Super Bowl XLII: Giants Win! Red Sox Suck!

I'm a baseball fan who doesn't care about football. The Super Bowl was, I believe, the second game I've watched this season. But I watched the Giants upset the Patriots with all the fervor and enthusiasm of a lifelong pigskin enthusiast.

Why did I care at all, let alone so passionately? It all goes back to 2002, when the Pats won their first Super Bowl. What did the fans chant at the victory parade? "Yankees suck! Yankees suck!" It seemed appropriate, somehow, given that the Yanks, who at the time were the four-time defending American League champions, had been driving stakes through the Red Sox's hopes and dreams for over three quarters of a century. No mere football team could erase a pain so deep and long-lasting, but at least they gave Bostonians an opportunity to vent during the off-season.

Back in '02, this lifelong New Yorker and Yankees fan was happy that the Pats had won the big one, given that New England sports fans had endured a 16-year drought without any of their sports franchises winning a dang thing. And I enjoyed the "Yankees suck!" chants, in a way that only a sports fan who'd grown used to winning, and winning often, could enjoy them.

Six years later, the tables had turned, in a huge way. The Red Sox had won not one, but two World Series, and had stomped on the Yanks on the way to the first one. And if that's not bad enough for New York sports fans, the Celtics currently have the best record in the NBA while the Knicks stumble through yet another pathetic, embarrassing season. And the Patriots were chasing not only their fourth Super Bowl title this decade, but the title of Greatest Team In The History Of The NFL. And only the Giants stood in their way.

So I watched the Super Bowl not as a Giants fan, but as a Yankees fan desperate for some measure of revenge, even if it was in a different sport.

I don't think I'd ever heard the name Plaxico Burress until about a month ago, but now the man is my hero. And Eli Manning didn't just invent the cotton gin, he's a heck of a quarterback as well.

A New York team spoiled the Patriots' perfect season AND derailed the Boston sports juggernaut. While I wait for the long winter to end and get ready for pitchers and catchers to report, life is sweet.

Go Big Blue! Red Sox suck!

Comments

[django707]

Boston fans define themselves by the Yankees. That's why they chant Yankees suck when their football team wins the super bowl. Pathetic. I've been to umpteen Yankee celebrations and you know what? No mention of anything Boston.
Boston sux

[StanDaMan]

I'm a football fan who doesn't care about baseball.

Baseball is boring. It’s not a real sport, either.

Most of the time, here’s what happens in a typical baseball game: The pitcher is scratching his genitals, or adjusting his pants, or shrugging his shoulder, or shaking his head at the catcher, or digging a hole in the dirt, or going through any number of inane and tiresome pre-pitch rituals. The catcher is squatting behind the plate giving hand signals from his crotch. The batter is meandering around home plate, or, if he actually stays put, he spends most of his time waving the bat around or kicking his own hole in the dirt. The in- and out-fielders are just standing there, looking around, waiting for something to happen. The dugouts are full of players and coaches with their eyes glazed-over from the boredom, eating sunflower seeds, or chewing tobacco, or spitting, or talking about the stock market or anything but baseball.

That is why there’s so much emphasis on baseball statistics -- to distract the fans from the ho-hum events on the field. One baseball fan might ask another: “Which switch-hitter had the most doubles in August during a strike-shortened season in replacement of the regular third baseman when hitting left-handed in night games?” I have a better, and more important, question: Who cares?

Lastly, to make matters even worse, the exhorbitant salaries being paid to players have made them more disinterested than ever, and that makes the game even more tiresome. But who can blame the players? Who would want to spend an afternoon playing a boring game of baseball when, with another $100,000 in the bank for that game, they could be self-indulging themselves with liquor, drugs and women, popping steroids and pumping iron at the gym, acting like arrogant a**holes to fans, walking around as if they peed eau de cologne, or otherwise behaving badly?

[BlackJAC]

What do Tom Brady and the circus have in common?

Two more rings than either Manning brother.