Francona: "Damon will sit out series"

In the 2004 ALCS series against the New York Yankees, with the Red Sox down three games to none, center fielder Johnny Damon (photo at right) played a crucial role in the Sox eventual victory: he scored the winning run in game five and hit two home runs, one a grand slam, in game seven, and helped fire up the team in greatest comeback in ALCS history.

But this year, with the Sox trailing a dominant Cleveland Indians team 3-1 in the ALCS, Sox coach Terry Francona kept Damon off the field. “I'm not going to play him” Francona said. “We'll win without him.” And he was right.

And Francona didn’t play him in the first game of the World Series against the Colorado Rockies either, which the Sox won without their onetime star by a crushing 13-1 score. “We don’t need him anymore,” Francona said, confidently.

“Johnny’s just not the same as he used to be,” said David Ortiz, another hero of the Sox 2004 season. “He used to be very close to all of us. Now he’s more distant.”

“He used to be the heart of this team," said Manny Ramirez, another teammate. "Now it’s like he’s not even a part of the team. He's become a stranger.”

“Damon will not play for us in the Series,” said an angry Terry Francona in an exclusive interview with The Wolf Report. “In fact, I’d be very surprised to see him on the roster at all next year. The guy he’s become doesn’t belong with a team like the Sox; he belongs with a team like the Yankees”

Thanks to Libby and Danny Santella for permission to use the photo.

Yankees Held Scoreless in World Series Opener

The New York Yankees were held hitless and scoreless in the first game of the 2007 World Series, played tonight. So helpless were the once mighty Yanks in the face of Colorado Rockies pitching that they failed to get a single player to first base and were unable to get close enough to the ball to even hit one foul.

“It was pretty much a dream game,” said Colorado Rockies starting pitcher Jeff Francis. “I just knew that they couldn’t touch me. It didn’t matter what I threw. They couldn’t get any wood on it.”

“I’m not surprised that the Yankees sucked so bad,” said Terry Francona, Manager of the rival Boston Red Sox. “The Yanks are a bunch of overrated, overpaid, whining prima donnas who can be counted on to fold when the pressure is on. I’m amazed that they get as far as they have gotten some years.”

"The weenies," he added.

Faced with low television ratings attributed to the Yankees' dismal performance (virtually no one admits to having seen the game), Major League Baseball commissioner Bud Selig is said to be considering an unprecedented move: to have the nationally beloved Red Sox play the Rockies for the balance of the Series in place of the wretched, hated, overrated, underplaying, masquerading New York Yankees.

"The weenies," added Francona, unnecessarily, but entirely accurately.