originally posted october 23, 2004

Humble Pie

So the ALCS has come and gone, and there's really not much more to say than that. I arrived in my office this past Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday to smirking co-workers who I dismissed by saying "we'll win the next one." On Thursday, the day after the legendary game-seven loss, I arrived at 10:30 AM to a smug, satisfied group of co-workers. Fortunately for me, the ones who would have given me the hardest time had been drinking heavily (in some cases, extremely heavily) the previous night.

Lessons Learned

I've learned a few things from watching the ALCS over the last week. Here they are in no particular order.

In Álex Rodríguez, the Yankees spent $200 million for a player whose 2004 performance will be best remembered for slapping the ball out of Bronson Arroyo's glove in game 6. Among baseball fans I know, this controversial play has led to the creation of the verb "to A-Rod" which means "to slap rudely out of another's hand." Example usage: "Put that controller down before I A-Rod it."

The programming grids that ReplayTV uses are hopelessly inadequate. On Monday, game 4 of the ALCS was supposed to run from 5-8 PM and the NLCS game that night was supposed to run from 8-11 PM. What actually happened was that the ALCS game ran until about 11:10 PM, followed by the conclusion of the nine-inning NLCS game. From that point forward, I allocated six hours of space for each game.

That said, it's very convenient to start watching a game on at least an hour on tape delay. All the pre-game festivities, Denis Leary monologues, and irritating promos require just a button-press to skip. As long as I had enough space for each game (see above) it was possible to spend about 30 minutes watching an hour of any game.

In game 2, it was great to hear the Yankee Stadium crowd chanting "Who's your daddy?" as the Yanks shelled Pedro Martinez. In game 7, the chant was kind of sad as the Yanks could only cut the Sox's lead from seven runs to five. Taunts don't work as well when your team is faring so poorly.

The chant "Who's your papi?" is awful. It's hopelessly derivative and Sox fans should be ashamed for buying into it.

David Ortiz has a new obscene middle name among Yankees fans. His performance in the clutch of games 4 and 5 genuinely earned him the title of series MVP.

The Pittsburgh radio DJs I listen to are unwaveringly anti-Yankees, although at least one is objective about the Sox as well. The DVE morning show got me out of bed quite easily and bitterly this week with their root-for-the-$127-million-underdogs cheerleading. At least Scott Paulsen of 105.9 "The X" got it dead-on in his October 21 commentary:

The Red Sox win. George Steinbrenner now gets to fire anybody he wants. We will see who the Bosox will face after tonight's game seven in St. Louis. Will it be the Cardinals, who have tried to buy the pennant, or the Astros, who have tried to buy the pennant? Which will face the Boston Red Sox, who have bought the pennant? Meanwhile, I'll be over here with my Jack Wilson bobblehead doll if you need me.

For the Pirates faithful, "prospects" will become the 2005 buzzword of choice. The Yankees have no prospects and will have to buy their way into the ALCS next year (again). The Pirates have some great prospects, but history has shown that any player good enough to bring the Buccos over .500 for a while will get traded.

Torn About the World Series

Despite what the Boston faithful's rioting might tell you, the "Curse of the Bambino" is still in effect. The Curse does not concern beating the Yankees, but rather winning the World Series. The Sox were last in the Series in 1986, where they were six outs from the crown before an unfortunate turn of events that many people remember incorrectly. The Cardinals, on the other hand, last went to the Series in 1982 and won it then.

In New York, Yankees fans have appeased their conquerors.New York Mayor Mike Bloomberg (a native Red Sox fan politically obligated to root for the Yankees now) gave Boston Mayor Tom Menino some New York deli foods and Junior's cheesecakes. In a bizarre move, the proprietors of Mickey Mantle's restaurant announced they would change their name to "Ted Williams" and make employees wear Red Sox jerseys; it turns out that owner Bill Liederman was just joking. The Mantle family was not amused.

I'd like the Sox to win the World Series. The one season of gloating will be enough to silence the whiny Boston fans for my lifetime (assuming I die within the next 86 years). The Sox fans will never be satisfied, however, in knowing that the Yankees will forever be the better-known team in the league. That's what really upsets Yankee haters: casual baseball fans will always know the Yankees as the iconic team of American baseball, even though it's less compelling to root for such a historically successful team. Life will go on for both camps: the Bronx faithful will continue to pay $20 for nosebleed seats in the Stadium, and the Red Sox Nation will pack into Fenway no matter how much it costs to prop up the biggest #2 payroll in any American sports league.

I don't know anything about the St. Louis Cardinals, so there's no way I can make any decent prediction about who's going to win. History suggests the Cardinals in 7, but the Sox are already 8:5 favorites in Vegas. Both teams have tremendous momentum: the Cardinals won on a 12th-inning home run in the most exciting game 7 since last October in the Bronx, and the Sox have a four-game winning streak to uphold.

Last year I didn't even care about the World Series, which the Yankees lost in six games to the Florida Marlins, because of the sheer gravity of the ALCS. This year I plan to watch the games but without disrupting my sleep patterns. Two weeks of long work hours and television-saturated nights have not been good to me. Now I can get back to hanging out with friends on friendly terms, eating dinner that wasn't ordered from a speaker box, and finally joining a gym like I've been talking about for months.

It's a great time to be a baseball fan.

Back to October 2004, or to the year 2004.