America's Real Team

For the past thirty years the Dallas Cowboys have been tagged America’s team. At one point in the 90’s the Atlanta Braves picked up that moniker. The Yankees have always been a symbol of American sports.

I’m here to tell you that none of these teams can be called America’s Team. They just can’t. There has to be someone though, right? There is, but just not the Cowboys, the Braves or Yankees.

The Dallas Cowboys were great in the 1970’s, were awful in the 1980’s and had glimpses of power in the 1990’s. Now, they are merely a team more notable for their playoff departures, criminal record free agents and pop star romances. On field, they lack the consistent victories and championships to show for it.

The Braves cannot keep the title after failing to make the playoffs for a few years. The pitching staffs of Maddux, Glavine and Smoltz have given away due to free agency and retirement.

Even the “greatest franchise in the history of sports”, the New York Yankees, have no business in being classified America’s Team. For as many fans who don the interlocking NY hat, there are about ten others who despise the team. A nation of fans always harp on their greed and desire to be know as the best, despite not winning a championship since 2000. The Steroids Era has unearthed many of their top talents and combined with an ownership group that reeks of all that foreigners detest about America, tops it off.

The United States of America is changing. Changing in a more subtle way than what our parents did in the 1960’s. There are no draft card burnings or wearing paisley suits to weddings on a beach in California. We’re an expressive nation now. We wear what we feel and promote individualism.

The Yankees return to a 1950’s, play it by the book and by the company letterhead style. Players from the A’s shave off their beards and cut their hair into a buzz cut. When the Yanks take the field, they wear corporate pin stripes which seem more like a suit rather than the summer flannels. Before you know it, Derek Jeter will hand out business cards with an extension to be reach and they will have corporate outings which is Nantucket dress and if Nick Swisher is not wearing light blue flat front khakis from Vineyard Vines, then he will be traded to Boston or “some other” team that would tolerate that non sense.

Simply put the team is not fun. Watching a game on YES is like watching C-SPAN for three hours. All these mission statements and focus on the past traditions of a team that is losing its strength in the league, despite following the real American Team in the AL East.

I said it, Boston is America’s Team. Blue and White is too corporate. Throw some red in their and you have life. Sew a Captain’s C on the catcher and you have an identity. Derek “The Captain” Jeter reads off personal statements from management. When Varitek speaks it’s coming from his mouth. Youkilis can go bald and no one asks him to grow out a hair style or chop off the goatee. There is a reason this team has won two World Series this decade… THEY ARE LOOSE! This is what America is. The Red Sox express themselves and that includes the manager, Terry Francona. Francona in interviews is free flowing and does things his way. Girardi went from being that guy who was leading a Marlins team his way to running a 25 man daycare in New York. The Bronx Zoo just got themselves a new janitor.

When the Red Sox upset the Yankees in 2004, it was because the team filled with Manny’s, Pedro’s and Papi’s took it one day at a time. They had nothing to lose but the next game. The Yankees had to play in the name of tradition and honor of the “beloved pinstripes”.

The main components were there in 2007, trailing the Indians. The Red Sox were loose, letting their hair flow and their reliever doing Riverdance. They took a young, anxious Cleveland team to seven games and then just dissected them.

America loves the underdog. We beat the British, made a constitution and gave Rocky the Oscar! The Red Sox are the underdog. They were drowned by a Curse, by a city of over analytical sportswriters and not too mention so many bad pitching staffs in the 1990’s. They rose up and beat it, and they will keep beating it.

The verdict is out and the decision is this; the Boston Red Sox are America’s Team. You try winning the World Series after having to comeback from a 3-0 or 3-1 deficit.



ROC SPORTS NET 2009