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Post by LS on Sept 7, 2004 16:47:50 GMT -5
Yanks Seek Forfeit Because of Late D-RaysSee?? This is exactly the kind of crap that puts the 'Stank' in the Yanks.   It's not 'jealousy'  because they buy high priced 'talent'...it's their lowroad self-serving stunts like this that have tarnished their once respectable rep and makes them hated. 
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Post by Mr._Shooter on Sept 7, 2004 18:18:49 GMT -5
Yanks Seek Forfeit Because of Late D-RaysSee?? This is exactly the kind of crap that puts the 'Stank' in the Yanks. It's not 'jealousy' because they buy high priced 'talent'...it's their lowroad self-serving stunts like this that have tarnished their once respectable rep and makes them hated. For once, I actually agree with one of your barbed-wire statements about the Yankees, LS.  The front office's handling of this was entirely for the birds. Was it an inconvenience for the players who reported early and the fans who showed up at the Stadium around noon yesterday? Yes. Was there a valid excuse on the part of the Devil Rays? Yes. Case closed. This should have been a non-issue; now, it's yet another public relations nightmare.  |
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Post by Roughneck on Oct 13, 2004 16:46:37 GMT -5
October 13, 2004 Mets Decide the Time Is Right for a Cable Network of Their Own By RICHARD SANDOMIR he Mets loved the idea of the Yankees' YES Network so much that they will start their own regional sports channel in 2006. The Mets announced yesterday that their partners will be Time Warner and Comcast, the country's largest cable operators, which will guarantee the fledgling network distribution to 3.1 million cable households in the New York metropolitan area. The deal was set in motion last June, when the Mets paid $54 million to make an early escape from their television deal with Cablevision's MSG Network and Fox Sports New York. The Mets had contemplated making a new deal with Cablevision for substantially more than the $47 million they were paid this year and making a deal with YES. But Fred Wilpon, the Mets' principal owner, learned from George Steinbrenner, his Yankees counterpart, that owning a network offers potential riches, greater control over what its announcers say and a way to market his games, tickets, players, and merchandise 365 days a year. "Fred's been thinking about this for years," said Bob Gutkowski, the chairman of Criterion Sports and Entertainment, a consulting firm that has YES as a client. "Ten years ago, I went to Fred and George Steinbrenner and told them to create the New York Baseball Network." The partners in the Mets' network, including Wilpon, refused yesterday to discuss the deal, the investments by Time Warner and Comcast and the stakes each side will own. But two people briefed on the investments by the partners said the Mets would own 60 percent and Time Warner would own most of the rest. Comcast will operate the network. At YES, Goldman Sachs and Providence Equity, which paid $340 million to be investors, own 40 percent; Yankee Global Enterprises owns 35 percent; and some former Nets and current Devils owners own the rest. It was not immediately known how much of the $54 million the Mets borrowed to buy out Cablevision, and the $135 million that was borrowed to buy out the former co-owner in the Mets, Nelson Doubleday, will be repaid by the investors. At the very least, said Lee Berke, who has helped start several team-owned cable sports networks, Wilpon "wouldn't have spent the money to buy out Cablevision if he didn't think he'd get it back." The Mets' network will carry 125 regular-season games, which means that 25 fewer games will be available on a broadcast station. The Mets' decision to start a network echoes similar choices made recently by the Charlotte Bobcats, the Memphis Grizzlies, the jointly owned Colorado Avalanche and Denver Nuggets and other teams to start their own channels, usually in partnership with a cable network. Even the Dallas Cowboys have started one, and their network cannot show regular-season games. Comcast has been particularly aggressive, most prominently creating a regional network in partnership with the Chicago Cubs, the White Sox, the Blackhawks and the Bulls that spirited those teams away from the existing Fox Sports Chicago network. "This is the endgame of where sports television is heading," Berke said. "As many teams as possible will develop their own networks." For the Mets' network, having Time Warner and Comcast as partners will eliminate some of the contentiousness that has historically existed between regional sports channels and cable operators. But it will still have to face an undoubtedly reluctant Cablevision, which, having lost the rights to carry the Mets on its channels, may resist the financial terms required to carry a new rival network. Cablevision, the largest cable operator in the region, refused to make YES available to its nearly three million customers in 2002 because it said the channel was overpriced. It agreed to carry YES in 2003 because of a deal brokered by New York's attorney general, Eliot Spitzer, and will keep offering it as a basic cable channel through early 2009 because of a binding arbitration ruling. The Yankees have been far more successful than the Mets on the field, and this season their 4.6 cable rating (or 339,309 TV households) was 147 percent greater than the Mets' 1.86 cable rating (133,920 households). That difference, and the fact that the Mets' network will have only one professional sports team when it starts negotiations, could lead Cablevision to resist any effort to pay nearly the same $2.08 monthly subscriber fee that cable operators will spend in 2006 to carry YES, which also has the Nets. That fee was set this year by arbitrators who also mandated that YES be carried on basic-cable tiers. "History shows that Cablevision might resist, but this will be different because it will already be on Time Warner and Comcast," Gutkowski said. "The arbitrators' decision certainly set a tone, that regional sports should be on basic, and should have a pretty good value." Meanwhile, Cablevision's regional sports television empire is shrinking. Through 2001, it dominated the market, with MSG and FSNY. But then it lost the Yankees and the Nets, and after 2005, the Mets will be gone. Without those teams, Cablevision will be left with the Knicks, the Rangers, the Islanders and the Devils - all playing winter sports - and no baseball, the highest-rated sport on most regional sports networks. FSNY could lose the Devils after the 2006-7 season to YES, which has some owners in common with the hockey team, or to the Mets' network, which may be willing to pay more for the low-rated team. Cablevision refused to speculate about an eventual merger of MSG and FSNY, which would reduce subscribers' fees. In a statement, Cablevision said that it would "continue to carefully monitor the situation." Just PLEASE don't let them call it MES!  |
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Post by Mr._Shooter on Oct 15, 2004 9:44:28 GMT -5
Just PLEASE don't let them call it MES!  ;D |
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Post by Roughneck on Oct 19, 2004 17:31:45 GMT -5
Ah, but ya see Shooter, at least we Met fans can have a sense of humor about ourselves. Not like you Yankee fans, for whom anything less than a World Series ring is the end of the world. ;D
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Post by LS on Oct 21, 2004 22:41:19 GMT -5
Ah, but ya see Shooter, at least we Met fans can have a sense of humor about ourselves. ...And we're also very nice.  We lent the Sox our 'Ya gotta BELIEVE' slogan...and by crackee it sure does look like it worked for 'em... ;D LS cleaned up nicely on that one  ...when they were down 3- she bet her fellow Metsox fans they'd be back, it'd go to seven and they'd take it...And to think- of all people- can ya believe Mets fans said I was nuts??!! ;D ...And now with that minor interruption out of the way- back to my regularly scheduled football season ...and the 'snoozefest' J-E-T-S... ;D |
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Post by Roughneck on Oct 21, 2004 23:59:23 GMT -5
Boston took down one evil George, nw can they take down another? ;D
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Post by Roughneck on Oct 22, 2004 0:05:13 GMT -5
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Post by Roughneck on Oct 22, 2004 9:30:04 GMT -5
October 22, 2004 In a Fan's Eyes, the World Turns Upside DownBy MICHIKO KAKUTANI There was a breakdown in the cosmic order Wednesday night. At least that's how it felt to Yankees fans: all the old myths, the old beliefs in curses and destiny, had been shattered, left to blow about the chilly field at Yankee Stadium along with empty Cracker Jack boxes and tattered hot dog wrappers. And the Yankees' very identity as destiny's darlings had been shredded as well in a spectacular reversal of fortune in which baseball's eternal losers, the scruffy, hopelessly jinxed Boston Red Sox, pulled off the unimaginable: toppling the once-proud Yankees in the most shaming and mind-boggling fashion - after the Bronx Bombers had been ahead, three games to none, in the American League Championship Series and a mere three outs away from the World Series. For Yankees fans, it was not only a shocking humiliation, it was also a stunning fall from grace. Gone was the club's mythic sense of itself as a team of consummate pros, players who make all the clutch plays, always pull off the most impossible, last-minute comebacks. Instead of another highlight reel that could play endlessly on the YES Network, there were cheeky headlines shouting "Damned Yankees" and "The Choke's on Us." Instead of Bucky Dent and Aaron Boone, there was this: The galling sight of Red Sox players celebrating on hallowed stadium ground, only yards from Monument Park. And as Mike Francesa, a longtime Yankees fan and a talk show host on radio and television, noted, it happened on Mickey Mantle's birthday no less. The team hailed as the team of the century is now mocked for pulling the biggest choke job in the annals of sports. The ghost of Babe Ruth was dead. The tide of history had turned. Karma had left the Bronx and fled north up the Eastern corridor. Certainly anyone who was not a die-hard Yankees fan would say there was a kind of poetic justice to it all: an end to the dominion of the Evil Empire, a stake in the heart of the richest, most storied franchise in sports history. After 26 championships, after years of George Steinbrenner's outspending everyone, after decades of Yankees fans' taunting Boston with chants of "1918," wasn't it finally someone else's turn? And who better to do it than the Red Sox - national symbols, along with the hapless Chicago Cubs, of the perennial underdog? And there were other morals to be drawn from the narrative. This is what happens when you don't cherish a home-grown star like Andy Pettitte and let him go. This is what happens when you chase after All-Stars like Kevin Brown, Alex Rodriguez, Kenny Lofton and Gary Sheffield, who are hardly true-blue, pinstriped Yankees. This is what happens when you think you can buy a championship team and strip-mine your farm system. This is what happens when you have the hubris not to correct obvious flaws on the pitching staff, like not having any ace left-handers. Yes, Yankees fans have been horribly spoiled over the years. We did not know the pain of Boston. Or Chicago. Or even the pain of Jets, Mets and Knicks fans. We have taken tradition, luck and money for granted. And so there was that morality lesson as well. Many Yankees fans had grown so entitled that they practically assumed a trip to the World Series was an annual autumn rite, and now that illusion has been smashed. And because of the shocking way in which the Yankees lost ("Hell Freezes Over," blared The Daily News), the result was not the usual disappointment that millions of sports fans feel every year, but something more disorienting - a kind of identity crisis, combined with a creeping sense of mortality, the realization that this was truly the end to the dynastic hopes that were planted in 1996 and that blossomed between 1998 and 2000. This, after all, was not the same Yankees team, and it did not possess the same mojo or the same ensemble feel. Only Bernie Williams, Derek Jeter, Mariano Rivera, Jorge Posada and Joe Torre remain of the old Yankees, and there was talk, even before this week's debacle, of the toll that time and age were beginning to take on some of them. Yankees fans have been guilty of seeing the team's history as one bright line threading its way back through the annals of time, back to Ruth, Gehrig, DiMaggio and Mantle, while forgetting the drought years, say, that Don Mattingly suffered through for so long. In fact, we've lived in a happy bubble in recent years. We had become accustomed to savoring the joys of sport (escape from daily life, escape from real things like war and politics and business) without having to face many of its disappointments. We had all too often enjoyed the thrill of victory, without risking (we thought) the agony of defeat. Of course, we can try to console ourselves with memories of what happened several decades ago to the Yankees' previous archenemy: after one awful postseason loss after another to the Yankees, the Brooklyn Dodgers finally beat the Bronx Bombers in 1955, only to fall to them, humiliatingly, a year later. But for fans still reeling from Wednesday's epic loss, mustering that sort of hope right now is hard. The Yankees' monumental collapse in the face of a Sox team that seemed to rise from the dead went beyond most fans' worst-case scenarios, and it came as the culmination of a week of interminable playoff games that had already left New Yorkers exhausted and drained. It felt like a harbinger of a long winter of discontent, and perhaps a much longer sojourn in the wilderness - a prospect made all the worse by the sense that the world was somehow, bizarrely, disconcertingly, out of joint. |
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Post by Mr._Shooter on Oct 22, 2004 15:47:12 GMT -5
...And we're also very nice. We lent the Sox our 'Ya gotta BELIEVE' slogan...and by crackee it sure does look like it worked for 'em... ;D LS cleaned up nicely on that one ...when they were down 3- she bet her fellow Metsox fans they'd be back, it'd go to seven and they'd take it...And to think- of all people- can ya believe Mets fans said I was nuts??!! ;D ...And now with that minor interruption out of the way- back to my regularly scheduled football season ...and the 'snoozefest' J-E-T-S... ;D Yeah, LS, it's amazing to think that, now, Ambien comes in green! ;D As for the disaster that was the ALCS, I'll write everyone as soon as I complete my 12-step program.  |
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Post by Roughneck on Oct 22, 2004 21:22:00 GMT -5
As for the disaster that was the ALCS, I'll write everyone as soon as I complete my 12-step program. Yeah, I'd kinda figured the wife still had you under sedation. ;D |
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snizz
Full Member
I'm sure I'd be more upset if I weren't quite so heavily sedated
Posts: 322
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Post by snizz on Oct 26, 2004 15:52:08 GMT -5
Mr. Shooter, I'll chalk up that Ambien crack to either the effects of heavy sedation ;D or that you're not a football kind of guy. After suffering through days on end of the most pathetic spectacle of whining in the history of sports here's my two cents on the subject. I think the whole thing sums up what people have been trying to say. Not all, but most of the more recent Yankee fans who've shown up since the mid nineties do have an attitude of entitlement. As for meself, I couldn't stop laughing over their absurd "end of the world" blubbering. After four straight years of coming up empty, I'd think that saying "there's always next year" should've sunk in by now. The "historic meltdown" should've been no surprise and I get the impression the person the least surprised was Torre. It's the point baseball fans in general have been trying to make. Steinbrenner can buy all the top rated players he wants, but he can't buy a team. No matter how good or bad a team's performing, if there's no chemistry between the players then there's not much of a team. The gripe isn't that Steinbrenner buys up all the first rate talent and assembles formidable teams that there's no chance of beating. It hasn't worked. The gripe is that he buys up all the top talent and it hasn't worked to buy him a championship. That many overinflated egos on one team can't work well together. But it takes players out of circulation who might be a perfect fit on another team which would result in a much more interesting and competitive sport overall. As much as I'm loathe to say it they did have the chemistry in the mid to late 90s and that's why they won championships, because those guys were a team. They didn't have marquee names to do it either. Fame for most of them came after the wins. It boiled down to one thing. Boston is a team, they played as a team and their players bled for their team. These Yankees weren't a team, only a bunch of highly paid all-star players thrown together who happened to be playing on the same field but were all in their own separate worlds. And the best they could pull off was a sorry ass sissy glove slap. |
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Post by Mr._Shooter on Oct 27, 2004 10:50:20 GMT -5
Mr. Shooter, I'll chalk up that Ambien crack to either the effects of heavy sedation ;D or that you're not a football kind of guy. ;D ;D ;D Snizz, perhaps it's a little bit of both. Seriously, people who know me know that I'd rather sit through a presentation on Florida time shares than watch a football game. Just not my cup of tea. My wife, a big-time footballer, thinks I'm nuts by the way. Why she bothers with me, I don't know. ;D I appreciate your point. As for me, I've been a fan from the cradle on. Vividly remember my first game -- a 5-3 win against the K.C. Royals, Tommy John started and won, Willie Randolph homered, Mattingly doubled and vacuum-cleaned at first. Stuck with my team through the miserable '80s, when the only thing we had going for us was Donnie Baseball. Suffered through the Stump Merrill generation (hitting bottom was being forced to witness Steve Howe pitch in a Yankees uniform). Was a season ticket holder when the Yankees couldn't reach .500 with a ten-foot pole (actually gave up my seats in 1993, before the team found religion, as it were). Found hope again during the Buck Showalter era (even as I cursed the man for managing as if he were walking on glass). Went into depression over the '94 strike (at the time, the Yankees were running away with the AL East). Punched a hole in my basement ceiling when we blew Game 5 against the Mariners in '95. Cried tears of joy when we tomahawked the Braves in 1996. Punched another hole in the basement ceiling when Rivera served up the Alomar homer in '97. Gloated when we steamrolled the Pods in '98. Gloated again '99. Took pride in silencing Met fans in '00. Suffered much heartburn in '01, '02, and '03 (but got through it by resting on the laurels of the recent championships). Was forced into the 12-step thing this year. Soooooo....I agree that the new generation of Yankee fans deserve no sympathy for having their sense of entitlement smashed to smithereens (as it turns out, life sucks sometimes, so move on). The end of the world? No, of course not. But for long-time fans such as myself, this cannot help but sting. You don't invest your time, money and interest in rooting for a team only to say, "aw shucks...what else is on?" when your team pisses away a 3-0 lead to the rival Red Sox and becomes the laughing-stock of professional sports. Yes, the sun will rise and set. Time won't stand still. There will be a "next year." But when fans of other teams say that Yankee fans should "just get over it" (or some variation on that theme), I can only conclude that they are psychologically superior. After all, they apparently have no problem (no letdown, no frustration, no anger, no disappointment) with their own teams spit the bit. In the scheme things, you're right, snizz. They Yankees lost to the better team, the more inspired team, the more fundamentally-sound team. The historic part of this, however, is that, in short series, oftentimes the overall best team doesn't win. Someone on the lesser team gets hot and dominates, or the lesser team collectively is on fire and, because there are few games to play, there's no opportunity for the better team to stop the momentum and restore the natural order of things. This seemed to be happening during the first 3 games of the series, and many observers figured that history was on the Yankees side (both in terms of the hotter team winning 3 games right off the bat AND the hotter team being up 3 games to none and winning the whole enchilada). What Boston did was something that historically should happen only during the regular 162-game season, when the better team will have the multiple winning streaks, and the lesser team will have the multiple losing streaks, that ultimately decide first place. I agree with you 100%. It struck me that the only player on the Yankees who visibly manifested a "team first" attitude was Jeter (and this was to be expected, given his status as team captain and his track record). Everyone else, while they seemed to be playing hard and enjoying the moment, appeared at times to be in "every man for himself" mode - even Bernie Williams, who should know better. The Yankee teams of '96-'00 were as tight as the Red Sox were this season and it showed - they won almost every year. Recent Yankee teams, however, have been missing that one key ingredient: esprit de corps. Look, the Yankees need pitching, no doubt about it. But they also need to examine exactly who is on the team. Who are these guys? Are they hard-working yet self-centered jerks? Are they team players, willing to sacrifice an at-bat for the good of the team? Just two years ago, the Red Sox were a team of turmoil. Too many egos, too many personalities, no sense of purpose or direction. That they've been able to turn it around, even with Manny Ramirez (one of the biggest previous offenders)still in the mix, is astonishing. Steinbrenner and Cashman would do well to take notes. |
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Post by Roughneck on Oct 27, 2004 23:30:45 GMT -5
Yeah, my favorite joke was the new item in the Yankees store, the Yankees choker. One girl at work didn't care, and said she knew the Yankees were gonna lose once they blew game 4. That one I was surprised cause I had thought she would be in a bad mood and slug me. Another threatened to kill me. ;D Seriously though, I think one of the problems is the fact that the Yankees are expected to win no matter what rather than be happy with a good season. Over 100 wins in the regular season is a spectacular record no matter what, especially since in several divisions most teams were below 500. One could argue about a disolution of talent, but more and more teams are finishing below 500. While the Cardinals will definitely be wondering what went wrong at the end, Given the fact that they won 105 games, I doubt they would try a wholesale restructuring of the team, unlike Slimebrenner, who will most likly do so. The Yankees were often shielded by their mystique and history, and the fact that they were in first, which in itself would make most teams happy. I remember a statistic pointed out last year that after the All Star Break, the Yankees had a spectacular record against teams under 500, but were getting slaughtered by teams above it. That just ain't gonna cut it once you reach teams that were good enough to make the playoffs, all of whom are presumabley above 500. I remember all through the ALCS Fox (who didn't seem to like Boston very much in it's coverage...wonder why ;D) constantly put up the fact that the Yankees had what was it, 61, 62 come from behind wins that year, the most in the majors. While that's a nice number, it is indicitive of a problem. Like how did your pitching let the other team get ahead in the first place so many times. There are those 61 times and then the 61 times that the Yankees didn't come back, meaning that the Yankees fell behind in most of their games. Not a good sign. That's putting too much on the bats to come up with runs at the end, and in the end, the Yankees bats just ran outta gas...or maybe it could be credited to Boston pitching not letting the Yankees hit home runs, which is how they got most of their runs this year. Either way, the result is the same. |
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snizz
Full Member
I'm sure I'd be more upset if I weren't quite so heavily sedated
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Post by snizz on Oct 30, 2004 21:21:59 GMT -5
;D ;D ;D Snizz, perhaps it's a little bit of both. Seriously, people who know me know that I'd rather sit through a presentation on Florida time shares than watch a football game. Just not my cup of tea. My wife, a big-time footballer, thinks I'm nuts by the way. Why she bothers with me, I don't know. ;D I thought maybe you were reading the stat sheets backwards. Red mentioned earlier that your wife's a long suffering Bills fan? Then you should've known Ambien is the offical sponsor of the Bills. But since you're not a football kind of guy, you got the teams confused. An understandable mistake. Factor in one other thing. Baseball fans who aren't Yankee fans. Any sports fan in general. People in general. Face it, everybody's a sucker for a Cinderella story. They love to see Davey beat Goliath. People root for the underdog. It's just the way it is. Strange as it seems, it's the long time fans, at least the ones I know, who've been the most pragmatic about it. They explain it this way. The WS has been around for 101 years and 99 series have taken place. The Yankees have won more than any other team but, they go on to say, put it in perspective. 73 of them have been won by teams other than the Yankees. 20 of their wins came before 1963. After that, they became mortal. They didn't make an appearance in the WS or win a division title between '64 and '76. They didn't win another title until '76, won the ALC but lost the WS, then won 2 WS in '77 and '78, lost the ALC in '80 and lost the WS in '81. They didn't win anything between '81 and '96. Do the math and they've only won 6 WS in the past 41 years, which is only two more than two other teams have won during the same period and not even close to half of what the team accomplished in it's first 42 years. I'm not psychologically superior material ;D but I think we view things differently. I view sports as what they are, games. A roll of the dice where anything can happen. A form of entertainment. I invest my time and interest because I enjoy a sport and develop an attraction to certain teams. If they win great. If they lose, eh nuts, but I was still entertained. I stick with my chosen teams through thick and thin, applaud when they put on a good show and give a groan when they fall short. But it's not anything I get pissed off, agonize or lose sleep over. No use crying over spilled milk as my grandfather would say. If that were the case, being primarily both a Mets and Jets fan I should be on Prozac caused by a lifetime of perpetual letdown, disappointment, anger and frustration, but I'm not. ;D Sometimes you win, sometimes you lose and sometimes you break even. It's all part of the game and you take it in stride. Maybe that's my attraction to both teams. Neither are ever sure bets, you never know what to expect and you can never count either out till the fat lady's sung. It's something I find more exciting and interesting than predictability. Mr. Shooter, I've always been of the mind that things happen for a reason. You can't consciously build a winning team, they just happen. You get the right players in the right place at the right time and chemistry takes over. If you change any of those parts, even the weakest links, it breaks the chemistry. Team owners never seem to realize that. Once they get a winner, they try improving on it and it never or rarely ever works and they wind up destroying the "magic." As Roughneck pointed out, sure they won 101 games, but I didn't see them as being dominant in any real sense. Luck seemed like more of a factor with them. The Cardinals on the other hand were. I didn't find the Yankees "meltdown" surprising in the least, but I was shocked by the Cardinals "meltdown." I saw the way Boston played all year and I have to admit, like Red, I was confident they'd come out on top. I don't believe in curses. I had fully expected the Cards to breeze past the Astros and then take the WS, but I was very shocked when they struggled against the Astros. With the way Boston played and won it, and then watched the Cards struggle in the NLCs I knew it wasn't going to be the Cards year afterall. I don't think they're in any real position to. Steinbrenner's given the players he's got, contracts that are too enormous for other teams to afford. And while Steinbrenner was willing to pay any price for Johnson, the DBs are trying to rebuild their team and weren't interested in money. ;D They wanted players and the Yankees a long time ago gave away all their prospects and neglected to replace them. Instead they focused on trying to buy a team that will win in the short term. He'll probably get Beltran as expected, but he's going to come with a big price tag and another bat does not a bullpen make. The great and almighty A-Rod was a huge mistake. He's not a team player and the Rangers certainly proved they were much better off without him. In the end, Boston wound up better off not getting him, you couldn't have asked for a better team player than Shilling. Willie Randolph did an interview after the A-Rod-Varitek incident and he made some harsh comments that showed it was obvious he was disgusted with the state of the team, which may be why he's campaigning so hard for Howe's former position on the Mets. |
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It's not 'jealousy' 
because they buy high priced 'talent'...it's their lowroad self-serving stunts like this that have tarnished their once respectable rep and makes them hated. 
The front office's handling of this was entirely for the birds. Was it an inconvenience for the players who reported early and the fans who showed up at the Stadium around noon yesterday? Yes. Was there a valid excuse on the part of the Devil Rays? Yes. Case closed. This should have been a non-issue; now, it's yet another public relations nightmare. 
We lent the Sox our 'Ya gotta BELIEVE' slogan...and by crackee it sure does look like it worked for 'em... 
...when they were down 3- she bet her fellow Metsox fans they'd be back, it'd go to seven and they'd take it...And to think- of all people- can ya believe Mets fans said I was nuts??!! 
