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Shaughnessy: Red Sox Need To Tell The Truth About Standings On Fenway Park Scoreboard

BOSTON (CBS) -- It's a little thing. But it's annoying to Dan Shaughnessy.

In this case, it's the standings plastered on the Green Monster at Fenway Park. The standings out in left field for several days have shown the Red Sox above the Yankees, even though the Yankees are percentage points above Boston in the official standings.

Shaughnessy was in Tuesday for his weekly spot on Zolak & Bertrand, and he went on the following mini-rant about the issue:

It's a small thing, most people don't give a you-know-what about it, I understand -- but the Red Sox, they put the left field standings out there, American League East, one through five. You know what? Tell the truth with those standings out there. Don't pander to the lowest common denominator, the pink hats, to make people think you're in first place when you're not.

Yes, it is a virtual tie, but the numbers show that the Yankees are 41-33 and the Red Sox are 42-34.

They're not telling the truth on this. The first-place team is the New York Yankees.

The percentage points right now are .554 for New York, .553 for Boston. No newspaper in America, including the John Henry-owned Boston Globe, would publish standings any way other than the team with the higher percentage on top. But for some reason, they feel compelled to insult the intelligence of their fans who come in and say, 'Oh, we're in first place, we're ahead of the Yankees!'

No! You're not. You will be maybe at the end of tonight, we don't know. It's been this way for three or four days because the teams have been in lockstep, they both won last night.

So I'm just begging, please, don't do this to your fans. Don't insult everybody.

If it were the batting title and if it were Carl Yastrzemski and Alex Johnson or whatever, one guy is higher. There actually is one guy higher even though they're in a virtual tie. That guy wins the batting championship when you carry out the numbers to the digit.

I realize that no one's a half-game behind, you're in a tie. We get that. But when one team has played two more games and has split those games, the team that has played more games has a suppressed percentage. That's just the way the numbers work. It's been as old as time.

And again, no media outlet would publish standings in this manner, but it's like, 'Oh, it's the Yankees, we'll just tell our fans we're ahead of them.' No. You're not.

Tonight, when you get to the park, those things will be out there. I'm just begging someone to just tell it the way it really is. It's OK.

They're not tied.

It is not a tie.

Fans here would have noticed this years ago and said, 'Actually, no, we're not in first place. Don't do that.' But it's pandering to the pink hats. It's like, nitwits who go in there and don't know anything about baseball and go, 'Oh, Sweet Caroline in the eighth inning, this'll be great. Oh we're in first place!'

No.

Tell them what the real deal is. It's OK. You're good enough. You're going to be better than the Yankees. You've won three championships while they've won one. All those things.

You don't have to do this anymore.

Don't be insecure about it.

It's OK to put the standings up the way they really are.

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