Sunday, February 22, 2009

Nomaas Needs Our Help

Nomaas.org rents the pages of Red Sox pitchers Curt Schilling and Josh Beckett, and enjoys posting petty, jealous advetisements about their respective abilities.

After the 2006 campaign, they listed Beckett's stat line for the year along with the comment "Ace."

After Beckett had his breakout, ALCS MVP-winning 2007, the post changed, to "It's Not A Blister!"

Clearly, they needed help.

And now, thanks to the wonders of the Internet, we can offer them assistence, from their website:

As some of you may be aware, we've been sponsoring pages on Baseball-Reference for several years. With the new baseball season right around the corner, we thought we'd do something a little bit different and let our loyal visitors write our sponsorship messages.

And, what two better players to help us with than Curt Schilling and Josh Beckett. We're not sure if Josh Beckett knows how to use the internet, but you know Curt Schilling does. That means that insecure blob will surely see whatever we put up there.

So here's the deal. We will select our favorite entry for each player and submit them to Baseball-Reference for publish on those pages. To participate, simply post your entries on the wall of our Facebook page. Post as many as you'd like. But, we won't submit anything to B-R that contains words your mother would be disappointed to hear. Keep it clever, not vulgar. Good luck in your quest to become internet immortals.

I'm going to offer this one regarding Schilling:

"Watching the Yanks lose the '01 Series: Priceless

Watching the Yanks blow a 3-0 lead in '04: Priceless

The ability to post comments about the weight of the guy who helped make those memories: $X (annually)."

I'm still working on a Beckett version.

Tuesday, February 17, 2009

Spring Is Here, Don't Fear The Yankees (Fear The Cowbell)

My father's friend got out the Navy in the late 70s. He'd spent his time in communications, and was well-versed in the ins and out of electronics. When he got back home to New Britain, he got a job working for a 24/7 sports channel starting up in Bristol.

Yes, THAT 24/7 sports channel.

He's got some great stories, including but not limited to his work in Bristol, my favorite proving that 'Anchorman' isn't nearly as far-fetched as some might think. He told me, "There are some TV personalities like that; they'll read anything off the teleprompter and not even realize what they're saying. Frank Gifford, you always had to be careful with that guy, because he would say, 'Hi, I'm YOUR NAME, and we're in beautiful San Diego this week..."

Anyway, he's also been reading Bill James since the early 80s, and hyped up Theo back when they first hired him based on his reputation of being a guy who isn't afraid of the future, which, he insisted, correctly by the way, was what the Sox needed. He still insists Amos Otis was never as good as James claimed he was though, but otherwise likes his view of the game.

I'm not comfortable saying all former Navy personal can cuss a blue streak at the drop of a hat, and maybe it's the subject matter, but this weekend he offered that we shouldn't be scared of the !@#$% Yankees because we still have better pitching and it's doesn't matter how much those !@#$% spend on free agents with a bullpen that's made up of Rivera, who's !@#$% amazing, and a bunch of !@#%... And he kind of went on like that for a while.

I'm not willing to agree with every word, but I am excited about this season, and right now I'm far more concerned with the Rays than I am with the Yankees, so spring training is arriving at precisely the right moment.

For me anyway.

Wednesday, February 11, 2009

Wow, Just, Wow

Now, the above shirt was the result of the 2004 ALCS, the one where the Yankees blew a 3 games to none lead in the postseason, losing the last two in the Bronx to their archrival.

It was in the papers, and I believe the Post had the greatest headline ever, "The Choke's On Us."

Granted, it's not entirely true, but "The Comeback's On Them" doesn't grab you the same way.

Not that you'd want to read what's written on it, but it basically offers that the Yankees have won 26 World Series, including 20 of them before most Yankee current fans were even born. So, yeah, what if they blew the biggest postseason lead in history? They won a slew of titles during the Truman administration!

When the Sox won again in '07, I thought the shirts were pretty funny, especially when they boasted that it wouldn't be 86 years until the Sox next title.

Well, it took a year and some months, but it appears that the Yankees now have a response to that '07 Series:




You'll note the new version has seven rings for the Sox.

In case you can't read the rest of it, and I assure you it's not worth your time, this shirt basically parrots what the previous one read except it now adds "It'll take the Sox 238 years just to match our current total."

So, what can we make of this, other than that Yankee fans believe that the Red Sox and Yankees future title hope lie not in their respective performances on the field but in how well Mickey Mantle played during the Cold War?

I'll tell you what we can make of this: We've finally gotten as deep under their skin as they used to think they'd gotten under ours.

Ha ha ha ha.