New Stadium……1.3 billion dollars……

Pitching upgrades…..240 million dollars….

Offensive upgrades…..over 200 million dollars

Outspending the Red Sox by……..450 million…….  

  Watching your blood rival turn a three game lead into a one game deficit in four days…………PRICELESS…………………….. 

 Ron Burgdandy says…………..”Stay Classy New York”………………………………..

These. Are. The. Good. Times.

What is it when the Sox and Yanks get together, is there a special water they drink, it’s April for crying out loud.  Once again yesterday, the Sox and Yankees answered all the questions about why these games are hyped so much,and why they constantly play these games on national t.v. .

  A Yankee/Red Sox game is like a box of chocolates, you never know what you are going to get, I guess.  Sometimes they are nail-bitters, and other times it looks like there will be no conclusion until the very last out has been recorded.  This time the last out was recorded almost five hours after the last pitch.  The sun was high in the sky when the game started, it was setting when the game ended.  Terry Francona had a head full of hair, he is now bald, President Obama was just starting his first 100 days, he is now planning his re-election campaign.  Lets put it this way…it was a long game.

  This game was billed as a pitchers duel, however few thought it would be, especially not on the Sox side, as Josh Beckett has been just plain average these days.  On the otherside, A.J. Burnett had been pretty dominate to start his Yankee career.  So when the Yanks jumped to an early 6-0 lead, and Burnett had only allowed one hit thru three innings, you had to think that this series was heading for splits-ville.  What ensued after though was just another historic Yankee/Sox game.

Pitching-  Josh Beckett was horriffic, end of story.  He had only one 1-2-3 inning, and was scored upon eight times in just five complete innings.  What was more amazing, was that Beckett was actually in line to win the game, after the Sox rallied in the 5th to take the lead.  For some reason though, Terry Francona gambled on Beckett, he quickly found out that was a bad move.  Who knows whats going on with Beckett, it’s very clear at this point we are looking at guy closer to the 2008 version of his self, and not the lone brilliant year of his career 2007.

  On the other side, Yankees starter A.J. Burnett was equally as bad.  He also failed to make it six innings, and he was also tagged for a touchdown and two point conversion.  Sure Burnett started good, but the end result was the same, he stunk on wheat as well.

  Hitting-  What’s to say, the Boston Red Sox hitters were brilliant yesterday (notable exception Rally Killer Donkey Hole Drew).  Every Sox hitter except Rally Killer had a hit.  The Sox feasted on the Yankees mediocre bullpen like it was thanksgiving, and they were very thankful.  The Sox made the Yankee pitchers pay for every mistake, including when Yankee manager Joe Giradi walked Drew to get to Mike Lowell, what a dope.  Drew is an automatic out, and Lowell is one of the hottest hitters in the American league.  Lowell took it personally, as he crushed a three run go ahead homer over the MONSTAH !

  Bullpen-  Despite the final score, I felt the Sox bullpen looked pretty good overall.  They pitched four innings yesterday, and allowed only one earned run, not bad at all.  Manny Delcarmen continues to be impressive, and Ramon Rameriz is indeed the real deal.  Once again Hideki Okajima struggled as he gave up a towering homerun to Robbie Cano.  His run was the only one the bullpen surrendered.  Jonathan Papelbon pitched a pretty sloppy 9th inning, however despite throwing 30 pitches, he got out unscathed, and allowed no runs to cross.

  As I said to start the season, The Yankees bullpen is a mess, and the only way they can fix it is to throw more money @ that problem like they do everything else.  The Yankee bullpen also surrendered a touchdown and two point conversion, and they were scored upon in every inning they pitched.  Luckily for them, the Sox did not need to bat in the 9th, otherwise who knows what the final score would have been.

  Who know what tonight will bring, of course this game is on ESPN, and will have an 8pm start time.. Which means both teams will be boarding a plane around 3 am or so.  Hopefully this will be just a “normal” three hour affair between these two teams.

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 Well it was a lovely day to open the new Yankee Stadium.  The billion dollar plus plus stadium was all polished up and ready for business.  The Fort Knox Bombers were ready to go, they had thier 500 million band of free agents on the field dressed in thier best pinstripes.

  Alas today was not about a story book opening though, as the Fort Knox Bombers dropped the first of what I hope is alot of games at the new stadium.  The Yanks were spanked today in front of a sellout crowd.  The final score was 10-2, the second time in a few days the Yanks have given up a touchdown and fieldgoal in a game.  It was nice to see and it brought a little smile to my face when I heard the final score, I swear I almost heard Dirty Water in the background.

  I know the Sox have struggled out of the gate a tad, okay 3-6 is slighty more than a tad.  However the Yankees have started the season against two celler dwellers from last season, while the Sox have played six games already against the best of the A.L., and six games out West already.  At 5-5 I guess it’s true what they say, 450 million sure doesn’t buy what it used too.

Unlike alot of baseball fans last night, I was not choked up at the site of the Yankees last game in Yankee Stadium.  In fact I was struck by how many of the Yankee legends that were there, were only rent-a-players.  The whole thing seemed very disengenious to me.  It seems for p.r. value, the Yankees will call anyone a “Yankee legend”, and retire thier number, and maybe even give them a monument.  This a is list of just a few of those “Yankee legends”, I have ommitted Roidger Clemens, since he was not there last night

           Mr October as he was dubbed by Yankee fans called alot of places home in his 20 year career.  Jackson played only five season for the Bronx Bombers, and ripped the Yankees on his way out of town.  It wasn’t until the late 90′s and the Yankee’s championship run that Jackson embraced his “Yankee roots”.

      Who can forget Wade Boggs riding on the back of a horse after the Yankees won the World Series.  I guess Yankee’s brass and thier fans can forget that boggs played 18 big league season, and only five were in New York.  Boggs played 11 years for the Red Sox, and finished his career with the Tampa Bay Devil Rays.  Who can forget Boggs attempt at selling the rights to which cap he wore into the Hall of Fame.  Classy guy, another “Yankee legend”.

    Dave Winfield, dubbed “Mr October” by George Steinbrenner.  Winfield played 22 season in the big leagues, and only 8 of them were with the Bronx Bombers.  Winfield never won a World Series title with the Yanks, and like Jackson trashed the Yankees for years, until they started winning again in the late 90′s.  Like Jackson, he also became a born again Yankee.

          Also prancing around Yankee Stadium last night was this moribund Yankee Legend.  Wells played 20 major league seasons, and of course only four were with the Yanks.  If your keeping track, thats just two more than he played here in Boston.  Well’s resume is quite long, and I did not have space for all the different uniforms he has occupied.

         Another “Yankee Legend” that seemed to play @ Yankee stadium for a short time.  Brosius played 10 big league seasons, and only 4 were for the Yanks.  I guess thats 40%, which is getting closer to half of a career.

The list goes on and on, from Paul O’Neil to Roger Maris, from David Cone to Darryl Strawberry to Dwight Gooden.  The Yankees are willing to call just about anybody a “Yankee Legend”.  When they finally close old Fenway Park down, you will not see Johnny Damon or David Wells roaming the diamond thats for sure.  The Red Sox have respect for thier past players, and they do not need to distort the past to do so.

Whatever you watch and read about this game, the real story was the inconsistancy behind the plate by the umpires.  Home plate umpire Marty Foster is clearly a Yankee fan, and his bias was more than evident tonight.  The Yanks lone run was scored, when Beckett was squeezed with two outs and two strikes on two different batters, that allowed the inning to continue in both instances.  The entire game it seemed the strikezone was different for the Yanks and Sox.  The K zone on NESN showed many instances where the home plate umpire Marty Foster not only got it wrong, but wasn’t even close.

  With one out and a man at first, Mike Lowell was called out was called on a called strike three that he had to move out of the way for.  The replays showed the pitch was no where near the zone, in any way shape or form.  J.D. Drew of course was also called out on a called strike three to end the game.  However his strikeout did not look as bad, he just looked like a jackass standing there with the game on the line and his hand up his ***.  Typical for Drew, twice he came up in this game with men on base, and both times he folded. 

  Look I get it, Major League Baseball needs the Yankees in the playoffs every year.  Isn’t it enough though that they recieve an easier schedule than everyone in the A.L. East.  I think with the favor they ave recieved from MLB they should at least have to go out and win thier games.  Obviously what I hate a loss to the Yanks, but what i hate more is when the umps decide the outcome of a game, especially as close as this one.

Well if there are a pair of gutless losers that were made for each other, it’s A-Rod and the New York Yankees.  It also appears that Hank Steinbrenner is just as big of a windbag as  Big George .  It also appears that Scott Boras and A-Rod over valued themselves a wee-bit.

  It all started at the start of this season, when the Yankees proclaimed they would not pursue A-Hole if he opted out.  Well A-Rod did just, doing so in the middle of game four of the World Series. The Yankees and Hank Steinbrenner bid A-Rod farewell, and said he was not a true Yankee. A sentiment usually echoed by most Yankee fans.

  It seems now though, that most teams do not want to pay 30-33 million a year for a guy that may hit .300 and drive in150 runs during the season, but turns into a pumpkin as the clock strikes post-season.  It has also been tough on poor A-Hole, and Scott Boras since both the Yanks and the Sox have stayed out of the bidding process.  Whats an over-paid non-team player to do, I guess run back to the Yankees apparently.  It looks all the big-bad talk by Brian Cashman, and Hank Steinbrenner was just that, talk.

  I do hope, that the Red Sox now get involved in the A-Rod talks as well.  I hope that Boston does to New York, what they always do to other teams, get involved in the process and drive up the price.  The Yankees are a steaming pile of ****, and have a made a practice of this for years.  It would be nice to return the favor, especially since they are doing it again with Mike Lowell contract talk.  Whatever the case, looks like Yankee fans will also have to swallow thier pride as well, and start cheering again for ole # 13 again, or maybe for the first time.

Just wondering how that decision to go with the team that has the best chance to go to the World Series paid off for Roger.  While were at it, how did it go being the Yankee savior.  All in all not bad for you huh Clemens, the check cleared I’m sure.  18 million dollars does not buy what it used to I guess.  Hey Riodger there is always next year, or the year after that, or the year after that, or the year after that, or the year after that!

For years I have suspected that Roidger Clemens had somehow medically enhanced his career.  Anyone who saw his last few years and Boston, and then his new physique in Toronto will attest to that as well.  Finally you are starting to see some mainstream media questions as well about ole Clemens longevity, and the questionable changes in his numbers after Boston.  Check this story out from Kevin Hench…

There must be something in Roger’s water

Kevin Hench Special to FOXSports.com, Updated 2 days ago STORY TOOLS: print send blog RSS LIKE THIS STORY?

Vegetables? Brown rice? Rigorous jogging?

As Roger Clemens returns to the mound two months shy of his 45th birthday, not only is it a fair question, but it would seem fairly irresponsible — given assumptions made about other players during the Steroid Era — not to ask it.

Long before the comical flaxseed oil alibi, leaked grand jury testimony and revelations about his hat and shoe sizes, the most damning evidence against Barry Bonds was on the back of his baseball card.

There was simply no way, we agreed, that a guy who should have been entering the steep decline phase of his career could be that much better in his late 30s and early 40s than he had been in his late 20s and early 30s without chemical enhancement.

Shouldn’t Roger Clemens’ baseball card elicit the same dubious eyebrow-raising? The presumption of guilt that hounded Bonds through his assault on various home run records hasn’t necessarily given way to a presumption of innocence with Clemens, but rather to a sort of weary reluctance to ask how it is possible that a major league pitcher was considerably better from ages 41-44 than he had been from ages 31-34. If Carl Lewis won the 100-meter dash in Beijing in 2008 we’d have questions, right?

During Clemens’ final four years in Boston — the seasons in which he aged from 31 to 34 — the Rocket went 40-39 with a 3.77 ERA over 745 innings. In his past four seasons, when he aged 41-44, Clemens pitched 750.2 innings and went 55-27 with a 2.83 ERA. It’s one thing to stave off a decline phase, it’s quite another to shave almost an entire run off of your ERA as you move into middle age.

Roger Clemens was just above .500 with the Red Sox in his early 30s … (Rick Stewart / Getty Images)

And this brings us to an important distinction between Bonds and Clemens. Apologists for Barry will often correctly point out that he was a sure-fire Hall of Famer prior to his absurd stat (and body) inflation in San Francisco. Clemens was a lock too, but Bonds never had a four-year stretch of sub-Hall numbers like Roger. From 1993-’96, Clemens had a record one game over .500 with an ERA just under four, which is not exactly Cooperstown-quality production. If Bonds was motivated to juice, as has been alleged, by watching Mark McGwire, a player he deemed inferior, break the single-season home run record, imagine the motivation for Clemens after four mediocre seasons and an acrimonious departure from Boston.

As has been well-chronicled, Clemens showed up in Toronto in 1997 — after claiming he wanted to be closer to his family in Texas — in the best shape of his life and turned in back-to-back Cy Young seasons, going 41-13 with a 2.33 ERA. The statistical disparity between the Rocket’s last four years in Boston and the following two seasons in Toronto was as dramatic as the spike Bonds experienced after McGwire broke the home run record.

But all we heard was that Clemens was such a fitness madman that sometimes he’d go for a jog after his starts.

When then-Red Sox GM Dan Duquette had famously concluded after the ’96 season that Clemens was entering the "twilight" of his career, he had a century of baseball evidence to support his assertion. Given that no subsequent 300-game winner since Mickey Welch (1890-’93) had won fewer games between the ages of 31 and 34 than Clemens, it seemed highly improbable that the Rocket would win 108 more games after leaving Boston. He’s won 156 and counting.

Along the way he’s also drilled Mike Piazza in the head and thrown a shattered bat in his direction during a World Series game, a transgression for which he blamed the clubhouse coffee. Too much java. Right.

… and back to Hall of Fame form with Houston in his mid-40s. (Ronald Martinez / Getty Images)

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Now Clemens will move into a locker room with Jason Giambi.

Giambi, perhaps the most forthright player this side of Jose Canseco from the Steroid Era, is still being dogged by the fallout from his semi-admissions and oblique apologies. By trying to come clean, Giambi has become something of a sympathetic figure and also a reluctant spokesperson for his fellow, lips-sealed transgressors.

As the Yankees’ season of discontent unfolds, once-impertinent questions now seem all-too pertinent. But will anyone ask them of Clemens?

After his most recent minor league tuneup, Clemens snapped at a reporter who appeared to have asked a fairly innocuous question about the warm reception he’d been receiving from the minor league crowds.

The Rocket went on a long harangue about negativity before concluding, "I’m positive and I’ve always been positive."

Gee, imagine if the reporter had asked him a tough question. Like the one that no one dares ask.