November 7, 2007
THEY'LL ALWAYS HAVE THE 20TH CENTURY:
The sorrow and the pity: a Bronx tale (Alex Beam, November 7, 2007, Boston Globe)
Admit it, now that the World Series trophy has paraded through every Middlesex village and farm. You are starting to feel a little sorry for them. The New York Yankees, I mean.Truth be told, they are pathetic. Their greatest current player, Me-Rod, is stinking up the sport, baying for lucre that he doesn't need. Their Murderers' Row of pitching aces is headed for the glue factory. Mussina, Pettitte, Clemens, Rivera - stick a fork in 'em. They're done.
The mark of greatness is empathy, and we are wallowing in it.
The grandkids will be attracted to the lovable losers in pinstripes. Posted by Orrin Judd at November 7, 2007 7:06 AM
Actually, this is shaping up to be a replay of the 20th. Traditionally, the Yankees start a century very slow, just as they are doing here. The Red Sox, on the other hand, traditionally start the century very strong, then suffer 8 decades of failure. They and their predecessors won 5 World Series by 1918, but that was it. The Yankees didn't start winning World Series until 1923, but accumulated 26 before the century ended.
Posted by: mgarbowski at November 7, 2007 8:46 AMBut the Babe is dead.
Posted by: oj at November 7, 2007 9:29 AMOne team has the best young pitching in baseball.
The other depends for almost their entire offense on an aging hall-of-fame left fielder and an overweight, a32 year old dh with bad knees.
Who ya gonna pick?
Older and fatter, older and fatter.
Posted by: Jim in Chicago at November 7, 2007 10:09 AMOk Jim
Best young pitching in baseball - you can't be talking about the Yankees when the Sox have Lester, Buckholz, Papelbon, and Beckett.
NY in 2007 was built to win games 10-8 as the offense overcame the weak pitching. Half of that offense is leaving (Me-Rod) while the rest is based on aging Jeter, Damon, and chemically enhanced Giambi.
The Sox can't stand pat (the mistake they made after 2004) but barring some major signings by NY the Sox should be a better team again based on pitching.
Posted by: AWW at November 7, 2007 10:16 AMWow. You guys really can really take a tongue-in-cheek comment and analyze it into boring submission. Yes, the Babe is dead, the Yankees are old, and the Sox look to be much better the next few years. But when I start predicting events in 2023 based upon a single instance of how teams traditionally begin and end a century, reality is pretty irrelevant. The players who will most affect the 2020s are currently under 10 years old, so I'm not exactly scouting them. Maybe I should check the Baltimore orphanages.
Posted by: mgarbowski at November 7, 2007 11:08 AMSawx fans have lived on their fantasies so long that they actually think that all of them are going to come true, no matter how implausible. So let's leave them alone for now, and at least wait for 2037 before we fans of the other 35 MLB teams start chanting "2007" at every Sawx road game.
Hey, by then even the Mariners might have finally acheived a Series victory!
Posted by: Raoul Ortega at November 7, 2007 1:53 PMRed Sox fans are unable to enjoy their 7th World Championship in any context other than the Yankees failure to win for the 27th time.
The Yankees don't care who they beat.
Posted by: Tom at November 7, 2007 2:00 PMThey don't beat anybody anymore. And no one cares.
Posted by: oj at November 7, 2007 2:10 PMIt actually wouldn't be surprising to see the Sox trade Buchholz for one of the superstars teams are dangling, precisely because he's not fat enough. Pitchers as slender as he don't have great track records. You need a big bottom half anyway.
Posted by: oj at November 7, 2007 2:13 PMIt would have been helpful had the Mariners established Brandon Morrow as a starter in '07, instead of falling into the Papelbon/Joba trap.
Posted by: oj at November 7, 2007 2:15 PMand no one talks about Manny Delcarmen, who has better stuff than Papelbon, or Masterson, or Bowden or Hanson. This team is stockpiled.
Posted by: neil at November 7, 2007 7:48 PM