My view in 2000:

Man, that city [New York] has it all: Weird accents, great food and historic culture, they’ve got all that. Not to mention the city is the envy of all sports fans.

They have a baseball team that spends ungodly amounts of money on players who are bad [Chuck Knoblauch], complain all the time [Paul O’Neill] and get on the cover of GQ magazine [Derek Jeter]. They even have players with funny food names [Chili Davis] on the roster. And don’t even get me started on that guy who always hits home runs in the clutch [Bernie Williams].

The [Yankees] spend money on future Hall of Fame pitchers [Roger Clemens], expensive bad Asian pitchers [Hideki Irabu], once great but now over-the-hill chumps [David Cone] and still have winning seasons every freaking year. Its closer [Mariano Rivera] is lights out, and what’s worse – he’s one of the players they didn’t buy.

They have their own network [Madison Square Garden Network] that shows all their games. When they do play on a regular station during the playoffs, [NBC] calls its opponents, with similar – if not better – regular season records [Cleveland Indians, Atlanta Braves] the “Cinderella” team, just because they are facing the [New York] freaking [Yankees].

Top it off, the city’s football team [Giants] recently went to the Superbowl [2000]. They have an awesome defense with players such as [Jason Sehorn] and [Michael Strahan]. The other team [Jets] is incredible because of an MVP caliber quarterback [Vinny Testaverde] and controversial wide receiver [Keyshawn Johnson] no one can stop them. Man, they play good football there.

The basketball team is getting better after putting talent like [Allen Houston] and [Latrell Sprewell] around long-time star [Patrick Ewing]. Not to mention, the team name [Knicks] still evokes memories of great former players.

God I wish Cincinnati could have that much success, but [New York] always dominates the headlines, especially when the other teams are from a small market. Man, I hope that [Boston] can someday be better than them, because that would mean no more [New York] hype.

My view in 2007:

Replace all words in brackets in this order: Boston, J.D. Drew, Manny Ramirez, Josh Beckett, Coco Crisp, David Ortiz, Red Sox, Curt Schilling, Daisuke Matsuzaka, Tim Wakefield, Jonathan Papelbon, ESPN (not technically their own channel, but I mean did you watch ESPN over the summer?). (Deep breath) Fox, no need to replace Cleveland, Los Angeles of the United States of America of Anaheim Angels, Boston, Red Sox.

(Almost there) Patriots, 2001-2003-2004, Rodney Harrison, Richard Seymour, Patriots offense (yeah they’re so good they could be its own team), Tom Brady, Randy Moss.

Not done yet…

Ray Allen, Kevin Garnett, Paul Pierce, Celtics, Boston, pick any city not located in the 13 colonies and Boston.

So I ask you this: Why don’t other people make the connection that the new “New York” of our time is Boston? Give New York style-pizza a rest – try the chowda (as the locals say), because Red Sox Nation makes about as much sense to me as the Evil Empire [New York] once did.

If you agree with this because you’re a fan of a small market team, contact sports enthusiast Joe Harrington at [email protected]. If not and you’re part of the problem, feel free to watch ESPN for Joe Torre updates and Curt Schilling Blogs.