Deja Vu? Sick of the Yankees and Red Sox

The rest of us sit in front of blank TV screens and dry our
tears-- our October dreams dashed once again. The Dodgers, A's, and
Cubs fans of the world enact their yearly ritual of turning off the
TV, throwing a beer can against the wall, and checking the calendar
for NBA opening day.

We are the outsiders in today's two-team baseball universe. In
the last few years, we have seen the rise of a new Major League
Baseball-- a league based on the introverted, egotistical feud of
two barely separated cities, New York and Boston. The rest of us
are excluded, our fansmanship second rate. We must choose between
the two-- are we evil Yankees fans or insecure Red Sox
fanatics?

I say screw that. I refuse to make that choice this time
around.

I'm here to say that there's a third choice for those of you who
are sick of the same old crap. That choice is not choosing at all
(still choose on Nov. 2 though).

I could have told you how it was going to play out three months
ago. Yankees fans will dismiss their opponents from atop their
pedestal like the baseball nobility they claim to be. Red Sox fans
will, as they always do, see in the Yankees everything they want in
a baseball team and get real pissed, clench their fists, and
probably get in a fight or two. Then the Yankees will win, the Sox
will lose. And everybody-- Sox fans included-- will be secretly
satisfied. The Yankees will claim that history, fate, and God came
together to bring them the victory.

In the World Series, the Yankees will lose to a team that
actually cared about winning the World Series. That team, of
course, will be forgotten after three weeks (ex: Florida Marlins).
Then the cycle will begin anew. Rinse and repeat.

I may be alone here, but this pisses me right off. I saw the
Marlins beat the Yankees in the Bronx last year. I was there. I saw
a team that actually came together to win rather than one that was
constructed to win. I saw a great team silence the Yankee fans on
their home turf. It was sublime.

But this cycle has to stop now.

The rivalry has become too large, threatening to subsume all
other mini-rivalries. Today, it is the only rivalry and that's not
cool. New York and Boston may be big cities and all but they're
only in one corner of one coast. There's a whole country of fans
craving to be in their position: poised to go to the World Series
and hit that heroic Aaron Boone-like homer. Believe it or not,
there are people out there who could care less about Bambinos,
curses, or errant grounders down the first base line.

At the beginning of the playoffs, I was giddy. I made that
mistake and now I know better. I was of the mind that my team would
find its way into late October. I was broadcasting all over campus
the glory of a Dodgers-Yankees World Series-- an old school revival
of an ancient intra-borough rivalry. It would be the Pee Wee and
the Bums of Old vs.Whitey's Yanks. It wasn't to be, of course, and
now I feel foolish-- foolish because I gauged my team against the
Yankees-Red Sox backdrop. I wanted an NY-LA series. Now I just want
the Yankees and Red Sox to both lose simultaneously and the Astros
to win their first ever trophy by default.

Maybe I'm just depressed because my team lost despite doing
something right after 15 years of failure and woe. The specter of
Kirk Gibson haunts me to this day-- a reminder of those good old
days way back when.

These days, though, someone like Gibson could only wear
pinstripes or red socks. That's not right.

Wednesday morning (the day after I started writing this), I woke
up to find that other people are thinking on the same wavelength.
Eric Neel, famed humorist/sports writer of ESPN.com wrote a column
arguing the superiority of the Cards-Stros series. This is a step
in the right direction.

No matter what happens this time around, we have to remember one
thing. The game is bigger than this rivalry even though some New
York fans would like us to believe that baseball is spelled
Y-A-N-K-E-E-S. (For Boston spelling, add on S-U-C-K.)

So, rather than watching this, can anyone tell me when
basketball season tips-off?