The Yankees' shaky start has brought Yankees-haters in the media crawling out of their dank, shadowy holes like vicious, craven hyenas smelling dead carcass for the first time in months.
Analysts, writers and broadcasters across the country have been exceedingly quick to pronounce the Yankees dead, and are fighting amongst themselves to see who can give the most baseless, fact-free, self-congratulatory eulogy. One problem, Marc Antonys: Caesar's not dead yet. So shut the fuck up.
With anti-Yankees glee building over the first 40 days of the season, the Roger Clemens signing let loose the dogs of war. Supposedly objective journalists everywhere attacked the signing, calling the Yankees desperate, claiming the fun and harmless in-game announcement was somehow offensive to the game of baseball, and slamming both Clemens and the Yankees for a contract rich in monetary value and filled with perks for the big Texan.
Funny, I don't remember this level of venom being directed against Houston the last few years, when they were signing Clemens to partial-season contracts for exorbitant amounts (before the pitching market exploded in the 2006 off-season) and offering him the exact same perks the Yankees are giving him now. In fact, I don't remember any venom at all.
It's rare that such an obvious apples-to-apples comparison allows us to see just how deep anti-Yankees media bias runs. When Clemens left New York for Houston, he was applauded for going home. When he left Houston to return to the site of his greatest glories, he is labelled a mercenary.
Even Houston manager Phil Garner took a shot at Clemens, clearly bitter that his team sucks and that they were unable to bring the Rocket back one more time.
The national sports media has shown their true colors and naked hypocrisy, and sports fans everywhere would be wise to remember this ugly incident the next time they rail to the gods about the supposed east-coast media bias, which is about as real as the liberal media bias.
