, somehow made it less real. I don't know if this is because of the auditory associations I have with Yankee stadium, or because with the sound off it just looks like another game, without the postseason roar of communal lust. I wasn't going to let them steal another night of brain from me, so I tried to comfort myself by reading a treatise on the unreality of matter during the game, naturally, in order to convince myself that this wasn't real, and it didn't matter. Although I picked up a few more expository moves, the self-delusion proved stronger yet again. It was real, and it mattered. Oh, it mattered.

The contingencies were felt. In game 1, I believe, we had the tying runs on base, with Bill Mueller up. He hit a ball sharply up the middle, and Rivera made the stab and started the 1-6-3 DP, game over. This time, game 4, Roberts steals, and Mueller again hits it up the middle, this time just by the frantic grab of Rivera. Tie game. And we won that one.

Game 5 I actually had to miss some of. I had a class presentation to do. So I watched the beginning of the game at a bar by school, ducked out with the score 2-1 us, gave my presentation, spontaneously snapped off a remarkably witty and biting zinger at the expense of the most influential philosopher of this generation, who is a prof at my school, and bolted out of class, and back to the bar.

We’re down 4-2, now in the 7th. A bunch of asshole corporos are being idiots and talking shit, not knowing who's pitching or what positions various players play, yet feeling superior and deserving nonetheless. After a sox strikeout, they yell 'sit down', and pump their fists. So finally, when senor October comes through yet again, in the 14th, we start screaming and I yell 'sit down' in the direction of those stupid motherfuckers. One of them, dressed in his corporo gear, starts towards me, screaming drunkenly that they were going to kick our asses, that we're a bunch of losers, that the red sox suck, that Boston sucks. So I cut in and say 'yeah, I know, and I suck too, I really suck. Your job is better than mine, you have a nicer shirt than I do.' he's taken off guard, and noticing that I’m wearing a turtleneck and a (not-baseball) cap, says 'well, you have a cap, and. you're a beatnik!' I laugh, and yell, 'you're a suit!' so he yells that the Yankees are better, and so I say, 'c'mon, suit, market it at me. Hey, it's human resources calling... you suck!' I wanted to say 'don't fight, you'll lose your 401K', but he's busy being restrained by his friends, and I’m trying to figure out whether I should dodge or punch first. I remained content to chant "MVP" for senor October.

What is there to say about game 6? Words cannot express how amazing schilling was. Although I will note that before they reversed the a-rod cheated call, I thought I was going to vomit. It would have been tying run on second, 1 out, with Sheffield and Matsui coming up. Not that those fuckers actually could hit when it counted.

A-rod is a cheater and a choker, a 25 million dollar player whose teams get better when he leaves, and worse when he arrives. Fuck that motherfucker.

Which of course brings us to last night.

The Sox had runners on 1st and second, and the hitter chopped one foul up the third base line. A-rod made the play, and in case it was fair, went to tag third- but rather than stepping on the bag, he hit it with his glove. I yelled "why don't you knock the bag away, you fucking cheater!"

The sox actually did it. I’m still looking for the Yankees, because they didn't even show up to game 7. They didn't even make a game of it. It was over in the second inning.

We spilled out onto the streets, chanting 'Yankees suck', because now it’s true, and 'who's your daddy'. Dismayed and lost Yankee fans looked at us pathetically, although a couple thought to yell. 'Go back to Boston', which was met with the gleeful rejoinder 'oh, we'll go back to Boston... for the world series!'

As we're parading down the street, chanting 'who's your daddy?', and 'go play golf!', and getting cheers from apartment windows and honks from motorists, a girl comes running up to us, flailing violently, kicked drew in the balls and punched me in the face. She’s a spoiled bitch like the rest of them. I laughed at her. It was funny, after all.

Will someone make a t-shirt: 'I went to Yankee stadium and all I got was this a.l. pennant'?

And to cap it off, as I was stepping out the door of the bar to go home, I turned back in and screamed 'Yankees suck, Yankees suck!' everyone joined in, naturally, and I walked out of the bar, with that brand new truth ringing in my ears.

I’m not going to try and describe the feelings. I think we all experienced joy and vindication and pride and, well, everything good. We suffered, we earned, we accomplished, we didn't choke, and we humiliated the Yankees. We showed them what its like. The rivalry is forever changed. We’ve wiped away all those 26 rings, because something happened that's never happened in baseball history, a choke that even the red sox never managed, and it was the Yankees, collapsing in unprecedented and remarkable fashion, at the hands of the red sox. They can 1918 us all they want, but they can never, never undo what happened this year.

Who’s your fucking daddy now, you stupid motherfuckers! We went into your house and pissed on your rug, and their ain't nothin you can do about it. Who’s the red sox now? How do you like it?

Ahh, sweet, sweet victory. Unexpected, impossible, miraculous, gritty, amazing victory.

All the insults, the yelling, the abuse, the fights, the having to risk my neck with all these drunk idiots to stick up for my team, the constant looking out of the corner of my eye for projectiles and fists, I don't like this stuff. I try to glam it up in my storytelling, but I wish they would all fuck off. And now they will. We win. They lose.

I want to buy t-shirts. T-shirts commemorate. And now Yankee fans can go commiserate.

Oh yeah, and fuck themselves.

2004 ALCS Game 6: A New Hope

From the Archive:

October 20, 2004:

[Hope for Game 7 ALCS; Series tied 3-3 after the Sox were down 3-0]

Just got the word of the day from good ol Webster’s.

The Word of the Day for October 20 is:

oblivion \uh-BLIV-ee-un\ noun
1 : the state of forgetting or having forgotten or of being
unaware or unconscious
2 : the condition or state of being forgotten or unknown

Boy, is that appropriate. The past is irrelevant.

If, and of course this is a very big 'if', if the sox pull this out, those 26 rings will mean nothing. The slate will be wiped clean. History erased. We will never hear taunting from a Yankee fan again. Ever. If the sox pull this out, this will be the biggest, most colossal postseason collapse in sports history. Not even the red sox have ever blown a 3-0 lead; this is not only entirely unique for any team, but for it to happen to the new York Yankees, "the greatest franchise in sports history", against those cursed red sox, well, hell truly will have frozen over.

If we can forget the past, the ghosts, and well, our red sox ness, and win this one game... life as we know it...

Please, please, win this one game.

And please, please let me see the look on steinbrenners face if they do. And all the rest of those stupid fuckers.

Oh yeah. A-rod is a fucking cheater and that play was a disgrace, plain and simple. He should be suspended.

Unsubscribe?

October 11, 2004:

[someone requested to ‘unsubscribe’ to the Sox fan email list]

Unsubscribe? There’s no unsubscribing. This is the first circle of hell. And you're in it. We Sox fans have had to put up with Yankee bullshit for too long, we've been kicked around and downtrodden and exploited for too long, and you spoiled Yankee fans have had such a fucking cakewalk, with no suffering. Well, now you're paying for your life of indulgence and plenty, thinking you deserve all that winning by some divine ordinance, never having to work for it, telling us that losing is just our lot in life, that we should accept it because of who we are, that we're better suited for losing, that its our nature, and that you the Yankees, are simply the winners, well now you're paying for your lack of humility and sacrifice, your unchecked imperialistic expansionism, your slave-owner who spends at the expense of the equilibrium of the environment, the only thing he's not paying is heed to the destruction his greed fosters, the lives that he tramples and destroys simply to fulfill his apocryphal delusions of grandeur, his yearning for expansion and control at the expense of all else, justifying it under the cruel credo of social Darwinism your godless materialism will be punished, oh yes. Its time for the meek to inherit the earth, the Sox are uniting, and there shall be a glorious uprising, throwing off the shackles of our Yankee oppressors, the cruel dogs with their smug assurance in their right to greed and spoils. This revolution will be televised, oh yes, Tuesday, 8pm on fox.

2003 ALCS Game 7- Non, Je Ne Regrette Rien

From the Archive: October 17, 2003:

[After Game 7 ALCS v. Yankees; Sox lose series 4-3, after blowing a 5-2 lead in the 8th inning, and eventually losing in the 11th on an Aaron Boone home run.]

Well, things don't always go as planned. Or in some cases, things are planned to go the way you don't want.

But you know, I'm lucky. Because for 7 1/3 innings, I owned that fucking place. Yankee stadium. Or at least the vicinity around the top tier, section B, row N, seat number 9. For 7 1/3, I got to see the look on those stupid fucking Yankees' fans faces. I screamed at the top of my lungs. I abused them. And they couldn't do anything.

Sure, I was hit in the head and drenched with a few beers. Yes, I was pegged with a bunch of peanuts. But none of those assholes could even own up. After Pedro breezed through another inning, and having grown tired of the mocking "we want Pedro" chant, I switched it up to "throw more beer!, throw more beer!". Did anyone do so? No. Of course not. Because the Yankee fans are cowards. I don't know who threw those beers. But they knew who I was. I was the guy who for 7 1/3 innings owned that fucking place. I was the one with the balls to put myself on the line, because I've suffered, and I was earning that victory.

Every time Soriano waved at another pitch, I hollered "overrated" over and over again. Jeter whiffs "hey, nice cut, Mr. November." Giambi pops out; "you need the deodorant ads, because you stink!" After starting another "lets go red sox" chant, an infuriated Sopranos looking Yankee fan offered for me to come down and fight him. I've never so casually nodded no and given the finger at the same time. His buddy did a nice job of restraining him. I don't know what stopped the other bunch of guys who offered to fight me. Probably being pussies, I guess.

My throat is sore, and my head hurts, and there is beer in my hair and clothes. But for 7 1/3, it was euphoric. There was nothing better. I was in their house pissing on their rug and they just had to shut the fuck up.

And yes, I did notice that we lost. But if we had won, it wouldn't have lasted forever. Maybe the Yankees would have won next year. This way it didn't last a year, but for those 7 1/3 innings, I was the winner. They were the losers. I stood up at Yankee stadium and yelled at the top of my lungs for 2 hours. I told Roger to get his fat ass in a rocking chair, and for Bernie to join him. I told Bernie that it was odd that he could be both washed up, and stink (although few got that one.) I got to call the Yankee fans sore losers, and the fucking pussies wouldn't even admit who threw beer and peanuts. (I guess when you drop out of school in 9th grade you miss out on the spitball phase.)

The damn Yankees fans don't suffer. They don't earn what they get, and they don't deserve it. So I made goddam fucking sure that they suffered as much as possible. In the end, we didn't win, but I'm used to that. We never win. But I knew that for those 7 1/3 innings, all those suckers who paid all that money to be at the game, well, I was making their lives a living fucking hell. I made damn sure that every Yankee fan within earshot, and boy do I have a loud voice, was regretting that they got off their fat asses in the first place to come to that game.

I'm sure by now they've forgotten all about me. But I won't forget the look on their faces. The anger. The rage, all directed at me, the guy who was getting what he earned, but what those assholes thought was theirs for no fucking reason at all. So fuck them. I know that I ruined their fucking night, at least for a couple of hours. And sure, I can get a kick out of responding to "Pedro sucks" chants with "he makes 17 million dollars. So what does that make you?", but it doesn't normally affect anyone. But tonight, for those 7 1/3, those fucking Yankee fans, well, they truly sucked.

So for those of you who weren't there, I'm sorry that you couldn't experience at least the fleeting sensation of triumph in the midst of all those stupid fuckers. But frankly, I don't want to tell you about what it was like leaving the stadium, or pushing through a crowd to find the subway, and all that. This I could have done without.

But that's all a bad dream. The reality, well, were those 7 1/3 innings, when the Red Sox were champions, and I was there.

Everything was beautiful, and nothing hurt.