Oh, ESPN. Not only did you force me last night to listen to Jon Miller and Joe Morgan pat themselves on the back for an entire inning after “discovering” that the left field foul pole at Yankee Stadium was “in the wrong place” (It’s not. It’s fine. It’s called an optical illusion. The left field fence at the corner is angled, making it look like the two are not aligned. You’ve wasted my time), you think that us New York baseball fans are morons by showing us a stock-footage shot of the Manhattan skyline. Any New Yorker paying attention at this point would have noticed something odd. On the TV screen, the Empire State Building was lit up in green and red (above). Problem is, it’s only ever green and red around the December holiday season. Had it been a live shot, they would have shown the building lit up in blue and white on one side (Yankees colors) and blue and orange on the other (Mets colors) to commemorate the Subway Series games that were going on at that moment.

Way to go, fellas.

Drunk, belligerent Al Reyes to arresting officer: “Don’t tase me, bro!” (DRaysBay)

In other booze news, Drunk Jays Fans is having a healthy debate about all those…drunk…Jays…fans. How apt.

El Lefty Malo has an intriguing suggestion for Barry Zito: send him down.

Fire Joe Morgan took their sarcastic snark to new heights yesterday with YouTube. Epic.

I love reading CenterField. This woman has gone above and beyond to bring us the video of Jonathan Papelbon’s asstastic Dunkin Donuts commerical. I have been waiting for this moment all week!

There’s a reason UmpBumper Nick didn’t join our fantasy league. “You guys have to understand, fantasy sports is like crack to me,” he confessed. “Once I start, I can’t stop.” Sound familiar to any of you? Well, here’s a way to save yourself from yourself. (RotoNation)

Edgar Renteria apparently likes getting booed now (”When the fans boo me, that’s real exciting”) reports the Boston Herald. That’s not what he said when he left Boston for the Braves, when he said that an early booing by Red Sox fans caused him to put too much pressure on himself. “I don’t know if [the fans] were looking for 30 homers, like Garciaparra in the past did, but it was crazy,” he kvetched at the time, adding “I had never been booed in my career.” We weren’t looking for thirty homers. We just didn’t want thirty errors.

The Red Sox and the homers they hit, from Me and Pedro. An excellent chuckle (at least for Sox fans).

Since 1956, only 5 pitchers have gone their first three starts without giving up a run. Today, tomorrow, and Sunday, three pitchers will try to match this feat—Ben Sheets, Oliver Perez, and Kyle Lohse. Get the details from Baseball Reference’s Stat of the Day.

Doug Glanville’s writing a guest column for the NYT this season.

Also, there’s a Red Sox t-shirt buried under the new Yankee Stadium.

Thank you, that is all.

You might dislike the Yankees. You might be jealous of all those World Championships. Maybe you blame them for financial disparity in all of baseball. Perhaps you think of them as the willing host body upon which the leech Scott Boras feasts. Maybe you’d like to accidentally push Alex Rodriguez down three flights of stairs. You may even want to go back in time to the 1996 ALCS and tackle the then-twelve-year-old Jeffrey Maier down to the ground and beat him to a pulp just so he wouldn’t be able to reach over the wall and grab Derek Jeter’s “homerun” ball (if you do want to, you just ain’t right - he’s twelve for god’s sakes! Why would you even think of doing such a thing you bastard???).

But if you’re a baseball fan, you have to respect Yankee Stadium. It may not look like much now, but too many things happened there and too many legends crossed those foul lines onto the playing field for anyone to say “good riddance” to the stadium once the Yankees vacate it after this season. It deserves to be remembered in baseball lore - not only as the House That Ruth Built,  but also as one of the most meaningful cathedrals built on American soil.

And a place like that needs to go out with a bang. It merits a fitting tribute. It demands an event so powerful and lasting that will remain forever linked with the Stadium itself.

Instead, it looks like we’ll get a New York Rangers game. That’s right. Hockey. That’s what baseball fans around the world want as the last event at hallowed Yankee Stadium. A Canadian sport.  Hazzah.

It’s not even the case that I dislike hockey. I do like it. In fact, as a kid my brother and I had a poster of Pat Verbeek, Kirk Muller, Ken Daneyko, John MacLean, Aaron Broten and Sean Burke hanging from our bedroom wall (we’re Devils fans if you couldn’t tell).

But Yankee Stadium is and forever will be known as a baseball stadium. Sure, it’s seen other memorable sporting events in its time such as Joe Louis vs. Max Schmeling, Pele and the NY Cosmos, Notre Dame vs. Army, NY Football Giants vs. Johnny Unitas and the Indianapolis Colts in the 1958 Championship game.  Despite this, I imagine that very few people will say that these other events are what they will remember most about the shrine on River Avenue. They’ll remember the Babe, Gehrig, DiMaggio, Mantle, Berra, Reggie and Jeter. They’ll remember the sound of Bob Sheppard’s voice. They’ll sit in bars and talk about which grounds keeper was the best at dancing to “YMCA”. And they’ll knock back a drink in salute to Cotton Eyed Joey and his lethal moves in the broadcast booth.

Alright, fine. I’m terrible at waxing poetic. But you’d think that a proud organization like the Yankees would want the average fan’s final sight of Yankee Stadium to be… Yankee-ish or at least something related to America’s pastime. Instead, we’ll get Henrik Lundqvist. Now that just ain’t American.

1. Jim Rice is the 21st player to win over 70% of votes in the Hall of Fame balloting but fall short of the 75% needed for election. The other 20 players have all ended up in Cooperstown. (Bugs and Cranks has a great rant on the caprice of BBWAA members and the mysterious rise—and occasional fall—of HOF-eligible players’ vote totals.) Rice has the support of this year’s only inductee, Goose Gossage: “I think Jim Rice does belong in the Hall of Fame. No hitter scared me, but Jim Rice came the closest.” As for Nick’s contention that Rice has no place in the Hall, I clearly disagree. But Nick’s post has convinced me that Dwight Evans belongs in Cooperstown as well, something I was on the fence about previously. Come on, Veterans Comittee!

2. What with all the Roger Clemens coverage, the NFL playoffs, and this little election-thingy going on right now, you might have missed this story, but the new Yankee Stadium is going to cost New York taxpayers a pretty penny—including $70 million for free VIP valet parking. Even more irksome to New Yorkers, while the poobahs will get 40 years of parking courtesy of the taxpayers, Joe Yankeefan will still have to pay out of his own pocket. That’s preposterous. However, I must throw cold water on the notion that fans are being gouged by a rate increase from $14 to $17 this year, and again to $19 at the new stadium in 2009, and up to $35 bucks by 2014. Most of the parking at Fenway is already at least $30. Yankee fans, suck it up.

3. After a successful workout for several teams in LA and offers from “three or four” clubs, Gabe Kapler has chosen to play for the Brewers next year. He’ll get 800k. Kapler managed Boston’s Single A affiliate last year to an uninspiring record of 58-81.

“Gabe brings versatility and athleticism to the outfield position,” said Brewers GM Doug Melvin. “He has always been a great teammate and possesses the determination to bounce back and become a valuable player to our club.”

This also elevates the already impressive hotness quotient of the Milwaukee Brewers, who field such eye candy as dreamy-eyed third baseman Ryan Braun and cutie-patootie Prince Fielder.

4. Also in the former-Red-Sox-making-a-comeback category, MLBTradeRumors reports that at least the Diamondbacks will be watching as Keith Foulke throws later this month. As for the idea that Foulke “may have special interest in” the Red Sox, I can guarantee right now that the Red Sox will not have any interest, special or otherwise, in Keith Foulke, who is (perhaps unfairly) less remembered for being part of the 2004 championship team than for being the perennially injured and ineffective closer of ‘05 and ‘06, speaking dismissively of Red Sox fans as “Johnny from Burger King” types that meant nothing to him, licking his World Series ring with groupies, and for (allegedly) sleeping with one of the Red Sox ball girls, (allegedly) in the clubhouse no less, and (allegedly) getting caught in flagrante delicto by Dawn Timlin, who (allegedly) promptly told Mrs. Foulke, who (most definitely) demanded a divorce.

5. Just to go back to the Hall of Fame for a minute, I would like to personally apologize to Goose Gossage. No, I don’t have a Hall of Fame vote. But I do have an Unfortunate Facial Hair vote. And there is absolutely no excuse for me to have overlooked Goose’s contributions in the field of facial hair when I wrote this retrospective of the fu manchu. Clearly, Gossage had a historic impact on the place of the distinctive moustache in baseball lore, and I was remiss not to formally recognize this sooner. I’m sure Goose will be as thrilled to be included in our UFH category as he is to be elected into Cooperstown. “It was very emotional I’ll tell you, off the charts. I can’t describe the feeling.” Yes, Goose, I’m sure. Only the lucky and the few get such recognition. But are you sure you really can’t describe how it felt? “A shock wave went through my body like an anvil just fell on my head.” On second thought, I think maybe calling it indescribable was fine.

I realize this is some kind of insidious corporate ad campaign, but this site has some pretty awesome computer animated flyby videos of the five new ballparks currently under construction in Oakland, New York (both Mets and Yankees), Washington, and Minnesota.

http://www.mlb.com/mlb/fan_forum/cisco/

It’s interesting to see how much the new Yankee Stadium is going to look just like the old one. The new Mets stadium, Citi Field, seems dispiritingly boring and non-distinctive to me, virtually indistinguishable from all the other HOK parks, but then again, maybe that is fitting since it is replacing the dispiritingly mediocre Shea Stadium.