Manager
Yankees: Billy Martin beat up a marshmallow salesman, two bouncers in a topless bar, a Chicago cab driver who preferred soccer to baseball, a pair of traveling secretaries, a sportswriter named Ray Hagar, and a Detroit Tigers fan. Red Sox: Don Zimmer beat up Pedro Martinez, but he did it as a Yankee. Honorable mentions: notorious Sox manager Pinky (No black players on my team!) Higgins did two months for vehicular homicide in 1968; Gene (Stick) Michael had a DUI. Butch Hobson was busted on cocaine charges while managing in the Phillies farm system.
EDGE: draw.
Police escort
Yankees: cops escorted Ruth to the game after his speeding arrest. Red Sox: the Doug Mirabelli circus. Ruth was actually good; Boston needs to get a life.
COSMIC-SHAME EDGE: Red Sox.
All-time criminals
Yankees: Gooden, Strawberry, Howe, David Cone, and Canseco. Red Sox: Canseco, Cone, Wil Cordero, Julio Valdez, Oil Can Boyd, Jeff Reardon, and Reedy “Rip’it.” Analysis: Gooden, Strawberry, and Howe might be the top-three most-arrested baseball players of all time; rank hypocrisy of George’s “clean-cut” facial hair policy vis à vis his willful ignorance of their appalling rap sheets makes this one a no-brainer. Yankees have never had a mascot feel someone up, however.
Still, STRONG EDGE: Yankees.
FOR THE RED SOX: Oil Can Boyd will always have his place |
Fans
Yankees: Scott Harper, diving 40 feet onto backstop screen. Red Sox: Chris House, getting in Sheff’s face. Mitigating factor: annual UMass-Boston mass arrests following Red Sox–Yankees playoff series, irrespective of result. Following the 2003 playoff loss, police dogs were dispatched to break up chants of “Yankees Suck” and “Let’s Go Marlins,” while students burned T-shirts and threw beer out of the John Quincy Adams tower. Additional mitigating factors: “Yankees Suck” chants at OzzFest and Patriots championship parades, and generally acting like assholes anywhere and everywhere.
STRONG EDGE: Red Sox
Disastrous 2006 pitching acquisition
Yankees: Sidney Ponson assaulted a judge in Aruba. Red Sox: Julian Tavarez has never been arrested, but he really, really sucks. Mitigating factor: Randy Johnson’s love child.
EDGE: Yankees.
Little-known DUI
Yankees: Joe Pepitone lost his mind in the Midtown tunnel in 1995. Red Sox: Manny Ramirez, back in his Cleveland days.
EDGE: draw
Overall analysis
You can argue over the specifics — in 2006, does ex-Yankee Esteban Loiaza’s bust cancel out ex–Red Sox player Scott Sauerbeck’s bust? Does Armando Benitez cancel out Terry Adams? How many of David Wells’s 689 pounds were gained in his Yankee tenure? What about Wade Boggs’s pantyhose? Where does “Sudden Sam” McDowell fit in? These are important questions, and it may be that a scandal yet to come — a juice bombshell, Mr. Giambi? — will settle the final score forever. But for my money I take a Yankee to end up on the wrong side of an indictment over a Red Sox player anytime. And so, clearly, does George. We’ll check the score again next year.
When he’s not googling “Dale Berra” and “cocaine,” Matt Taibbi is writing for Rolling Stone. He can be reached atM_Taibbi@yahoo.com
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