The Yankees are coming. The nonsense is beginning.

The first shot was fired by old friend Michael Coleman, who warmed the hearts of Jimy Williams bashers everywhere by piling on with his own bit of Weebles-blasting. This is a remake of last year's Carl Everett episode, with the teams reversed, and it's just as ridiculous. Coleman showed up with the Red Sox in September of 1997 and alienated everyone -- and I mean everyone -- with his Prime Time strutting. Then, when he got sent to Pawtucket in 1998, he alienated everyone -- and I mean everyone -- with his adolescent pouting. He spent two full years there, never hitting over .268 or raising his on-base percentage over .341 (in a terrific minor-league hitter's park) and striking out slightly more than once a game. But Coleman would have you believe he was buried by a narrow-minded, vindictive and cowardly manager, and some elements of the anti-Jimy crowd are eager -- nay, dying -- to chime in their approval.

There's no denying Coleman does have native baseball skills, none of which he truly honed during his years with the Red Sox. There's no denying that if he does hone them, the Yankees (or whoever his employer may be) could find themselves with a terrific player, though the jury is still out as to whether the ability to throw and run can translate into the ability to become disciplined at the plate and consistently hit a major-league breaking pitch. There's also no denying that if, as Vince Lombardi used to say, nothing stokes the fires of competitiveness like hatred, then Coleman may just use his anti-Williams/anti-Red Sox angst to put his career on track. If it happens, it happens.

But it wasn't going to happen here, and for Coleman -- or anybody -- to blame Williams or any member of the Red Sox organization is beyond absurd. It doesn't really astound me that some players seem physiologically incapable of looking in the mirror, but it continually astounds that these players can find sympathizers in the public . . . especially since the only reason they're doing so is to have another weapon at their disposal in their quest to rid New England of Jimy Williams. If Michael Coleman is half as good as he thinks he is, all he had to do was come to Pawtucket and prove it. That's it. It was that simple. If he had, he'd be in the Boston outfield right now. And to say he's not because he was "disrespected" by a manager more interested in turning out stay-in-line metronomes than winning games is . . . what? Words fail me.

Just as they fail me when I try to address people who think he's right.

Far more entertaining is yet another remake, which we might call Spaceman vs. The Gerbil . . . Again! Most sequels pale in comparison to the original, but leave it to Bill Lee to come up with a Godfather II plot line: Now he's claiming that Don Zimmer deliberately threw the 1978 pennant race to the Yankees, and his reward was this lifetime coaching job he seems to have received from George Steinbrenner.

I realize this is a deadly charge, but I can't help but laugh; it's what you'd expect from a guy who resides in outer space and only visits our planet. Nothing much has changed in 25 years, including Zimmer's complete and total inability to adequately respond to this lunacy: He merely repeats his obscene name-calling and the fact that Lee is the only man he's ever met in baseball whom he wouldn't invite into his house. The response pales in comparison to the charge.

It is, of course, absurd. It -- the notion that Zimmer threw the race -- would only be true if he managed differently down the stretch in 1978 than he did at any other time in his managerial career. He didn't. And if Zim was looking to tank, he almost blew it by leading his team to 12 wins in its last 14 games. Maybe he was sweating bullets in the sixth inning of the playoff game, thinking, "Oh, no, we're ahead! Now I won't get to be the Yankees' bench coach two decades from now!"

So much of what happens in baseball now, especially on our end, tends to be ultra-serious and sometimes mean-spirited. For whatever reason -- nostalgia, maybe? -- this made me laugh. I can't help myself.

It's a nice antitode to Michael Coleman.