BAND TOGETHER WITH ME!!

I hate the Sports Guy. We're over. For real this time. This is the equivalent of a guy and girl in college breaking up and getting back together again over and over ad nauseum infinitum, and then one day, finally, the guy crosses the line and cheats on her with her best friend. And she firmly and resolutely ends it.

I think this will explain things:

Secret Yankee Closer Election Set for April 8
Extensive Security Planned for Friday's Funeral
By BILL SIMMONS

THE BRONX (April 6) -- Major League Baseball on Wednesday set April 8 as the date for the historic start of the conclave to elect a successor to Mariano Rivera, as the Yankees made final arrangements for the funeral of a great career that is expected to draw millions of Yankee fans and world leaders to the Bronx.

The decision came after the future Hall of Famer blew his second save in as many days against the team's biggest rival, the World Champion Red Sox, giving up five runs in the ninth, getting battered like a rented mule and ignominiously getting removed from the game in the middle of the inning, the fourth consecutive time he has blown a save to the Red Sox dating back to the 2004 ALCS. Fans at Yankee Stadium even booed the great closer on his way back to the dugout, proving beyond a shadow of a doubt that Yankee fans are headed to hell.

Yankees GM Brian Cashman said the Yankees would be sequestered in the team offices in the early afternoon to start the decision process for the next closer. Candidates include Oakland's Octavio Dotel, Detroit's Ugueth Urbina, current set-up man Flash Gordon, Rick Ankiel and Charlie Sheen. The Yankees will continue to use Rivera from the bullpen, but only in blowouts and games where the lead or deficit is six runs or more.

If none of the candidates gets the required two-thirds majority after about 12 days, the Yankee braintrust may change procedure and elect the closer by simple majority. The date was set on the third hour of preparatory meetings of Yankee front office people who have converged on the Bronx ahead of Friday's funeral and burial of Rivera's career.

Fans continued to flock to Yankee Stadium after Wednesday's game, jamming up streets as they waited to pay their final respects to Rivera, who has been lying in state of shock since the Red Sox hammered him off the field for the second straight day. More than 200,000 Yankee fans will have filed solemnly by the pinstriped body by the end of Wednesday night, at a rate of about 15,000-18,000 people an hour in a nearly around-the-clock procession, according to calculations by the Yankee front office.

To which, I responded with a strongly worded email that I can safely say he will never print, but I wanted him to know he lost a loyal reader:

You probably get hate mail a lot. This isn't that. Consider this the equivalent of screwing up so badly that your parents don't yell or scream, but quietly and deliberately affirm, "You've really disappointed us."

I've always found you annoying and repetitive and schtick-y. But I respected your humor and overwhelming sports knowledge and as such read you every day.

Now? I lost all respect for your column and possibly you when you wrote that "obit" for Rivera.

Boston blows seasons for 86 years, Rivera blows 2 regular season games, and all of sudden he warrants this kind of abrupt dismissal of his unparalleled talent? You're pathetic, Simmons. I could understand if you were having a field day with an A-Rod error, but Mariano Rivera is one of the classiest guys in the game. So what does that make you, an increasingly unpopular writer even among his own fans, for declaring Mo "dead"?

I guess you have to find an angle somehow when your team blows the opening games. Nicely done, attacking a legend. You're a real class act, good follow up to referencing the late Pope in your intern contest column.
Mo's career is no where near dead, but my already waning interest in EVER reading your column again is.

Seriously. This last time I was this angry was when my ex-boyfriend met up with a date next to my building and then said, "You don't own the east side!" when I told him he could have picked her up somewhere not 10 feet away from me.

(This is a legitimate reason to get mad. Back off.)