Ain't it the truth...
SI.com wrote:Just desserts
Yanks and Red Sox robbed us of what should have been classic baseball
We get what we deserve. When we allow dirty players to be sanitized and called "intense competitors," when we accept classless gestures and taunting as healthy enthusiasm, when we cheer for the barbaric, eye-for-an-eye mentality of players throwing baseballs at each other, we get what we deserve. We get embarrassments like last Saturday's Red Sox-Yankees game, which was supposed to be a classic and almost turned into a crime scene.
Sometimes there is no right, only degrees of wrong. Saturday was one of those times. Put it this way: If you were watching that game with your child, which of the Yankees or Red Sox could you have pointed to and said, "That's the way I'd like you to behave in that situation"?
It certainly couldn't have been Boston pitcher Pedro Martinez, who intentionally came at the Yanks' Karim Garcia with a pitch that was a whisker away from hitting him in the head and perhaps putting him in the hospital, or worse. Martinez is a head-hunter from way back, no matter how much his apologists try to portray him as just a hard-nosed competitor. The beanball was completely in character for him -- he was struggling, and he wanted to remind the Yankees that, at the very least, he still had the power to stick a fastball in their ears. What a prince.
Garcia would be a more sympathetic figure if he hadn't tried to take out his anger at Martinez by bowling over Red Sox second baseman Todd Walker moments later on a slide that could easily have blown out Walker's knee. By going after a player who had done nothing to deserve it, Garcia lowered himself to Martinez's level. Then there's Yankees pitcher Roger Clemens, who retaliated against the Red Sox by throwing a purpose pitch of his own at Manny Ramirez. It's true that the fastball wasn't particularly close to Ramirez, but it was at head level. Given the circumstances, it's obvious that Clemens was trying to send a message to the Red Sox and perhaps bait Ramirez. But Clemens, as is his cowardly habit, played innocent after the game, pretending that the pitch had no malicious intent. Clemens is the kid who throws spitballs when the teacher's back is turned but has his hands neatly folded by the time she turns around.
Clemens' actions led to the most absurd scene of the day, a melee in which Martinez pushed Don Zimmer, the Yankees' 72-year-old coach, to the ground. Martinez may have dealt with Zimmer unnecessarily harshly, but Zimmer gets no free pass here just because he's a senior citizen. He is, after all, more than old enough to know better. He had no business charging at Martinez like some sort of crazed rhino, and he's lucky that he only got a mouthful of dirt for his trouble. All those critics who are roasting Martinez for not simply sidestepping Zimmer should at least acknowledge that if Martinez, acting in self-defense, had met Zimmer's charge with a fist instead of a fling, the Yankees coach probably wouldn't have been laughing in the dugout a few moments later.
Zimmer will no doubt get a huge ovation at Yankee Stadium the next time the Yanks play at home, but he shouldn't. No one on either team deserves cheers for what took place at Fenway Park last Saturday. The Yanks and Red Sox robbed us of what should have been a great postseason baseball game and in its place gave us a competition with all the class of pro wrestling. Both teams should have been booed off the field, but they weren't, because we've been trained now to mistake bloodthirsty, dirty play for healthy competitiveness. We didn't get a game for the ages between two future Hall of Fame pitchers. We got what we deserved.
Sports Illustrated senior writer Phil Taylor writes about a Hot Button topic every Monday on SI.com.
http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2003/w ... n/?cnn=yes
I barely came back to baseball after the strike. This time they may have lost me forever.
Bunch of overgrown, overpaid children...
It's totally a joke...
Let me know what you think. What the hell is wrong with No-more Garciaparra?? 
