Jon Lester Pitches a No-Hitter!

Jon Lester, less than a year after beating cancer, has no-hit the Kansas City Royals. It was an incredible pitching performance – 130 pitches, 9 K’s and he was topping 95 MPH on the last batter. Just incredible.

Of course I didn’t see any of it because I was hanging out with fellow S&P writer Jason playing Grand Theft Auto IV on his new flat screen TV. Unfortunately, we were far too busy shooting up police cars and running over pedestrians to check on the Sox game. That being said, its been a while since we’ve had a good baseball post on S&P so I’m going to go over a few of my impressions of the AL East (only division that matters ;-) ) at the quarter-mark.

The Red Sox look great. Every time these guys take the field I expect them to win. An excellent team with a great combination of young talent, veterans, and superstars that make them supremely balanced and a monster in the league. Sure they have bullpen issues, but who doesn’t? Don’t buy the crap in SI’s power rankings – the Sox are the team to beat.

The Rays holding down second place? Since dropping the word “Devil” from their name, the Tampa Bay Rays have had a phenomenal season – racking up enough wins to chase the Red Sox for first place in the division. Almost a decade of drafting in the first round has finally produced results, and the Rays are loaded with really solid young players that remind me of the 2007 Indians. I’m not saying they’ll be neck-and-neck with the Sox in August, but they’re definitely past their “40 games out of first place” era. Good for them!

The Torontorioles are what they are. Right, there are a couple other teams in the AL East. They play baseball just like all the other teams. Except one’s in Canada and one had to unload all their ‘roided up players and is no longer considered a threat. To save time I just group them together.

The Yankees suck in many, many ways. It wouldn’t be a baseball post without me bashing Yankees. And trust me, its really easy to do right now. I could rant about all the pitching issues – which range from the embarrassing, to the tragic, to the hilarious – or mention the cavalcade of injuries they’ve suffered. Or comment on how the slumping hitters are so desperate they’re now wearing golden man-thongs. But most of these issues can be repaired, and I expect the Yankees will start to pick up the pace in a few weeks and be competitive again by the All-Star Break.

Something far more pressing that I want to talk about are the new ticket prices for the new, smaller, soulless, corporate Yankee Stadium. Here’s a quick rundown of some of ticket prices if you want to catch a Yankees game next season according to the NY Daily:

“Start with the best seats in the house, first row, dugout to dugout. At the Garden, these are known as the Spike Lee seats. At the Stadium, I still like to think of them as the Rudy Giuliani seats. The plan is to sell these for $2500 next season. Per seat.”

”Front-row seats in the first couple of boxes beyond the dugouts, in 14A and 14B on the home side and 26 and 27A on the visitors’ side, are supposed to go for $1250. Right behind them, the Yankees are looking for $600 a ticket.”

”Front-row seats that extend from there toward the foul poles? The Yankees want those to go for a thousand.” Five hundred for the ones behind them.

”Even seats in the very first row of the upper deck behind home plate will cost $135. Which, if you’ve been tracking the math, is just 15 bucks less than a seat behind the dugout cost just one season ago.”

All this for a team in last place! We haven’t even touched on food costs! $20 beers? $10 Cracker-Jacks?

These outrageous prices will be the team’s downfall, and ensures a sterile, corporate atmosphere where the average fan can never visit the park, and must stay at home watching on TV with their plebeian families. Soulless overpricing like the kind we’re seeing at Yankee Stadium is what ruins regular season basketball – where $1000 courtside seats are only afforded by uninterested CEO’s, which they use for business entertainment expenditures, not fans. I expect it will ruin Yankee games as well.

This verifies that which we’ve always known – the Yankees only care about money, and have no regard for the history of baseball or its importance in America. They are far too concerned with figuring out how to spend $30-million a year on steroid abusing losers like Jason Giambi than care about their fans or their lasting image in the 100+ year history of America’s pastime. Just look at how they whore out memorabilia that should be in the Hall of Fame. Shameless. The future is clear – if you want to see baseball in New York you’re going to have to go to Queens. Go Mets. And Sox.

Wait, what was I talking about? Oh right! Congratulations Jon Lester and good luck to the Red Sox. How are things going with your teams as they gear up for the summer stretch? Sound off in the comments section!