Richard 'Bleeping' Griffin
I was two years old in 1978. I could barely string two words together
and I regularly shit my pants. My day usually consisted of sleeping,
smearing spaghetti-os on my shirt, stacking wooden blocks, knocking
down those blocks, and crying. I drooled a lot, and I couldn't take
four steps without falling on my ass. I bit other people and I ate
bugs. Maybe I watched Sesame Street. I don't know, because I was
two.
Luckily for me - and especially for my friends and family - my 31 year old self barely resembles that obnoxious little two-year old (except when I am drunk, in which case I completely resemble that obnoxious little two-year old). You see, that was 29 years ago, and so much has changed since then that it would be totally ridiculous to compare my current lot in life with that of the two-year old that I once was. That would be almost as stupid as claiming that the events of a baseball season from nealy 30 years ago has any bearing on the current Major League campaign. Which is where Richard Griffin comes in.
Many of us thought 2004 would put an end to those lazy curse-of-the-bambino stories. When the self-proclaimed idiots won their eighth playoff game in a row to finish off the Cardinals (and their fans morphed from long-suffering to insufferable) it should have vanquished all the demons, exorcised all the ghosts, reversed any curses, and all the other boring blah-blah-blah shoved down our throats by those tired sports writers who tried to have us believe that the Babe Ruth trade had somehow put a hex on the Red Sox organization.
No more Babe and no more Bucky. Even Aaron Boone was meaningless. The Red Sox were world champions, and no longer would sports columnists prattle on about the Boston Massacre , the summer of 49, or Grady Little. The ink-stained wretches would need to create new storylines, build new heroes, and focus on something other than the Yankees versus the Red Sox. Unfortunately, someone forgot to tell Grimace:
Whenever Yankee fans wish to turn the crank of Red Sox fans and get them slobbering uncontrollably, like Pavlov's poor ol' hound dog, all they need do is mention the name Bucky (Bleeping) Dent, and the sudden-death playoff for the AL crown in 1978.
I know some Red Sox fans, and for those of them who remember Bucky Dent, his home run - and the 1978 collapse - still hurts. However, whenever I mention Bucky Dent, they tend to say things like 2004, Dave Roberts, Rivera in Game Four. They don't slobber uncontrollably because I mentioned the name Buck Dent - they slobber uncontrollably because they are Red Sox Fans.
And, yes, times have changed since the advent of the wild-card, making any late-August series less of a life-and-death struggle, but starting tonight, with a three-game series against the Bosox in the House That Ruth Built, the Bombers have a chance to start prodding those Yankee-Red Sox ghosts with a pointy stick.
Ruth...ghosts...woohoo, it's 2003. There is a new episode of Friends on tonight.
Even a Yankee sweep will not completely close the gap in the standings between the talented Sox and the uneven men in pinstripes, but it would seriously stir memories of, and comparisons to, 1978 and what may be the greatest late-season baseball turnaround of all time, the '51 Giants notwithstanding.
Sure. If the Yankees sweep the Sox, it might stir memories of 1978. But as it stands now, the Yankees are 8 games back of the Red Sox, with little more than a month left in the season. If the Yankees sweep the Sox, go on a bit of a run, and then take two of three in Boston next week, we could draw comparisons to 1978. But, in case that doesn't happen, we should probably move on and discuss something else. What has been behind the Red Sox success this season? Why have the Yankees been so uneven? What are their comparative schedules like for the next few weeks? Can the Yankees succeed with Mussina throwing batting practice every five days? Can Schilling possibly return to form? Or hey, how about a column on the Blue Jays? Isn't J.P. Ricciardi still a terrible GM? Isn't statistical analysis still racist? There is so much fodder for columns out there, there shouldn't be any reason to go into detail about the 1978 baseball season.
More to the point, why bother writing a pointless blog entry about this pointless column? Because it is a symptom of what ails sports writing in this city: namely, tired cliches and useless trivia passed off as analysis. It is just lazy and unhelpful. Even Red Sox fans and Yankees fans (full disclosure: I am a Yankee fan) are tired of this story, because we have heard it so many times and it means nothing. If you really want to write about the Sox and Yankees, why not give us something new, instead of the same old cursed-Sox tripe. Or, why not write about the home team and spare us all another story about the great rivalry? If Yanks fans and Sox fans don't want to hear it, I imagine Blue Jays fans don't give a shit either, nor do the fans of the 27 other MLB teams who are sick to death of wall-to-wall coverage filled with frivolous stories about the Yanks and Sox.
I will end this rant with a little contest for the readers. The first person who can tell me three things that are wrong with the following sentence from Grimace's column will win a free one-year subscription to the Cox Bloc:
It's clear that Sox manager Terry Francona is not the same lame tactician as Zimmer in terms of warped baseball strategy.
Send your answers to kimjorn@coxbloc.com
Luckily for me - and especially for my friends and family - my 31 year old self barely resembles that obnoxious little two-year old (except when I am drunk, in which case I completely resemble that obnoxious little two-year old). You see, that was 29 years ago, and so much has changed since then that it would be totally ridiculous to compare my current lot in life with that of the two-year old that I once was. That would be almost as stupid as claiming that the events of a baseball season from nealy 30 years ago has any bearing on the current Major League campaign. Which is where Richard Griffin comes in.
Many of us thought 2004 would put an end to those lazy curse-of-the-bambino stories. When the self-proclaimed idiots won their eighth playoff game in a row to finish off the Cardinals (and their fans morphed from long-suffering to insufferable) it should have vanquished all the demons, exorcised all the ghosts, reversed any curses, and all the other boring blah-blah-blah shoved down our throats by those tired sports writers who tried to have us believe that the Babe Ruth trade had somehow put a hex on the Red Sox organization.
No more Babe and no more Bucky. Even Aaron Boone was meaningless. The Red Sox were world champions, and no longer would sports columnists prattle on about the Boston Massacre , the summer of 49, or Grady Little. The ink-stained wretches would need to create new storylines, build new heroes, and focus on something other than the Yankees versus the Red Sox. Unfortunately, someone forgot to tell Grimace:
Whenever Yankee fans wish to turn the crank of Red Sox fans and get them slobbering uncontrollably, like Pavlov's poor ol' hound dog, all they need do is mention the name Bucky (Bleeping) Dent, and the sudden-death playoff for the AL crown in 1978.
I know some Red Sox fans, and for those of them who remember Bucky Dent, his home run - and the 1978 collapse - still hurts. However, whenever I mention Bucky Dent, they tend to say things like 2004, Dave Roberts, Rivera in Game Four. They don't slobber uncontrollably because I mentioned the name Buck Dent - they slobber uncontrollably because they are Red Sox Fans.
And, yes, times have changed since the advent of the wild-card, making any late-August series less of a life-and-death struggle, but starting tonight, with a three-game series against the Bosox in the House That Ruth Built, the Bombers have a chance to start prodding those Yankee-Red Sox ghosts with a pointy stick.
Ruth...ghosts...woohoo, it's 2003. There is a new episode of Friends on tonight.
Even a Yankee sweep will not completely close the gap in the standings between the talented Sox and the uneven men in pinstripes, but it would seriously stir memories of, and comparisons to, 1978 and what may be the greatest late-season baseball turnaround of all time, the '51 Giants notwithstanding.
Sure. If the Yankees sweep the Sox, it might stir memories of 1978. But as it stands now, the Yankees are 8 games back of the Red Sox, with little more than a month left in the season. If the Yankees sweep the Sox, go on a bit of a run, and then take two of three in Boston next week, we could draw comparisons to 1978. But, in case that doesn't happen, we should probably move on and discuss something else. What has been behind the Red Sox success this season? Why have the Yankees been so uneven? What are their comparative schedules like for the next few weeks? Can the Yankees succeed with Mussina throwing batting practice every five days? Can Schilling possibly return to form? Or hey, how about a column on the Blue Jays? Isn't J.P. Ricciardi still a terrible GM? Isn't statistical analysis still racist? There is so much fodder for columns out there, there shouldn't be any reason to go into detail about the 1978 baseball season.
Here is the gist of the 1978 horsehide nightmare for New Englanders.
The
haughty Red Sox led the AL standings by 14 games on July 17, and still
led by 6 1/2 as they prepared to enter September. Although they ended
up losing the pennant in a playoff, there were some redeeming factors.
I was wrong.
I will spare you the next four paragraphs, in which Grimace rehashes
the almost 30 year old details of the Sox collapse, the one game
playoff and Bucky Dent's home run.
This is not a sports column, it is a time capsule. These facts have
been recycled a thousand times by a thousand writers, and they still
add absolutely nothing to the conversation regarding this or any other
baseball season with the exception of 1978. Half the players on both
teams were either not born or
in diapers when Dent hit his dinger. The fact that the Red Sox once
blew a huge lead to the Yankees does not mean that they will do so
again, and if it does happen, it will not be because it happened once
before.
More to the point, why bother writing a pointless blog entry about this pointless column? Because it is a symptom of what ails sports writing in this city: namely, tired cliches and useless trivia passed off as analysis. It is just lazy and unhelpful. Even Red Sox fans and Yankees fans (full disclosure: I am a Yankee fan) are tired of this story, because we have heard it so many times and it means nothing. If you really want to write about the Sox and Yankees, why not give us something new, instead of the same old cursed-Sox tripe. Or, why not write about the home team and spare us all another story about the great rivalry? If Yanks fans and Sox fans don't want to hear it, I imagine Blue Jays fans don't give a shit either, nor do the fans of the 27 other MLB teams who are sick to death of wall-to-wall coverage filled with frivolous stories about the Yanks and Sox.
I will end this rant with a little contest for the readers. The first person who can tell me three things that are wrong with the following sentence from Grimace's column will win a free one-year subscription to the Cox Bloc:
It's clear that Sox manager Terry Francona is not the same lame tactician as Zimmer in terms of warped baseball strategy.
Send your answers to kimjorn@coxbloc.com
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