Whew! We got that out of the way.
Papelbon is signed. I’m not sure I would have survived an entire season without a glimpse of him in red socks, doing the Funky Chicken again. If I’m dating myself with the archaic dance, so be it. I’m convinced that if he were in pinstripes and did one of those dances, or any other form of eccentric behavior for which he’s known, on a Yankee mound, George Steinbrenner would go into cardiac arrest.
Seriously, folks, Papelbon, Pedroia and Ellsbury are signed, and while it settles in as something of a ‘no-brainer’ for the Boston Red Sox, hearing of their contracts led to a collective Red Sox Nation sigh of relief that made surfboarder waves as far south as Charleston, SC. We have faith in Theo and company, it’s just that we breathe easier as, not before, the ink on the contract is drying.
It’s just the way we are.
We got ‘no-hitter against Baltimore last year’ pitcher, Clay Buchholz, too. In fact, all 40 players on the Sox roster are under contract now.
We can sleep.
Until the ‘noise’ of another CEO fracas reaches our ears. We try to roll back over, pulling the pillow in tight around our ears, but Epstein calls Mike Mussina a ‘bad apple’ because, as Epstein put it, Mussina and Kevin Brown spent the whole time bitching about the Yankees trek to Japan last year. And then goes on to say that the Yankees used the trip as a ‘crutch.’ So Steinbrenner Junior (Hank) fires back some long-winded and seemingly unrelated trash talk about the entire US of A being “Yankee Country,” just guaranteed to stir things up, which, of course, it did.
Reminds me of the sourdough starter I have brewing in a crock at home. Takes a few days for the grapes and the flour to start interacting; bubbling on the surface as the yeast starts acting on the sugar and starch. Won’t be ready for a week or so, sort of a like the Yankees/Red Sox timeline, as the CEOs ‘feed the mix’ on a regular basis.
Hang on. Here comes Shakespeare again.
“Double, double, toile and trouble
Fire Burn and Cauldron bubble.”
And just as that little scene with the witches in Macbeth foretells of some gruesome things to come, so, too, does the war of baseball words seem to promise yet another season of a rivalry that’s only partly about baseball.
On the other hand, I think Hank Steinbrenner needs to get out more. Even the most casual of major league baseball observers would have to conclude that while Yankee fans are indeed, everywhere, so are the legions of fans who absolutely hate them. Personally, when I moved to New York, right around the time that the Bombers were winning championships in the mid-to-late 90s, I was absolutely dumbfounded at how many baseball fans in and around Yankee Stadium hated the Yankees as much as I did. While a lot of these folk were Mets fans, just as many of them weren’t. One of NYC’s most popular sports talk radio shows (Mike and the Mad Dog on WFAN) features a die-hard Yankee fan (Mike Francesa) and a die-hard Yankee hater (Chris “Mad Dog” Russo; who follows the San Francisco Giants).
This tends to make die-hard Yankee fans cranky. They’re not only loyal to their team, but pretty much expect that everyone within anything resembling geographic proximity to the Stadium be a fan, too.
Hate to burst your bubble, Hank, but your team isn’t as well-liked as your comments might suggest. Like I said. . you need to get out more. In the meantime, we’ll forgive you. We know how annoying it must be to have spent all that money and still not have a championship in the 21st century.Keywords: Boston Red Sox. Jonathan Papelbon, Dustin Pedroia, Hank Steinbrenner, Jacoby Ellsbury, Kevin Brown, Mike Francesa and Chris "Mad Dog" Russon, Mike Mussina, Theo Epstein, WFAN
