just a quick one

Six games. Six games? SIX GAMES?

Now is the time for all good New England columnists (I'm looking at you, Dan Shaugnessy) to scold everyone who wrote the Yankees off back in May. The fact that these columnists were the same people who were so eager to declare the Yankees D.O.A. a few months ago doesn't matter - what matters is being able to write doom and gloom stories about the Red Sox and the inevitability of another Yankee triumph.

I don't really have any interest in going there - there's still a lot of baseball to be played by both the Red Sox and Yankees before the end of the season. The Sox have the pitching to succeed in the postseason, which the Yankees don't, but the Yankees may very well mash their way into the postseason if they continue to put up Football scores.

So Barry Bonds broke Aaron's record, and everyone is all boo-hoo because Henry Aaron was such a class act, and Bonds is such a jerk, and isn't this the worst thing that has ever happened in the entirety of Western Civilization?

People were upset when Aaron passed Ruth, but that had more to do with racism. Today, people would probably celebrate it due to the fact that Aaron is a great guy, and Ruth was a boozing, womanizing boor.

I get a kick out of the fact that people are already counting down to A-Rod surpassing Bonds, which is acceptable because A-Rod is what the french call un jerk au naturale. Sure, he's been convicted of one cheap play (the Arroyo wrist slap) and indicted for another ("Mine!", "Ha!", whatever) and he's self-important, arrogant, alienates his teammates, and is ridiculously overpaid, BUT no one has ever accused him of juicing.

Now, that's what I call a hero!

It's curious that people care so much about liking the man who holds an important record. I mean, Nolan Ryan would drill his own grandmother in the skull if he thought she was crowding the plate, but no one says boo about his all-time strikeout record.

The guys who are 1-2 on the all-time hit list are a player banned from baseball due to gambling on his own team and a virulent racist who once pistol-whipped a man to death. Where's the outrage there?

A recent SI poll of active players showed that Tigers' first baseman Sean Casey is the nicest/best-liked player in baseball by an overwhelming margin. The solution to the ethical conundrum of who holds important records is simple: invalidate the statistics of every active, former, and future major league player who surpasses Casey in Hits, Runs, Doubles, Triples, Home Runs, RBIs, Walks, and Stolen Bases, making "The Mayor" the all-time leader in each category.

No one will have to quibble with someone they personally dislike holding a major record then, right?