one of the good guys

Being a Red Sox fan means that I must hate the Yankees. There's really no choice, and that's fine with me. However, over the years there have been plenty of Yankees that you had to respect, as ballplayers and/or as the quality people that they are. For instance, Bernie Williams is a great guy, a good musician (I would buy his cd, but I can't bring myself to do it), a solid Christian and a very good baseball player (a batting title, couple Gold Gloves). If he wasn't wearing pinstripes I would root for this guy.

There are others. I always respected Paul O'Neill as a baseball player (although his attitude made it hard to like him personally). Jorge Posada. Derek Jeter (though overrated in many areas, is a true clutch player). Mariano Rivera. And so on. Some of these guys would be among my favorite players if they were on the Red Sox (come one, Rivera would be worshipped in this town). Alas, they wear the wrong uniform. Some of you may have heard the phrase: you root for laundry. It's completely true. No matter what, you always root for your team, it doesn't matter who is wearing the uniform. And you cheer against those wearing the wrong laundry.

The other day Hideki Matsui, the Yankees left fielder, broke his wrist against the Red Sox. He was trying to make a sliding catch coming in on the ball and his glove hand snapped backwards. You couldn't really see the break itself, but when he ran after the ball (that got behind him) you could see his glove hand just dangling loosely. It was one of the nastiest things I've seen in a while (but probably still not in the top 5 nastiest sports injuries I've ever seen- that's another post for another day).

Matsui is one of those guys that absolutely kill the Red Sox. I swear that if he could play all 162 games against Boston, he'd break every record in the book. In fact, when the Red Sox let lefty-specialist Mike Myers go this offseason, the first thought in my mind was, "how are we going to get Matsui out?" There's a reason the Yankees signed Myers, because he was one of the few Sox pitchers who could get Matsui out. Good strategy.

In the 2004 playoffs Matsui was crushing the Red Sox. What was the counter strategy? Throw at his head. That's what Pedro did, and after that Matsui calmed down. That was what we had to resort to in order to get him out.

The reason I'm posting this is because I just read his comments after his injury. Matsui, displaying tremendous character, apologized to the fans and his teammates. Apologized! He feels bad for getting hurt, like he's let everyone down. This is a man who has a completely different mindset from the rest of the sports world. He had a consecutive games streak that extended back to 1992 in Japan (with some 580+ games for New York) that will now be ended. It's obvious that he's the type of guy who takes pride in playing for his fans and his team everyday. That's his job, and he's work as hard as he can to do it well.

You hate to see a guy like this get hurt, no matter what uniform he's wearing. Here's hoping he recovers well and returns to left field. But I hope in this time away from the game he forgets how to hit the Sox pitchers.