The Sickening Yankees/Red Sox Media Bias

Okay, the entire world knows there is an extreme Yankees and Red Sox media bias in the world of baseball. These two teams are on every possible nationally televised time slot. And when they play each other, it is even worse. ESPN and FOX are Yanks/Sox lapdogs. You can't get any coverage without hearing many times the info on these two teams as almost all other teams combined. They're always the first scores announced. On and on.

Okay, enough about complaints from somebody who isn't a fan of either team. What I want to do is ask fans of the Yankees and Red Sox if they hate the fact that their own teams are being the target of the media bias. I have a reason for asking, by the way, and it isn't envy. I am a Giants fan and our own history with Barry Bonds gave us our own media bias. Bonds' legendary accomplishments (that kept the Giants as perennial contenders) put us on the map in a huge way. We were on the game of the week all the time, we were on ESPN all the time. Thousands of media members would flood the ballpark every day in search of some stupid, inane piece of trivia about Bonds; his shoelaces, his towel hanging in his locker, the air pressure in his tires. Usual walking routes outside the ballpark were blocked off for some media tent or something. It was never ending.

Starting times for games were constantly being changed because of dictated TV coverage start times. Tickets you bought in February now had different starting times. When the game was nationally televised, our own professional, knowledgeable announcers on our local broadcasts were replaced with ignorant network clowns who knew little more about our team than what they crammed for midterms in their hotel room the night before. They constantly got facts and ideas wrong and couldn't offer in-depth coverage due to the generic national audience. I'm sure the rest of the country hated Bonds and the Giants because of it just like we hate the Yankees and Red Sox. I know that I, and many other Giants fans I talked to, hated the media bias that was supposedly directed in our favor. It just simply wasn't to our advantage as fans.

So, how about it Yankees and Red Sox fans? Do you like the extreme bias? Do you hate it? Do you feed on it? Are you so used to the bias that you aren't even aware of it? Or are you completely clueless that there even is a bias? Do you like the 8:35pm start times on work/school nights? Do you care that the rest of the country is forced to watch you? I'd love to know.

Bonds to Red Sox?

Just a completely wild guess, but a rumor just came out while listening to the Giants/Dodgers game on the radio. The Red Sox are rumored to be trying to trade Manny Ramirez in a three way deal with the Marlins and Pirates. I can see Ramirez going to Florida, since they're in contention and the Pirates wouldn't cough up that type of cash anyway. A lesser known will go from Florida to Pittsburgh, and the Sox would get somebody from the Pirates. The Sox will be missing a big bat for the final push, so why not Bonds? Crazy. I'm just guessing at this moment so as to have predicted it just in case it came true. It won't happen, but if it does, you heard it here first. If it doesn't happen, then I'm stupid. Fair enough?

Red Sox In Last Place

So said today's headlines. Cool!

Slime-Rod and The FOX Sox Nation

This is old news by now, but I don't know what was more slimy, the announcement by A-Rod's agent during a World Series game that he would not pick up his option to play with the Yankees, or FOX's coverage of it with the immediate suggestion as to the Red Sox being just about the only team capable of affording him. A shot of owner John Henry just happened to be on the video in the truck, so they switched to it.

Right in the middle of a World Series game is not the place for a TV broadcaster to be interviewing a player agent. He wasn't doing his job. His job was covering the game. Now if FOX put him up to it, FOX wasn't doing its job. FOX's ratings were in the toilet, anyway. Desperate times call for desperate measures, I guess.

The Red Sox Are The New Yankees - Or Maybe Worse

It's gotten beyond the point of contemptful toleration. The whole Red Sox thing is sickening. With all the attention, media coverage, East Coast bias, fan idiocy, transplants worldwide, and the like, the Red Sox are the new Yankees. But I'm going to say that it might be worse.

The Yankees are those pinstriped bunch that the whole world loves to hate more than any other team, Dodgers from Giants fans excepted. I've hated the Yankees my whole life, and for all the regular reasons. They're always on TV, in the media, constant press. ESPN is their superstation. Their fans are everywhere. They always get the prime time TV slot for the post season; no wacky day games in bizarre time zones for them. They have the highest payroll. They are the first topic of conversation even when they aren't involved. Jealousy? Yeah, maybe. Wanting David to beat Goliath is normal. And now the Red Sox have all this.

But there's a difference. As much as I hate the Yankees, I can have respect for them in the very reasons I hate them. "And how many rings has your team won?" This isn't arrogance, it is accomplishment. New York is the largest market there is by way far. So I can expect them to be on because of ratings. I expect them to sell out. I expect their manager and players to be the highest paid. Their fans have the confidence and swagger. And they have won 26 championships after all.

The current Red Sox thing goes beyond this. It took them 86 years to win one. And now they (Red Sox Nation) think they deserve the same. They think they're America's sweetheart losers now on top. They assume that their own terms of endearment are everybody's. They're not. "Big Papi" is to them more than simply their nick name for Ortiz, it is assumed that it is everybody's. It's one thing to say, "Big Papi Ortiz" as a nickname because it ties his nickname to his real name, but quite another to use "Big Papi" by itself, as if I would, too. He's just not my big papi. Or "Manny just being Manny." Huh? Papelbon's dance, the permanent image of the bloody sock, the steal. As I heard one fan say, it used to be that watching the Red Sox in the post season meant seeing 35,000 fans terrified of the next pitch. It took faith. Now it's all presumption. I might be rooting for the Yankees to beat them next year.

Giants Invade Fenway

Fenway Park is the oldest ballpark in the major leagues. It was built in 1912. The last time the Giants played the Red Sox in Fenway Park was in 1912, the year it was built. And in the World Series at that. The Giants did play some games in Fenway in 1914 and '15 because the Boston Braves leased the park before building Braves Field, but they didn't play the Red Sox those years.

So this interleague series between the Giants and Red Sox was one of the original promises of interleague play. Too bad it took 11 years to occur.