For some reason that's still a mystery to me, people around these parts love - and I mean L-O-V-E LOVE - them some Steven Tyler.
The enfatuation isn't likely to simmer down anytime soon, either, especially now that those oh-so-endearing Yankee backers are now claiming that the lead singer of Aerosmith tipped off David Ortiz right before he hit the bomb that put Boston up 2-1 in Friday night's eventual 3-2 loss to the Bronx Smallballers (ed. note: "small ball" is a baseball term and is in no way indicative of the collective testicular fortitude of the Yankee roster, however realistic a comparison it might actually be).
What actually happened, of course, is that Steven Tyler saw himself on TV and, like he always does whenever people are paying attention to him, he hogged the spotlight. The eight-second tape delay notwithstanding, nothing that Tyler did affected the approach that Ortiz took to the at-bat or the ensuing result.
This is a guy who needed a teleprompter to remember the words to his own national anthem back in October when he sang the Star-Spangled Banner at the Bruins' home opener, before bailing on his responsibilities to the media and hightailing it out of the Garden, presumably to go get some more meth or another injection of lip fat in one of those North End alleys.
Even if the guy next to him was handing him signs, and there was no tape delay, and Ortiz gave a hoot what Tyler was trying to tell him, there's no chance that he was coherent enough to get the message across to the Red Sox' DH.
But hey, as long as we've decided that the Black Swan Theory is in play in professional baseball games, I'm sure that the reason the Yankees lost the next two games was because of the guy who made that claim.