Tuesday, February 22, 2005
The Idiot King
After the Red Sox dropkicked the Angels out of the playoffs last season, I swallowed my pride and began rooting for the Yankees because of the bad experiences I had with Red Sox fans. I rooted for these people to feel the misery they had coming to them. While still a devout Angel fan, if I had to choose a side of baseball's best rivalry, I would still side with the Yankees, but for a more timely reason. The Yankee players conduct themselves with class and dignity while the Red Sox players are a confessed "bunch of idiots." This distinction was never more clear than in the last two weeks when the Red Sox took cheapshots at Alex Rodriguez while ARod and the Yankees chose not to swing at pitches so clearly in the dirt.
As everybody knows by now, the whole thing started with Rodriguez making some asinine comments about how he's already done with his workouts by the time most players are rolling out of bed. Was this an arrogant and dumb thing to say? Yeah, probably, but I highly doubt it was meant to slight players who take their kids to school or wait 'til the sun comes up to start their workouts. Honestly, it really doesn't even make sense to boast about a rooster-oriented workout. As long as everybody's doing their thing, who really cares what time they do it at? Are there games starting at 6 a.m. this season that I haven't heard of? The season isn't starting in Japan this year last time I checked.
Anyway, ARod's comments, albeit ignorant, were in no way directed at anyone personally. So why did the Red Sox' Trot Nixon have to take it that way? What was the point of calling Rodriguez a "clown" and a "deadbeat dad?" I would think the Red Sox would have been satisfied to beat their rivals in the greatest choke/comeback of all-time, but I guess it's no fun stepping on your worst enemy to win a World Series if you don't get to enjoy some childish namecalling afterwards. And it didn't even stop with Nixon. Six Red Sox players in six days felt it necessary to take shots at the Yankees star third baseman.
I ask you, is it more despicable to slap a ball from a pitcher's hand in the heat of battle or to take unwarranted verbal shots about a player in the preseason news media? I know where I stand on that, and I'm pretty sure Red Sox Nation will disagree with me.
What these guys are doing is the George W. of all bush league moves. After eighty-six long years, they finally won another World Series. In those eighty-six years, the Yankees kept busy by winning twenty-six world series of their own. Granted ARod is yet to win one, but it still looks bad when little brother gets one win out of how many and starts talking trash about a player on the team he finally beat. Apparently, when you're a bunch of idiots, you lose any inclination for graciousness in victory and defeat.
Kevin Millar took it a step further and began detailing how Rodriguez is not really a Yankee, not like a Derek Jeter, Bernie Williams, or Jorge Posada. Since the guy's been on the team all of one season, would you really expect him to have etched himself in Yankee lore already? Give me a break, guys. What is the f'in point, really?
Let me be clear, I am not a Yankee fan. I respect them as an organization dedicated to winning but I have despised the way they bully everyone else in baseball for years. But in this rivalry, I will be rooting for them. It would have been all too easy to fire back at Nixon, Millar, and the other idiots, but the Yankees, like the classy group that they are, took the higher road. They didn't snap at the cheap bait the Sox dangled in front of them and I admire ARod and his teammates for that.
While Nixon's calling people out from Red Sox camp, here's what Alex Rodriguez had to say as a rebuttal.
"The bottom line is they won. They've earned the right to say whatever they need to say."
Sounds like graciousness in defeat to me. Great choice of words, "whatever they need to say." I think that's my main question, why do the Red Sox need to say anything?
It's easy for Red Sox Nation to gripe about ARod's character based solely on that controversial slap play in Game 6 of the ALCS. Players called it bush league and fans called it bitch. You would think a player who would pull such a trick would be some kind of a cheating scoundrel who never wanted to accept responsibility for his shortcomings.
Yet when it comes to the Yankees' team-wide collapse last season, ARod says "Blame it on me. If there's one guy to blame, you've got to look right here."
Sounds like integrity to me. In a rivalry as old as the one between the Red Sox and Yankees, there are so many levels or angles to it, it's really impossible to label one side as the good and the other as the bad. But since I am in an Angel fan and see both teams as obstacles in the goals of my team, I'll just take a side on the simple, evident facts of this ridiculous espn-perpetuated situation. Red Sox players made unwarranted, infantile comments about their opponent and the Yankees handled it with class. If there really is a clown in this whole mess, I'd have to say it was Nixon.
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As everybody knows by now, the whole thing started with Rodriguez making some asinine comments about how he's already done with his workouts by the time most players are rolling out of bed. Was this an arrogant and dumb thing to say? Yeah, probably, but I highly doubt it was meant to slight players who take their kids to school or wait 'til the sun comes up to start their workouts. Honestly, it really doesn't even make sense to boast about a rooster-oriented workout. As long as everybody's doing their thing, who really cares what time they do it at? Are there games starting at 6 a.m. this season that I haven't heard of? The season isn't starting in Japan this year last time I checked.
Anyway, ARod's comments, albeit ignorant, were in no way directed at anyone personally. So why did the Red Sox' Trot Nixon have to take it that way? What was the point of calling Rodriguez a "clown" and a "deadbeat dad?" I would think the Red Sox would have been satisfied to beat their rivals in the greatest choke/comeback of all-time, but I guess it's no fun stepping on your worst enemy to win a World Series if you don't get to enjoy some childish namecalling afterwards. And it didn't even stop with Nixon. Six Red Sox players in six days felt it necessary to take shots at the Yankees star third baseman.
I ask you, is it more despicable to slap a ball from a pitcher's hand in the heat of battle or to take unwarranted verbal shots about a player in the preseason news media? I know where I stand on that, and I'm pretty sure Red Sox Nation will disagree with me.
What these guys are doing is the George W. of all bush league moves. After eighty-six long years, they finally won another World Series. In those eighty-six years, the Yankees kept busy by winning twenty-six world series of their own. Granted ARod is yet to win one, but it still looks bad when little brother gets one win out of how many and starts talking trash about a player on the team he finally beat. Apparently, when you're a bunch of idiots, you lose any inclination for graciousness in victory and defeat.
Kevin Millar took it a step further and began detailing how Rodriguez is not really a Yankee, not like a Derek Jeter, Bernie Williams, or Jorge Posada. Since the guy's been on the team all of one season, would you really expect him to have etched himself in Yankee lore already? Give me a break, guys. What is the f'in point, really?
Let me be clear, I am not a Yankee fan. I respect them as an organization dedicated to winning but I have despised the way they bully everyone else in baseball for years. But in this rivalry, I will be rooting for them. It would have been all too easy to fire back at Nixon, Millar, and the other idiots, but the Yankees, like the classy group that they are, took the higher road. They didn't snap at the cheap bait the Sox dangled in front of them and I admire ARod and his teammates for that.
While Nixon's calling people out from Red Sox camp, here's what Alex Rodriguez had to say as a rebuttal.
"The bottom line is they won. They've earned the right to say whatever they need to say."
Sounds like graciousness in defeat to me. Great choice of words, "whatever they need to say." I think that's my main question, why do the Red Sox need to say anything?
It's easy for Red Sox Nation to gripe about ARod's character based solely on that controversial slap play in Game 6 of the ALCS. Players called it bush league and fans called it bitch. You would think a player who would pull such a trick would be some kind of a cheating scoundrel who never wanted to accept responsibility for his shortcomings.
Yet when it comes to the Yankees' team-wide collapse last season, ARod says "Blame it on me. If there's one guy to blame, you've got to look right here."
Sounds like integrity to me. In a rivalry as old as the one between the Red Sox and Yankees, there are so many levels or angles to it, it's really impossible to label one side as the good and the other as the bad. But since I am in an Angel fan and see both teams as obstacles in the goals of my team, I'll just take a side on the simple, evident facts of this ridiculous espn-perpetuated situation. Red Sox players made unwarranted, infantile comments about their opponent and the Yankees handled it with class. If there really is a clown in this whole mess, I'd have to say it was Nixon.
# posted by j.h.k. @ 6:02 PM 
