Good reads: Whining Yankees etc.

Lupica hammers the Yankees for asking Major League Baseball for a forfeit.
There are lot of great lines in here, but this one sums up what's going on:
Levine doesn't just sound cheap here, he sounds desperate. If the Yankees are still 10-1/2 games ahead of the Red Sox, do you think he would actually go out in front of the public and beg for a forfeit?

Martin Fennelly of the Tampa Tribune piles on too
I liked this line:
It's like the lions complaining because the Christians were late.

The Boston Herald's Tony Massaroti weighs in from Oakland.

I liked this lede:
OAKLAND, Calif. - When you get right down to it, when you get past the politicking and legalese, this is all very simple. The New York Yankees are either insultingly arrogant or insanely desperate, though that does not eliminate the possibility that they are both.

Some Red Sox fans are just warped. Nothing drives me crazier than stupid media accounts of people that think they have the curse broken. This story recounts people that found a 1918 penny in a puddle of beer. Hey guess what they made pennies in 1918, some of them still exist. Finding one has nothing to do with the fortunes of a baseball team.
They aren't the only nutjobs out there:
Rumors, superstition, and unbridled hope abound amongst vendors and fans at the park, Coen said. And signals that the team's sixth World Series win could be imminent just keep coming.
For example, Gabe Kapler and Johnny Damon sometimes stand together in the outfield, Coen said. Their numbers: 19 and 18.
Then there was the teenager struck by a foul ball last Tuesday. His address: Ruth's old house in Sudbury.
The 16-year-old boy had his two front teeth knocked out, and some fans now wonder whether his sacrifice could have lifted the Curse. Especially after the Yankees suffered their worst-ever loss that same night, under a nearly full moon.
''This is the year," Coen confirmed. ''This is just another sign."

Bob Hohler's Red Sox notebook included the following:

Interest in the series extended at least as far as Iraq. The Defense Department issued a news release describing the effort by a Marine from Weymouth, Mass., to build a miniature replica of the Green Monster at Camp Ramadi in Iraq. Captain Stephen Pritchard of the 3d Battalion, 11th Marine Regiment, had a message for Sox officials. "If the spring training venue in [Fort Myers, Fla.] ever proves to be untenable, then you are more than welcome to hold spring training here in Ar Ramadi, Iraq," Pritchard said. The Marines built the fence out of 200 panels of recycled wood and covered it with 120 gallons of green paint. They also raised a replica of the Citgo sign behind it. "We built this to try to erase some of the scars of the war," Pritchard said, "so if you stay here at Camp Ramadi for seven months it wouldn't be so bad."


The Defense department's link to this story is here. Photos are included.

The Arizona Republic checks in on Schilling.


If anyone knows why we haven't had a Jackie MacMullen sighting in months, I'd love to know.