Northern California Baseball Blog and Q&A

Paul Gutierrez
Raised in Barstow, Calif., where he played community college baseball for two years, Paul Gutierrez has worked at Sports Illustrated and the Las Vegas Review-Journal, where he covered his alma mater's Runnin' Rebels at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. During a six-year stint at the Los Angeles Times, he co-authored Tommy Davis' "Tales from the Dodgers Dugout." He came to The Bee in October 2005 and is now a Bay Area sports features writer who concentrates on baseball during the spring and summer.

• Ask a question

« An Amen on an A's analysis and a Mariners thought, or two | Northern California Baseball Blog and Q&A front page | Where do Bonds, his recliner and big screen TV end up? »

January 24, 2008

Paging Beantown for a friendly e-mail battle

There's nothing like hanging with your friends and shooting the breeze about sports, even if logistics force you to do it in cyberspace, right? So it's always a good time when a random e-mail battle breaks out and the bar-room-style facts and insults fly like so many Mitch Williams wild pitches.

Recently, our friend Jay, who grew up in Philadelphia and in college was justifiably insufferable as a fan of anything remotely associated with the Phillies, Eagles, Sixers and Flyers but since has moved to the Boston area, was prattling on about the greatness of New England sports teams - the Red Sox and Patriots, specifically - and their fans. "The best in sports," I believe is how he described Beantown's denizens.

Well that got everyone in an e-mail lather, especially since the Red Sox somehow have become just as unlikable as the Evil Empire they claim to disdain in the Yankees and the Patriots, though they are 18-0 heading into the Super Bowl, are proven cheaters (Spygate, anyone?) and the legend of Tom Brady was borne out of the ridiculous "Tuck Rule Game," which hosed the Raiders, of course. If the Patriots lose that game, as they should have since Brady's fumble should NOT have been overturned because the replays were inconclusive, who's to say Drew Bledsoe, who gave way to Brady early in that 2001 season due to injury, does not regain his job as the starting QB and Brady goes back to being a cute sixth-round draft choice backup?

Alas, that's an entry for a different blog and since the main topic here is baseball, our other friend, Chris, put a quick and bloody end to Jay's ramblings with a poignant missive when it comes to our national pastime.

"Only someone who grew up watching games at Veterans Stadium (or Shea) would think Red Sox fans are great," Chris wrote. "All I see are drunken frat guys who think a great derisive chant is, 'You (stink), Jeter'; old nerds who want to write books about all they've suffered through at Fenway; and a sea of clowns who think Ortiz should win MVP every year for never picking up a glove and slicing balls over a 36-inch-tall right-field "wall" that's, what, 204 feet or so from home plate, maybe 205?

"Red Sox Nation is as phony as the ideals of those who think that franchise is any different than the Yankees' (mantra of), 'Let's buy another pennant this year with free agents other teams can't afford while (some reporters kiss) up about our 'home grown' talent that's obtained by spending more money on scouting than some teams have to pay their big-league players."

Couldn't have said, or written, it any better myself.

-Paul Gutierrez

Posted by Ahmed Ortiz, January 24, 2008 04:12 PM

Ask a question

Please use the form below to submit your question. Because there is a 100-word limit for questions, a word counter is located directly beneath the box where you enter the your question.