Come on everybody let’s sing! “It’s the most wonderful time of the year, duh, duh, duh duh duh duh, blah, blah blah blah blah blah, it’s the most wonderful time of the year .”
That is, except for the obscenely manic, your compulsive over eaters, and New York Yankee fans already fretting over the state of their team and the very recently improved roster of their hated rival, the Boston Red Sox.
Unlike all that turkey and gravy, pretty pies, whatever else your mama’s preparing for the holiday season’s biggest meal, I find that last described upset a little hard to digest.
After all, we are in the throes of another blustery winter, and for one, the New York Football Giants look strong heading into a highly critical Sunday match up with their own heated rival, the Philadelphia Eagles.
Just across locker room way, the Jets, while not looking anywhere near as muscular as they did a couple of weeks ago, still have a pretty legit shot at the playoffs. (He said tongue in cheek—I’m not much for the Green & White, can’t really imagine why anyone else would be either aside from the fatty corn beef and heady parking lot cocktails that start around nine o’clock on a typical, football Sunday morning and last, via flasks masked as thermoses—or is that the other way around?—until utter oblivion sets in sometime later that afternoon or evening.)
Knickerbocker basketball has almost magically returned from utter absentia. Amar’e and Co. are on a roll, Madison Square Garden is once again electrified and tonight the high flying men from Manhattan will be entertaining another team New Yorkers love to hate from the top down, Pat Riley, Dwayne Wade, Lebron James and the Miami Heat.
Even the Rangers, yes the once famed Blueshirts, (a hockey team that many city dwellers have been forced to forget about these past many years under threat of becoming overtly non responsive), are playing pretty well—20-13-1, fifth in the East—how’s that for a surprise?
So by no stretch of the imagination is this great northeastern metropolis lacking for easy to feature sporting news these days, in fact this may be the greatest collective abundance of good news multi team loving New Yorkers have had to embrace in a very long time.
Of course that doesn’t do much for the endless breath of N.Y. Yankee beat writers dealing up columns for those things people used to read called newspapers. Lately there’s been a deluge of reporting over the Cliff Lee tragedy. Oh fare thee well, Cliff, may you live long and prosper in the City of Brotherly Love & let’s see you out-pitch Giant ace Matt Cain or long haired, cannabis loving, Tim Lincecum next time the two or three of you should meet.
But even with all the commotion over Lee, (finally dying down), and his truthfully, refreshing choice to take less and perhaps enjoy life more in Philadelphia, the notable focus of the expansive Yankee press is already returning to the teams near century old rival—the suddenly bigger spending Boston Red Sox.
You see with the laudable additions of speedster Carl Crawford and ex Pod slugger, Adrian Gonzales, the ‘Sawx, by popular report, have flown by the Yanks who’ve been relegated as of now—at least in the New York if not nationwide press—to nothing more than a potential Wild Card contender at best.
So with that in mind, or having been said, let’s take this opportunity to segue into a quick comparative, position by position look at the Red Sox & Yankee’s to see if things are really as hopeless as currently deemed—as if heading into the season as something other than a heavy odds on favorite to win it all is something to contemplate slitting ones wrists over—for a team that has won 27 World Championship Titles and forever has it’s collective mind on adding additional hardware to the worlds largest trophy case.