Beat On that Red Sox Mickey Mouse All You Want, Anaheimans...

Those futile swings won't bring your prop-board shantytown any closer to being an actual city (like, say...the one from which your baseball team embarrassingly pretends to be).

[OC Register via Deadspin]

Maybe I Don't Understand Major League Baseball Rules (And Maybe I Don't Care)

What, exactly, was Yankees manager Joe Girardi complaining about on Tuesday night after my sad-sack Red Sox scraped out a win against their vastly superior (this season to date) AL East rivals?

Something about Manny Delcarmen taking too much time to warm up in preparation to relieve one of the Red Sox's five godawful (this season to date) starting pitchers? Something about one of those pitchers, Josh Beckett, not actually being injured?

Cheese and rice, Joe: Your team's about a billion games up on the Red Sox. If you're going to protest something, protest the fact that the Yankees are currently trailing a team whose fans will remain nonexistent until it faces yours in the division series. (And then they'll be all like, "Hey, our city has a baseball team! I love that dude from 'Desperate Housewives'!")

Old Men, Take a Look At Us Now

It was reported on Wednesday that the Boston Red Sox have reached a preliminary agreement with the Texas Rangers to trade Mike Lowell for minor league catcher Max Ramirez.

The deal could still collapse--because Mike Lowell is an old man with a bum hip--and the emotional side of my Red Sox fandom kind of wants it to. On the other hand, Mike Lowell is an old man with a bum hip and the Red Sox desperately need a new catcher because their current one--whom I love dearly--is an old man with a bum everything.

I don't know how to feel...other than old.

[UPDATE (12/20): No deal.]

Metroville's Movie Corner 2026: Shia LaBeouf IS Terry Francona in 'Reverse the Curse'*

I've been telling my wife for years that Boston Red Sox manager Terry Francona is an older version of Shia LaBeouf. At last, I have found two video clips of the aforementioned individuals that (sort of) prove my case:






*(That might not turn out to be the exact title of the film; perhaps it'll be based on Stephen King and Stewart O'Nan's book.)

Celtics Defeat Yankees, 92-1

As any deluded sports fan knows, the best (irrational) way to cope with one season's team's failure is to carry over the resultant disappointment to the next season's team in the (meaningless) hope that the latter will, in victory, take the sting out of the former's most recent defeat.

When such a victory occurs on the same night as a decisive thumping of your former season's team's archrival...well, that's just Phantastic.

Idiot

Following the (suckass) Generally-Pacific Coast Angels of But Also Maybe Portugal?'s improbable victory over the (suckass) New York Yankees (actually of New York, unlike the NFL's Giants) in Game 5 of the ALCS on Thursday, the Yankees' ballerina-armed centerfielder Johnny Damon--the Judas who conveniently ended his tenure with the Boston Red Sox by grounding into an out that ended the Red Sox's postseason in 2005--was knuckleheaded enough to make the following statement:

"It gives them a couple more days of hope, and hopefully that hope ends on Saturday because anything can happen, especially with as tough of conditions as we’re going to be playing in... They still have to beat us two times at our place, and hopefully that’s going to be tough to do.”

Anything can happen? No shit, Professor Recall.

God, I hate both of these teams so much.

GO--uh...THE RETROACTIVE CANCELLATION OF THE 2009 MAJOR LEAGUE BASEBALL SEASON?

(Yeah, that works.)

Oh, NOW They 'Bumble'...

Shut up, baseball. I hate you.

Red Suckers

Here's a screenshot of what arrived in my inbox ten minutes before the time of this posting:


Yeah...let me just grab my credit card and do that, billion-dollar franchise made primarily on the backs of the middle- to low-income people whose souls you crushed not 48 hours earlier. Can I throw in an extra few bucks for your thoughtful timing?

Pap Smear

Grrrr...look at me...look at my mean face...

Mean faces count for outs, right?

What? No?

[Ed. note: Fuck you in your stupid fucking face, Papelbon.]

A Case for 'the Providence Red Sox of Boston'

When the Boston Red Sox--despite having been staggeringly incapable during the final few weeks of the 2009 season--managed to stumble ass-backwards into a playoff spot (a break owed entirely to the team's early-season dominance), I was concerned about their chances.

On Thursday night, when the BoSox promptly shit the bed against the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim-California-United States of America-Continent of North America-Earth-Earth's Solar System-Milky Way Galaxy in the first game of their division series, my concerns were unfortunately validated.

The question now is: How can the lethargic Red Sox turn the tide against the charged-up (and mathematically due to win the series) Angels?

Get their pitching to not suck? Hogwash. Have their batters hit the ball and reach base safely? Balderdash. Care? Stratego.

There's only one thing the Boston Red Sox can do if they hope to stand a chance a chance against their extraneously-named ALDS rival:

They need to add more cities to their name.

Think about it: in 2002, the first year since 1965 that the (then just "Anaheim") Angels acknowledged their geographical location on their jerseys, the team won its first (and, to date, only) World Series. No one outside of Anaheim gave a hoot (and even the majority of those living in the Anaheim area were only pretending to give hoots in order to hide their shame over having been unaware that their city had housed a professional baseball franchise since 1966); the team went on to suck for the following two seasons, a suckitude made much more embarrassing than its previous incarnation by the fact that the rest of the baseball world was now vaguely aware of the existence of Anaheim in all its irritating worthlessness. (I thought Disneyland was just Disneyland, remarked everyone, oblivious to the trenchant accuracy of that discarded belief.)

Prior to the 2005 season, the Angels ownership--no doubt realizing that the wholly artificial, rapidly decreasing "fan base" that came to exist just three years earlier might soon vanish entirely--struck upon the ingenious idea to rebrand the team to arbitrarily include the name of a city 40 miles away: a city that, importantly, people had actually heard of. And, voila: the [One City] Angels of [Another, Completely Unrelated City] went on to make the playoffs in 4 of the 5 ensuing seasons.

Sure, Providence, Rhode Island, is 45 miles from the city in which the Red Sox actually play--not to mention in a different state--but the Anaheim Angels didn't let silly things like "facts" and "logic" stand in their way en route to their recent postseason-appearance streak; the one thing that has stopped them, time and time again, from advancing beyond the division series is the Boston Red Sox. The hard truth currently facing the Red Sox is that they can't, in all likelihood, keep knocking the Angels out of the postseason forever. [UPDATE (10/11/09): Called it.] For that streak to continue, the Red Sox must take a page from the Angels' book and add a city.

(And though it may be too late for the Red Sox to do so this season, there's always 2010 for the Providence Red Sox of Boston; and if that doesn't work...watch out for the New England Boston Braves-Red Sox of Pennsylvania in 2011.)

Sports Writer Unaware of Sports Fans

I need to get off the internet.

I can't, of course, because doing so might force me to directly interact with other human beings. But if I could, I might have a better chance at avoiding articles like the most recent one from "NBC sports.com contributor" Tony DeMarco wherein the author critically wounds the Boston Red Sox's chances of winning the World Series this year by brazenly asserting that the Boston Red Sox will win the World Series this year.

Way to know your readers, DeJinxo. Sports fans are by nature superstitious; Red Sox fans are by nurture quite unhealthily superstitious; ergo, you are a big jerk with a stupid mustache.

Unless, of course, your prediction turns out to be accurate (knock on wood)...in which case you will be a great guy with a stupid mustache.

Nomar Smoltz

Nomar Garciaparra returned to Fenway Park on Monday. Yay!

His Oakland A's beat the hell out of elderly John Smoltz and the Boston Red Sox. Less yay.

Innings of Love

In daylights, in sunsets
In midnights, in cups of coffee
In inches, in miles, in laughter, in strife
In five hundred twenty-five thousand six hundred minutes
How do you measure...
An inning in a game?

With an AL record-breaking 12 runs before recording an out is how, we musical-theater-loving nancies--I mean YOU! Not "we"! Just you! Ha-ha, what a weird typo!

I only like sports and I therefore have no idea from what fabulous stage play are the above lyrics. And I'm definitely NOT humming the tune associated with them as I write this.

Manny Using Manny (Drugs) Getting (Suspended) Manny (Games)

The Los Angeles Times has broken the story that Dodgers superstar and "model citizen" Manny Ramirez will be suspended for 50 games beginning Thursday after testing positive for performance-enhancing drugs.

...Hooray? ...Boo?

Eh, I don't care. As long as he's not on the Red Sox anymore or on my fantasy tea--ah, crap.

Red Sox Celebrate Metroville's 400th Post by Peeing All Over New Yankee Stadium

There will be many games played between the New York Yankees and the Boston Red Sox at the ill-advised sinkhole that is the Yankees' new stadium between now and the time that the Yankees go bankrupt, but there will only be one first game to take place there between the two arch rivals...and--on Monday (Tuesday local time)--the Red Sox won it.

That's on the books forever and ever, Yankee fans. Nana-nana boo-boo.

Who Told Selena Roberts I Have a Birthday Coming Up?

Beginning with his shift from would-be Yankees' savior to be playoff poison, I figured that, following the divorce, the Madonna mess and--of course--the steroid scandal, my Alex Rodriguez schadenfreude had reached its apex with the mirror-mirror smoochy-face gay porn photo spread. Little could I have imagined that the gift that is A-Rod's freefall had more to give.

It comes in the form of further revelations from Selena Roberts' upcoming biography of the manchild, A-Rod: The Many Lives of Alex Rodriguez.

Not only did Roberts break the story that A-Rod tested positive for steroids in 2003 (when he was playing for the Texas Rangers), her book reportedly includes evidence that Rodriguez--despite orange-faced promises to the contrary--continued to use illegal performance-enhancing substances when he was a member of the New York Yankees. Part of this evidence--the best part, far and away--is that A-Rod's Yankees teammates called him "Bitch Tits" because of his "round pectorals, a condition called gynecomastia that can be caused by anabolic steroids".

My cup runneth over.

Rodriguez also, according to Roberts' book, has a gambling problem, is a bad tipper at Hooters and (speaking of tipping) is a fan of signaling opposing batters to let them know what pitch is coming with the expectation that his cheating will be reciprocated.

The latter practice is called "pitch tipping", which is similar to the nickname that will--god willing--haunt Alex Rodriguez for the rest of his life.

Then again...I don't want to be greedy.

[NY Daily News]

"BOS! TON! SU-aaah, We Probably Should've Started This Chant Earlier."

I dislike the "[OPPOSING TEAM] SUCK[S]!" chant that is so prevalent at Major League Baseball games. It's crass, it's unoriginal, and--because its popularity can be directly traced to "YANKEES SUCK!"--I find it particularly embarrassing as a Red Sox fan. My enjoyment of it only ever takes place retroactively--and then only ironically--after its occurrence has been hilariously ill-timed.

Pay close attention to the first second of audio in the following clip:



What you've got there is manna from heaven against uncreative sports fans.

Sweep the Dregs

While it's too late to provide unique insight on the Red Sox' 3-game sweep of the Yankees over the weekend--including Jacoby Ellsbury's ridiculous steal of home (y'know, the base to where the pitcher is throwing the ball in the first place!)--I figured I'd squeeze in my obligatory mention of it before the Red Sox begin their series against Cleveland, who has a better of beating Boston than the Yankees do, because the New York Yankees are a terrible baseball team.

Grow Up, CBS SportsLine.

Seriously. Grow up.

Diversion's Antichrist Seeks Commission in Human Tragedy

Although the act amounts to precious little within the scope of Angels pitcher Nick Adenhart and two others' deaths in an auto accident early Thursday morning, I cannot resist expressing my irritation at the fact that Adenhart's agent Scott Boras--widely regarded as an amoral cutthroat whose duplicitous tactics are a cancer on the game of baseball--took the opportunity to put on a tearful show for the cameras at the team's press conference regarding the news.

I'm not saying that Boras isn't sad that Adenhart died--the kid was 22 years old and had his whole future senselessly erased, for chrissake; one would have to literally be inhuman to find that as anything but heartbreaking. I'm not even entirely unconvinced of Boras' assertion that Adenhart's family had asked him to speak on their behalf. But even though Boras is no doubt emotionally affected by the loss--and even if Adenhart's family was not opposed to Boras' appearance at the press conference--who the fuck cares what a young athlete's agent has to say in the immediate aftermath of his unexpected death?

Second to those of his family, the reactions of Adenhart's friends and teammates--those who were with him every day, bonded in a shared purpose and camaraderie--deserve to be made public, if so intended. There is meaningful insight to be gleaned from those who knew Adenhart and had nothing to gain or lose from their relationship that the man himself--at the very most--didn't stand to gain or lose reciprocally.

But his agent? His fucking agent? The guy who, at the end of the day, was professionally obligated to view Adenhart as nothing more than a paycheck--a "great kid" that he would have dropped like a bad habit the second that his market value fell below a predetermined profit margin? Not appropriate. Had Boras been magnanimous enough to realize as much, he would have respectfully declined the Adenharts' alleged request of him to speak at the press conference.

Instead, he chose to take the stage alongside Angels manager Mike Scioscia, general manager Tony Reagins and others, and attempt--by all appearances--to "out-sad" the lot of them.

Bearing in mind Scott Boras' proven track record as a publicity-hungry self-promoter (how many other agents does the casual sports fan know by name?), his public tears over Nick Adenheart take on a distinct resemblance to those of a crocodile--or, perhaps more fittingly, a snake.