Boston Still Sucks

Yet more fallout from baseball's managerial carousal, and even a dose of that dreaded, overused word "closure"...

You know Don Mattingly really wanted that Yankees job. Even his typically classy responses couldn't hide his disappointment at being passed over for Joe Girardi. "Vengeance is not running through me at all," he said. "Trust me, I'm not all of a sudden going to start rooting for the Red Sox." Mattingly went on to admit he considers himself a New Yorker, even if it looks like he's gonna have to switch coasts now to continue to ply his trade as a coach before the next manager spot opens up.

70 years ago, another all-time Yanks great, one George Herman Ruth, was denied his dream of managing in the Bronx, and it all but crushed the life out of him. Wanting to remain in baseball after his playing days ended in 1935, The Babe took a first base coaching with the Dodgers in the middle of the 1938 season, but quit after the year ended. That was his last job in Major League Baseball. Let's hope Donnie Baseball -- who merely represented Yanks fans only real reason to keep watching during the downbeat 1980s/early '90s period -- has a happier fate awaiting him.

Curt Schilling, undoubtedly a great pitcher and a big-game performer for the ages, can also be a first-class jerk-off. Schilling keeps a blog, 38pitches.com, where his overriding narcissism is on display for all. He's been known to call up Boston sports talk shows to set the record straight. Like all great players, if he's on a team you root for you can put up with his personal brand of nonsense -- see players like Terrell Owens, Deion Sanders, Ron Artest. But Schilling just went out of his way to state that as a free agent, he would consider playing for any team EXCEPT the New York Yankees. Schilling also found the time to write letters to his Red Sox mates after the World Series. "I actually broke out a pen and paper the last couple days and wrote letters to some people here, just to say goodbye," Schilling said. "There's a very realistic chance I won't ever play with them again." Chief Bloody Sock obviously thinks the world hangs on his every word.

Somehow Schilling still found some time in his busy new life as a man of letters to take a few more cheap shots at the Yankees' search for a new manager, saying it was nice of them to make sure "we were updated every 15 minutes about when they were actually going to name their manager. I didn't give a crap. Bottom line was they're playing golf and making organizational decisions and we're still playing games." That's the classy high road we would expect from a right-wing schmuck who campaigned for George Bush in 2004, once expressed interest in running for John Kerry's Senate seat as a Republican, and more recently has criticized Hillary Clinton for her opposition to the war in Iraq.

No matter where he ends up (and Schilling lists Cleveland, Detroit, Anaheim, New York Mets, Philadelphia, Atlanta, L.A., S.D., Arizona, Chicago Cubs, St. Louis and Milwaukee as teams he would deign to grace with his presence), you have to hand it to him: Schilling is the type of asshole who makes sports a little more interesting, if only because hoping for bad things to happen to him keeps fans like me coming back for more.
Here's how much I hate the Red Sox and really all Boston area teams now: Patriots, Celtics, Boston College ... hell, I won't even drink Sam Adams beer anymore -- I would rather see the Mets win it all next year than the Red Sox get anywhere near the Big Show again. Even as a Yankees fan born & bred to hate the Mets, I'm here to tell you that nothing is more insufferable than hearing arrogant Sawx fans calling WFAN and talking trash.

In 1986, when the Mets and Red Sox squared off in the Fall Classic, I was rooting hard against Dwight Gooden, Daryl Strawberry, Gary Carter and the rest of the Mets. Now, that '86 Mets team was easy to root against as a Yankees fan, but the current version with guys like Willie Randolph, Orlando Hernandez and David Wright is not as automatically detestable as it was then -- even with their fair share of me-first players and prima donnas like Lastings Milledge and Paul Lo Duca.

In fact, it wouldn't be such a bad thing if the Mets reached the World Series at some point in the near future -- if only for the amount of sheer joy it would bring to the lives of family and friends who live and die with the fortunes of the Flushing Nine. My Aunt Vickie has been sick for the last few years, undergoing chemotherapy for a form of blood cancer she's been battling. She literally never misses a game and loves Jose Reyes' unbridled joy as he runs the bases. My Aunt Helen is in her 70s now and the Metropolitans are the love of her life after Uncle Sal passed away a few years ago. And close buddies like Tony, John and my boy Gatt down in Florida have been hoping for a winner for a long time now. The Mets' epic collapse down the stretch this past season had to be like a kick in the gut -- minus the actual physical pain of a sharp blow to the solar plexus. Maybe I'm getting soft in my old age, or maybe I've just learned to put things in perspective. But after all, it's only a baseball game; it's not like it's football or something really serious.

During the non-stop Joe Torre watch following the Yankees' elimination from the playoffs, where seemingly every minute of New York sports talk radio was dedicated to the possible scenarios and potential candidates, one ESPN-Radio host offered this analogy: Joe Torre was like the outgoing Johnny Carson when he retired from the Tonight Show, with Don Mattingly playing the role of Jay Leno and Joe Girardi standing in for David Letterman. His logic was that Leno/Mattingly was the safe choice to replace Carson/Torre, but that Girardi/Letterman was the right choice. Not a bad analogy, but like most talk show hosts, he couldn't make a point and move on but had to belabor it for more than an hour. That's 60 minutes of my life I won't be getting back, as the kids like to say...