On April 8th, three days before Opening Day at Fenway, I wrote:

"My mom pointed out tonight that on Opening Day at Fenway, when they announce the yankee players, Mo will get one of the biggest ovations of the day. And you know, if he does, he should pull an LAPD in Heat, when Pacino's character realizes he's just been had, and he just smiles and throws up his hands, knowing that the criminals are taking his picture. If he did that, I'd have some respect for him. But I'm sure he'll just look down and frown. Which would be good to see anyway."

Well, mom was right about the ovation. About the movie comparison, you be the judge:

Pacino:


Mariano:


Pacino:


Mariano:


That's right, Mo nailed it.

And I will be true to my word. I respect him for it. It was great to see a human moment like that. Right then, all I knew was that a crowd of people was reacting to a person, and that person put everything aside and just laughed. It seemed really genuine of him. And it really worked because my seat was in the right field roof boxes, so I had the same angle as DeNiro did of Pacino, taking pics from high above. If you've never seen the movie, I hope you're not totally confused.

As the Jere rulebook states, on the rare occasion that I say something positive about a yankee, I must counter it with at least one negative.

It seems like sports reports (in NY at least) last night all started off by saying, "The New York yankees showed class today by not running and hiding while the Red Sox had some ceremony or something."

Maybe not that bad, but the Channel 2 guy said that the yanks pulled an "un-Red Sox-like" move by "taking the high road."

So I'd just like to point out a few things.

Yes Network did not show the Ring Ceremony. As Mad Dog pointed out, if the whole yankee team watched, then their network could have showed it to the fans. Mr "16 non-championships in 22 years" Steinbrenner is as classless as they come. History in the making essentially pre-empted by highlights from yesterday's loss to the Orioles.

And Jorge Posada decided he needed to do some sprints in the outfield during the Ceremony. He always was one of the classy ones, that Jorge.

And as for the whole yankee team watching from the dugout, well, you know Torre was gonna be out there. And once his little helper Jeter went out, which surely led others to follow, well no yankee was gonna take the chance of being called "the one who hid."

If you don't see another post above this one with more (huge, sorry) pictures, it's because I'm still workin' on it.