By Dan Mathers

All season long, I’ve cringed when people proclaimed the Yankees "dead", kind of like the panicked cringe people do in the Harry Potter books when someone talks about He Who Must Not Be Named. Don’t say that out loud, or the Yankees will hear you and awaken.

We’ve all been down this road before. Remember following a good April several years ago Eddie Andelman making plans for a Yankee Elimination Party? (A year the Sox didn’t even make the playoffs, back when Andelman was still employed.) Do I even need to bring up 1978? So whenever I’ve heard some bonehead say, "The Yankees are done," I’ve been quick to shush them, tell them "It’s a long season" and "They’re still the Yankees. They’ll be back."

But the month when the Yankees were going to turn it around became the month they really started to slide. Today is May 30. The Sox are 14 1/2 up. The Yankees could still get hot and win the wildcard, but, as of today, the Red Sox are going to win the division.

Being 14 1/2 up, even if the Yankees were to get hot, and the Sox were to go into a slide, how much do you really see the Yankees picking up? The Sox now have that cushion where they could blow a 9 game lead on the Yanks – a big margin – and still be more than 5 up. Anything could happen. It IS a long season. But this version of the Sox look too deep and too good to go into any prolonged slide ala 2006.

So breathe easy Sox fans. Relax. Enjoy the summer. And start making plans for October. The Yanks might still get hot and be there too, but they won’t keep us from playoff baseball this year.

Other thoughts: Is Julian Tavarez the craziest Sox pitcher since Oil Can Boyd? And when did he become Greg Maddux? He’s been great, but now might be the time to sell high. Jon Lester IS going to be the Number 5 pitcher on this team down the stretch. Would Tavarez be more valuable to the Sox inserting him into middle relief, or would he be more valuable as trade bait? You have to wonder if a national league team in the hunt for the playoffs (of which there are many) might want to grab a much-needed arm. And Tavarez’s value will never be higher than now.

My gut feeling is that Larry Luccino’s crew will wait a few more years, for posterity, before handing Number 21 over to a new Red Sox player. Although, it would probably make the most sense to do it next spring training, as it gets it over with – there aren’t years of waiting to see what will happen, building it up – and spring is always a new slate. Personally, I would like to see them give it to someone this year, next week, if not tomorrow. Just get it over with. Let Clemens know while he is still playing, whether he cares or not, that his number won’t be retired in Boston. Maybe it will be retired in Houston. It will be retired in New York, where they never excepted him as a real Yankee anyway. But not here.

I think I’m going to obsess over this number thing until they do give it away. So, Larry, I’m begging you for my own health, give the number to someone. Anyone. Bucholz. Lester. Hanson. Heck, I could live with them bringing back Rudy Seanez if they gave him Number 21.

-Dan

by Dan Mathers

I don’t hate Roger Clemens because he is a Yankee. I hate Roger Clemens because he is a liar.

He said he wanted to come back to the team with the best chance of winning a championship (lie). He said he was leaning 80-20 toward retirement (lie). He said the only reason he’d come back was if teammates really called and asked him to (lie). Back in 1996, he said he couldn’t see himself coming back through Fenway in another uniform, and the only other places he could see himself playing was Texas and Houston (lie). That year he also said he wanted to remain a Red Sox and it wouldn’t take a lot of money to keep him in Boston (lie). He probably also lied about asking out of Game 6 in 1986.

With Roger, it’s always been about one thing: Money. It was about money in 1997, and it is about money again this time around – regardless of what he says.

That’s why I hate him. And that’s why I’m kind of relieved he isn’t coming to Boston. Don’t get me wrong. I wanted to see him come back and be a dominant 4 or 5 man in the Sox rotation. If that happened, you could order those World Series tickets. But it would come at a price, an internal conflict. While I want what is best for the Sox to win, I’d still hate the guy, so I’d be cheering for him with mixed emotions. Now I don’t have to worry about that. I can just hate him and feel good about it.

He helps the Yankees. But he isn’t enough to carry them. Even with him, their rotation overall has a lot of questions. At their best, they still don’t quite match up with Schilling, Beckett and Matsuzaka. Even if they did, their middle relief will kill them in the end. And let’s face it, this isn’t the National League Central, which for the past three seasons had weak lineups top to bottom (even the Cardinals lineup was weak last regular season). There’s no way Clemens has an ERA under 4.00. It’s at least 4.20, maybe more. Worth $20 mill for a short season? Maybe for the Yankees. Hopefully it’s another Cashman debacle like signing Pavano, Jared Wright and Kevin Brown.

So it will be nice to cheer against him. My favorite Clemens memory is Game 3 in 1999 ALCS – Clemens getting lit up and getting booed by the fans so mercilessly that it made his wife cry. Hopefully we can even do better this year.

We were classy in 2003, and gave Clemens an ovation on his last trip to Fenway. Let’s not let that happen again. Let’s boo his **** all the way back to Texas. ****, when he comes back for the 25th Anniversary of the 1986 team, let’s boo him then too.

And can we finally put to rest any silly notion of retiring Number 21? It would be sacriligious now. Clemens is a Yankee, a villian, and a money-grubbing dirtbag. It is time to give Number 21 away. Give it to anyone, the bat boy, the equipment manager. It doesn’t matter now. But Sox Nation can never let Number 21 be retired as Clemens’ number now. Never.