YANKEETORIAL: The Rays Want to Be Our Rival; Should We Let Them?

First-off, every Yank fan knows what it’s like to walk into the bar with 26 notches on your holstered cannon barrel, knowing that every punk-ass office temp in a corner booth wants a piece of your April.

And why not? You’re the Yank fan, the billionaire, the owner of A-Rods, the buyer of stars. They wonder what it’s like to have Scott Boras run your escort service, with Warren Buffet as the Molly Picon go-between, while they’re hitting on a dental clerk whose face resembles Sidney Ponson. Deal with it: They’re gonna hate you.

What to do? Ignore their beer lasers, sidle to the bar and buy a utility infielder for $5 million. Let the hot babes in the joint know not just the batting order, but more importantly, the pecking order.

So today, we have this pathetic attempt by the Rays, formerly Devil Rays, to appoint themselves “The Official Rival of the New York Yankees,” which is like Lou Bega declaring war on Bruce Springsteen, except for the fact that Lou Bega has a Gold Record to his credit.

They want a piece of us? Who cares?

The other day, some half-go-hero broke our 21-year-old catcher’s wrist, and it’s the first time in history we noticed a team exists in Tampa, something they're celebrating, as if they just received a hand-written rejection slip from National Lampoon: Wow, the editors thanked me for my submission! Yahoo! So now, they stand outside the bar, waving a broken bottle and bleeding from the gums, drunkenly calling us out like zombies in a Karl Rove campaign ad.

Trouble is, we’re in the back room with Kristin from the Emperor’s Club VIP, and why bother to go outside, because it’s raining, and cold and… and – oh, screw this analogy – you get the picture. They live in hell. Why join them?

Let them succeed.

They are our future Yankees.

We don’t injure young prospects. That would be eating our seed corn.

Now, we know what a few of you are thinking: Fugginay, sombich, it’s us Redsocks who are the official Yank rivals, and we’re America’s team because ESPN says so, and we’ll sign Eva Longora, when she's a free agent, and we got Jacoby Ellsbury, fugginay-goSocks.

(Sigh.)

Where do we start?

How about the Boston Globe website. These are forum thread numbers from this morning.

These are Redsock fans, mind you. This is what they think about.

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Dem Yanks… 960 comments.

Poor fools. They can't enjoy victory. They sit on the trophy, which proves painful. Instead of enjoying their year, they lock eyes on the rearview, worrying about who’s coming up behind them.

When you sit on the trophy, it hurts to shift weight.

By the way, you think there’s a forum like that on a Yank site? Go look. Good luck.

And good luck, Rays.

As far as we’re concerned, only one team is "the official rival of the New York Yankees."

The New York Yankees.

That’s all. We must defeat ourselves. Everybody else? Go stand in the rain and wave the bottle.

We have no time for you today. Kristin is polishing our rings.