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

Boston is a tough team to like. I mean, yeah for me and most other NYY fans, it's about as feasible as winning a joust with a cardboard wrapping paper tube.

But in general, the Red Sox don't make things easy on themselves. Bobby Valentine doesn't help, but while I don't think it's entirely his fault, I think a part of him is loving how the rest of the team is just inspiring the same kind of ire and incense from their fanbase as he has.

It's like that scene in Stand By Me, when Gordon is telling his friends his story about Lard Ass:

"And Bobby Valentine just sat back and enjoyed what he had created: a complete and total mess-o-rama."

Four years ago today, Yankee fans got treated to this gem at Yankee Stadium--like some of photo negative of class. The noblest guy in the game versus the most irreverant.

And if Highlights for Children taught us anything with Goofus and Gallant, it's that class is better. (Contrary to what Latarian Milton would have us believe.)

This past Wednesday, David Ortiz decided that he's so good at baseball, that he has carte blanche to say whatever the hell he wants. That's fair. I mean, what could possibly go wrong if he just speaks his mind?

Seriously, where are these people's PR reps?? I swear I think they wait until their PR folks are like, "Ok, my sister just had a baby, so I have to go home for the weekend. Are you gonna be ok for a few days? I'll be back as soon as possible. In the meantime, just don't...don't. Just don't anything."

And then they lick their chops and go out and say shit like this (h/t USA Today):

"If you go crazy and give contracts to whoever comes along despite not knowing how they're going to do, then you don't give me my due consideration, even though I do my thing every year, f--- that. I'm going to be open to anything. My mentality is not going to be, 'I like it here.' It's going to be, 'Bring it to the table, and we'll see what happens.'

It was humiliating. There's no reason a guy like me should go through that. All I was looking for was two years, at the same salary ($12.5 million). They ended up giving me $3 million more than that (actually $2.025 million), and look at my numbers this year. Tell me if they wouldn't have been better off. And yet they don't hesitate to sign other guys. It was embarrassing."

Sweet Christ, Papi. You could hit 120312 bombs and still no one is going to sympathize with someone who's publicly whining about his $14 million contract. While you're kicking rocks around and throwing under the bus the city that's been pretty good to you, you got those so-called Fenway Faithfuls shelling out their weekend beer money just to see you bat every few innings.


And not for nothing, but I don't know if you have the luxury of accusing people of "going crazy," given your own apparent rejection of normal social conduct.


And you know makes it reaaaaaalllly believable that you're not on steroids?

Stuff like that.

And stuff like this:

2007:  Regular season, .332; Postseason, .446
2008:  RS, .264; PS, .192
Caught juicing/lying
2009:  RS, .238; PS, .083
Caught sucking wildly at baseball
2010:. 270
2011: .309

So yeah, he's probably just improving so much because of all the extra hard work he's been putting in. You can really tell by his rhetoric that he's the type of player that will put his head down and do the work and just honor his committment to the team.

-CYC, after the Yanks make a bajillion run comeback to beat the Sox during their 100-year Fenway party