Go Rays.

Let me type that again.

Go Rays.

Screw the Boston Red Sox.

I have come to a startling revelation in the past few weeks or so, while watching the Red Sox melt down.  As I sit, night after night, and laugh out loud at the pathetic faces on Tim Wakefield, John Lackey and David Ortiz I realize just how much I enjoy the misery that is the Red Sox this September.  For a while I didn’t know why.

After all, aren’t the Red Sox the heroic answer to the villains that are the New York Yankees?  They represent the working man, blue collar, lunch pail, time card, steam whistle baseball fan.  They are the anti-elite.  They’re as pure as the dirt that gets stuck to that pine tar on their helmets.  (why does one team need to use so much pine tar, by the way?… but I digress).

But as the late Heath Ledger said so eloquently in The Dark Knight: “Their morals, their code?  It’s a bad joke.”  The Red Sox have been playing us all for fools.  Sure, they were the lovable losers in the 80’s and 90’s.  But that truth has ever-so-slowly eroded away until they, to steal another line from another movie, “have become the very evil you swore to destroy.” (bonus points if you know the movie)

Here is the truth:

The Boston Red Sox are the true “Evil Empire”.

Yes, I said it. 

I would rather root for the New York Yankees than ever pull for the Sox again.

At least with the Yankees you know what you’re getting.  They will give out stupid contracts, over-spend for everybody and everything, but they will attempt to win games with class.  Derek Jeter, Jorge Posada, Mariano Rivera all carry themselves a certain way: as the aristocrats they are. 

The Yankees may rob baseball blind, but they do it with a gun pointed in front of you.  In some way, that’s far less detestable than what the Red Sox do.

The Red Sox try to tell us that they’re the fun-loving guys.  They have dirty helmets (again, why all the pine tar?) dirty uniforms, stupid facial hair, stupider dreadlocks (see: Ramirez, Manny) and even stupider batting stances (see Youklis, Kevin).  They want us to say “wow, those guys are rebels… I’ll cheer for them!”  They have catchphrases to further cement their own marketability.  In 2003, they said they needed to Cowboy Up; in 2004 they called themselves “Idiots”.  How clever.

They are like any other snake oil salesman.  They’re pulling a huge con.  They are the Yankees in the Chicago Cubs’ clothing.

I hate the Red Sox for many reasons.  First and foremost: their stupid contracts harm all other Major League teams.  When guys like John Lackey, who has seen his ERA go up every single year for the past 4 years, gets a 5 year deal for more than $80 million it increases the asking price for every other pitcher. That’s because the overall average for a Major League pitcher gets adjusted up when those detestable contracts are handed out like toothpicks at the front of a Chili’s. Then, Adam Eaton can go say “well if the overall average just became $6 million instead of $5 million, then I’ll demand that.”  That’s why guys like Eaton, Marcum, Meche and Zito get the money they get.  In part, it’s because of both the Red Sox and Yankees.  But again, the Yankees aren’t trying to tell me anything I don’t already know.

Not to mention the fact that Lackey is 33 years old.  He will be 37 when that contract is over.  That contract just basically says, “We don’t really give a crap about money at all.  This guy is, at least, marginally effective and we think our spending doesn’t matter to anyone else, so we’ll just throw a few buckets of money at him.”  And if he sucks, they’ll just release him and eat the contract.  To hell with the damage it does to every other team in the process.

I wasn’t pissed when the Phillies signed Cliff Lee.  He’s an excellent left-handed pitcher.  He deserved money and he got it.  Great.  The Phillies are an organization striving for greatness.  The Red Sox are irresponsible teenage girls who just got ahold of daddy’s credit card and plan on running that thing up for all its worth.

Buck Showalter said it best: "I'd like to see how smart Theo Epstein is with the Tampa Bay payroll... You got Carl Crawford because you paid more than anyone else, and that's what makes you smarter?"

Exactly.

Dustin Pedroia is an a-hole. David Ortiz is a cheater. Adrian Gonzalez is a traitor. John Lackey is a hack. Josh Beckett is a bitterman. I hope you all get injured.

Go Rays.