The Fight - I know, it's been a while since I've written things. I was back from my trip to New York a week ago, but had some things to catch up on. Or, maybe I just didn't feel like writing. Some people have motivational problems sometimes, ok? What? Do you want to fight?

Speaking of fights, did you see this Game 3 of the Yankees / Red Sox playoff Saturday ngiht? Pitches were thrown, idiots got angry. Pedro Martinez didn't look macho. He looked like a cry baby, throwing his Don Zimmer doll to the ground when he didn't get his way. Someone needs to get that guy a binky.

I happened to tape the game on my old early 1990s Panasonic VHS VCR (an very simple predecessor of TiVo, that uses analog signaling to temporarily preserve video and audio information on a magnetic tape). Rather than recap the stupidity I saw, I think it better to go with what the guy sitting a couple of tables down from me at a cafe as I passed a gorgeous San Francisco Sunday morning with a pint of Bass told his friends.

He picked up the Chronicle sports section, which had a photo of the teams in a pile at midfield and waved it in front of the people he was with, figuring there was no chance they'd seen the game, and stared explaining, trying to overcome their clear disinterest.

It all started with a rash of hit bats men. The Yankees' Roger Clemens hit four guys, and Pedro Martinez hit two, both squarley in the back. The first three by Clemens did little more than get some angry stares from the Sox bench, but when he hit Manny Ramirez in the shoulder, that was it. Ramirez charged the mound, bat in hand, and started swinging at anything and everything in his way. People, horses, walls, anything there was going to get smashed. He helped the team by hitting several Yankees, though, only superficaially, but knocked out his own Rightfielder, who happened to be Rick Nixon. Apparently, this guy gets baseball and 1970s politics confused.

Understandably, the Yankess were moved by all of this, and proceeded to mount a retaliation. It was a storm the likes of which only they could build, at the center of it all was the devil, a ninja, emboded in Don Zimmer. Zimmer, grabbed a bat from the rack, ran out onto the field, and holding it like a Samurai sword, sliced throgh two umpires. Before the ambulance came to collect them and take them to the hospital, the Boston Police decended on the field, but didn't come anywhere near Zim. Fortunately, Pedro Martinez was there. He pulled open the front of his shirt, and showed a glimmering, bold, yellow and blue letter P on his immense chest.

Martinez calmly, walked up to Zimmer, knocked the bat out of his hands, grabbed Zimmer by the head, threw him to the ground, and caught the bat out of the air all in one motion. The Yankees, "because they're the Yankees," retreated, as Martinez stood near the pitcher's mound yelling something to the effect of "Say hello to my little freind." The field cleared, the Yankees took the field and play resumed.Tensions where high, and a couple of batters later, things got good.

Suddenly, the picture changed. There was a fight going on out in the bullpens. Or, as he called them, "the pitcher warm up areas." They were shown, using some expensive image capture devices. It was the Yankee relief pitchers versus the Red Sox relievers and some fans. It wasn't really clear what was going on, until the Yankees pitcher, Jeff Nelson, pulled a knife on the Sox pitchers. He must have been hiding it in the loose folds of his uniform pants. He's there threatening them with this knife, when the fans got in the act, throwing beer, hot dogs, and peanuts down on Nelson. Maybe he's allergic, because because he looked away, clearly distracted.

Not to miss an opportunity, Red Sox reliever Derek Lowe climbed up on the bullpen dugout roof, and lept, Jimmy "Superfly" Snuka-style into the meelee, bloodying Nelson's face, and sending him, cowering, to the bench, and essentially ending the Yankees' hopes of furthing this battle. The fight cleared.

The cops moved in. People were arrested and other people were ejected. When the dust lifted, the Red Sox had so many players kicked out, sent to the hospital or in the clink that they could no longer field a team. They had to forefeit, and so, the Yankees won 4-3.

But it was cool.