Project A-13

In an interesting effort to combat the relentless scrutiny placed on baseball players in the Northeast, one misguided Yankee fan has put together a website intended to unite all Yankee fans in undying adulation of everyone's favorite quarter-billion dollar man, Alex Rodriguez. And I am quite amused.

At Project A13 (http://www.projecta13.com/index.html), Pinstripe fans who are "tired of expecting him to fail, and standing up to boo when he does so" are encouraged to "forget the contract [and] remember the game" as they support ARod. I sincerely hope this initiative takes off and gets the attention of as many New Yorkers as possible, who will promptly boo this webmaster and probably urinate on his doorstep.

Anyone who has been a part of a truly magical heckling experience, whether as performer or observer, knows logic and reason really aren't mandatory for success; many times, the best hecklers are those who know just enough to be dangerous and are in no condition to remember the rest. Although one has to admire the work that went in to designing this slick site, you know it has no chance when you see the subheading, "The Anti-Boos Movement," and can hear your neighbor across the street booing their computer.

So let's go on this magical journey together and have a taste of what this site has to offer.

Would you have signed the contract?
There are very few things I wouldn't do for $252 million dollars.

Would you have come to New York?
If coming to New York included escaping the smoking pile of rubble left at my former franchise because of my crippling $252 million dollar contract, sure.

Would you stay in New York?
Well, considering my only other option is to retire from baseball and not collect the last $125 million dollars of my contract, probably not. I may contract Scott Proctor disease and miss a couple seasons, though.

As we move further down the page, we search for the root causes of ARods problems (stopping to label him an "American hero" en route, of course), and the author endears himself to Yankee fans by basically blaming Cap'n Intangibles himself, Derek Jeter. Although I kind of agree with that sentiment (at the time, I thought it would have been better for Jeter's career if he moved to center field and allowed Bernie Williams to hit the coffee house tour three years earlier), it is not a popular one among real Yankee fans. The author goes on to continually ask if he or I could handle the pressure ARod faces on a daily basis. Of course we couldn't - that's why we're blogging after midnight on a Wednesday and he's swimming in a giant silo of gold coins like Scrooge McDuck.

In terms of ARod walking away from his contract after this season, I have a revelation for Yankee fans: the only reason he leaves is if Scott Boras thinks he can get a more lucrative contract on the open market. Period. End of story. If you boo, it doesn't matter. He may suck more every day, but he has 100 million more reasons to take his lumps and hit those Miami beaches by the second week of October for the rest of the decade.

Anyways, this guy continues to ramble on for hundreds and hundreds of more words, but I just wanted to throw such an intriguing concept out for public consumption. Could you imagine such a site for a Boston athlete? The only type of fan I could picture creating such a site would be a stereotypical pink-hat fan who bought a player's jersey with the name on the back and now can't wear it at the game without the fat guys in the bleachers throwing beers at him.

(As a complete side note, nothing aggrevates me more than when I see Sox fans wearing replica home jerseys with a last name across the back or a Yankees fan with the name across either jersey. Guys, the names aren't on those jerseys in real life. The only reason you throw a name on there is so other pink hat fans know what jersey you're wearing. And quite frankly, that's disgusting.)

So I will let all of you settled safely in Red Sox Nation know if Project A13 is a success.

My guess, however, is that A13 will ultimately be undone by one too many 6-4-3s and E5s.