If the Sox can do it, how about Cornell?

[Jerseygirl]

(Imagine me speaking in a cool, even tone, because I am really not ranting)
Hockey players are much hotter in the playoffs than the Sox.  The Yanks played like a team also -- it's not like they didn't have "heart."  Just because Steinbrenner is a maniac who buys whatever shiniest new toy he can get his grubby paws on doesn't mean the guys aren't there to play.  What I am so sick of are people who act as though the Sox are the anti-Yanks.  They're two sides of the same coin.  Yeah, the Yanks have the biggest payroll in baseball, but who's next?  The Sox -- yes, I know it's by a wide margin, but it's not like the players are coaching little league to make ends meet -- and it would have been much higher had the A-Rod trade gone through.  Furthermore, it's not like all these intangibles, the heart, the grit, the determination, are what carried them this far.  The Sox are a talented team.  They're not a ragtag bunch of lovable losers a la the Bad News Bears who gosh darn it found a way to win.  

I'd rather have a hockey team like the Yankees.  That way, we'd get a championship often enough so that the Faithful wouldn't start to whine in January about how much their team "sucked" (one of this board's more prolific poster's complaints last season) when they were at .500 or whatever.  Also, if our hockey team was like the Yankees, at some point in college I probably would have been hit on awkwardly at afterhours by a guy who looked like Derek Jeter, and ain't nothin wrong with that.

[dsr11]

Speaking of the Yankees having a heart, here's a good quote about Steinbrenner's boys this year:

The money is limitless, but what did it get Steinbrenner in 2004? For $184 million, the Yankees became the equivalent of a '70s-era gas guzzler -- huge and loud and impossible to ignore. But step on the pedal, as the Yankees did in Game 7, and there was nothing under the hood.

[KP '06]

I wonder what the odds are of a "Who's your daddy" chant at Lynah tonight?  :-P

[Will]

[Q]KP '06 Wrote:

 I wonder what the odds are of a "Who's your daddy" chant at Lynah tonight?   [/q]

Oh geez, I hope not.  It was bad luck and way too hubristic for the Yankees fans.

[Josh '99]

[Q]Will Wrote:
Oh geez, I hope not.  It was bad luck and way too hubristic for the Yankees fans.[/q]But at least it was in some sort of context.  At Lynah it'd just be nonsenical parroting (and parroting of Yankees fans at that...  blech.)

[puff]

maybe it'd work if the goalie is chased in the first

[Ack]

The Giants haven't won at all since moving to San Francisco from New York...a mini-"curse" if you will.  Somewhere during my lifetime, in the years 1989 and 2002 one of the players must have stepped on the chalk while coming onto the field to start the World Series...
1962: SF Giants "fall inches short" - Yankees win World Series in game 7, 1-0.

1989: The Giants lose to cross-bay rivals Oakland A's and during which, the hand of God shaking the field literally with the largest earthquake since 1906.
2002: Stupid "rally monkey."  The Angels fought, I'll give them that.

Well, I won't consider it a full-fledged curse, and most of this is probably falling on deaf ears...I'm from the wrong side of the country. Besides loving the Giants, I love baseball, and as much as Red Sox and Yankees fans yell each other, the teams put on a good show...fun to watch and always something new, or not - adding to the drama. Here's to an amazing World Series.

Cardinals have a chance to become the second most dominant dynasty in baseball, having already "quietly" claimed 9 championships (tied with the A's), and the Red Sox have a chance to fix their own history...and this isn't the first time the Sox and Cards will meet: there was 1967 (which wasn't a bad year for Cornell hockey) and 1946 (2-0 St. Louis).  There should be a class exclusively about baseball here - someone tell me there is.

[Al DeFlorio]

[Q]Ack Wrote:
...I'm from the wrong side of the country. Besides loving the Giants, I love baseball...[/q]
I love 'em, too, Ack.  Since Bobby Thomson's "shot."  That 7-run ninth at Dodger Stadium was clearly the work of a curse.  Blame it all on the greed of Walter O'Malley. :`(

[Robb]

[Q]Ack Wrote:
  There should be a class exclusively about baseball here - someone tell me there is.
[/q]

Okay.

[DeltaOne81]

[Q]Will Wrote:

 [Q2]KP '06 Wrote:

 I wonder what the odds are of a "Who's your daddy" chant at Lynah tonight?   [/Q]
Oh geez, I hope not.  It was bad luck and way too hubristic for the Yankees fans.[/q]

Hey guys! Scooter here with a tip for all you fans! Chanting "Who's your daddy" isn't so intimidating when your team is down by 7!

[DeltaOne81]

jersey,

actually, they are a rag tag bunch of lovable (postseason) losers. They're just well paid. Besides, you're allowed to overspend when you haven't won in 86 years. You're not when you've won nearly half the WS in the last decade and been in 8 (7?) of them.

Oh, and the ARod thing is a fallacy, remember Manny was going to go to Texas in that trade, so the salary jump wouldn't have been as huge as you imply.

hackgagcoughwheez...

oops, sorry about that, I nearly choked ;-)

[Jerseygirl]

Why is it a choke and not a comeback?  Really, give Boston some credit.  If Theo Epstein was spending all that money and not turning out to be a big market Billy Beane, I would hope John Henry would have whupped that ass a long time ago.  Boston was SUPPOSED to be good this year.  Everyone knew they were good.  Yeah, they were "lovable" losers in the post season the past couple of years.  But each time, Theo saw what went wrong and fine-tuned that part of the team.  Then they got better.  And anyone who thought the Yanks had every tool (no pun intended) in place to win a championship this year was incredibly short-sighted.  No reliable left-hander on the mound?  Come on now.  They were so shaky that when I was at the stadium with my mother early in the season and they were throwing big fat grapefruits across the plate, my mother actually gripped my arm as if to stop me from trying to get onto the field when I said something to the effect of, "Gee darnit, I could throw a couple of innings and have a lower ERA."  I just hope that after the Kevin Brown wall punching incident, George comes to his senses and realizes the locker room is only big enough for so much ego and gets some fresh blood in there.  I'm not holding my breath.

Steinbrenner, psychopath that he is, can overspend to his heart's desire.  Is it sportsmanlike?  No.  But as long as he has the money, he can do whatever he wants.  Likewise, is Geno Auriemma supposed to encourage the best high school prospects to go to second tier baskeball schools in the spirit of encouraging more parity in women's athletics?  No.  It's a competition.  Those in athletics are going to do whatever the rules allow to make their team win.  If Steinbrenner wants to keep paying a luxury tax, let him.  It's his money.

You'll notice that in my defense of my team, I'm not resorting to insult or mockery, except of the owner, but I feel like that's fact, not opinion.  There are enough a-hole Yankees fans (and Sox fans) to go around, and I certainly won't be one of them.  I'll defend my team, of which I have been a fan ever since Derek Jeter was still a skinny, mullet sporting, high schooler, because I am a fan, and a good fan stands by her team.  For the record, though, can we please, please, all agree on one thing, and that is he or she who jumps on the Sox bandwagon now is subject to the same disdain as were those who started saying, "Oh, I'm a Yankees fan" around 1996?

[DeltaOne81]

Wow, give the Red Sox some credit? That's the first time I've ever heard a Yankees fan mutter those words. 11th inning of game 7 of the ALCS last year, and they got absolutely no credit for anything from Yankees fans I know.

The fact if, you don't have a 3-0 comeback for the first time in MLB history without both a collapse and a major run.

And the final truth is, if 90% of Yanks fans (not all, no) weren't so obnoxious, condescending, and spoiled in triumph, then you wouldn't have to put up with this now. Yankees fans can dish it out, but they sure don't seem to be able to take it this week.

[DeltaOne81]

By the way, I was a bit busy, so I didn't respond to the rest of it. But I do agree with you. You seem reasonable and I'll take your word for it that you aren't obnoxious when they win. Obviously no one likes Steinbrenner, but you summed up my complain exactly - totally unsportsmanlike. Sure, Bill Gates COULD go around and buy out the local homeless shelter to turn a profit on it, but I wouldn't have to like him for it (extreme example, yes, but the point of the haves having their way with the have-nots (no, I do not include the Sox amoung the have nots).

Hmmm, unsportsmanlike? Kinda like ARod I guess. Kindred souls perhaps.

Which is the perfect example. Yanks fans give a whole lotts $h!t, and had ARod gotten away with that cheat, and the Yanks had gone on to win in 6, I woulda heard so many times about how the Red Sox suck and blahblahblahcurseblahblah.

I believe ya, Jersey girl, but its funny how all the Yankees fans turn into good Yankees fans when they lose. And when they win, its all "the Sox shouldn't even bother trying, we all knew how it was gonna end."

Oh, and yes, jumping on a Sox bandwagon isn't any better, although perhaps slightly less evil. Although I *did* just move to Boston 2 months ago, so if listening to Boston sports talk every day and hearing people talking about the Sox at work has increased me from "active router" to "fan", I think its extenuating circumstances .

[Jerseygirl]

Hey, I actually happen to like Johnny Damon in general -- I'd like him a lot more if he wore a different outfit to work every day. Maybe you should get to know better Yankees fans.  And while we're giving the Red Sox credit, let's admit that their fans are obnoxious too.  It wasn't a Yankees fan who kept throwing peanuts at my friend David at a game last year until he stood up and told him that if he was going to behave like that, he should go back to his mother's cage.  And while the Yankees fans delayed game 6 by throwing crap on the field, they weren't the ones at Fenway throwing back the Yankees-hit ball that Unfrozen Caveman tried to get rid of by tossing into the stands.  

The reason the non a-hole Yankees fans find the victory so hard to take is not only because its spoils are being enjoyed by our version of the Harvard hockey team, but also because Sox fans apparently don't seem to see anything annoying or obnoxious about their behavior.  And I am not solely talking about the ALCS gloating.  It's the whining all year long, the derision of A-Rod, the questioning of Jeter's sexuality, etc.  Yeah, I'll call Pedro a nutjob (and no, he is NOT welcome by me in the Bronx next year), but that's because last year he hit Derek and Jorge in succession and pointed to his head when Jorge was jawing at him from the dugout.  But I wouldn't dream of personally disliking someone because of the uniform they wear (and yes, I know some Yankees fans would).  FWIW, there are plenty of non-Red Sox players for whom I have no great love.  And some non-Yankees for whom I do (rrrrrrr, Chase Utley, who is not only attractive but a great prospect who hustles his buns off on every play)

BTW, where's my hell yeah for the bandwagon comment?  Do you really want these fans, who will be easy to spot because they have Red Sox jerseys with their own last name on the backs?  The women will be the ones in pink knit hats with the Bosox logo on it.  I'm calling this now.