Sports hate: Our friends at Monstah Mash make mincemeat of the Blue Jays, the Yankees, and me!

I see so much bad writing every day on the Internet that I make it a point to praise those people I know who are good writers I especially appreciate those who are genuinely hilarious, like my friends at Monstah Mash, the Red Sox fan site. Nick Piccione, one of the lead writers there, had a really funny rant today in an article entitled "An Open Letter to the New York Yankees." Lots of great lines in this piece!

He starts with a sports hate rant, talking about how now that Boston is out of contention,he has fired up "the hate train." Here he describes his full-throttle sports hate:

Every year I get to pick some players, managers, and teams that I get to root against. The Cardinals are my keeper team. They’re in the lineup every year. Keep calling yourselves “the best fans in the country” as your football team leaves for LA you giant collective of asshats. The rest of the roster fills out as follows: David Price (Hall of Fame tool), Joe Maddon (for spawning David Price #unforgivable), David Price again (Seriously, I hate this guy), Buck Showalter (the only manager almost as overrated as Maddon) and the Toronto Blue Jays round out the hate squad.

I tip my hat to Nick for all of this, because I am writing this squawk while watching David Price and the Blue Jays shut down the Yankees for much of Friday's game, before finally wearing out in the eighth. I hate you, David Price!

About those Blue Jays: surprisingly for a Red Sox fan, Nick has invested a lot in hating Toronto this year!:

Look, I take a lot of pride in my hate. My hate makes me happy. You can call it moronic or oxymoronic or sociopathic or whatever, but it’s true. And I’ve invested the vast majority of this season’s hate index towards the Toronto Blue Jays. I think they’re wildly overrated, and that they’re gonna get their doors blown off as soon as they run into any team with a good pitching staff.

I agree that sports hate is an underrated emotion, and it also makes me happy! (And really, hate can be an underrated emotion -- when I am pushing through a road race, I'd like to think I am always thinking warm and fuzzy thoughts, but sometimes when I am running, I am thinking "I'll show you!")

After all, I call myself a New York City football fan, rooting for both the Jets and the Giants, but let's face it -- I hate the Patriots more than I love those teams! New England is just so hateable! Tom Brady, Bill Belichick, Gronk, Aaron Hernandez....what is there to like? Hate, hate, hate! I hate them all!

But here's the thing. Because of his sports hate for Toronto, Nick was rooting for the Yankees (!) to win the division. Now he's peeved that the Yanks have blown what looked to be a secure lead. Me too, Nick! Maybe you jinxed them!

I also get a shoutout in the column (emphasis added):

Even the locals are turning against your sham of a team now. My bestest friend on the internet Lisa Swan over at Scrubway Squawkers is so miffed by you baboons that she’s been forced to write about how much the music at your ballpark sucks. As a man who is well versed in that art of the hate-filled rant, I can say factually that if you’ve been reduced to spitting fire about the jingles in between innings, you are so ripsh!t about your team that literally anything can set you off into a pants-pooping fury.

That is actually true! (Well, not the pants-pooping fury part, but the part about me being positively peeved!) Squawker Jon gave me a hard time over that piece, saying I needed to write another article about the Yankees getting humiliated by the Blue Jays. But there is only so much fury I can safely spew, but I think I've got it going again. So step it up, Yankees, or a hate-filled rant will be very necessary!

How I ended up seeing the Yankees play in Toronto

I'm recently back from a road trip with my friend David that started in Boulder and ended in Montreal. We stopped in Toronto, and the Yankees just happened to be in town.

Originally, we planned to be in Toronto last Monday, but the trip got pushed back a day, so we ended up at the Tuesday game. On Monday, the Jays won, 3-2. As it turned out, the Jays also won on Wednesday, taking two of three.

Naturally, I was at the Tuesday game, when the Yankees hit five home runs.

At least we were late to the game and missed the Bombers' three-homer barrage in the top of the third. But by the time we got into the stadium in the bottom of the third, the Yankees already led, 6-0.

The weather was nice, so the roof was open at the Rogers Centre (see photo). There were plenty of Yankee fans in attendance, and numerous Jeter jerseys, but unlike when Squawker Lisa and I saw the Yankees play in Baltimore, the home team did have a lot more support, even in a blowout.

The Yankees built their lead to 10-1 before winning, 11-5. Considering that in the last Met game I went to, the Mets lost to the D-Backs, 14-1, maybe it's time to stop going to ballgames for a while.

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On one of Lisa's posts, reader Uncle Mike wondered if I traded my "Mets money" for "loonies" at the border. No, Uncle Mike, I'll leave that to Omar Minaya and his signings of the likes of Oliver Perez and Francisco Rodriguez.

Photo by Jon Lewin.

Squawker Jon brings Yankees luck in Toronto

Squawker Jon is mostly incommunicado these days. He's on a road trip, and his current phone plan has so few minutes that we have to communicate via telepathic beeps and squeaks, the way they did in one of the "Planet of the Apes" sequels. But Jon did manage to get me a message that he was at the Yankees-Blue Jays game last night, as he's in Toronto right now.

Jon got to the game just in time to see the Yankees' three-homer barrage in the fourth inning. Needless to say, he wasn't too pleased to witness this.

And no, Jon did not dress as a fake umpire, as some Toronto fans have been known to do!

Anyhow, I was happy that the Yankees' offense did so much last night. I was also happy to hear that Johnny Damon will not be going to Boston after all. But the best part of last night was knowing that Jon had to sit through watching the Yankees beat up Toronto! Tee-hee!

What do you think? Tell us about it!

On A-Rod, the police, and crazy Toronto fans

So there's a whole to-do about Alex Rodriguez colliding with the female cop at last night's game. It's gotten as much attention as him getting his 2,500th hit the night before.

I blame the cop, not A-Rod, for the collision. (Yeah, I know, it's a real shocker that I would take A-Rod's side!) But hear me out. Why the heck was that cop not paying attention until Alex was within spitting distance of her? See what I mean in the video?

I'm not being a cop-basher here - you may remember that my late father was a police officer - but I just thought that the cop last night either didn't seem to have very click reflexes, or wasn't paying attention. And neither thing is good. What if that had been a fan jumping on the field, instead of A-Rod approaching her? And she seemed more concerned with hanging onto that stupid stool than she did not interfering with the game.

Speaking of which, a dopey Toronto fan threw a ball at Alfredo Aceves during the game. And according to the Journal-News' Peter Abraham, "It took nearly five minutes for security to reach the area and when they did, the crowd booed." Good grief.

Joe Girardi better be prepared to pull a Jim Leyland and pull his team off the field if anything else happens this weekend, the way Leyland had to do in Toronto on Opening Day. This is getting ridiculous.

What do you think? Leave us a comment!