ESPN – My son and I have flown from California to spend the week in Boston. He is a little more than 6½ at this point. He has never set foot in Fenway Park. The time is right. He likes baseball. He likes the Red Sox. We bring my father with us. Three generations of the Simmons family taking in a Yankees-Red Sox game for the first time. We find our $1,500 seats in the lower boxes near third base. Ever since Boston won the World Series 10 years ago, I always imagined pointing to that 2004 banner and telling my little boy, “That’s the team that changed everything.”So that’s what I do. I point at the banner and tell him, “That’s the team that changed everything.”"Isn’t that the team that cheated?” he asks. We look at the 2004 banner again. I always thought that, for the rest of my life, I would look at that banner and think only good thoughts. Now, there’s a mental asterisk that won’t go away. I wish I could take a pill to shake it from my brain. I see 2004 and 2007, and think of Manny and Papi first and foremost. The modern-day Ruth and Gehrig. One of the great one-two punches in sports history. Were they cheating the whole time? Was Pedro cheating, too? That 2004 banner makes me think of these things now. I wish it didn’t, but it does. This makes me sad. This makes me profoundly sad.

I haven’t had a good Bill Simmons rant in a long time but I just couldn’t ignore his take on the Manny situation. I mean if you told me this was written by Dan Shaugnessy I wouldn’t have blinked an eye. Did Simmons really say he has a mental asterisk next to the 2004 World Series banner now? Honestly that is the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard in my life. Now don’t get me wrong I expect Yankee fans and all the people who are jealous of Boston to say shit like that. I would too if I were them and hated a city that we couldn’t beat. That’s just what sports fans do. They look to tear down the king of the mountain with anything no matter how ridiculous it may be. Whether it be Rodney Harrison testing positive for HGH, spygate or dead spots in the Garden. You always look for something to discredit the other guy. So naturally the haters are going to cling to this Manny thing like gold even though nobody is happier about this development than Bostonians. That’s what made this article so strange. How can a guy who is supposedly the voice of the Boston Sports Fan say he has a mental asterisk next to our World Championships and he’s sad when he looks at the banners? It’s nuts. Seriously is there any other Sox fan on earth not in an insane asylum who feels this way? Nobody fucking cares whether Manny used or not. Nobody fucking cares. It doesn’t even matter to me whether Manny was the only guy on the planet who used steroids as opposed to like all of baseball. It still wouldn’t tarnish the memories. It doesn’t make anything less sweet. It doesn’t take away how I felt when Big Papi went deep or Dave Roberts stole 2nd or Curt Schilling pitched with a bloody sock. It all happened and nothing can ever change that. And how anybody can feel otherwise is simply beyond me. So while Bill Simmons may be a great writer I think it’s time for him to keep his thoughts about Boston Sports to himself because clearly his little stint in LA LA land has caused him to lose all touch with reality.

PS – Don’t bitch about ticket prices when everybody knows you haven’t paid for a ticket in the past 10 years. It’s insulting to people who still pay to go.