This post was delayed because of the announcement of Theo's engagement.

MUSINGS ON THE RIVALRY RENEWED

I guess sooner or later everybody who writes about the Red Sox has to write on the Yankees rivalry. I've mentioned it a time or two myself. Unlike most people who comment on this circus, I have no emotional attatchment to either team. I do have a profound antipathy to the Red Sox, as you might have noticed if you'd read any of my earlier posts.

I'm not thrilled about using the word musings, but it seemed like all the good titles were taken. I think only people with multi-colored soul patches feel comfortable using the word musing. Even then, I bet they only feel comfortable using the word when they talk about outsider art, or the one person shows that they produce to show their loser friends that it was truly bleak to go through their puberty in a suburb where they were tortured by jocks, stuffed into lockers and forced to undergo swirlie after swirlie for the heinous crime of having a bohemian soul. A run-on, I know (actually, I think it might even be 2 or 3 run-ons running onto one another), but how do you break up a sentence like that without ruining the insanity. But back to the point, if there is, or ever was, one.

I am not, or at least I was not, a Yankees fan. I've always hated the Red Sox, but for a long time I hated the Yankees too. Their fans are just about as bad as Red Sox fans. I went to school with a lot of Yankees fans, and if I heard one more person talk about the inferiority complex Bostonians feel toward New Yorkers, I was going to start doing backflips and giggling like Woody Woodpecker.

I don't think Bostonians should feel inferior to New Yorkers for any reason. I've been told that New York has the best museums and theater and culture in the country. I don't care. I don't go to museums. If I feel the need to be bored, I have a number of people I can talk to about how Josh Beckett will easily surpass Cy Young's career stats and how Jim Rice's 1978 season can only be compared to DiMaggio in 1941. Plus, how many times can you really go to the same museum? As for the theater and the rest of the things people with too much time and money on their hands and a morbid desire to torture their fellow man consider culture, I am all set with it.

There is one area in which Bostonians (not me, but you know who you are) feel inferiority to New Yorkers is when it comes to baseball. Red Sox fans are jealous of Yankees fans. And they should be. The Yankee organization is a model for how a franchise should operate. I don't mean Big Stein spending 200 or 300 million to buy a title. I mean the little things that people don't necessarily notice at first.

When the Yankees win a game at home, they play Sinatra's version of "New York, New York" over the PA system. That's pretty classy. It's a great song, it celebrates the city and Sinatra is Sinatra. And then there's the Red Sox organization. When the Sox win a game at home, what plays over the PA? Love That Dirty Water by the Standells. The Standells have nothing else of note in their songbook. Not only that, but the song was written by a guy who got mugged on the MIT bridge. To top it all off, the song sucks.

Like I said a few days ago, this blog has been evolving into my own version of the Festivus Airing of Grievances, and like Frank Costanza, I have a lot of problems with you people. The playing of this particular song is one of them. Surely, in the 370 years since Boston was incorporated as a city someone must have done something worthy of commemoration in song beyond show appalling contempt for the cleanliness of our watershed areas.

Much more will be written in this blog about the pathetic fixation Red Sox fans have with the Yankees. Some of the themes will touch on a website devoted to the hatred of the Yankees, and how much of a fraud it is. For the record, there are many reasons it is a fraud, and none of them relate to their attacks on the Yankees. I've said it before, and I'll say it again, I am not a Yankee fan, nor have I ever been a Yankee fan. The Yankees are merely a convenient foil to my mortal enemies in Red Sox Nation.

Before I sign off this evening, I have an follow up to my recent post in which I railed against Mark Cuban. I didn't watch tonight's game, there was a movie I'd really wanted to see for a while now on cable. So I watched it, but after the fact, I tuned in to TNT's postgame show because I'm a big fan of Charles Barkley, as you might have noticed if you read my earlier work.

To make a long story short, as it's Memorial Day and I've had a beer or two, I noticed that the Mavs were the benificiaries of at least two missed calls down the stretch. Since I've heard that Mark Cuban has sent game tapes to the NBA offices to highlight missed calls or bad calls that hurt his team, I assume that he will send this particular tape to the commish so that these mistakes do not occur again. Only a colossal fraud would point out the officiating errors (and I admit some mistakes must occur as long as there are human beings officiating games) that hurt his team while remaining silent on the missed calls that benefit the Benefactor.

I wonder though whether I will be disappointed in that afformentioned hope of mine. Perhaps the Benefactor is too busy auditioning for the role of Clyde when the studios remake the Clint Eastwood classics Every Which Way But Loose and Any Which Way You Can. I assume that's what he's doing when he watches a Mavs game. Otherwise I can't come up with a plausible explanation for his behaior in the stands.

There is always the possibility that I, for my part, might have bit off more than I can chew in trying the Benefactor. It will, however, be somewhat difficult for him to have a problem with my calling him a fraud when he doesn't send that game tape to the league office. Good night, and good luck to you, Mark Cuban, if ever you decide that this site might have libelled you in the last week or so.

Today was a sad day for the female citizens of Red Sox Nation. I suppose it was also a sad day for some of the male citizens, but that is not the Cincinnati Kid's business. We here at Sedition in Red Sox Nation advocate tolerance for everybody, with the notable exceptions of Red Sox fans and the Boston media. We also refer to ourselves in the third person and show a flagrant disregard for employing the editorial we right on top of the third person. I think that makes it triply flagrant, using the editiorial we in a blog that cries to the heavens for competent editing.

Theo Epstein, or America's Prom Date as he's known on this site, is getting married. Personally, I don't care. However, it does afford me an opportunity to add insult to the injury some fans felt when the news broke.

I am not as impressed with Theo as everybody else in New England seems to be. He did bring Boston it's first World Series since Woodrow Wilson ran the show. That is a fairly impressive accomplishment. Of course, the list of Red Sox GMs from 1918 to 2003 doesn't read like a roster of Nobel Prize Winners. And yes, I am still deeply disappointed that the Sox won that title.

I don't think that I am bitter about it, though. I was bitter before that day, and I will be bitter come October, when I can throw a little Crowded House on the radio and torment Red Sox Nation when they fall short of the Promised Land. I do hate the Red Sox more now than I did before they won the Series, but I find myself hating the Red Sox more each day than I did on the day before. That's been going on for a long time now, it's actually starting to worry me. It can't be good for my health. But if it kills me, I will have died doing something that I loved, so I have that going for me, which is nice.

But back to Theo. I guess I wish him the best in his personal life. At least I try not to wish him any ill beyond total and complete professional failure so long as he runs the team. What bothers me is the amount of attention people pay him. I don't know that what he did was all that much more impressive than Ken Williams putting together a championship White Sox team.

Now that I think about it, I think Ken Williams had a much tougher task building that team than Theo had winning in Boston. The White Sox have a smaller payroll (103 mil vs. 120 for the BoSox), a longer tradition of losing (1917 vs. 1918 might not seem so big, until you factor in the thrown series in 1919), a worse relationship with the local media (the CHB for as big a tool as he is pales in comparison with Jay Mariotti) and maybe the worst behaved fans in the free world (Eagles fans are bad, but when has the wife of an opposing player been hit in Philly?).

And then there's Halloween. The GM of the team with the second highest payroll in Major League Baseball snuck out of the team offices in a gorilla suit? I'm still having trouble accepting that. Some of my friends, who for reasons of their own root for the Sox, have attempted to convince me that this was cool. I am not buying that. To me, it called to mind images of Magnum PI sneaking out of the Robin Masters' estate because he promised Higgins he'd water the begonias.

I think the best part of the whole mess is that it reaffirmed one key fact. The Globe sports department sucks. That fact has been well established. After all, I am but the latest in a long line of bloggers and other types who have gone at the CHB. But when push comes to shove, the lions in their dens between Landsdowne and Yawkey Way tremble at the CHB's approach.

Our beloved Theo, Prom Date to the Dateless, Spendthrift Disciple of Billy Beane and Mastermind To End All Masterminds dressed in a gorilla costume. A nice nod to the day, perhaps, but not the way to go out. If I were going to go out, I'd go out like Brian Cox when he came out to the boos of the Buffalo fans, with both birds held high. Or maybe like a drunken Tony Montana bidding his fellow restaurant patrons to say good night to the bad man.

I suppose I'm being a bit harsh to Theo. No matter what he's done among my enemies, his grandfather did write Casablanca. That should be worth a free pass for a generation or two. I imagine it would be, were I not a sad, small person consumed by trivial hatreds. But I admit that. That makes me a good person.

Ladies and Gentlemen, I apologize for the delay in updating this fevered dream I call Sedition in Red Sox Nation. I do have my reasons. First, this blog was recently subject to review by the site that hosts it. I did not discover that until I tried to post and my computer crashed. I hadn't saved a draft of the post on which I was working at the time, so I was a bit angry. I didn't get around to redoing it as I had more pressing concerns at the time. After that, I went on vacation for a while. I am back now, and ready to get back to subverting the confederacy of dunces that is the Boston Red Sox.

I know I promised a new feature in one of my posts. I was working on it at the time of the computer crash. Unfortunately, anger and laziness have conspired to delay it still further. I simply am not ready to run with it yet. It does exist, at least on a conceptual level, as I write this. However, in my travels, I got the idea for a new segment which strikes me as more interesting at the moment. WIthout further adieu (and with nothing more than a working title at this point), here it is...

RANDOM THING I HATE INSTALLMENT 1:

I hate a great many things. The overwhelming majority of them are, in the grand scheme of things, trivial. Among them, you might have noticed (provided, of course, that you have read any of my previous posts) the Boston Red Sox, Red Sox fans and Danny Ainge. That is just the tip of the iceberg. I am a small and petty person, a bastion of negativity seeking to make other people unhappy.

This particular segment exists under the working title "Random Thing I Hate" because I can't come up with something better at the moment. It is random in the sense that it is something I hate that is not related to the stated purpose of this site. Basically, every day in my life is Festivus, this blog is my version of the Festivus Airing of Grievances and this particular segment is my way of telling those outside of Red Sox Nation that, in the immortal words of Frank Costanza: "I have a lot of problems with you people, and you're going to hear about them."

The first grievance I have is with the Benefactor. I cannot stand Mark Cuban. He's a fraud. He sold Broadcast.com to Yahoo at just the right time, which was quite lucky for him. I also have to give him credit for that. I will not believe that he's a latter-day JP Morgan until I enter the url for broadcast.com or broadcast.yahoo.com and see something. One cannot help but wonder where he would be if Yahoo held out just a little longer in the wake of the Broadcast.com IP, or he'd played a bit harder to get.

But I must temper my contempt for his business acumen by remembering that he did acquire Antoine Walker from the Celtics for what amounted to magic beans. I imagine that is a little harsh, after all, Raef LaFrentz is probably the best center to hover around the 3 point line and play defense once in a blue moon since Arvydis Sabonis retired. And Jiri Welsch was awesome.

His behavior in the crowd at games bothers me to no end. To put it plainly, I think he looks and acts like a jackass. He runs onto the court after playoff games to criticize officials. He flails and flops around his courtside seat each time a call goes against the Mavericks. For the most part, he conducts himself like a 3 year old in dire need of a time out.

As I watched him in this postseason, I kept remembering something I'd read. It took me a while to dig it up again, but when I did I think the author summed up Mark Cuban quite nicely. The author is George Orwell, and in his essay As I Please 6, he wrote about "the exceptional ugliness and vulgarity of the faces displayed" in the New Year Honours List (which as I understand it is, or was, a document issued in Britain to celebrate people who had recently been endowed with titles).

The particular quote that caught my eye in connection with Mark Cuban reads: "...I saw in Picture Post some 'stills' of Beaverbrook delivering a speech and looking more like a monkey on a stick than you would think possible for anyone who is not doing it on purpose."

I think that sums up Mark Cuban's deportment. He looks like a monkey on a stick. The question then must be asked: is he doing it on purpose? I think he is. After all, he has managed to become a B list celebrity. He had that awful show that ABC mercifully cancelled. He gets to hang out with George Clooney and produce movies that courageously stand up against McCarthyism 50 years after the fact. He reminds me of the little dog from the cartoons who is always yipping and yapping at the bigger dogs to attract their attention.

Personally, I don't care who is on the A list or the B List. Celebreality, in my way of thinking, is one of the worst TV genres to crop up in the last few years. I do not lose myself from my mundane concerns when I see the rich and famous acting with entitlement and avoiding responsibility. But I must confess, I did laugh like hell when I read that Mark Cuban got shut out of a trendy night club in New York. Apparently he even offered the doorman $1,000. Of course that is 3rd hand gossip, picked up from a New York tabloid via Wikipedia. It's not too hard to imagine the Benefactor trying to pass the bouncer a grand while 18 yr old Jersey girls who were on the list breeze past.

It might be possible for him to get in if his team wins the NBA title, but (as we know if we read his blog) the NBA conspires to deny Cuban the O'Brien Trophy. That is the only possible explanation. If the NBA allowed its officials to call the game as Dr. Naismith intended, Dallas would have 3 or 4 rings by now. Of course, based on the way he behaves in the crowd and "writes" in his blog, it seems to me that the only way to properly officiate a Mavs game is to have every opposing player start the game with 3 fouls. Perhaps the NBA could even work in a power play or two for the Mavericks.

I really don't know what to say about his grand gesture on fan appreciation night. It was awfully sporting of him and American Airlines to give the fans plane tickets. I know times are tough for the airlines, but you'd think the Benefactor could have done a bit better than a roundtrip to San Antonio, Houston, KC or St.Louis. Hell, he could probably have sent them all to Maui and not even have to think twice before asking for extra cheese on his next Texas Double Whopper.

I hate Mark Cuban. I am in a difficult spot, though, because I hate the Pistons and the Suns. For now, I draw some consolation in the fact that Antoine and the Heat are up 1-0 on Detroit who looks amazingly mortal. If Ben Wallace could get called for the occasional over-the-back and pick up a blocking foul when his feet aren't set, who knows what might be. I'm not enough of an optimist to believe that Prince will ever be called for 1 handcheck out of three. But maybe the Pistons will lose. There is always a chance.

Great Moments in Red Sox History #3

Dateline: 5/25/02

I must confess, I don't know who the Red Sox played on this date. It seems like a strange intro for the third episode of Great Moments in Red Sox History, but you have to bear with me for a second. All will become clear in time. Or at least it will become less clear but in a way that I hope is somewhat entertaining.

The scene for our great moment in Red Sox history is the Fleet Center. It was a great day for Boston sports. The Celtics completed the largest 4th quarter comeback in NBA playoff history, overcoming a deficit of 21 points at the beginning of the last quarter. They beat the New Jersey Nets, a team which I really hate. Antoine Walker had a big game (he ended up with 23 points, but he kept the Cs alive when the rest of the team was ice cold from the floor).

I was at this game. I was having a hell of a time. When Jason Kidd touched the ball, I booed and screamed "Wifebeater" at him with the rest of the crowd. Perhaps it was not an enlightened way to pass an afternoon, but life is too short not to do dumb things on occasion. Over the course of the game, I noticed something I found disconcerting. Fans in the Fleet Center started up a "Yankees Suck" chant. I found that to be pathetic.

Since I am not a Red Sox fan, I do not suffer from the inferiority complex that bedevils Bostonians when it comes to the Bronx Bombers. I don't have a problem with negativity and hostility against opposing teams (as I said in the preceding paragraph, I booed Jason Kidd). I do, however, have a problem with chanting "Yankees Suck" at every opportunity.

There is a time and a place for that sort of behavior. It's at Fenway Park when the Yankees are in town. If you chant "Yankees suck" when the Royals are in town and losing by 10 runs, you are a tool. One day when I have more time and find myself less depressed than I am at the moment (there's nothing like a 3 game Red Sox winning streak to put a damper on a weekend), I might describe in detail the order of magnitude for tools of the human variety. Tonight just isn't that night.

I don't really know where I'd put the tools who chant "Yankees Suck" at Fenway when they aren't playing the Yanks. It's not really that high on the list. It certainly doesn't challenge the level of tool that sings U2's One at the top of their lungs in a bar.

That image is fresh in my mind since I recently witnessed such a spectacle. Now I like U2 a lot, and I really like that particular song. I merely think Bono recorded the definitive version. I certainly don't want to hear some jackass with a beard the like of which hasn't been popular since Sir Walter Raleigh stalked the Earth sing it. It was not a good time, but I digress.

That kind of tool, the lizard king of the yuppies in Anytown, USA is the same kind of tool who chants "Yankees Suck" at a basketball game. A basketball game. A playoff basketball game. The first time the team had been to the conference finals in over a decade. The series was tied 1-1. The team pulled off a miraculous comeback. And all that people in the crowd can think about is that now would be a good time to chant "Yankees Suck."

You can tell yourself whatever you want about the myth of the inferiority complex in Red Sox Nation. You can't change the fact that Red Sox fans chant "Yankees Suck" at the drop of a hat, regardless of time and place. I've seen people with "Yankees Suck" shirts walking up to the Communion line at Mass. It really makes me question whether intelligent life exists on this planet.

I suppose I'm overreacting to this particular instance of the "Yankees Suck" phenomenon. Just because it was an historic moment for the NBA and for the Celtics organization does not mean that it should displace a preoccupation with New York and the Yankees for even an instant. After all, it was just another moment. It's not as though Red Sox fans saw fit to chant Yankees Suck at a moment as significant as Bruce Springsteen playing the first rock concert in Fenway Park's then 91 year history. Oh wait, they did.


P.S. I have it on reliable authority that Danny Ainge was quoted in the Herald in the not too distant past intimating that he had no idea what direction the team needed to take in the upcoming draft. What a shock! I must say, I'd be infinitely more surprised if he did know that. It might be a first sign that a man who has been around the NBA as a player, broadcaster and executive since 1981 is developing a small measure of basketball IQ.

Here's an idea for you, Danny. Draft the stiff from West Virginia. The best way to find out if he's really the second coming of Raef LaFrentz has to be to pair them up on a team. Then we could completely reverse conventional wisdom as it applies to basketball. Guard could go down and post up, and 7 footers could stand at the three point line and look useless. That will sell some tickets.

It is May 4, and the season is 28 games old. Papelbon was recently named the DHL Deliveryman of the Month for April. Perhaps this could lead to a potential career in package delivery, in case this baseball thing doesn't work out. I am as well aware of the fact that he has "electric stuff" as anyone. I'm just not convinced from one month of work that he can handle the pressure of closing games for a full season. He wouldn't be the first "can't miss" pitching prospect with "electric stuff" who ended up missing, after all (I know I've said this before).

There is also the question: "How will Red Sox Nation react if he should blow a few saves down the stretch?" Imagine what his life will be like if he chokes in a big game against the Yankees at the end of the season. Obviously, with Papelbon allowing his first 9th inning run of the season last night in the loss to Toronto, the honeymoon period isn't over yet. Sooner or later, this situation will worsen. The law of averages is on my side here.

Things could be a little better from my perspective. The Red Sox are 5-5 over their last ten games. In a perfect world, they'd be 0-10, but I've learned to live with disappointment. I also can't complain all that much, as I mentioned the Trilateral Commission and Howard Hughes in a blog with sedition in its title and I haven't been detained for questioning by any of the duly appointed authorities. It is a good thing that being long-winded and having inelegant sentence structure are not yet illegal, at least for me.

On that note, I couldn't help but notice that more people are visiting this site earlier and more often than I had expected at this point. I couldn't help but notice because one of the friends of this site (who is far more skilled in high tech matters than I) told me. He also told me that my posts are "incoherent but inspired." I am sure that he's right, but I have neither the time nor the inclination to change that.

Actually, I must confess that I do have the time. I'm just a bit lazy. Like Arthur Dent said in The Hitchiker's Guide to the Galaxy: "I seem to be having tremendous difficulty with my life-style." The blog needs more editing, but I don't want to do it. That said, I am a bit disturbed by the number of simple mistakes that have slipped past me and spell check. Since I don't want to look like any more of a jackass than is absolutely necessary, I promise to work on a way to clean up minor errors without taking away the raving stream of consciousness that gives the blog its peculiar charm.

That accounts for my minor errors. There is, however, one glaring error somewhere in this blog. Unlike the minor errors, it is not a product of my sloth (the deadly sin, not the three-toed or seven-toed variety). It is deliberate and calculated, and it's there for two reasons. The first is that I remember hearing one day that the guild of weavers who wove Oriental rugs in earlier times deliberately wove an inconsistency into the pattern because only God is perfect. The second is that one of the core principles of this site is that Red Sox fans will refuse to acknowledge obvious flaws and deficiencies in their team, so how could they notice one in a site like this.

Now that I've finished my post for the evening, I will conclude by promising another installment in my Great Moments in Red Sox History series, and a brand new feature. Good night, and go Orioles.

P.S. In the wake of a sort of informal survey that I have conducted recently, I think I might be the only person in the North East that will admit to liking REO Speedwagon. As for whether or not that makes me a geek, I think that ship sailed with the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy reference. What can you do, though? It's not like publishing a pseudonymous blog was helping. And in case you were curious (which I doubt), among the words not found in the dictionary of this site's spellcheck utility is the word blog itself. Ironic, isn't it?

What can I say about the Red Sox in the last few days? It was nice to see them struggle so mightily against the Devil Rays Scott Kasimir (probably misspelled his name, but who cares?). Then there was last night's media circus for the return of Doug Mirabelli. Imagine if he'd been a .300 hitter or an every day player?

It was a big coup for America's Prom Date. I wonder how much it cost the city, and will John Henry reimburse the tax payers?

Of course, Johnny Damon returned to the Fenway for the first time, and was lustily booed. A lot has been made of whether or not this was justified, since he did contribute so much to the team in his tenure with the Red Sox. Personally, I don't think the fans owed him any more than he owed them. I do, however, wonder if there might be more than the casual fan (or the die hard who drinks 30 beers in the stands) perceives to this situation.

Could the dramatic attention paid to the return of a very average role player have been a smoke screen on the part of America's Prom Date? Could he have his own covert reasons for trying to distract the fans from Johnny Damon's first appearance in Fenway as a Yankee?

I couldn't help but notice that Damon, who I was told thrived in hostile environs as a member of the Red Sox, may as well have left his bat in the dugout when he went to the plate for all the good it did him and his team. He also played the field as though he'd never set foot in the stadium before. I don't know whether he'd have caught the Ortiz homer if he'd have been better positioned or took a better line to the ball, but at least it might have been easier to watch the ESPN shows today if he had.

Then there was the fly ball that Jeter overran. It was somewhat amusing to see Manny, whose defensive inconsistencies have been beaten to death by this point, helping Wily Mo Pena track down fly balls in center field. It was somewhat surprising to see Damon, who had enjoyed a reputation as a solid defender (except for the fact that he throws abysmally), found himself out of position at times and was less than helpful to his teammates. I imagine one could attempt to explain this by bringing up the fact that Jeter is a Gold Glove winner. He is also a veteran of many games in Fenway, whereas Wily Mo is brand new to the team, the stadium and a natural right fielder.

I don't mean to insinuate that he was part of some deep seeded conspiracy with America's Prom Date and John Henry (who would have some nickname based on his bizarre Howard Hughes like obsession with neatness on his yacht if I had the time to think of one). Actually, I do mean to insinuate that, but I mean it jokingly. He had a bad game. I imagine he was nervous coming back to Fenway, and the boos and money thrown in his direction rattled him just a little bit. I seriously doubt that Theo, Damon and JH are a new Trilateral Commission. Among the three of them, they don't seem to possess the intellectual capacity or the moral turpitude.

Every once in a great while, I find myself sharing something with the citizens of Red Sox Nation. This past offseason, it was a profound sense of disappointment that Johnny Damon was leaving town. I believed (and still do) that he was old and injured. I don't think he'll be the same player he once was. I really wanted the Red Sox to overpay for him. And then the Yankees got into the picture. I was not pleased.

I am not a Yankees fan, but I don't think they're the Evil Empire either. As a native Bostonian, I never liked New York teams, but because I hate the Red Sox and the vocal, oppressive contingent among their fans, I found myself warming up to the Yankees. The enemy of my enemy is my friend, as the old saying goes.

I also found it slightly hypocritical of Larry Lucchino to come out and call the Yankees the Evil Empire after they out-overpaid (not a word, I know, but sometimes flagrant abuse of syntax is required to remind Red Sox fans of recent unpleasantness) for Jose Contreras. Lest we forget that the Red Sox booked every room in the hotel where Contreras was staying to try to corner the market on him.

The Red Sox aren't exactly the Twins or the Pirates, after all. They spend as freely as their means allow, like the Yankees do. The real issue between the two teams is that Big Stein has a bigger stadium and better infrastructure for raising revenue from his team. And if you don't believe me, watch the bidding war that will develop over Clemens if the opportunity arises.

That is just one of the reasons I hate the Red Sox and the majority of their fans. They sit there and swallow the organization's hypocrisy as though it were their job. Like all hypocrites everywhere, I hate little more than I hate hypocrisy. I think the blanket generalizations and wild allegations I have made against the Sox in the short history of this blog are ample evidence of this. Nor do I anticipate that I will stop such behavior. But I admit that I am a hypocrite, which makes me less hypocritical than. At least that's what I tell myself.

Since I lost whatever narrative thread was supposed to tie this post together, I think it's time to sign off. But before I go, I think it's good to go out on a more positive note. I was watching the TNT Basketball Half Time Show tonight during the Chicago-Miami game, and I heard one of the best lines Charles Barkely has ever delivered.

Kenny Smith was wearing a velour suit with some kind of rhinestone trim. And whenever he moved in his seat, the things would bump into the desk and make noise. During one of Barkley's monologues, he was distracted by that noise. So Sir Charles turned to him and hit him with the line: "Where did you get that suit? Toys R Us?"

I thought it was quite funny. I also enjoyed the follow up: "What did you buy it at TJ Max?" And I think he hit the mark when he complained of some of the fouls called on Shaq by saying: "After all, this isn't the WNBA."

Good night and go Blue Jays.