"It's great to be young and a Yankee."

That wasn't as fun as last night.

A.J. Burnett is useless at Fenway for some reason. I can't even begin to hazard a guess as to why this is. The guy is unstoppable in most other situations, and throw in him the Godforsaken landscape that is Boston, and it's like his arm gets replaced with the prosthetic one from The Fugitive. Worse though, since at least that guy held his own in a wrestling match with Harrison Ford. Today AJ couldn't have held his own against Winona Ryder.

Admittedly I shut it off after Youkilis went long for the 2nd time. As Chunk tells Mikey. "That's all I can take, and I can't take no more." (2 Goonies references in 2 days! I need to see more movies...)

It was bad enough it was a nationally broadcast game. (Actually, I remember writing something for sportscolumn.com a few years ago called "If ESPN's in the broadcast booth, who's guarding hell?", and someone responding, "At least you're a yankees fan. Can you imagine how unbearable it is for the rest of us to have to watch our 97th Red Sox-Yankee game this year?")

Touche. But then again, who really is suffering the most when the game is on, not ESPN which is rough enough, but Fox? The analytical stylings of Joe Buck and Tim McCarver make Joe Morgan and Jon Miller's booth rhetoric sound like a conversation between Stephen Hawkings and his editor.

So Tazawhat?? did pretty good today. Shut down the everpower Yanks, while the Sox teed off on our firecracker.

McCarver informed us that, "The Red Sox have now outscored the Yanks in this series." Thank you, Tim. That is completely significant and important and consequential. I guess beyond showcasing your ability to conduct simple addition on the fly, (though, honestly, I really wouldn't be surprised if that was the Elias Sport Bureau's handiwork), it really says absolutely nothing at all. One extreme, notable example might be the 2008 Patriots who outscored basically the entire league combined.

But for my money, I'd rather narrowly get Ws and then pull out a Giant upset in the Super Bowl with 17 points. I don't think the Pats total season scoring comforted any New Englander on February 3, 2008. (Barring any bookies.)


From what I saw of the game, the Yanks were back to their old tricks of Krazy gluing runners on 3rd (I love the old advertising gimmick of trading C's for K's! Not as much as I love the Pluralization by Z practice, though.*)

At another point in the game, McCarver drones how Remy is back in the booth, "the President of Red Sox Nation." Ok, I don't know WHY exactly, but the whole RSN concept annoys the hell out of me. I think it's because they act like it's a real thing and not just a Fan Club for Adults.

A guy I dated is friends with the NY Chapter Governor, and I remember he was telling me, "Yeah, and because he's the NY Chapter Governor, he gets 100 tickets to a game at Fenway and since I'm Secretary of Manny Defense, I'm gonna be one of the people he's taking." I was basically like, "Ok, I'm sure Fenway's just gonna hand out 100 tickets when there's not even 100 freaking seats in the whole stadium. And by the way, stop talking about RSN like it's A REAL RECOGNIZED SECT OF GOVERNMENT!"

But lo and behind, today during the broadcast I hear, "And Remy's not the only officer of Red Sox Nation here, we got the governor of the NY chapter here too, with 100 other Red Sox fans from NY." Well, I'll be damned. I stand corrected.

So when I rolled my eyes at this, it was with a smile and head shake. I hate Boston more than anything else in the world pretty much, but admittedly a part of me thought about how excited he was to ship out to Boston for this game and get to see the unexpected clubbing, and then some of my disgust and animosity over the game was replaced with humane instincts. At least someone I knew was happy. Because the rest of my buddies sure as hell weren't.


In other news:

• Kevin's pics from yesterday (Captions: "The green monster"/"GODZILLA! BWUOY!!"/"You mean Herbie Hancock!")

I finally found a place for my rally monkeys. In a move of sheer creative genius, I shoved them in the closet.