Le Sequoit

Bisoxual No More

The White Sox have just swept the Red Sox from this year's playoffs. I don't like the Red Sox.

I used to like the Red Sox. I pulled for them in the '67 Series with the Cardinals (being a Cubs fan, I really don't like the Cardinals). I was living in Boston when two rookies, Jim Rice and Fred Lynn, led them to game seven in the '75 World Series against the ever despicable Pete Rose and the Big Red Machine. That was a fun team, with Cecil Cooper, Yaz, Dewey Evans and Bernie Cahhhhhbo. Toss in The Spaceman (Bill Lee) and El Tiante and this was definitely a team you could learn to like.

And I almost left out Pudge Fisk and the dance on the first base line.

But now I'm so happy to see them gone―not so much because they are a bunch of overweight and overpaid slugs―but because the Eastern Seaboard Programming Network is officially half way to having to get off their fat Bristol, Ct. asses and look for a story from out West. True, they still have the Yankees, and so for a little while the lead story is a sure thing around there.

ESPN used to give the appearance of being national, they don't even try any more. The color announcer's comment at the end of the clincher was something like, "We know now what we didn't know before, the White Sox have the deepest bullpen in the playoffs." No kidding, you ignorant twit! The White Sox led the American League in ERA nearly the entire year. The White Sox went 35-19 in one run games. They tied the league lead in saves with another playoff team you undoubtedly know nothing about, the Somewhere South of Malibu Angels.

Go to the ESPN site right now and what do you see? Konerko, who hit the winning home run? How 'bout El Duque (Orlando Hernandez), who came on and shut the Red Sox down with the bases loaded to protect a one run lead? How 'bout the kid from AA ball who came in and smoked the famous Red Sox bats in the ninth for his second save in two games?

No, what you get is Johnny freakin' Damon, all sad like, with the caption, "Johnny Damon and the Red Sox didn't have that '04 magic"

I suppose when the Yankees go down, The Boys of Bristol can skip baseball altogether, dust the cobwebs off of Dick Vitale and start where they left off last year hyping the ACC and the Big East and all those sucky hoops teams from Philadelphia. There was exactly one team in the Elite Eight from east of the Appalachians last Spring, but to hear ESPN tell it you'd think the hoops world was flat and and the edge was somewhere just west of Winston-Salem, NC.

Now, I must admit that I do appreciate the hi-def games brought my way by this organization, even though it means putting up with Chris Berman, who obviously hasn't cracked a media guide in a long time. But I never, ever watch Sports Center any more―not since the internet is there to give me scores. Often I wait thru the start to confirm my suspicions, and then off it goes.

Get ready for a piss poor network effort for the ALCS. Without all the Yankee-Red Sox cliches, and without getting their knowledge of the participants from the half Red Sox-half Yankees crowd of fans at the corner Starbucks on the way into their little Connecticut fantasy world over there, these guys have nothing.

It almost makes me yearn for Joe Garagiola. Maybe not.

posted by sequoit @ 8:44 PM