The American League Championship Series begins tonight in what should be another classic series between the Boston Red Sox and the New York Yankees. I must confess I am the delusional type of Red Sox fan who thinks every year that this is the year the curse will be broken. I also happen to hate the Yankees. What a surprise, I know.
Anyway, the thought occurred to me that I might have trouble writing a non-partisan column on the ALCS. Fortunately, I am also one of The Daily Cardinal's copy chiefs, which means I spend a fair amount of time editing stories. So I thought to myself, \Self, why don't you just write what you want to say, and then let the copy chief in you make sure you're doing objective journalism?"" Amazingly enough, I agreed with me, leading to this:
The Curse of the [drunken womanizer Babe Ruth] Bambino will be broken this year. The Red Sox simply have too much talent this time to be stopped by the [best team money can buy] Yankees.
Boston will benefit from being well-rested after sweeping the Anaheim Angels. Unfortunately the Yankees are not exactly tired. The [small-market pretenders] Minnesota Twins could only muster one win against New York, but this is not too surprising. Only people from Minnesota and [their cousins they married] honestly thought the Twins would win. Even the FOX baseball announcers seemed to be [more biased than FOX news] rooting for a Boston-New York series.
Though New York won the American League East division, Boston has been the better team since it orchestrated a midseason trade with three other [suckers] teams that upgraded the Red Sox's [Green Bay Packer-like] shoddy defense. Boston got two Gold Glove winners, first baseman Doug Mientkiewicz and shortstop Orlando Cabrera. On the downside, they had to trade [injury-riddled] Beantown icon Nomar Garciaparra, who was hugely popular [with team doctors].
Even if you are not a Boston fan, there is no reason to like the Yankees. Many teams' entire payrolls were not much more than what the Yankees' [windbag] owner George Steinbrenner pays his infield. Steinbrenner [finances al-Qaida] makes competing for championships very tough for other teams by outbidding for the best talent in baseball. Over the past couple years New York has obtained [the greedy] Alex Rodriguez, [the malcontent] Gary Sheffield and Jason Giambi, although Giambi's production has been limited [since he quit taking steroids, and his head began to shrink and his muscles deteriorated] due to numerous injuries.
It should be interesting to see if Boston can [crush the Evil Empire] erase last year's ALCS meltdown. After all, you don't often get the chance to rewrite everything.
Michael Worringer offers his apologies to Rick Reilly and easily offended Minnesotans. He can be reached for comment at mtworringer@wisc.edu.
