Simmons at it again

With all of the rain, I feel like I have nothing baseball-related to write about. Keep your thoughts and prayers with the people of New England. They're fighting off a bitch of a monsoon right now. My grandma is in Beverly, where the damage has been pretty bad. She phoned yesterday and said she was okay though.

Simmons' new column was f-ing hysterical. One thing I miss about the North is being able to listen to Mike & the Mad Dog all of the time on the WFAN flagship stations. Anyway, he provides a running commentary of a show... complete with plenty of New Yorker jabs.

Simmons' column mentioned the greatest day in the history of talk radio:

Strange twist with the Dog: He's a diehard Giants fan who usually loves twisting the knife with Yankees fans; his joyous show after Game 7 of the 2004 ALCS should have been immediately sent to the Smithsonian. Meanwhile, Francesa is a huge, huh-yuge Yankees fan. See, this would never work in Boston -- you could never have an anti-Sox guy hosting a drive-time show. He'd end up getting shanked by Murph and Sully one night outside the Cask 'n Flagon after a tough Sox loss. And you think I'm kidding.)

Link to Simmmons' column

That made me want to dig up the transcript to that show. This is long, but well-worth the read.

MIKE FRANCESA: All I want to tell you, for you, for all of Red Sox Nation and for all of you doubters. Someday, some team will come back from 3-zip to win a series in baseball. Not on this day.

JOHN STERLING: Swung on and lined to deep right! It is high! It is far! It is gone! David Ortiz has hit a two-run home run on Brown's first pitch ...

CHRIS RUSSO: The Yankees, from the manager -- and you will agree -- right on down, are incredibly tight!

JS: ... and the Red Sox take a 2-nothing lead!

JOE TORRE: We've always respected their ballclub. We knew they had a ton of ability. Uh, you know, the fact that when they get on a roll, they can do things like they did to us...

JOE CASTIGLIONE: Swing ... and a high drive to deep right! Back toward the corner it goes! ... Sheffield looking up! ... Grand Slam! Johnny Damon! ...

BOB HEUSSLER: This is history. This is collossal collapse potential here on the part of the Yankees. And when they do that parade down the Canyon of Zeroes with the Karate Kid leading the way with his left-handed baton ... (Russo giggles) ... I want to be there to cheer them on. I want to be a part of that.

CR: There you go, Bobby!!!

JC: ... With one swing of the bat has given the Red Sox four more runs! They lead it 6-to-nothing!

CR: If you're going to break a hex, a curse that is almost insurmountable, you need to do something cataclysmic.

CHARLEY STEINER: There's a flyball to right field and Johnny Damon has hit another one! ...

BH: This will be remembered more for ... a first! A baseball first. A team that has won 26 world's championships, 39 pennants, would be remembered for the worst collapse in the history of baseball postseason.

CS: ... Into the upper deck. A two-run home run. It is now 8-1 Red Sox.

TERRY FRANCONA: I think to do what we did you have to have people chip and do some special things. We found a way to win some games while Johnny wasn't swinging the bat. Then, all of a sudden, Johnny gives us huge lifts.

JS: The pitch is hit in the air to deep right. Fair, it's gone. That ball is ... gone! It hit the foul pole. Mark Bellhorn homers off the right field foul pole, and the Red Sox take a 9-3 lead. ...

CR: The Red Sox tonight will dance at Yankee Stadium.

JS: ... All nine Boston runs on home runs.

Alex Rodriguez: I'm embarrassed right now. You know, I think in the long run this is going to make us better. We're going to come back and be a better team because of it.

JC: Swing and a ground ball to second base. Pokey Reese has it. He throws to first and the Red Sox have won the American League pennant! They mob Alan Embree on the mound! The Boston Red Sox have pulled the greatest victory in team history!

ORLANDO CABRERA: This is great. We've got faith from the beginning, when we were down three games, but we've got the heart. The people here played with heart and we knew we could do it.

Yankees home run chimes die a slow death.

Mike and Dog theme song.

CR: AAAAAAAAAAAAAAND GOOD AFTERNOON EVERYBODY!!!! Red Sox Nation in the South Bronx! Mark Malusis, Eddie Scasari, the Big Guy's here!

MF: Like I had a choice?

CR: (Laughs). Oh baby! Oh baby! Did you ever think you'd see the day! When Trot Nixon ... it's Wade Boggs in reverse! With the champagne in the bleachers in right! And the New York Yankees, epically, they've been asphyxiated! They have been used up. The Red Sox are going to the World Series!

Good afternoon there Michael.

MF: And how was your night?

CR: (laughs) Mrs. Lincoln.

MF: How was your night?

CR: Oh Boy!

MF: I saw how your night was.

CR: Oh boy. ... Well, you know who I feel good for? And I'll give you credit, because you got him in. He thinks I got him in, you got him in last night. And that's Eddie Coleman.

MF: Yeah, Eddie was ecstatic.

CR: Eddie's been sitting there for 50 years, his father, the whole bit. And he gets that and he wins a championship.

MF: You know, Dog I ... and we've got a lot to do -- and we have plenty of time, plenty of time, to field your phone calls, Red Sox Nation. And, yes, you Met fans who have been looking to take a piece out of me for about 10 years. I'll be here for your pleasure for the next five hours, listening to you. Because they've been calling the newsroom Dog, making sure I'm going to show up today! Yes, I was going to show up. I promised.

CR: Mike's going to be here.

MF: So, Dog, last night ... they way I put it when I was on Imus this morning, the first thought was, here was -- the expectation, we built it up to such a heightened state. It was like going to a heavyweight fight and all of a sudden, you're just in your seat, the defending champion takes a right hand and he's out for the count.

The problem with baseball -- in boxing you get up and leave. In baseball, they drag 'em around the field for about four hours, and that's what happened last night. They dragged the Yankees around the field for four hours. That was a mugging with an audience. That was a disaster.

And I'll tell you what I take, sitting there as a Yankee fan ... and Dog will give you the perspective in Red Sox Nation, which was about four seats away, it started and went for a about a mile ... with each passing home run, with each passing Yankee mistake -- and there were plenty -- with each bad at-bat, with each out that they registered -- and they were counting the outs after the third inning. I heard them ... ching! 17 ... 16 ... 15 ... 9 ... 8 ... counting them down.

CR: Five! When it got to five, getting past five was significant.

MF: The, the ... it seemed to be a very strange phenomenon in the Stadium. The Stadium seemed to change with each out from blue to red. And it seemed like with each out, the Red Sox fan was somehow multiplying before my eyes in the Stadium. Next thing I know, we're in Fenway Park in the eighth inning!

And I stayed to see the celebration. Now, I could only take about four minutes of the Red Sox on the field. That's about all I could take, and the chanting and the people going crazy -- Dog stayed for 45 minutes, he will fill you in on that. I stayed for the last out. I wanted to see it happen. I stayed and watched it. It was one of the strangest things I've ever seen.

And let's put it in perspective: No. 1 ... forever the Red Sox will be emblazoned as the comeback kids, because this is the greatest comeback in postseason history. And No. 2 ... the Yankees, who are the storied franchise as we all know, are now at a dark hour, because they just took the worst defeat, not only in my lifetime as a Yankee fan, I think without question the worst defeat in their history.

Because to be the team that has a team come back from 3-0 -- and we know the numbers, we've given them to you time and time again -- and now to be remembered ... because, you see, someone said to me this morning, 'Well, there are World Series losses that are worse.' No, that's not true. Yeah, the 60 Pirates was a bad loss...

CR: That's the second one.

MF: Yeah, the 81 Dodgers was a terrible loss up 2-zip and had Fernando on the ropes in Game 3. Terrible loss. Yeah, Arizona. Folks, I was sitting in the fifth row, Arizona was a tough beat. But World Series losses happen. They happened to Ruth. Didn't happen much to DiMaggio. They happened to Mantle. They happen. But you're still in the World Series. This is one -- and it's forgotten, you lose a World Series, you lose a World Series. You come back and win another World Series.

Now, whenever you see a team go down 3-0 in any sport, they will put up a graphic on television which will say, with a little asterisk, '2004 Red Sox, down 3-0, beat New York Yankees.' This is now part of sports history. And every guy who's got a team down with its back to the wall is going to talk about the Red Sox for the next 30 years.

CR: Absolutely.

MF: So this is a historic collapse, and, on the other side, a historic victory.

CHRIS RUSSO: Well, Mike, a couple of things: I would say the Mazeroski game would be the next closest thing...

MIKE FRANCESSA: I don't remember that.

CR: ... because they were dominating. They were so much better. They should have won that.

MF: They were. Mantle always said his worst defeat, but I don't remember ...

CR: So I would put that one second.

MF: ... I don't remember that one. The ones that came to mind for me were ... 64 did not crush me ...

CR: Not bad, not terrible.

MF: ... OK, 63 was frustrating, but we were overrun by that pitching.

CR: Right, exactly.

MF: The ones that bothered me the most ...

CR: 81.

MF: 81 forever. Because they had Fernando on the ropes in Game 3. They were up two games to zip. They lost the game, the had a 4-nothing, they lost the game 5-4 and they lost the rest of the series. So that was a crusher. And 2001, lead 9th inning, Rivera on the mound, as we know, in Arizona. That was a crushing loss. This. Is. Worse.

CR: Mike, I can't say ... listen, I think it definitely is. I mean, maybe that 95 is a bad one against Seattle, but that was the first year ...

MF: The first year back, I could live with it

CR: You could live with that one. That was a tough 9th-10th inning. But this is as bad as it gets for the Yankees. There was two things about it. First off, the biggest at-bat last night was the Ortiz home run. Not because it was a home run. It's because the Yankee fan could not celebrate the big play at the plate.

MF: I agree.

CR: The next pitch!

MF: I agree totally.

CR: So the Red Sox didn't even get a chance to feel, 'Uh-oh, here we go again.' The next pitch. Out of the ballpark.

MF: And it finished Kevin Brown.

CR: Ah, it killed him.

MF: It finished Kevin Brown, who showed nothing last night.

CR: Terrible. So that's the biggest at-bat, the biggest pitch of the game. And the Red Sox, to me, I know the game was very flat from a Yankee perspective. It didn't have any of that epic conclusion that you wanted to see. But I think the Red Sox had to have a game like that. I think if the Red Sox were in a white-knuckler last night, I'm not too sure if they could have gotten through it. So they needed to have a large working margin and they could even withstand Pedro -- will get to that in a second -- so that's No. 2.

No. 3 ... I think for a Red Sox fan, and I was with them all the last three days, so I'll tell you what they told me: This eliminates Bucky Dent, and this eliminates Aaron Boone. This does not eliminate World Series now.

MF: No, it can't. They still have to go on and win the World Series, otherwise that other curse lives.

CR: This does not eliminate Bill Buckner.

MF: Right.

CR: This does not eliminate Enos Slaughter. This does not eliminate that. But -- it doesn't eliminate Morgan against Burton -- but it does eliminate, if you're a Red Sox fan, it eliminates the Boston Massacre.

MF: Yup.

CR: It elimiates 13 1/2-game lead in July.

MF: Right.

CR: It eliminates Bucky Dent off Mike Torrez.

MR: I agree with that.

CR: It eliminates Gossage and Yaz. And, I'm sorry, I hate to say it to Yankee fans, because this is going to be very painful, if you're a Red Sox fan this has got to eliminate last year's eighth inning.

MF: I don't think there's any question.

CR: There's no other way ... if you're a Yankee fan who wants to put this ... you can't say that now, because they came from 3-0 down. Now if they just won a Game 7, it was tough series and they won a Game 7 10-3 ...

MF: You'd tip your cap and move on.

CR: ... You can get over it. But you blew a 3-zero lead in this series.

MF: And had a 4-3 lead with the best closer in the world on the mound in the ninth inning.

CR: Which brings us to the next point, and I'll throw it out and let Mike comment. The biggest at-bat, to me, in this series. The biggest at-bat ... is not Millar's walk. The biggest -- in the fourth game -- the biggest at-bat is A-Rod.

His strikeout against Timlin in the eighth inning of Game 5 after they got out of the bottom of the seventh on a Manny Ramirez double play, after Cairo hit that double off the left-field wall, it was a pin-drop in Fenway. Jeter lays the bunt down ... if the Yankees get that fifth run, this series is over. If A-Rod does what he's supposed to do, and A-Rod, he's got a lot to answer for ... he hits a sac fly there at 5-2, I think, myself -- Mike might differ -- I think this series is over.

MF: Oh, I totally agree.

CR: So from my standpoint, that, to me, is the biggest at-bat of the series. Mike might tell you the Dave Roberts steal, Mike might tell you Millar's walk, Mueller's hit ... that to me was the biggest at-bat of the series.

MF: Well, I think it all ties in at the same time, Dog. And I think the thing unraveled after that first game, because they did a bad job in the second game ... in Game 5, being the second game they lost ... from a lot of different standpoints in my regard. And the Red Sox got tougher and tougher as the series went on. And finally the Yankees' lack of pitching reared its head. It hadn't reared its head. We thought it would rear its head. Surprisingly, it had not.

But the Yanks got outpitched in their building in Game 6, by Schilling, who did a great job. Lieber didn't pitch badly, but he didn't pitch as well as Schilling. And then they got destroyed in Game 7.

And there's a lot of different things here. First thing you want to take is the big picture. I think Dog just did that with the Red Sox. No longer can you thumb your nose at the Red Sox about this. Now, the Red Sox haven't won their World Series. They have to go do that. That's up to them. But that's a different deal. This is about the Yankees. The Yankee perspective on this first. I'm going to give you that and we'll get to the Red Sox.

Because the Red Sox, they are going to chronicle this as one of the great moments in sports history. It's going to be one of the great comebacks and one of the great stories ever in postseason history, and they're right about that. It was that big. It was played out with that much tension, that much pressure, this built up all year. Remember, this is a two-year thing that culminated last night. It has been a two-year war with the Red Sox. It's gone on from Day One for two years.

And for them, under that scrutiny and that pressure ... and they were getting destroyed on Sunday morning. They were getting beat ... they were getting beat to a pulp on Sunday morning. And you know what, if you looked around there, you looked around that stadium that night -- ninth inning, Game 4 -- they thought they were dead! Why wouldn't you think they were dead?

CR: 19-8, 19-8. my god. ... Oh, you're talking about the next day ...

MF: Yeah, the next day they thought, 'We're going home.' But, you know what? They didn't go home. And then they got stronger from there. But the point of this is, there is a Yankee perspective to this, and the Yankee perspective to this is here is this team, built to win championships, that a) is no longer, no longer, has any connection. The book is closed. They no longer have any connection, and it's going to get worse and worse because guys who have been the staple of that, such as Rivera, who right now, maybe ready to hand off the mantel to this kid Lidge as the next great closer. I mean, he's already had a decade of it, you can't expect him to go forerver.

CR: I agree.

MF: OK. And Bernie Williams, who is winding down, and again -- again -- they try to bury Bernie Williams and he probably was as consistent as any Yankee again in this series as the guy you want up in the big spot every single time.

CR: Absolutely.

MF: And you know what, he's winding down. So the guys who are the remnants of that run -- and Jeter made that point last night Dog, and he did it with a little fire in his eyes when he said 'Don't be comparing those teams to these teams. There's no relationship.' And he's right. It's now four years removed from a championship and that group has whittled down to four and will whittle down from there. Soon, soon, it will just be Posada and Jeter. Eventually that's what you'll be left with for a while. And that's it from that core. And this group has not gotten the right mix.

But what happened here is different. You're talking about the Yankees, the proud Yankees, the way they're built, the money, the whole thing -- everything that makes the Yankees the Yankees. For them to collapse on the grand stage ... and right now the Red Sox-Yankees stage is even bigger than the World Series. It is. It's bigger. It's watched by more people. More people care about it. The city cares about it more. To have them collapse at this level, on that stage, when they are three outs away, three games up and three outs away and lose the series is, without question, the greatest postseason collapse in the history of sports. That's a lot.

CR: Hey ... if you want to look at it this way, when you're in enough of these situations, sooner or later you're going to have something bad happen to you.

MF: Not like this.

CR: It's funny about the Yankees. They have so much good history, that we all have to hear who hate the Yankees ... whether it was the trade, whether it's DiMaggio, whoever it might be, Gehrig, Mattingly, whoever it might be. For once, for once, the Yankee hater, the Crack Committee, now has something that will stick to the Yankees that's bad forever.

MF: Absolutely.

CR: And that is something that has not happened to the Yankees. Mike gave you the situations about the World Series. Games happen. They haven't had anything like this. They haven't had anything historic happen to them badly. Now they have.

MF: Yeah, in their whole history, Dog, they have had bad losses. '26 World Series to a team they were a 5-to-1 favorite over. They lost to Grover Cleveland Alexander. It happens. Babe Ruth lost that Series. Mantle, the '60 World Series. They won the three games by 90 runs and lost four squeakers and lost the Series. Worst loss of his life. That happens. It happens.

But this is different. This is an utter collapse. This is one that will reverberate. Now, we'll get to all the different things in the days to come. You know Steinbrenner is going to do something, who knows what. He doesn't really have a lot of options, which we'll get to. But this one, as Dog said, will stick to the ribs. This is one that will follow this franchise. This is a big blemish. Because this is the ultimate winning machine, and for it to collapse this way, is a big deal. You can't minimize it.

This is a black mark on the Yankee history.