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so you're saying that if we win the Series that you will come out and make the absurd statement that the New York Yankees were the best team in baseball in the year 2005??

Look at it this way. If the Yankees win the World Series, according to what you guys are saying, they would be the best team in baseball this year. I have a real problem calling the Yankees the best team in baseball with this horrible year we have had. So if you guys insist on granting the title of best team in baseball in the year 2004 to the Boston Red Sox, you have to say the Yankees are the best team in baseball in 2005 if they win the World Series. Fair?

end the end, the team that won the championship was the Red Sox, and like I have already admitted, the best team in the postseason was the Red Sox. But you guys WERE not the best team last year. A team that plays sub-par .500 baseball for the entire first half is not the best team in baseball no matter what. Like in 2003, nobody with a reasonable amount of intelligence could possibly believe that the Florida Marlins were a better team than the Yankees. Same with 2001, I believe the Yankees were a better team than Arizona, though it is a tough arguement because of Randy and Schilling, but lets not forget that the Yankees had good pitching as well. And i'll even take it a step further, 1996. The Atlanta Braves were a superior team compared to the 1996 Yankees. There is absolutely no denying that. But the best team isnt always guaranteed the championship, and that is what im trying to get across to you guys.

how do you know the lever to which i follow and understand baseball? The first game I went to was in 1992, and I have pretty much followed the game since then. I see 13 years right there Pirate. And i'll say it again, just because you didnt choke last year doesnt mean that all of your prior chokes go down the toilet.

so you are denying that the Cardinals were the best team in baseball last year? Are you denying that Seattle was the best team in baseball in 2001? You're ridiculous, the team with the best record is the best team of that season (as I said, postseason is a different story)

umm...sorry pal, Randy hasnt had a mullet since early in his Arizona career. The last few years his hair has been similar to what it is now.

thats not necessarily true. He testified that he used in 2003, but he never said if he did it around the playoffs. Probably, but its not definate, and until it is dont say it. He's not Rafeal Palmeioro who got his 3000th hit on steroids. Yea, because Eck the Alcoholic is the perfect f***in person and can go and poitn his fingers at people. Whose to say Eck didnt use. He wasnt that good until he moved to the pen, just a sub-par starter before that. And he was in Oakland when he began to flourish (like Giambi), so maybe we should be talking about the Hall of Famer here too ....now I know reading the above probably didnt appeal to you guys, well thats how we fell about all this Giambi talk Arent they the same thing? So you're saying that if somebody has done something bad/illegal in the past that he or she is guaranteed to still do it. Every person who has ever sipped alcohol is an alcoholic? every person who has ever smoked weed has a drug problem? etc.. Why cant anybody accept the fact that he has defied the odds and is back on track doing what he is being paid for??

yo shut up. Worry about your team's steroid problems. And by the way, what happened after July and before he started hitting again is called a SLUMP...Oriole fans should know plenty about that So you're saying that players that have used steroids in the past are not allowed to have comebacks? Are you also saying that players who have used steroids are not entitled to a slump? The way I see it, he has passed every test given to him. No man could be stupid enough to use if he were in Giambi's position.

oh s***, is it that close? I appologize.

but as I recall you guys havent exactly had your way with TB.

hey man, say what you need about last year. Yes, we did choke, and no we're not denying it. The only one denying chokes here are you guys. Because you won last year all of a sudden the past is erased. It doesnt work that way. I can live up to my team's losses. If you guys are able to live up to the Red Sox wins, then you have to be able to live up to the losses.

you're getting me all wrong on the point about the Sox and Cards, nobody can argue that the Sox were the better team in the World Series, for christ's sake they DESTROYED St. Louis. But what I am saying is that St. Louis was the best team in the Majors last year.

yea but at least we can beat Toronto, both Toronto and the D-Rays have played well against Boston this year.

wrong, if you want you can go back and check all of my posts, when the red Sox deserve credit, 9 times out of 10 i give it ( the 1 time I dont is when the Yankees are getting baqshed in the same thread). I dont exactly consider those chokes, with the exception of last year..2001 can MAYBE be considered a choke because of how close we were to winning, but 2003 wasnt a choke, it was a LOSS. Theres a difference, throughout the history of the Red Sox, they have done both so much, im surprised you were unable to tell the difference.

haha I love how ignorant you guys get...win a championship and history goes out the window...must I remind you of your COUNTLESS chokes?

if anybodys on a bandwagon its you...I thought Texans were supposed to be these proud bunch of people, im curious what has you rooting for the Sox as opposed to the Rangers or Astros??

I can debunk that right now..the Yankees were obviously the better team in 2003, but we lost, and we were the better team in 2001, but we lost..thats 2 right there...so there goes your theory

what about the Yankee fans that have been here the whole time??

so a loss means a team sucks? hmm..interesting, I sure hope the Pats go 19-0 this year otherwise they suck. I dont quite understand why you guys are so focused on the Jets/Chiefs game, it has nothing to do with the Pats or any of the teams that you guys root for...you're just trying to disguise the fact that Randy SHUT YOU DOWN !!! we're accepting with our losses, grow up and accept your's And we can take pride in taking 2 out of 3 from you beaneaters

what'd they win, 105 games or something like that? IMO the best team in baseball is better than a Widl Card Team

because they cant take a loss, when we lose we get destroyed on this site, btu when we win they minimize it by bringing up other s*** like talking about our staff or whatever other flaw they choose to talk about. BTW, im kind of lost, you guys always accuse us of needing to buy big stars to win or whatever, and now that some lower-level pitchers have stepped up you say that its not enough. If you ask me, the contributions that Small and Chacon have made since arriving have been phenominal. And since Wright came off the DL, with the exception of 1 start, he has been very good as well. Randy has been piecing it together lately, as you chowder heads saw today, and while Wang is not the same pitcher now that he was earlier, theres still the chance that he can become that. Hes only had 1 f***in start (2 if you count his rehab start in Columbus). But whatever he does, and whether its out of the pen or in the rotation, it can only help us. Al Leiter has been a mystifying puzzle since we got him, but I would prefer him in the pen than Wayne "I Lose Games" Franklin. Its not unlikely that Moose comes back and is still a reliable starter. And last but not least, we have a guy named Mariano Rivera. So considering all of the s*** that the 2005 New York Yankees have had to go through, with injuries and whatnot, I cant complain about the pitching staff right now. Umm.....a lot of people OUTSIDE of New York believe the Jets have a chance against the Pats.

having a better team in front of you doesnt mean anything..in fact I wouldnt even consider Cleveland a better team and I barely consider you guys a better team, but because you are atop the division I have to. But last year you guys had to beat the Cardinals to win the Series, and the Cardinals were a better team, but you prevailed and won proving that the better team doesnt always win.

I doubt it will stay that way for some time as we have Cano and Wang up, Andy Phillips will probably be in the bigs all year next year (as a bench/utility guy of coarse), as will Proctor, and not to mention that we have guys like Hughes, Melky, and Duncan on the rise. But that does not take away from the fact that you guys do have several top-notch prospects, (Pedroia,Hanley, Papelbon, Delcarmen, Hansen, etc..) You are absolutely correct about the guys we bring in being stars when we bring them in..but that works 2 ways; No star is going to want to sign with a team that doesnt win, and yes, the same goes with the Yankees. We werent winning in the 80's or early 90's, so we didnt really didnt have many big stars except for the guys we still had from the 70's championships and Winfield (who signed while we were still considered a winning team not far off our championships). But after we started losing in the 80's the best guys we could get were the Steve Sax, Danny Tartabull, and Jimmy Key's of the world. The biggest player we got during that time period was Rickey Henderson, who was hard to consider a star at the time due to the fact he was only 5 years into the league when we signed him away from Oakland. So back to the point, it took us winning in 1996, 1998, 1999, and 2000 before all the big stars started flocking to the Yankees. If you think about it, the Moose's, Giambi's, Matsui's, A-Rod's, Sheffields, and Brown's of the world didnt come until after we won those titles, the biggest stars we got DURING the title reign were Clemens, Knoblauch, Justice; who at the time we signed/aquired them were not at the level of the other guys I had listed (exception: Clemens) as opposed to the other guys i listed ( the Moose's, Giambi's, Matsui's, A-Rod's, Sheffields, and Brown's of the world ). So its not only us buying these guys, its them being drawn to us, and us being ABLE to buy something. Lets face it, if you were a millionaire you wouldnt live like a homeless person.

now I will get to my thoughts on the rivalry being dead or not.. How could a rivalry that has spanned 100 years be dead. It CANT. The clostse possible thing to being dead is to be in a state similar to the late 80's or the early 90's, where it wasnt this intense, but there was still definatly a form of tension and dislike among the fans (and maybe even the players, but if so, definately not to the degree that it is now). But I dont even think the rivalry is at that low, I still think the rivalry is flourishing as if it were 2002 or 2003, but just a little different, due to the fact that the Yankees dont have the overwhelming superiority factor over the Sox that they had prior to the 2004 World Series win by the Red Sox. But that right there is the only explanation I could come up for people saying that it is dead, the fact that the Sox have finally accomplished the feat. But even so, this rivalry is still flourishing...it is demonstrated on a daily basis on this very site. In every thread a Sox fan makes an anti-Yankee comment. Anybody who thinks this rivalry is dead is absolutely crazy. I could understand if you think it has lost some "juice", something that I done agree with, but can understand.