Maybe Geraldo Could Do the Play-by-Play

I COMPLETELY agree with this article appearing today ~ especially the part about Joe Morgan making you vomit.

RIVALRY'S BUZZ TAKES A BEATING
By JOEL SHERMAN (NY POST) 04-16-08
I DO NOT want to write this column, but I must, because the Red Sox and Yankees start a series tonight and someplace next to the original Gutenburg press is a journalistic playbook that demands we trumpet each new sighting of The Rivalry as if it were the ball coming down on New Year's. Even if the two teams just played over the weekend in Boston. Even if this series is just two games. Even if it is just April 16.
You see, we in the media are as addicted to Red Sox-Yankees as any junkie is to a drug. We have all decided to ignore realities that this series has lost a good deal of its juice the past few years, and now contains two of the worst traits of modern baseball: The games are usually way too long and too often come with the commentary of Joe Morgan. In fact, this series has become Joe Morgan in many respects: Famous for something that happened in the past and now something presented to us regularly as extraordinary that, quite frankly, isn't.
This is like "Survivor" or "ER" now. Something that used to be unique and special and well done, that lost its essence years ago. However, it stays on the network schedule in hopes that it can recapture what it once was. I asked a Fox executive before the Saturday game if he covers his eyes while the game is in progress and hopes when he opens them that Pedro Martinez and Don Zimmer will be rolling around on the ground? He laughed. I didn't.
It is Red Sox-Yankees, so yes, it comes with a ton of history and, thus, more buzz than, say, Brewers-Pirates. But it also comes 18 times a year. If Christmas were celebrated 18 times a year, it would be hard to sing the carols with quite the same gusto.
And here is the big thing: The Red Sox win now. Not just games and series, but championships. The great backstory to this matchup evaporated along with that three-games-to-none lead the Yanks let slip away in the 2004 ALCS. Boston was no longer Charlie Brown falling on his butt after the Yankees went all Lucy and kept pulling it away at the final second.
In 2003-04, every game - heck, every inning, every pitch - was as riveting as baseball gets. But that was because the Yankees had something and the Red Sox were trying to take it away. The context was everything. The Curse defined The Rivalry. Once the hex was lifted, so was the Luke-and-Laura-are-getting-married portion of the script. The intensity could never be the same again.
In fact, now it is contrived. We are told these games carry the same heat as always by their presence in special time slots on Fox and ESPN, and by people like me trying to convince you that nothing has changed, that it is Red Sox vs. Yankees and it is the same as it has ever been.
This is where I abandon ship. I remember being young once and going to a bar with my pals and a few of us having quite a special night after meeting a few ladies. And we kept going back to that bar over and over and over hoping to recapture what had happened that one great night. Of course, we never did have an instant replay. It was a moment in time, great and gone.
And this is where Yankees-Red Sox is now. I am so glad that I was there for all that occurred in 2003-04 - whether it was Big Papi emerging to greatness or Derek Jeter going headfirst into the stands or Karim Garcia and Jeff Nelson re-enacting the Hell's Angels side of Altamont in the Fenway visiting bullpen. But I approach yet another Red Sox-Yankees series feeling like I have learned the lesson that even too much chocolate will make you sick.
And having to hear Joe Morgan discuss it will then make you vomit.