Projo Sports Blog

By ART MARTONE
Journal Sports Editor

Jonathan Papelbon spent most of his media session yesterday praising Mariano Rivera but also saying that, naturally, he'd like to close out the All-Star Game. (Boston Herald) ("Of course I want to close the game out. I wouldn't be Jonathan Papelbon if I didn't want to close the game out . . . If I were the manager, I'd use me.") He also acknowledged that "[there's] things within this game I have to understand . . . [and] one of the things I owe to this game [is] to let an elder statesman go ahead of me." Later he grabbed a Boston Globe reporter's tape recorder and, using it like a microphone, said: "This is Jonathan Papelbon, closer of the Boston Red Sox. Mariano Rivera will be closing the 2008 All-Star Game in Yankee Stadium. I'm making a statement right now, saying I don't want it, I want him to have it."

The New York Daily News -- among others -- interpreted all that as Paplebon "[declaring] that he deserves to be the American League's ninth-inning man at Yankee Stadium Tuesday," and took the opportunity to ignore Josh Hamilton and put out the back cover you see at the right. It also prompted Peter Abraham of the LoHud Yankees Blog (who called Papelbon "delusional"), Bill Madden of the Daily News and Joel Sherman of the New York Post to lecture Terry Francona (and chide Papelbon) about Rivera's divine right to pitch the ninth inning in the final All-Star Game at Yankee Stadium.

I understand this is Yankees/Red Sox. I understand that everything Red Sock is going to be interpreted in the worst possible light in New York, just as everything Yankee is going to be interpreted in the worst possible light in Boston. So this was a batting-practice fastball for our friends 180 miles to the south. Papelbon is Clemens-like in his inability to string words together, and in the garble of whatever he said yesterday there were individual statements -- like "I'd use me" -- that were certainly damning. But it's clear the Boston media interpreted the entirety of Papelbon's comments in a completely different way than the New York media . . . and the New York interpretation was used to pour gasoline on the "us good/you bad" stereotype that both sides embrace.

What it means, of course, is that Papelbon will be savagely booed tonight a) when he's introduced before the game and b) whenever it is he comes in to pitch. And then, when the Yankees come to town in two weeks, the favor will be returned. Ten-fold.

And people wonder why the rest of the country can't stand either one of us.

 Tags  Boston Red Sox Jonathan Papelbon Mariano Rivera New York Yankees

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