Last Saturday, New York Yankees President Randy Levine was forced to face the media. When he approached the microphone with a cold demeanor, the stern look on his face illustrated the seriousness of the situation.

“Why reward someone who had really bad motives and was trying to do a really bad thing?” Levine asked. “We’ll take appropriate action since we do know the name of the individual.” Levine referred to the crime as a “very, very bad act.”

With comments like that, a passerby might have thought that Levine was talking about a murder investigation. For Yankee fans, it was not far from it.

On Saturday, construction workers at the new Yankee Stadium in the Bronx unearthed a David Ortiz jersey, buried in the concrete of the new Stadium. A rumor had surfaced that die-hard Red Sox fan and construction worker Gino Castignoli had mixed the Ortiz jersey in with concrete that was laid for the new stadium. When New York Yankee officials heard of the jersey hidden within the stadium, a search was set out.

Construction workers on the site had a suspicion as to where the jersey was and used jackhammers to dig for five hours and look for the vexing garment. At long last, Ortiz’s white and red jersey was found and removed from the stadium.

Castignoli is 46 years old and has been a Red Sox fan his entire life. He had never wanted to work on the Bronx site, but after he and his friends hatched his

master-plot to curse the stadium, he signed on to work for one day.

“I would not go near Yankee Stadium, not for all the hot dogs in the world.” Castignoli told the Boston Herald. But the die-hard swallowed his pride for one day so he could attempt to curse the stadium forever.

Yankee fans and officials alike were outraged. Owner Hank Steinbrenner commented that he hoped Castignoli’s co-workers, “kicked the **** out of him.” And the Bronx district attorney has been contacted on matters of criminal charges. In the coming weeks, Castignoli may be faced with criminal charges such as trespassing and defacing private property.

In his defense, Castignoli remarked, “Anyone with half a brain knows it was all in fun. I didn’t hurt nobody.”

Of course, it is unlikely that Castignoli has half a brain. All he needed to do was to keep his mouth shut in the bars in Boston for a few months, and his curse may have had a chance. Instead, he was too excited by his own feat to keep the secret from his fellow fans.

That being said, the Yankees are going way overboard. Castignoli is by no means a criminal mastermind, and he’s not really even a criminal. The jersey is now being sold by the Jimmy Fund in Boston, and it is going to make great money for charity. This was a foiled plot of an enthralled fan and all it does is demonstrate how great the Yankee-Red Sox rivalry really is.

Red Sox fans hate Yankee fans. The sky is blue. The grass is green. It’s that simple. Call it a crime of passion, call it whatever you call it, but there has to be some kind of legal defense for Gino Castignoli.

But if there isn’t and the forty-six year old construction worker is forced to pay absurd fines to the city of New York, at least he will never have to buy another drink so long as he lives in Boston.