My life is full of crazy coincidences. But this one takes the Cookie Puss.

A few months ago, Lys and I saw a guitarist play a show, and later Lys told me that this person's father wrote the screenplay for that movie The Warriors. I had seen parts of this movie on television, and people I know are always saying, "Warriors...come out to play-ee-ay...". And I like movies from the late 70s and early 80s, so I decided it was about time I saw this film in its entirety. So a few weeks ago, I rented it, on tape, because I don't think a DVD exists. The tape didn't work in my VCR. I brought it back, and the place repaired it, and then let me rent it for free. So I finally got to watch it.

More on the actual film later, but here's where the coincidence comes in. I was gonna write a post about the movie and how it relates to Sox fans. I had it pretty much written in my head, and was just procrastinating the physical writing of the thing.

So last night, I'd just got my great news about the yankee ads being removed from my sight, when I started going to my usual websites, feeling all warm and fuzzed-out inside. On dirtdogs, they mentioned a post from another blog, Bambino's Curse. (This is the blog that inspired mine, and I'm sure many others.) The post was about how the Red Sox DO sometimes beat the yanks. It was similar to a post I wrote (see March 20th). Now the last thing I thought of was plagiarism, because A. he probably doesn't even know about my blog, B. It's a fairly common topic--standard Red Sox-yankees rivalry stuff, not the type of thing a die-hard Sox fan wouldn't have known unless they saw it on my blog first, and C. He just wouldn't do that, what is he, some kind of yankee fan? Plus, when when I went over to Bambino's Curse, I saw that the post wasn't even by the man, Edward, who is the blog's writer, but rather something he was quoting from something someone else wrote in July of '02.

But that's not the first thing I noticed when I go to the page. The first thing I noticed was the words "Warriors...Come Out To Play-ee-ay," in really big letters. It was the title of the post mentioned above. Whoaaaaa. This was one of those moments in life where you suddenly become aware that thoughts really might travel from one person's mind to another. It was very scary. Had it been a Twilight Zone episode, the camera definitely would've zoomed in on my face, with the background staying the same size. I mean I hadn't told anyone about this post I was gonna write.
What are the odds of this happening? It's not like The Warriors is some new movie that everyone's talking about. It's from '79! I thought I was the only person in the world who was thinking about how The Warriors relates to Red Sox fans on a daily basis (as I was writing it in my head for a few weeks). And so the last thing I thought was, Hey, I better write this quick before someone else does!

As I started reading his post, with my mind spinning at a million MPH, I thought, well, maybe he just used The Warriors quote in the title, and that's it. But sure enough, at the end of the post, he quotes the movie, and compares the Warriors to the Red Sox.

Unbelivable, but like I said, this is my life. Weird things always happen. I think it's because I think about so many things all day long, so eventually something I thought of gets mentioned by someone else, and it can be freaky. I think this is why religion is so popular. There are so many things that are unexplainable, so from the beginning of time, people have been making up their own explanations. I've never bought into any religious theory about the world. But I can see why so many folks do, because it can be frightening to not know why things happen.

Anyway, fortunately, Edward's post wasn't exactly the same as what mine was going to be, so now, instead of a fresh, cutting edge post by the could-have-been first person to make the Red Sox-Warriors connection, here is what I now have to call "an expansion" on the thoughts of Edward at Bambino's Curse:) Note: I could've just started this post right here, and skipped the big intro, but it was such a cosmic experience, I had to write about it. Besides, that's what blogs are for.

Okay, sooooo...the first thing I thought when I saw The Warriors was, "This is Homer's Odyssey." Only they really did put the "homer" in this odyssey--with the gang called "The Baseball Furies." Heh heh..... eh. Sorry. So then I thought, this must be what everyone thinks when they see this great film, so I searched on line for comparisons between The Warriors and The Odyssey, and came up with very little. I found just ONE place--Teleport-City.com--that had one. It was a review by Keith Allison, and after mentioning the Odyssey in his review, he then takes it one step further, and talks about another ancient tale called "The Anabasis" by Xenophon. (This is the part of the post where I was gonna mention that I was starting to sound like the Bambino's Curse blog, what with all the literary references.) The Anabasis apparently starts with "Cyrus" being killed. The Warriors starts with Cyrus being killed. And then, in both stories, a group of soldiers/warriors has to fight their way back home.

So of course, you can see where the Red Sox fans come into this: A seemingly endless journey, just trying to get back to that Championship. And just hoping that as many of our troops as possible make it all the way home.

A few days before seeing the film, I read a story by John Gordon, which appeared in a book called "For Red Sox Fans Only!" He teaches James Joyce in his English Lit class at Connecticut College. He says he draws the analogy between Joyce and Sox fans in class, and the half of the class which are Sox fans empathize. "I do think that Red Sox fans can understand the literature of failure better," he continues, "To be a Red Sox fan is to always be the sort of Sad Sack in the group. That's the role you're playfully resigned to. I don't think Red Sox fans could relate to anything particularly triumphal."
He goes on: "A lot of people say this has to do with the New England temperament--the feeling of flintiness, that we are not put on this earth for pleasure, but are meant to suffer. Red Sox fans are definitely more romantic fans than others... Yankee fans, on the other hand, would find James Bond more identifiable than James Joyce. They'd understand any sort of sequence where the most powerful guy winds up winning." Interesting stuff. We Sox fans are eternal optimists, though. Well, some of us.

So that's the deal. My post was gonna be called, "Shootin' At The Walls Of Heartache, Bang Bang." Get it?

Anyway, it's now about 28 hours until the next leg of our odyssey begins. I think it's weird that Nomar will be out of the lineup with--yup, an achilles injury.

Thanks to Christine at Blogger, there are no more ads--yankee-related or otherwise--on my blog. All is well... just in time for Opening Day.

The magic number for the Sox to finish ahead of the y*nks is down to 162!

"...the Devil Rays are pouring it on!"--Michael Kay

From the "Story of My Life" file: My fiance informs me that there are y*nkee ads on my blog. *Vomit noise*... *3 hours of vomiting*... *spitting remains of bile into toilet noise* Okay. Anyway, here's the letter I just wrote to google address they have you use for input regarding ads:(I hope I don't get penalized for using the word 'Hitler,' but I use 'Steinbrenner' all the time, so it's probably okay)

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Hi. My blogspot site is http://www.letsgosox.blogspot.com. My blog is titled "A Red Sox Fan In y*nkee Territory." It's about my life as a fan of baseball's Boston Red Sox, in southwest Connecticut, where most of the residents are fans of the Red Sox rivals, the New York y*nkees. You'll notice I don't capitalize the word "y*nkees" here, or anywhere in my blog. That's how much I despise that team and everything related to it. So you can imagine how shocked I was to see google ads for things like New York y*nkees tickets, etc., on my ANTI-y*nkees blog. While my initial response was to just move to Antarctica, where there would be no way for the stupid y*nkees to invade my life ever again, I sat a while and decided to calm down, and write to you about this issue, and hope that something can be worked out. I'd like to ask that there be no ads for anything y*nkee-related on this blog. In the meantime, I'm going to change all the a's in y*nkees to *s. Hopefully this will fix the problem, but please let me know if I can be allowed to have NO y*nkees ads on my blog regardless, as it will be quite annoying to keep hitting Shift-8 every time I mention the offending team's name. But I'll do it if I have to.
Also, I'd just like to ask a question. If I had a blog about how much I hated Nazis and Hitler, would there be big colorful ads placed at the top of the page saying, "Buy Nazi Memorabilia Here!", and "Hitler Autographed 8 x 10s"? I certainly hope not. Maybe there could be a way that the system would place ads based on content, not just common words? I don't know if that's possible. Thanks for reading.

Jere
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Note: the *s were of course 'a's in the actual letter.

I'll let you know how it turns out. Now I must go to bed as I have a date with the Devil Rays at 5 am.
Actually, first I have to go and change all the you-know-whats to "y*nkees." Uggggggh.

Weekends are especially rough around here because that's when all the "normal" workin' folks dress up in their casual gear, i.e. y*nkee T-shirts that look like they were bought yesterday.

I caught some of the y*nks' exhibition games in Japan on Hell, No. The first thing I noticed were the "RICOH" patches on the y*nkees' sleeves. The second thing I noticed were the "RICOH" emblems on the side of the y*nkees' helmets. Turns out Ricoh is sponsoring the entire series of games over there, including the two regular season games between the y*nks and Rays. This is the first time a company has sponsored a series of MLB regular season games, and the first time MLB sold advertising space ON THE MLB PLAYERS. Back to this in a minute...

The other obvious thing I noticed was that the y*nkees were wearing the pinstripes--that's right, the HOME uniforms while not even being in their home country, let alone New York. The deal here is that "all these Japanese fans," says Michael Kay, wanted to see their native son Matsui and the y*nkees in their well-known pinstriped uniforms ("in all their y*nkee glory," says Kay.) First of all, this is a crock of you know what. Second of all, I might've just looked the other way on this one, had it been for the exhibition games only. But get this--the y*nks will be wearing their home uniforms in the regular season games versus Tampa Bay! Despite the fact that the Devil Rays are the home team, and will have last-ups in both games. The y*nks also get the first base dugout, which is the home dugout at the Tokyo Dome. Story goes that the y*nks asked for the permission of the Devil Rays about this, and they said yes!!! I wonder if they also asked if Tampa Bay if they could let the y*nkees win both games--Because the Japanese fans want to see the y*nkees win! This is so disgusting, this is why I hate the y*nkees.

So back to the Ricoh thing. The Japanese fans will get to see the 'splendor' and 'majesty' of the y*nkees in their historic, traditional uniforms...with ads for COPIERS splashed all over them! It's just so pathetic.

And another thing that's pathetic was the pitch that that pitcher threw to Matsui so he could hit a home run. Talk about your all-time hanging-est curve ball.

And here's more: The opening that Yes came up with for the game tonight was a montage of Matsui highlights from the previous game, in slow motion, with no words, just music playing; the type of music usually reserved for the end of a movie when someone has just SAVED THE WORLD. Why I don't actually vomit more often, I don't know.

I didn't watch that first game, but in the second game, the crowd response the first time Matsui came up to bat was kind of like, let's see, the greeting for Brian Daubach coming to the plate for his third at bat in a May game vs. the Devil Rays--in Tampa Bay. Not like the "raucous" scene described by Torre after game one. And even better, the response to A-Rod coming up in the first: silence.

More on this Japanese baseball experience later... (or as Yes calls it, "The y*nkees descend on the land of the rising sun." Please.)

If you're a Royal Rooter over at RedSoxNation.net, welcome to my blog, and I hope you're not too annoyed by seeing my web address on all those top ten lists in the arcade.

If you haven't been there, go there now if you want to go to a cool Red Sox message board that also has an arcade...

Watched the Sox play the y*nks on the 'Hell, No' Network the other night. This was the game where A-Rod got hit in the face. Not quite as good as seeing Zimmer rolling around, but it made my night. Anyway, I'm not gonna go into all the misinformation I had to put up with this time, I'll save it for the regular season. But just two things:

1. In the 1st inning, the announcers, Michael "K-A-Y spells God" Kay, and Jim Kaat, actually gave credit to Gabe Kapler for hitting a ball over the center fielder's head despite the wind blowing IN.... But when the next batter, Bill Mueller, hit one deep to left, Kay said on his call that the wind carried the ball to the wall. He quickly said after the play something to the effect of, "We've gotta update this wind situation."
It's almost like he instinctively told us that the wind took the ball toward the wall just because the y*nks' opponents hit it, but then realized, Whoops, I just told everybody that the wind was blowing in--thirty seconds ago. I'm tellin' you, this man needs help.

2. Jim Kaat, who normally is, to me, the least offensive, and smartest of the y*nkee announcing 'arse'-enal, made one of the all time goofs. He started saying how he couldn't wait to see the T-shirts up at Fenway in April, because of the whole A-Rod situation. (I can't either.) Then he says, "....they've already got these shirts that say, '1918: Babe, Bucky, Buckner'." And I thought to myself, Did he just say that those stupid shirts are worn by RED SOX fans? Nah, couldn't be. But then he brings it up later in the game. They show a guy in the crowd with one on, and Kaat writes in "Boone" on the telestrator,below the "Buckner", saying this is the updated version of the shirt, still acting like this is a shirt a Sox fan would wear! Kay actually had to bail him out! Kay says, "I THINK these are y*nkee shirts, because those are all bad memories for Red Sox fans." I honestly can't believe Kaat could be so stupid. I mean that is STOOOOPID. Like his brain fell out for a little while or something, or he was drunk, it just makes no sense. It's like saying the Green Monster is y*nkee Stadium's most historic and well-loved feature.

When I got the idea to post Misinformation Updates, for some reason I thought finding enough fault with y*nkee announcers and New York media to actually write down on a semi-regular basis might be hard, even though I've experienced it my whole life. I don't know why I thought that. I'm gonna be doing a lot of writing this season. Kay spews enough lies in one inning to last me months. In fact, just before I went to write this, I was flipping channels, and Channel 2, the CBS station in New York, was showing what must've been some kind of "Get Ready For Baseball Season" y*nkee special. In the 30 seconds I saw before I flipped it off, (because I didn't want to ruin what was a very good Saturday night--had a party celebrating a court case me and my buddy won against a very evil person) I saw Michael Kay interviewing Derek "I'll Do Anything To Win, ESPECIALLY Deception and Chicanery" Cheater. He was asking about Derek's '03 season, and he started kissin' butt by saying, "Despite missing sixty games, you came back to almost win the batting title." He said it as if "almost" winning the batting title was like the best thing you can do. Too bad those TWO Red Sox players finished ahead of him. So I didn't wait to see Derek's answer, as I don't need to see his stupid face. If I want to see that, I'll just close my eyes; since 80% of all baseball I watch consists of Jeter's face reacting to every single play, his face is burned into my brain.

To close, can I just say how much I enjoyed seeing A-Rod getting whapped in the face by that Matsui throw... just seeing him holding that pretty mug of his, it was just a moment of pure elation for me. My (#2) goal for this season is to see that guy get what he deserves. Physically, psychologically, whatever, I'll take it any way I can get it. I just want to see frustration on his face all the time, and I know I'll be seeing that face ALL the time. He'll get his. I'm hoping the first game of the first y*nkee series at Fenway gets rained out, because I'm going to the second, and I wanna be the first guy to scream at A-Rod. I wanna witness up close the moment when he realizes: "Not everyone in the whole world loves me. But I'm A-Rod. A-Rod, dammit!" He's gonna cry all the way home and retire after the season. Ha!