The Black Table's Baseball Preview

The Black Table, an online magazine, has a lengthy baseball preview. Besides picking the Red Sox to win another World Series and saying the Yankees will not make the playoffs at all, Will Leitch chooses one blog as "the best weblog about each team ... No real fan of a team can survive without checking out these sites on a daily basis." And he chose this blog for the Red Sox. Thanks, Will. Now:

[W]ith their victory, they have now simply become obnoxious Abercrombie & Fitch assheads who have inexplicably become, of all things, cocky. One would think one breakthrough year after 86 years of misery would instill in Red Sox fans a measure of humility and restraint. One would be wrong. ...

One could make the argument that last year's victory over the Yankees was the victory the Red Sox had been waiting for, the first step in winning the great war. But Epstein has done something that George Steinbrenner has not done; he has put together an outstanding team that will also flourish in the future. The war isn't not just starting: It's already over. The Red Sox have won. The Yankees just don't know it yet.

I snipped the part where Will admits that he is "gleefully generalizing in a ludicrously broad fashion." But cocky, obnoxious assheads? Perhaps. ... And I believe the correct term is "asshats."

I do still have an overpowering urge to cackle with glee every time I see a Yankee cap on some poor soul's head. I don't think that feeling is going away anytime soon. I think what has made (some of) us cocky and obnoxious is the way in which Boston won it all. Coming back from being flat on our backs in the grave with the national media (and any Yankee fans we knew) heaping the dirt on us was beyond amazing. Its effect was much more life-changing than if we won a "regular" seven-game series.

To be able to throw off (and throw back) all the insults and taunts that we have heard from Yankee fans for so many years -- especially that our team can't win "the big games" and collapses under intense pressure -- well, it'll take a stronger man than me to not feel somewhat superior.

Also, I agree that the progressive ideas that Epstein and the front office have embraced will now begin to separate the Red Sox from the Yankees. It all begins anew tomorrow night.