Opening Day 2010

The Sox season starts off with a bang today. It is the next installment of the best rivalry in sports–– what will undoubtedly be a four-hour-plus marathon, the first of eighteen such emotionally draining contests this year with the Yankees.

Image: Boston Globe staff photo/ John Tlumacki

There is no question that the Yankees are still stacked this year, especially offensively. They’ve upgraded defensively with Curtis Granderson in center, and they will also have a good bullpen, with Joba Chamberlain moving back to his more suitable role of setup guy. If you don’t have a lead after six innings, it’s going to be difficult to beat the Yankees this year. They are in good shape to repeat as World Series champions and will be the serious impediment to the Red Sox in their quest for a third championship of the decade.

Despite this, though, I feel good about the Red Sox chances because of one critical factor: starting pitching. The Yankees are no slouches in this department, of course, but with the addition of John Lackey to the rotation, the Red Sox have an almost unbelievable set of starters: Josh Beckett, Jon Lester, Lackey, Tim Wakefield, and Clay Buchholz, with Daisuke Matsuzaka waiting in the wings.

The Sox lineup has some question marks, which might lead to some frustrating innings for the fans, but defensively we are in for a treat. Some new additions, such as Marco Scutaro and Adrian Beltre, should provide a little more pop in the lineup while filling in positions that have been revolving doors (shortstop) or vacated because of injuries (third). Above all, though, I am looking forward to watching the defensive upgrade in center, Mike Cameron (below), the 37-year-old sure-handed outfielder that I've never gotten to see very much of, particularly in the last several years that he has spent in the AL West and in the National League. It should be great fun!

Image: Reuters and AP photo/ Steve Nesius and Steven Senne

Starting pitching wins in the playoffs, so the challenge for the Red Sox this year will be to ensure that they get the 95 wins that the team is built for––and that that is good enough to make the playoffs. It may not be enough to win the AL East, but if the Sox get the wildcard spot, I like their chances for the ALCS and World Series championships.

Jim Ed Finally Gets What He Deserves

After being rejected fourteen times in a row - unjustly, in my opinion - by the Baseball Writers Association of America, Jim Rice has finally been elected into the Baseball Hall of Fame.  It was his last shot - the fifteenth and final ballot for which he was eligible to make it into the Hall.

Image from Baseball Card Stars

Rice played his entire career with the Red Sox, one of only four Red Sox Hall of Famers to have done so.  (The others are fellow left-fielders Ted Williams and Carl Yastrzemski, and Bobby Doerr.)  Without a doubt he was one of my favorite players of all time, and he will always be one of the enduring faces of the Red Sox for me.  He was a reliable hero on the diamond during a time in which I wanted nothing more from life than to play for the Red Sox in the summer and the Bruins in the winter.  (What ten or twelve year old kid in the Boston suburbs doesn’t dream of that?)

Photo from art.com.

What would account for the apparent reluctance to vote Rice into the Hall?  I don’t really know.  It is possible that his career numbers do not seem particularly dazzling by today’s standards, but one could hardly ask more from a player.  Over his sixteen seasons, he averaged 113 RBI and 30 home runs, had a .298 career batting average, and was an eight-time All Star.  Not too shabby.

Above all, though, I watched him play and to me there is something beyond the numbers that made him special.  He was a solid workhorse, a consistent slugger, and when he was out on the field with Fred Lynn and Dwight Evans, it’s hard to imagine a better outfield. 

Congratulations, Mr. Rice.  You deserve to be in the Hall.

NOTES

1.  Check out baseball-reference.com for Jim Rice’s career stats.

Thanks for the Memories… and the Championships

At the last minute of yesterday’s trading deadline, Manny Ramirez was sent to the Dodgers in a three-way deal that brought the Pirates’ Jason Bay here to Boston.  I don’t think there is any way to construe the Red Sox as “winners” in this exchange – they paid an awful lot to get rid of one of the best hitters in our generation – but they did manage to salvage some last bit of value from Ramirez, who has suddenly become even less reliable than he has always been.  Though it is hard to put a finger on exactly how and why, his presence on the team has undoubtedly hobbled the Red Sox since the All-Star break.  He had to go.

My assessment is that the Sox management did the right thing - but in the manner of pulling a tooth that must come out, as opposed to buying a shiny new toy.

photo from The New York Times, credit Jim Davis, The Boston Globe 

Actually, the amount that the Red Sox paid to get Bay – moving Ramirez, plus Brandon Moss, a backup outfielder who would be a starter on many teams, plus Craig Hansen, a young right-hander who has struggled in the Majors but has upside, plus $7 million – speaks volumes about how badly the trust in Ramirez had deteriorated in the corner office.  The Red Sox management is terrific at staying focused on winning championships; they are conspicuously unemotional in dealing with players.  There could not have been anything personal in this trade, no intent to “punish” Ramirez for his recent transgressions. 

Indeed, Ramirez seems like a big winner in deal, getting everything he wants, since he apparently does not care if he ever returns to the World Series.  (He made the crass and somewhat perplexing comment that he “can even play in Iraq if need be.”)  The Sox clearly calculated that unlike past episodes of the last seven and a half years, this time they could no longer count on Manny stepping it up in September and October.

During the years that Manny was merely lazy, it was frustrating to watch him but I could accept this as part of the “Manny-being-Manny” package, as it came to be known.  He limited himself to being a two-tool player, but those two tools – batting for average and power – were so valuable it was worth it… I suppose.  At least he seemed like a decent person, if immature.  

But this season, especially recently, Manny’s antics took a turn toward actual malice.  It seemed a little different than past years, in subtle but important ways.  My brother pointed out to me how quickly and accurately Boston fans in general seemed to detect this change.  After putting up with Manny for almost eight years, in the last two or three weeks it is as if a switch had just been flipped.  There are still some Manny defenders, but for the most part, the fans have gone suddenly cold.  He was heartily booed the other night at Fenway Park when in the seventh inning, while the slumping Sox were being no-hit by the Angels’ John Lackey, Ramirez didn’t bother to exert himself past a trot up the first base line after hitting a ground ball to deep third.  He was thrown out by a few steps when with a little effort, he should have easily beaten the throw to break up the humiliating no-hitter.  (Dustin Pedroia eventually did so in the ninth.)

Not that the blame should be deflected from Ramirez, but I do not discount the possibility that his new agent, Scott Boras, could have played some part in the turn.  Of course, I don’t think Boras told Manny to start shoving old men to the ground or taking swings at his teammates as a strategy for making more money, but it seems that it would have been a simple matter for Boras to manipulate Ramirez with a few well placed comments – Wormtongue whispering in the ear of King Theoden.  Boras may have had much to gain by shaking things up.  I don’t think he could have expected much of a commission with Manny playing happily on the Red Sox for the next two option years.  In any case, it’s obviously Manny’s decision to act as he did.

Just before the trade, Ramirez had the gall to say, “The Red Sox don’t deserve me.”  He’s right about that, but not in the sense he intended.  Indeed, the Red Sox do not deserve him: the ownership and management have strained too much to accommodate him and have worked too hard building a team around a collection of hard-working veterans and talented youngsters to be dragged down by one guy who can’t be bothered to run on ground balls or to show up for a game against the Yankees in a pennant race.  The Red Sox of the last decade have been built on good men who consider hard work a matter of honor: Trot Nixon, Jason Varitek, Bill Mueller, Mike Lowell, Dustin Pedroia, Kevin Youkilis, and many others.  Boston fans will grudgingly tolerate laziness and goofiness in special circumstances, but bad guys are chased out of town.

Thanks for the memories, Manny, and thanks especially for the two World Series championships.  But I’ve already moved on, and all I feel is relief.

NOTES

1.  photo from The New York Times, “Red Sox Send Ramirez to Dodgers in 3-Way Deal,” http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2008/07/31/sports/01trade_600.jpg, 1 Aug 2008.

Opening Day

My beloved Red Sox started off the season on good footing with a ten-inning victory over the A’s in Japan. The Tokyo fans were treated to a good game; their national hero, Daisuke Matsuzaka didn’t fare too well in the first couple of innings (though he settled down), but the Sox reliever, Hideki Okajima, got the win.

On a more general note, I wonder how long this adoration of the Red Sox by people outside of the Boston area will continue. I expect that the “tall poppies” syndrome will begin to kick in, especially if they continue to dominate as they have. It has already happened to the New England Patriots, who went from lovable underdogs to (three Super Bowl victories later) hated champions in about half a decade. Champagne in 2002, die Schadenfreude in 2008.

This expansion of “Red Sox Nation” into all areas of the country - indeed, of the world - surely has to do with a tragic past that is unparalleled in any sport that I know of. (Naturally, when I speak of a tragic past I mean prior to October 2004, when the Red Sox quenched the eighty-six year drought by winning the World Series, an achievement they repeated last year.) If this pre-2004 story were told in a novel, it would strain credibility to present such a succession of improbable losses, snatching defeat from the jaws of victory, as it were. The best comparison I can think of to the cruelty experienced by the Red Sox fan is that of Charlie Brown, who continues to try to kick the football, and really believes he will finally do it, no matter how many times Lucy van Pelt pulls it away at the last moment.

So what is it about the Red Sox? It’s more than simply losing; after all, the Cubs have gone even longer without a championship than the Red Sox had. But the Cubs almost always... well, stink. They are lovable losers. (My apologies to Cubs fans.) The Red Sox weren’t losers - they simply couldn’t win it all. They were almost always good, sometimes very good, fielding teams that got oh so close - but in the end, they would fall like Achilles. They worked so very hard, only to fail in the end, and often because of a fluke or a bad decision. There’s something so deeply rooted inside the Boston fan, I think it would be hard for someone who didn’t grow up with this to understand. All I would have to say is “Bill Buckner” or “Yaz pop up” or “Bucky F’ing Dent” or “Aaron Boone” and these small tags, these leitmotifs of the Grand Tragic Opera that is Red Sox history, will strike the soul of a Boston baseball fan like Thor’s hammer. I guarantee you that of the people now reading this post, you could easily distinguish the Bostonians by observing how that last sentence has caused them to grind their teeth and tug at their hair (hair that perhaps went a little gray in October 1986), while everyone else is apathetic or bewildered by the references. (“Bucky F’ing Dent? Oh, ‘f’ing,’ I get it.”) Let’s put it this way: if SOX makes you think of Sarbanes-Oxley legislation, you’re probably not from Boston.

Go Sox!