Dear Texas Ranger Fan,
I am sorry but I might have to turn my attention away from the comedy gold that is Ron Washington snorting coke on the backsides of Anaheim hookers and blue-eyed loser Josh Hamilton needing his wife to wipe twice when he doodies.
You see, little Miss Ranger fan, your team hardly amounts to the status of a pimple in a gnat's armpit in the psyche of Angels fans. In the grand scheme of things, you have taken it to the Angels a grand total of one time. You won the division in 2010, breaking our string of three consecutive division titles. Oh sure, in the nineties, before your mom married her cousin and had you, the Rangers won the West a few times. And then blink, they were gone each year. The Angels then had lowered-to-no expectations and even when we got close, y'all were rarely the tails we were chasing.
We are three games behind the Rangers and it would be nice to take the division and it would be a bummer to lose it, but in the big picture, both options are kinda boring in comparison to an epic that could be shaping up. Imagine it is 1977 and your mom takes you to the theater and there are two movies to choose from. One is Land of the Lost* and the other is Star Wars. Stomping some illiterate Texan rawhide sissies is Land of the Lost. It is cool, it has some good heroes one can relate to and some ugly, easily identifiable bad guys, lining up well as a comparison with the part Sleestack human trafficker Alexi Ogando and womb-formed Siamese twin in his cheek. But Land of the Lost is no Star Wars. The Texas Rangers are never going to be the Boston Red Sox. Beating Texas is like flipping channels on a humid afternoon. Beating the Red Sox, eliminating them from playoffs... oh dear... that is right there in epicness with the first time you saw Star Wars... And damn it mom, I wanna see Star Wars. I'm in the lobby of the theater and even if Star Wars costs more and my mom is gonna make me clean my room every day until 1985, I want to see Star Wars.
(*yes I know that Land of the Lost was on TV in the 70s, don't get technical.)
Texas, we don't care about the Rangers. We want the Red Sox. We want the Wild Card because it is theirs and we want to take it from them. A dumb Arlington Dinosaur in Land of the Lost is not going to even know we took its Western Division, that is how boring and nothing it is chasing the Rangers. Fighting Darth Pedroia and taking his Wild Card, that is action, that is something that makes this sport worth living for. It costs more to see Star Wars and it will take a game and a half more to catch the Red Sox, but it is the greater glory, the chance of seeing the Death Star Blow up and the face of Red Sox Nation crushed, and crushed by us, our little Los Angeles Rebel Alliance of Anaheim, all the way over here on the "left coast" destroying your assumed playoff berth, a privilege every larded up Sweet Caroline warbling drunk assumed was her birthright.
Enjoy living on the tumbleweed prairie of permanent insignificance and one lone star to keep your cattle habit company. The Angels have a magic number of 11 to defeat the most evil empire in sports, the forces of chowd darkness that stole the mythology of the underdog for themselves without ever actually being underdogs. The Angels will reach October on a far more glorious path than could ever be blazed by bettering the Michael Youngs of the world. We want to see Star Wars, we want WORTHY rivals, we want epic battles. We didn't fight all season to poke around with some campfire cowboys looking forward to another night playing the sleeping bag lottery.
We want to see Star Wars and we want to blow up the Death Star and we can take the Yankees in the first round of the playoffs, you know they will be shaking in their britches when we swagger into Yankee Stadium with a Green Monster's head on the end of a stick and announce that it is time to do a little touch up on the Derek Jeter painting. Come on, think about it, if we come back and beat the Rangers for the Division, it might make Sportscenter highlights after a Denver Broncos injury report. If we eliminate the Red Sox and are pumped to be flying to New York, ESPN will quake in fear of our X-Wing onslaught while all the Ranger fans will be looking for highlights of their loss to Detroit during commercials of the Dallas Cowboy Friday afternoon practice report.
Sincerely,
Rev Halofan, Rebel Commander.