Sayoonara Gabe

Gabe Kapler will be a Giant in Japan.

His time in Boston was spent as a outfield bench player, starting several games in place of injured right fielder Trot Nixon, and though he was never seen as a star in the Major Leagues, it is likely that the Yomiuri Giants will see him as godzilla playing outfield everyday.

As I always liked to call him, "Mr. Body Man," Gabe Kapler will be missed. Not only by the bombardment of single women who enjoyed his extreme body, but by the Red Sox clubhouse who will miss his personality. Gabe was one of the many men who contributed to the team chemistry that fueled the Red Sox through the 2003 & 2004 seasons.

Kapler's bat is one that likely could have found a starting home elsewhere in Major League Baseball, but following one of the greatest seasons in recent baseball history it is not completely strange to want to test the waters elsewhere for a while.

Gabe is the first of the 2004 World Champions to leave in an offseason that could see a clubhouse almost identical to that of last season or one that is completely radical to which. Either way in an offseason that includes many big name free agents it is not unreasonable to feel safe with Theo Epstein at the healm of the Red Sox never-ending rolling rally.




Paolo DeVito
Philly's Own Fenway Faithful

The Idea Of A Salary Cap

A salary cap in baseball?

The idea of a salary cap in baseball is one that has always been floated around in the months following the world series. As Red Sox fans we usually look at the Yankees and say, "of course they win - they buy all their players" well now that the Red Sox have won the World Series, the teams around the league are starting to say the same about the Sox.

Well if Scott Boras' belief that baseball teams have more money than they want to lead on is in fact true than a salary cap would be a plausible way to detect it. There are many teams across the league that fail to lang big money players because they don't have the money to compete with the southern california teams, Red Sox, or Yankees. A salary cap would hurt the teams who currently have big money players signed to long term deals but help the teams who are each year trying to land the one or two pieces they need.

With a now larger market for the Montreal Expos in Washington, one of the leagues smallest payroll may now see a sizeable increase, and as for the rest of the straglers, it will soon become convert or be crushed. If not for salary cap, gone are the days of the Kansas City Royals and Pittsburgh Pirates. Players salaries are constantly increasing and because the only teams with the money to cover the rising costs are the larger market teams, it is becoming ever unlikely that players are going to take any cut to play anywhere near Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

Now a salary cap could help drive down the every rising cost of big name players. This because they would have to accept less money in order for their team to compete. If Alex Rodriguez were thinking about his team he would have never accepted a deal to a team which devoted half of its payroll to himself.

I as a Red Sox fan am glad to see the Red Sox actively seeking players each offseason but this is because they have the money to do so. They are currently hovering around the luxury tax line and would most likely be able to field a very good baseball team if they were restricted to it -- as opposed to the Yankees who may not even be able to cover the costs of their 2005 bench & bullpen. I am sad each year to see Lou Merloni, to see Shea Hillenbrand, as now as well as Gabe Kapler leave Boston, because they are not suitable starters on a team that has to compete with the Yankees growing payroll year in and year out. The Red Sox must counteract on every Yankees acquisistion which has grown very tiredsome to me but that is just the way it has become since George Steinbrenner re-entered the game.

What I'm about to say is a slight theory and I'll admit it's a bit flawed but here we go. Many Yankees fans say the Red Sox are just as guilty offenders when it comes to payroll size as the Yankees but when checking ring-to-money ratio based on competition, the Yankees have only ONE team within $82 Million, and that being the team that beat them, the Boston Red Sox, at a $61 Million defficit.

Meanwhile, within $82 Million of the Boston Red Sox Are All But 6 Teams Listed Here In A Descending 2004 Payroll Order:

1) Cincinnati - who is currently building a team around several young under-payed studs.

2) Florida - who is once again rebuilding and saving up for their next world series.

3) Pittsburgh - oh boy, nobody wants to play in Pittsburgh -- Hey Jason Kendall don't forget the sunscreen.

4) Cleveland - who is also rebuilding around many young stars.

5) Tampa Bay - who has the cash to spend but just doesn't do it well.

and finally...

6) Milwaukee - who I don't know what exactly they're trying to prove, but they do well with what they have... good for them.


Now that I've finished that rant, that leaves 23 teams in competition with the Red Sox as closely as the Yankees are with their ONE competition. It's funny though because I don't seem to see the Detroit Tigers or Colorado Rockies coming back against the Red Sox down 3-0 in a best of seven series.

Money well spent New York.

Money spent all for the assurity of arriving in the world series each season. If only they could do so without the $80 million advantage... maybe a salary cap is the answer. You won't find any Red Sox fans against the cap because they know that eventhough it will hurt the team it would also help the team in ways, as well as help the rest of the league. Even if this means the Red Sox don't win it every year.




Paolo DeVito
Philly's Own Fenway Faithful

New England Is Anew Since The Red Sox Won It

Four weeks since what New Englanders waited for years to see.

A Red Sox World Series Championship.

Okay, I'll admit it -- it finally sunk it, but that doesn't mean I'm willing to give up my first born child and all my worldly belongings that I had once promised. The three Patriots super bowls that I would have traded for one Red Sox championship -- well luckily I'm not in charge of those kind of things... The Red Sox won the World Series.

28 days later...

We now know that George W. Bush will be our president another four years, beating out a New Englander. The die-hard Red Sox fan, John Kerry, who refused to fly out to an Arizona debate during a Red Sox playoff game. Oh the avid fan John Kerry, there will be a lot of free agents leaving the Red Sox this off-season but one can be sure that Manny Ortiz will still be in the lineup -- he plays goalie, right?

Here are just a few points to think over:

The Patriots winning streak is over...

Fred Hale of Maine, the world's oldest man at 113 years, as well as the world's oldest Red Sox fan, past away...

They're still not going to play hockey...

I have gone through 2 TV sets in my living room and 4 of my fish have died, a result of the Red Sox winning the world series? Well the 2 of them happened simultaneously during the post game show of game 4 in St Louis, so you be the judge.

Listen I'm not trying to point blame in any direction here but there are a lot of people who are going to have to come clean with their promises or else God is gonna be pissed -- start take away all else that is holy in Red Sox Nation. I'm not saying I wouldn't still trade it all away to see the sox win the next 3 years straight to shut up Yankees fans once and for all... Hell, I may be willing to trade a kidney to see that...

Well actually, we'll see when it happens...




Paolo DeVito
Transplanted Red Sox Fan

Big Farm, No Tools

Maybe not the sharpest tools in the shed, but definitely the most expensive.

A big-money contract is what sometime seems to become synonymous with Yankees players, and eventhough the player may not be the best player when they arrive in New York, they are expected to shine when they put on those Yankee pinstripes. It seems that the Yankees are more flash than substance, overly concerned with the immediate production of an aging player than the potential long term benefits of a young player coming into his prime.

While one could debate the pros and cons of prospects versus established players for an eternity, the simple fact of the matter is that this debate is now irrelevant when referring to the Yankees. The Yankees have virtually no developed farm system, and instead seem to be treating Major League Baseball as some sort of video game fantasy league, where if you don’t have the right pieces you need for a trade, you simply trade away one of your own players for those pieces, then sign a free agent to take his place. You need to look no further than the off-season rumors swirling around Jorge Posada, once a staple of the Yankees franchise, and the potential trade needed to acquire Randy Johnson. Though I will not debate that, especially for this Yankee team, Randy Johnson is far more valuable than Jorge Posada, the simple fact that they need to trade a man who is potentially the third or fourth best catcher in the league to acquire him speaks volumes about the state of the Yankee Farm System, especially since the Diamondbacks were willing to practically give Johnson away, assuming he waived his ludicrously elite no-trade clause.

The simple fact is, gone are the days of Derek Jeter, Jorge Posada, Mariano Rivera, and Andy Pettite. The Yankees Farm System has been stripped bare, and salted by the ownership of George Steinbrenner. When was the last time you saw a Yankee Minor Leaguer move onto success, with the Yankees, at least? George is so wrapped up with his auto-response mechanism to any Sox move that he is gambling away the future of the Yankees, especially with the dearth of free agent pitching on the current market.

You only need to look back to the 2003 season to find an example of the foolishness of the Yankee front office. The Red Sox, in an effort to boost their bullpen and starting pitching, October Essentials, acquired Jeff Suppan, Scott Sauerbeck, and Scott Williamson. The Yankees, however, opted to trade Brandon Claussin, arguably the first minor league pitcher the Yankees have had with “ace” potential for Aaron Boone. And while one swing of Aaron Boone’s bat may have given him a place among the then-ghosts of Yankee Stadium, the long-term benefit seems scarce. The Yankees went on to lose in the World Series to the Marlins, a team built on young pitching, and Aaron Boone went on to injure himself in a pick-up game of basketball.

When analyzing the current Yankees Farm System, you see very few, if any, majors-ready prospects, and even fewer majors-ready arms, usually the key figures in prospect trades. Many of the Yankees’ top prospects remain two or three years out of the majors, not an enticing prospect to teams such as the Diamondbacks or Expos, who are trying to bring along rookie and sophomore prospects to escape the turmoil of mediocrity as quickly as possible. As such, the Yankees will continue to strip their own lineup bare to find trading chips to offer these teams, and the Yankees will get progressively older, slower, and less athletic. Their salary will balloon to as high as $250 million in the next 4 years, as they will eat current players salaries (i.e. Javier Vazquez, Kevin Brown, Bernie Williams, Jorge Posada) in exchange to move them for tradeable prospects.

Meanwhile, the Yankee fans will grow less and less attached to these aging veterans brought in to replace the others. How will Yankees fans grow attached to any player when the Yankees could experience 80% roster turnover every 3 years? Steinbrenner will sign players to short, expensive contracts, and when the long-term players start to sag in skills, he will simply eat their contract in an effort to repeat the cycle.

It’s quite sad, the condition that the Yankee System is in. If the Yankees had kept some prospects, you wonder what would have been. Would the Yankees have needed to trade for Aaron Boone if they had kept Mike Lowell for a year or two longer? Would the Yankees have lost the series to the Red Sox if they had young and athletic Willy Mo Pena chasing down those little flairs, instead of dumping him for Danny Neagle? Do any of you doubt that Ted Lily, who absolutely baffled the Red Sox earlier in the year, would have done better than Kevin Brown or Javier Vazquez in Game 7?

The Yankees Farm System will be completely irrelevant and utterly useless to the organization for the next few years. The only thing that will matter are the depths of George’s wallet and who he finds useful to trade on his major league roster, to replace with an expensive free agent. If I were a Yankees fan, I would not be happy with the current direction of my franchise, and I’d find myself wondering how long before Derek Jeter was traded to snag some extra middle relief and a decent shortstop. Only this time, I wouldn’t expect a “Thanks, Beautiful” ending.

-Matt Kordis
-Paolo DeVito

A Clean Shaven Nomar In The Future

A-Rod, Jeter... Nomar?

Anthony Nomar Garciaparra may be the next player to join the New York Yankees. Thanks to the large number of slums on the Yankees payroll, one of the only positions in which they will be able to make any serious improvement is second base. The position occupied by Miguel Cairo this previous season.

Now it is almost a certainty that the Yankees will claim Carlos Beltran, hence moving centerfielder Bernie Williams to the DH spot, if not to a position where he may be sharing ground balls with Jason Giambi at first base. Setting up maybe the most prestigious infield of all time.

If you had asked anyone 12 months ago who the 3 greatest shortstops in baseball were, many of them would have answered: Alex Rodriguez, Nomar Garciaparra, & Derek Jeter -- but would anyone have ever imagined that the three of them could be playing for the same team?

The New York Yankees have been rumored to be actively seeking a second basemen in Nomar Garciaparra. Now the 31 year old shortstop is coming off an injury-plagued season in which achilles and wrists issues have limited his playing time as well as his range as a shortstop. Well the next logical move would likely be to third base, but when a chance to play for the Yankees comes up, second base suddenly becomes a plausible option.

How will Red Sox fans react to seeing Nomar in Yankee pinstripes?

We were all sad to see him go but we all knew it was for the better, and to the Chicago Cubs, a team that many Red Sox fans previously shared a common bond with -- their inability to win it all. But this is different: now he could be heading to the hated Yankees.

New York seems like the best option for a free agent Garciaparra who will be looking for a short term contract hopefully above the 12 million dollar level, and there may not be many teams willing to pay such a bill for the questionable Garciaparra, whom of course rejected the 15 million dollar contract extension offered by the Boston Red Sox before the 2004 season.

Nomar Garciaparra will already be recieving a World Series Champion ring from the Boston Red Sox, and there would be no better time to accept it than April 11th at Fenway Park as a memer of the opposing New York Yankees.

This could be just another page in the rivalry that is unmatched.

Paolo DeVito
Transplanted Red Sox Fan

A Rocky Road For The Yankees, Legacy

Yankees fans seem to be so stuck on the Yankees of the late nineties, which in reality -- it took these Yankees 16 years, until 1995 (the year after the strike mind you) to reach the world series again... which also included a 13 year streak without reaching the playoffs. Now this all of course changed when George Steinbrenner returned from his MLB suspension and began using his gambling winnings to buy up players.

Now I will hand it to you on the great Yankees teams of 1996, 98, 99, 2000 (and maybe 2001)... those guys had heart, but it's as Jeter stated during the historic American League Championship Series of 2004, it's a "different team" now.

The only remaining Yankees wearing rings from that 2000 team are:
el Capitan Derek Jeter, an old Bernie Williams, who let's face it will be fighting Jason Giambi for playing time, Jorge Posada who's numbers continue to drop steadily, and side note; looked as if he had lost all motivation to play the sport during the 2003 & 2004 playoffs, and finally the "untouchable" (also aging) Mariano Rivera.

Now back to the legacy of the Yankees...

So called Yankees fan speak of their rich legacy as if they have stood by it throughout all these years, when in reality how many of them stood by their Yankees through their 16 year stretch like the Red Sox fans did with their "cursed" teams.

Between 1963 and 1994, the Yankees won 2 World Series, consecutively in point, and I think we all can recall what happened in the 1978 season, as well as the 1977 season... the red sox won 97 & 99 games in these seasons, to sit at home and watch the Yankees carry home the hardware.

Now anyone who claims to be a Yankee fan since before 1963 has to be... let's say 55, to be nice to the old timers out there who might actually still remember when they were 10 years old.

That brings me to the "Mantle" years... now every fan of baseball in the world respects Mickey Mantle, but not every fan in the world is a soul selling bandwagoner.

Okay, that may have been wicked harsh.

The Yankees won 7 out of 12 World Series during Mantle's Years. (1951-1962, excluding 63-68) Then before him was the greatest Italian, that I believe, has ever lived (next to the fictional Italian Stallion -- Rocky Balboa); Joe DiMaggio who played up until the Mick's rookie season, hence, passing the torch.

He won 10 World Series in his 16 seasons. Now before I start sounding like a history report, and before I start talking about Babe Ruth's impact on the Yankees, here's my point:

I loved those Yankees teams too, hell I even shared an applause to the 1996 Yankees, especially seeing Wade Boggs finally get a ring... but those guys were likeable characters -- The Paul O'Neills and the Jimmy Keys, David Cones... Scott Brosius, David Justice & Luis Sojo.

That Dynasty Is Over.

Now the Yankees fans of recent years have had exactly two things to boast about to Boston, aside from the never-ending acclamation that Derek Jeter & Mariano Rivera are the greatest baseball players on the planet -- those 2 things are as follows: one being the fact that they had always beaten the Red Sox, well that one is over. And the second being they had won more world series than the Red Sox, well there are only 3 spans that in my mind as a Red Sox fan that kill me, the first is the late 1920 early 1930s when Babe Ruth was there (wasn't there a depression or something in that span too - oh well I'm sure that's not relative), also the 1977-78 seasons that Yankees edged us out, and finally, the great dynasty teams of the late nineties. Other than that, the Yankees need to come down from their thrown -- realize that it has been 4 years, and the team is different, in fact heading in a downward direction as the Red Sox are in many ways heading upward. The nineties don't matter anymore; Bill Clinton is no longer our president, the Macarena is out, and MTV is no longer playing music videos...

Legacy is not going to win you a championship, and most of the Yankees fans out there today running their mouths, in actuality, were not around when the legacy of the Yankees all began... And my apologies to the old-timers who remember the Mick from when they were children, but you're not the ones chanting 1918, and I commend you for that.

To the rest -- It's time to step off the bandwagon, to shut your traps... It's time to watch the great sport that is baseball. This sport doesn't consist of simply picking up a newspaper box score once or twice a month before heading to a Yankees game, at which you look silly at when you fail to name the starting lineup or 3 of the 5 men currently in the pitching rotation. It's a commitment, and for those of you who aren't ready for the rocky road ahead, a culture shock to the young generation of Yankees fans, whom I have nothing but pity for, because they're about to miss a whole lot of great baseball when you simply tune out.

Maybe, just maybe, it's time to root for the Mets.

Paolo DeVito
Transplanted Red Sox Fan