BRONX, NY – I’m not gonna lie, it hasn’t been easy these past few years. Sure, the Mets have done their part to keep me ornery, but that team that plays in the shadow of the Bronx County Courthouse just hasn’t been pulling their weight. Rock bottom came last year when they didn’t even bother to make the playoffs. 2009 promised to be a complete nightmare as the Mets were so laughably bad that you ran out of synonyms for “pathetic†by mid-July. Luckily, the Yankees have stepped it up and are back to being a team I can truly loathe. I know others here have made the case that this current club is really quite likable. I respectfully disagree with these folks. You can go ahead and put all of the Charlie perfume on this team that you like, I know the unmistakable stench of the inhabitants of Billy Crystal’s Whore Emporium when I smell it.
Let’s just get the obvious out of the way. Alex Rodriguez is still incredibly annoying. What makes it worse now is that many Bomber fans are starting to convince themselves that he’s finally a true Yankee and kinda awesome to boot. I could really care less about the Kate Hudson stuff. If she wants to sleep with someone who’s shared a bed with both Madonna and Derek Jeter, that’s her business. But let’s please hold off on anointing A-Rod the new Mr. October. Quite frankly, it’s an insult to baseball fans, borderline functioning humans, and animals everywhere. Needless to say, there’s some overlap in those categories.
Speaking of Rodriguez, I’m not sure if it was him or Johnny Damon or someone else who started the home run helmet toss as you round third base, but it has to be one of the lamest celebrations in sports. I seem to recall A-Rod saying something about taking his helmet off because it hurt too much when all of his teammates would pound on his head at home plate. Like this was happening all that often anyway. Need we say more?
Let’s stick with the celebrations thread for a moment. It seems A.J. Burnett has made quite a name for himself as the Yankees’ official shaving cream pie man. This is something that’s been going on in baseball for years but, for some reason, Burnett has done it so ridiculously frequently this year that the NY media acts as though he invented this gag. I personally think that Burnett doesn’t need to rely on such cheap laughs. Not at all. His Vanilla Ice haircut, dumba** tattoos, and equally stupid necklace should earn him more than enough yuk-yuks. Let’s put it this way, when you start pie-ing people like Jerry Hairston Jr., this sh** has got to stop.
Our disdain for the Joba Rules and the man himself have been well-documented so we’ll skip that here. How about Mariano Rivera then? His pitching has been near flawless over the years so we can’t go there. The guy is also a cold, calculating space alien so we don’t have much to go on in the quote department either. But how about his so-called restaurant, Mo’s New York Grill? I’ve never been but have heard from others who have, and the reviews are in: The steaks are terrible. There are many things in this life that I can tolerate, but a lousy steak is not one of them. Charging a whopping $84 for a porterhouse for two, you would think that Mariano would at least (to paraphrase Rodney Dangerfield) serve a steak that didn’t still have marks where the jockey hit it.
Finally, while I’ll admit to having some very good friends who are Yankee fans (including one or two on this site), for the most part they still remain a highly annoying bunch. And I’m not even including our own Yankee Joe in this assessment! At least he manages to make me laugh every once in a while. No, I’m talking about the Jeter-jersey-wearing, John-Sterling-loving, satin-jacketed-jackanapes that seem to double in size around this time of year. An unfortunate offshoot of this group are the celebrities who also show up to cheer them on, like they’ve been going to games all season long. I mean, didn’t Jack Nicholson used to be cool? Seeing him sporting a red (yes, red) Yanks cap and standing alongside Adam Sandler at the game in Anaheim on Monday turned my stomach. And, don’t get me started on Paul McCartney’s visits to Yankee Stadium. Bad enough that he’s starting to look like Julia Child, but he probably knows as much about baseball as… um… Jeff Wilpon.
Anyway, thanks again Yankees! I despise you once more and couldn’t be happier. That’s all for this week. Stay tuned for The Matts tomorrow and Grote’s Gripes/Grote2DMax on Friday. Also, Management asked me to make you aware that because of a technical mishap; the wrong edit of the Aussie Rules piece was uploaded. The right edit was finally put in place yesterday afternoon. Check it out.
