Side Notes from the Editor: What I’d Love from Red Sox Fans This Valentine's Day

Before I get to my plea to Red Sox fans for this 2003 season, a few quick words about February….

Simply put, this is a bad, bad time to be a sports fan. There’s nothing for us. Just a big, dark, cold void. No sound. No motion. I feel like I’ve been cast out into deep space. Or to Atlanta.

That's where the NBA All-Star Game reared its ugly head again, treating us to endless dunking and-blown-alley-oop action! As expected, the event–held in front of 2,039 dozing fans in the Mausoleum Formerly Known as the Omni–included horrific D-List musical entertainment. Seriously, couldn’t they have done better than Martina McBride (who?) for the Canadian National Anthem and Gloria Ruben (no really…who?) for the American one? I guess Jim Nabors and that mutant Keith from the "American Idol" tryouts were booked. (Side Note #2: While seeing Keith sing "Like a Virgin," my internal reaction function just completely shut down. I didn’t know whether to laugh, or cry, or pee, or scream, or laugh, cry, pee and scream at the same time. If you didn’t see it, anything I write will simply not do it justice. This deluded, mop-headed loser’s performance was the single greatest moment in TV so far this year, and I include Joe Millionaire making that "Dumb Guy About to Get Lucky" face when the three other chicks got into the hottub with him and Zora. You could almost hear him thinking, "Me Joe...Joe touch boobs….. girl wet…..mmmm….good….boobs…") As for the rest of the musical acts: Mariah Carey’s own fun-loving breasts (who have to have their own separate agent if they don’t already) made up for the inexplicable presence of Kool & the Gang, whose "Celebration" caused my eye twitch to act up again, as it always does whenever I remember wearing a sky blue, ruffled tux like I did on prom night '82. As for the game itself, Michael Jordan’s potential game-winning shot was overshadowed by Kevin Garnett’s strong…owwwwwww,dammit! Sorry, instead of spending even two more seconds discussing the NBA All-Star Game, I instead chose to do something more enjoyable: I stuck two shish-kabob skewers dipped in Tabasco® sauce directly into my eyeballs. It hurts. A lot. So don’t do it at home. But if you ever find yourself about to break down Ben Wallace or Zydrunas Ilgauskas’s All-Star performance, it’s an easy distraction.

But even worse that any sports void this time of year, however, mid-February means we’ve just celebrated Valentine's Day…or, as it’s known in the Rag household, "Buy Sappy Hallmark® Products, Flowers and An Expensive Dinner Or Else Your Wife Will Tell You Her High School Boyfriend Was Much More Romantic and Better in Bed, Too" Day. Clearly, there’s no love lost between me and this horrific, pre-fab holiday. I feel more of an emotional connection to February 15th , Susan B. Anthony Day. (Oh yes, it’s real, look it up. And before you scoff, ask yourself, where would we be without Susan B. Anthony? Using the same old boring George Washington-headed quarters, that’s where.)

But alas, friends, there is a reason for hope in the sports world. And while it rates a distant second to football season, it’s certainly better than suffering through a Pacers-Bulls NBC game of the week, where the only entertainment is to see whether Ron Artest gets convicted of manslaughter by the third quarter. (Side Note #5: Am I the only one who secretly wishes Dennis Rodman was still playing so we could see him and Artest stabbing each other with crude, homemade shivs while battling for a rebound?).

And what’s that reason for hope? Baseball.

Yes, we’re mere weeks from the opening of the 2003 season, which means one of my earliest loves–no, not Jaclyn Smith, whom I always like better than Farrah–rather, I’m talking about the Boston Red Sox, are starting to find their way onto the Rag radar screen. But unfortunately, the message I have this Valentine’s Day time of year for my fellow citizens of Red Sox Nation is not one of love. But I’ll get to that in a moment….

First, a few brief highlights of my Red Sox Fan resume: I was born in the Impossible Dream season of 1967. I was an 8-year-old, up wayyy past his bedtime, at Game Six – the good, 1975 Carlton Fisk Game Six, not the really, really, really, really horrific 1986 Bill Buckner Game Six. (Side Note #6: For the record, any Sox fan worth his/her salt does NOT blame Billy Buckner for that heartbreak. We blame that colossal buffoon John McNamara, who had apparently already passed out in the clubhouse by the time he was supposed to replace Buckner with Dave Stapleton, or anyone else with two functional human ankles). I was at Fenway for Yaz’s 3,000th hit in ’79, and for his last game in ’83. I was there for the Rocket’s 20 strikeouts, every one of which made the Mariners look like blindfolded children flailing at a piñata. I drunkenly danced on a Pennsylvania dorm room desk when Dave Henderson took Donnie Moore deep in the ’86 ALCS. I was at Fenway for Tom Brunansky’s sliding catch of Ozzie Guillen’s liner to clinch the AL East in ‘90. I was there when Ted Williams was surrounded by the greatest players of all time at the ’99 All-Star Game, and then I saw Pedro start that game by blazing fastballs past Barry Larkin, Larry Walker, Sammy Sosa, Mark McGwire, and Jeff Bagwell. And I was there to see Manny jack his first Sox pitch high into the screen. I’ve been downright lucky to see most of the great Sox moments in person.

But there’s one problem with listing all these magical Sox moments: they remind me of all the moments that, um, weren’t so lucky. And there have been enough of those to fill 50 years of intense psychotherapy. And, more often than not, they have involved -- you guessed it – the Yankees.

Ah, the Yankees. The Bronx Bombers. The Pinstriped Plague. The Evil Empire. Whatever you want to call them, they have long been a very convenient, logical target of Red Sox fear, loathing, and, unfortunately, lots and lots of whining:

"It’s the Yankees fault that we haven’t won a Series since 1918."
"It’s the Yankees fault that we can’t sign the best free agents."
"It’s the Yankees fault that Clemens decided to lay off the Cheez-Whiz®, get his lazy redneck ass in shape, and win three more Cy Youngs."
"It’s the Yankees fault that the Big Dig is $234 trillion zillion dollars over budget."
"It’s the Yankees fault that it burns when I pee."

On and on and on…..

Which brings me to that difficult message: while it’s certainly easy to blame the Yankee menace for our misfortune, we simply have to stop… our….f-ing…whining. Yes, to Sox fans everywhere I say, and I quote the classic J-Lo film, Enough! (Sorry, I couldn’t find anything appropriate from Maid in Manhattan.) Why? Well, not to get all Age-of-Aquarius on you, but until we nip this pathetic cycle of self-pity in the bud, the karmic shift necessary to unseat the Evil pinstriped Empire will simply never happen. Fenway Park opened in 1912–coincidentally, news of the new park’s opening was pushed off the front pages by the sinking of the Titanic, eerily fitting if you ask me–but aside from some great early years, our collective bad vibes have caused a dark haze to envelop everyone within a 100-mile radius of Fenway–like Pigpen’s personal filth cloud in the "Peanuts" cartoons–and to this day, poison our minds and take away our ability to think rationally.

Going into Spring Training 2003, I beg of you, we should simply ignore the Yankees. You heard me, ignore them. It is possible to ignore them, isn’t it? After all, they're a baseball team, not North Korea. They're not that scary. So let’s just not think about them so much, because thinking about them leads to anger which leads to frustration which leads to, you guessed it, whining, which leads to chanting "Jeter swallows!" for no reason during a Sox-Orioles game in early April.

Trust me, the Yankees aren’t thinking about us. (Side Note #7: They claim they don’t think about us, anyway. After all, their most condescending retort is usually "What rivalry? We don’ see the Sox as a rival." But I have this funny feeling that had they lost Contreras to us, Steinbrenner would have gone Vlad the Impaler on his staff and had employee heads skewered on spears all over the Bronx.) So we need to stop using them as a convenient excuse to explain that cold, hollow feeling we have deep inside us where a few World Series titles should be warming our chowder-filled bellies, if there was a God, that is–and that Mookie Wilson ground ball in ’86 proves the jury’s still out on whether He exists. Still, we must look ourselves in the mirror and say, "You’re good enough, you’re smart enough, and gosh darn it, you have to shut your freaking pie-holes about the Yankees and get on with your lives."

It takes more than a little pride-swallowing to do this. But to really kick off the healing process, Red Sox Nation needs to stop looking 214 miles down I-95 for someone to blame, and start regaining that lost ability to reason. Taking off our Boston blinders, and looking at the situation as pure baseball fans, we must admit that over the past 80-odd years–aside from a few Teddy Ballgame pre-war seasons in the mid ‘40’s, the ‘67 Yaz-Lonborg Impossible Dream season, the Lynn-Rice-Fisk-Yaz-Evans ‘75 juggernaut, and the subpar Yankee teams of the late 80’s/early 90’s–the Yankees have simply out-performed, out-planned, out-drafted, out-traded, out-maneuvered, out-pitched, out-hit, out-clutched, out-played and generally out-everythinged the Sox. (Side Note #8: to the Sox fans who bitch and moan about adding "out-spent" to the previous list, please, for the love of all that’s holy, knock it off. You make us all look silly, and, worse, ill-informed. Sure, Kim Jong Steinbrenner II stops at nothing to sign every player in both hemispheres, and, luxury tax or no luxury tax, the Yankee payroll is approaching Bill Gates’ net worth. But it’s not like John Henry needs a crowbar to open his wallet. Tom Werner will not be afraid to spend his "Cosby/Roseanne/3rd Rock/That 70’s Show" money when the time comes. The Sox are not our Jeremy Jacobs-owned Bruins...but that’s a painful topic for another time. We were ready to overpay for Contreras, too, only not to the insane degree that the Boss was. And remember, we’re paying roughly $160 million to a glorified DH who, while being one of the best pure hitters in baseball, has the maturity level of Jonathan Lipnicki and the hair of Sideshow Bob, so we’ve been known to go "drunk-guy-in-Vegas" a few times ourselves.)

Sure, George’s money has been able to pay/retain homegrown stars like Jeter, Posada, Williams, Rivera, and Soriano, a tall order by today’s astronomical salary standards. But the key word, in my opinion, isn’t "pay"…it’s "homegrown." Those guys were original draftees and original products of the strong Yankee farm system who rose through the ranks and became fulltime contributors.

Aside from Nomar, when was the last time we drafted a player and developed him into a perennial All-Star, or even a productive everyday player? Ok, maybe I’ll give you Trot Nixon. And Fossum might, might be a reliable #3 starter. But for every Nomar and Trot there have been a hundred Sam Horns, Scott Coopers, Andy Younts. For every Pedro deal there have been a hundred hair-brained swaps involving future studs like Dennis Tankersley, currently rated one of the best pitching prospects in baseball, who was traded to the Padres for–good Lord, no!!–the first-ballot Cooperstown-bound Ed Sprague. And there have been a hundred instances of the Sox not ponying up the necessary cash to sign original draft picks and potential studs–like Mark Teixera, a Sox mid-round choice in 1999 who is now poised to star for Texas–but never failing to throw giant bags of money with actual "$" symbols on them at the likes of Jose Offerman, Rolando Arrojo, Mike Lansing, Frank Castillo, and Howard Stern wack-packer, High Pitch Eric (just seeing if you’re still paying attention, but you get the point).

Oh, and don’t even get me started on the Jeff Bagwell trade. In the Sox defense, believe it or not, that deal made sense at the time, as Larry Anderson was a key middle reliever down the stretch and Bagwell was a Double A 3rd bagger stuck behind Wade Boggs and the immortal Scott Cooper. But the fact that Bags has been a perennial All-Star since he set foot in Houston brings up a whole slew of Sox talent-evaluation blunders. Basically, other than Duquette’s "Oz"-style sodomy of Seattle in the Slocumb-for-Lowe and Varitek deal, the "good move" pickins have been mighty slim in Beantown.

On the other hand, name one truly bad decision the Yankees have ever made? Buhner for Phelps. And maybe the Eric Milton-Knoblauch deal. That’s about it. Bottom line, the Yankees have not only earned and spent money, they’ve drafted well, developed well, promoted well, traded well, and, bottom line, they’ve earned It. That mysterious It with the capital "I" that has eluded the Sox for the better part of the last century. We shouldn’t complain about it; we should learn from it, and then, maybe, we’ll earn It.

At this point, some of you Sox fans might be ready to call me an Uncle Tom, er, Uncle Tom Yawkey. A traitor. A suck-up to our evil overlords in an attempt to absolve them of their sins. But I’m only reporting the cold, hard truth that we all must face in 2003 before we can heal, and that truth is: anyone that knows baseball knows that for as many baffling, infuriating, Yankee-related, that-can-ONLY-happen-to-the-Red Sox! moments we’ve endured, even the most jaded of us must admit that the Yankees have also earned most, if not all, of their heartbreaking wins over the Sox with countless, genuinely great, clutch performances that are worthy of a noble cap-tip. (Side Note #9: Of those horrible Sox moments, Tim Tschida’s unforgiveable "out" call on Knobby’s phantom tag during the ’99 playoffs – Tschida’s W.C. Fields-esque cheek blubber must have clouded his vision -- and, of course, Bucky Dent’s 9-iron into the screen immediately come to mind. The Tschida incident happened when I was an adult, and the Dent catastrophe happened when I was just a kid, but in both cases, I stomped my feet, turned red and used swears I never thought I knew, something involving a "donkey" or a "monkey.") We forget that Guidry’s win on that fateful one-game 1978 playoff day was his 25th of the season, against three–three!–losses. We forget Roberto "Was Working at Arby’s the Following Year" Kelly’s clutch shot into the screen off Jeff Reardon. We forget all the inside-out bloops to right field that Jeter has dropped on us at the worst possible times, causing us to "swallow." Reggie. Goose Gossage. Catfish. Munson. Mattingly. Jeter. Bernie. Rocket. They’ve all haunted us at the worst possible times over the years. They stole Wade "Couldn’t have looked more awkward atop a horse if he tried" Boggs and the Rocket. But it's not karma, luck, or whatever: the Yanks can simply. play. baseball. They have that come-from-behind mental toughness that no Sox team has had since Henderson/Don Baylor’s ‘86 squad (certainly not last year’s group of flatlined, late-inning zombies). I’m sorry to report that our futile chase of a World Series title has not been solely the cause of witchcraft and eye-of-newt curses whammied on us by some fat dead guy named Babe. It’s not because of the karma the Yanks gained by pilfering Boggs, Clemens, and Don Zimmer from us. Sounds simplistic, but far too many Red Sox fans refuse to believe that our "always-a-bridesmaid" lot in life has been the result of a whole lot of good, gritty, clutch baseball by the Yanks, and too little of the same from our side. But face it, that's been the case. And as a Sox fan, you sure as hell don’t have to like it. But as a baseball fan, you’ve got to respect it

Now, I know that all you Yankee fans might be giggling to yourselves as you read this, most likely while eating your young for dinner, shaving your backs, or asking your stylist for the "Jeter Cut" that will accentuate your humongous, overratedly handsome moon-face (hey, I’d be doing Boston a disservice if I was too nice here and failed to get some digs in). But it’s okay to laugh, to mock us under your breath, to throw rotten vegetables and howl at us like moonshine-swilling rednecks taunting the Amazing Lobster Boy on the Arkansas freakshow circuit. Because full of self-pity and inner loathing though we are, even you have to admit we’re a stubborn lot. We may get knocked down, but we always get back up, grab a cold, frosty "beeeeah," and start yapping at you again about how "this is the yeeeeah." (Hey, that rhymed.) You can’t say anything to us that we haven’t heard 1,236 times before, and, no, you simply can’t hurt us. Like most people who have spent their entire lives stoically fending off ridicule (see "fans, Cubs," "fans, Clippers," "fans, Star Trek" and "fans, Yanni"), we’ve developed quite the thick hide.

So go ahead, bring on the same-old digs: bla bla bla Harry Frazee bla bla bla 1918 bla bla bla Curse bla bla bla Clemens bla bla bla Bucky Dent bla bla bla Bill Buckner. (Side Note #10: this is one of the more curious Yankee taunts, as Buckner’s infamous non-play took place against your crosstown NL conjoined twin, the Mets. It had nothing whatsoever to do with your beloved Pinstriped Menace. But because it occurred in the general vicinity of the Bronx, you’ve somehow convinced yourselves over the years that it was in fact Claudell Washington, and not Mookie Wilson, who drove in Dale Berra, and not Ray Knight to win Game 6.)

ALL THAT SAID....I’m here as an unofficial Red Sox representative to say that here and now, as the Sox are just days away from playing their first of 63 Spring Training games against the Miinnesota Twins, our complaining ends. To the Yankees I say, you go spend your money where you want to spend it. You sign your Godzillas, your Rodans, your Mothras. You play the great baseball that you’ve always played, and as the 2003 season arrives–hey, here’s a new one–we’ll worry about ourselves for a change! Because for once in my life, I am sensing that ever-so-small karmic shift going on in the Sox-Yankees stratosphere that I haven’t felt since, well, forever. Boggs retired a Devil Ray, which immediately negates any pro-Yankee karma he’s been using against us. We finally have a Yankee defector, Ramiro Mendoza, which has to provide some sort of karma boost, doesn’t it? No, it doesn’t quite even out your theft of Clemens (I don’t count his stint in the Great White North), but it’s a start. And don’t look now, but combined with your loss of Stanton, our bullpen, especially if bigtime sleeper Chad Fox stays healthy, could be a biiiig advantage over your suspect group (Chris Hammond replacing Stanton? Yikes.). Age is creeping up (Clemens, Wells, and, especially, Contreras, but more on that geezer in a second), as are potential key injuries (Pettite). We also have Giambi–well, the younger one–but, hey, at least we have one, and call me crazy but he has that look of a guy about to bust into his .290/30/100 prime doesn’t he (sort of like, well, a certain older brother did in Oakland a few years back)? We have owners who loathe the Yankees as much, if not more than the fans do. We have a 1-2 punch in Pedro and Lowe that, bias aside, I would take over Mussina-Pettite in a heartbeat. The Millar thing worked out for the Sox, and while he’s not worthy of all the Globe ink he’s received, he’s still a solid, gritty, kick-the-enemy-when-he’s-down kinda player, the kind Sox fans will swarm to, the kind who usually ends up on, well, the Yankees. Finally, there’s already been a Sox-like rift in Yankees camp, as the Boss started spring training by calling Jeter a "party boy" or something of that ilk. I like it. I like it a lot. Infighting is a great way to start a season.

But where I find the most optimism is in the situation involving the Cuban defector, Jose Contreras. That was a classic Yankees-Sox pissing match, which, as you know, you won. So how in the name of David Cone is this good for the Sox? Well, even though GM/Boy King Theo Epstein flew all the way to Nicaragua to sign Jose while Brian Cashman sat on his ass in the Bronx, filing his nails, and just waited for Contreras to walk through door and beg to play in pinstripes, which he did–pretty much the epitome of the Yankees-Red Sox dichotomy over the years–I still feel ok about the turn of events. Why? Because Sox fans everywhere can rest assured that the Yanks will soon have a Danny Almonte situation on their hands. I mean, really, look at that guy. We weren’t kidding about that Scatman Crothers comparison. No exaggeration...I honestly think Contreras (left) could be 67-years-old. For once, I think the Boss was duped.

And when "Godzilla" Matsui turns out to be the Japanese version of Paul O’Neill (18 HR, 75 RBI at best), then it’s we who can start to smile. Not laugh, or point, or throw garbage, mind you, because we simply haven’t earned that right yet. But we can at least start to think about smirking at the Yankees. Because eventually, all things change. Good teams can get bad (the Yanks of the mid/late 70’s eventually morphed into the Yanks of the mid/late 80’s), and bad teams eventually get good. And since the Sox are already a good team, we don’t have that far to go.

Positive vibes, Sox fans...for once in our miserable lives, let's feel some positive vibes.

Oh, two final stats:

The 1912 Yankees finished 55 games behind the first place Sox.
The 1990 Yankees finished 21 games behind the division-winning Sox.

You see, folks, the karmic shift can happen. It has happened. But it won’t happen again until we stop our whining, and start throwing those good vibes out there in the form of truly believing that the Sox have what it takes to organize an AL East palace coup.

After all, none of you probably thought the Pats would win a Super Bowl in this lifetime, either.