Norse Mythology and the AL East Pennant Race

No one will ever mistake the New York Times for Comedy Central or even for the latter's flagship star, Jon Stewart. Remember this is the newspaper once -- and maybe still -- known as the Great Gray Lady and the newspaper that once fired a reporter for adding the "Jake Barnes Award for Valiant Effort" to the long list of agate type awards in a Columbia University graduation. So how pleasant it was to come across this article,

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/30/sports/baseball/30squirrel.html
?em&ex=1188619200&en=e149305c3ef69252&ei=5087%0A

my favorite of the month, maybe even of this news dreary year.

Meanwhile, in other pennant race news, the Yankees completed a sweep of the Red Sox, leaving for now only the question of why Boston manager Terry Francona wears a long-sleeved tee in Red Sox colors instead of a numbered jersey like everybody else. Is he allergic to doubleknits or something?

And, finally, that quintessential whiner Mike Mussina is "angry" and "hurt'" -- per Yahoo -- about being pulled from the Yankees rotation. Uh, excuse me, Mike, but in a short season where every game matters, you have put together a 17+ ERA in your last three starts and stuck the Yankees in a six run (at least) hole in the first two innings of every one of those games. You deserve another start about as much as I do. People get fired for poor performance in other industries, why not baseball? The only appropriate response for Mussina is to say to Joe Torre, "I understand completely. Let me do some long relief in blowout games until I get my stuff back." But, oh, wait, I forgot -- he's a Stanford grad, impossible to demonstrate such humility.

Go Bears!