Jello Biafra called one of his spoken-word albums "Become the Media." He just meant that we the proverbial people should think for ourselves, and spread the word of truth, instead of just blindly believing what's shoved down our throats.

In the sports world, I believe it should be no different. And with the internet, it really is like having a "new media," made by the fans. I'm happy about this, but as with everything else, we need to make sure the new boss isn't just the old boss in different bunny slippers. Let's take, for example, Boston Dirt Dogs. There are some very good things about this site. One of them being that when you're there, you're one click away from so many baseball and Red Sox related sites. I am grateful for that. But the opinions on that site drive me crazy. I'm so sick of reading negative things about Pedro and Manny. And when he/she/they tell Johnny Damon to cut his hair, I'm reminded of my mongoloid JV baseball coach in high school who would repeatedly mock me about my long hair. That macho a-hole is why I quit playing baseball. You know, after the A-Rod deal, I had a sneaking suspicion that Dirt Dog was really Steinbrenner, but now that he's telling Red Sox players to cut their hair, I'm sure it's him.

I understand there's a certain tongue-in-cheek-ness that goes along with these Dirt Dog headlines, but I think they make it pretty clear that they are seriously concerned with the fact that there is or are a player or players on the team who don't look exactly like them. Funny, there's all this talk about the curse, and how "none of us really believe it, the media made it up!" Well, it's not comforting to know that what we're REALLY worried about is the length of the players' hair.

I say "we" because Dirt Dogs is now representing Red Sox fans. And this is what I'm worried about.

You see, as much as I disagree with the some of the opinions on that site, I believe they've got every right to have and post them. But as it's gotten more popular, we've seen how the "real" media has consulted it to find out what the "real" fans are thinking. And since Dirt Dogs just wants to run all the free spirits off the team (the very players who make this team such a joy to watch), that's what the media will end up reporting. How is that different from all the "real" media morons, who've always just wanted to see the team fail anyway, and tick off the stars so they'll leave and sign with the yankees?

We have a pitcher on our team who might be the best of all time. And he's pissed off. Why should he be? We all buy shirts with his name on the back; we pay more money than some small countries have just to see him perform; we love his wacky antics. The people who I know--in real life--who are Red Sox fans, love Pedro Martinez. The reason why he's pissed is because of what stupid, old white dudes write in the newspaper. We have a chance to change what he thinks by replacing those dinosaurs. But instead, we leave it in the hands of basically ONE website---which repeatedly refers to Curt Schilling as the ace. (which has nothing to do with respect for Schilling) What are these people trying to do? What do they stand to gain by helping to make Pedro skip town? Unless, of course, they're actually Steinbrenner. Besides, do they think that if Pedro leaves, we can just replace him with someone who's as good, but looks and thinks like "us?" I'm really freakin' worried that Pedro's reading this stuff online! All he has to do is look at Schilling's Dirt Dogs T-shirt to get the address!

I love that Schill has this special connection with the fans. But if he sees that he's being called the ace on a website that he's promoting on his shirt, why doesn't he write to that website and tell them that Pedro's the "ace" as it stands right now and if you don't stop calling me the ace, I'll never make another internet post. (Again, none of this would matter if Dirt Dogs was simply a fan site, but he and they and everyone knows it's basically another Boston newspaper. Well, y'know, minus the actual story that normally follows a headline.)

I wish everyone who posted at SoSH and RedSoxNation would start their own site. There should be multiple sites that have the kind of "clout" that Dirt Dogs has. Or maybe I'm just not looking hard enough. But it's not how hard I look that matters, it's how hard those media creeps do, if they look at all...

Just before A-Rod struck out to end tonight's yanks-Devil Rays game, Hell No declared his home run in the first inning the "Play of the Game." Yeah, that homer really set the tone for the yanks 9-4 LOSS. Mussina shelled again. Awesome.

Got to see the Sox game from the fourth inning on down at the Bean, nice to see Schilling and Foulke start off right. The win combined with the yanks' loss put the Magic Number to Finish Ahead of the yankees at 160.

Today's example of a reporter saying that the yankees bullpen has improved, and then mentioning specifically Gordon and Quantrill: Peter "God, I Love the yankees" Gammons.

Today's line on Quantrill: 2/3 IP, 1 R, 3 H, 1 HBP

A caller on the FAN in NYC today was whining about how Pedro doesn't have it anymore, and all he does is intimidate people. "He drilled Segui!", he said. The hosts, Mac & Sid, two Met fans who should be way more anti-yankee than they are, did a fairly good job of telling the guy he was being ridiculous, but they did point out that after Pedro gives up a home run, someone's gonna pay.

Okay, last night's "incident," of Pedro hitting Diego Segui was an accident, nothing more. Didn't anyone who didn't know already find out like a week ago that Pedro and Segui have been friends at least since 1995-7, when they were teammates in Montreal? And was it the batter after the home run? No. Why would he wait a batter, just so he could hit his good friend? Also, Joe Morgan on ESPN2 pointed out correctly that the pitch got away from Pedro in the same spot as a pitch earlier in the game. (Only a righty was up, so nobody got hurt.) Another article which proves that the two are friends can be found here. This is from the Sporting News circa 2000, and also gives a good impression of the non-start day Pedro.

Then today, I read Shaughnessy's article about last night's performance, and do you know he said the same thing as Mac & Sid said: Someone had to pay. And he makes no reference to the fact that Pedro and Segui are buddies. And while at bambino's curse, I saw an excerpt from a Washington Post article that said that Pedro has nothing left but intimidation. These two writers said the same two dumb things that the caller and the hosts said on the FAN. People need to, well, I'm gonna quote Kurt Cobain here, after all, he's been gone 10 years as of today: "Hate your enemies, Save your friends, Find your place, Speak the truth"

Does that make any sense?

The Boston media is as bad as the New York media, but for much different reasons. Most of these Boston sportswriters just want to stir up crap, and want to see the Red Sox lose. And I'm getting frustrated, and I'm starving.

Oh, and apparently New Haven is getting NESN now, so congrats to you in NH, hopefully I'm next...

Well, the magic number stayed at 162. Schill will get 'em on Tuesday.

A couple of Connecticut related items:

1. The Red Sox gained a new radio affiliate down in Greenwich, in extreme Southwest CT-1490 AM. I don't think it will come in any better than TIC in Hartford for me here in Danbury, but it's a good sign that the team actually made a strong move to gain more listeners, not only in Fairfield County, but Westchester County in New York as well. Maybe NESN isn't far behind for us Fairfielders.

2. After tonight's game, I flipped on Mike'd Up, Mike Francessa's weekly sports show on the New York NBC station. He had his buddy Mad Dog on with him, as they did the show live from the Final Four in San Antonio. Behind them was a rowdy group of drunken UConn fans, who were loud enough to distract Mike and the Mad Dog several times. (Although I was born and raised in CT, I never was a UConn fan--and neither was anyone else before they got good.) So these fans are yelling and chanting and reacting to everything that was said, and then as Mike is throwing it to a commercial, he says, happily, "We saw a Red Sox loss tonight..." Although I only had a split second, I anxiously awaited the reaction of this group of Connecticut kids. And I was surprised and delighted. It was mostly "Awwwwwwww" and "Boooo" with one audible whistle that I think was pro-yankee. I think the tide is turning, ever so slowly.

CT must become Red Sox Na--, you know, Territory.

If you haven't read Frank DeFord's ridiculous piece of garbage yet, read it here: GARBAGE. Right away you get the gist of the whole article: It's not a rivalry when one team wins all the time. (See my March 20th post.) I thought of those T-shirts yankee fans wear that show the number of championships each team has won, and then says, "What Rivalry?" Wow, what a brilliant article, it's based on a bootleg T-shirt. So my next thought, naturally, was, Hey, that's almost as bad as writing an article based on those "Babe Bucky Buckner Boone" shirts. And sure enough, partially due to the fact that SI.Com highlights proper names in their articles, the next thing I see is those four names. This is like sportswriting for kids. Seriously, it's like reading some elementary school "sports page". In other news, Mr. Zoppi is making us run 20 laps in gym class. No fair!

Anyway, I had my mom read this article and she had a great quote about it: "Remind me, when I'm pushing eighty, to not write anything for public consumption."

Speaking of my mom, it's Opening Day, which always brings back memories of sprinting from the school bus to my house, where my mom would be waiting with a score update, and then I'd get to catch the end of the game. Thanks, mom. (It's on Sunday night this year, I get to see the whole game!)

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.