I haven’t paid much attention to the Red Sox since those dark days in early October. One could argue that it’s the off season so there’s not much to pay attention to, but that’s not the reason. I usually follow the Hot Stove dealings and rumors with enthusiasm. I anticipate the upcoming season like a kid waiting for Christmas. I check all the usual news outlets daily and offer my thoughts on whatever minutia may be happening on Twitter. Not so this year. I quite simply don’t care. I couldn’t even bring myself to have an opinion on a new manager. I was too busy mourning the loss of the old one. I’m not sure how far this apathy will extend. I’m still waiting for an apology that isn’t coming. I no longer believe in my team. It’s not about wins and losses or stats. I’m a Red Sox fan, I can handle losing, I can handle a late season collapse, previous decade aside, I expect that. I can’t handle a blatant lack of integrity.

The Red Sox of 2004 were idiots, but they were idiots who played hard, who loved the game and who never, under any circumstances, gave up on themselves. So we never gave up on them. They built a trust with us and with each other. We learned to accept victory over defeat as our expectation for our team. We learned to trust that 25 guys, occasionally 24 in a a bit of ironic numerology, were doing their utmost to win for us. No small feat for a community accustomed to decades of defeat. The quirkiness was eventually tempered into professional experience in 2007, but the spirit carried on until last fall. In one newspaper article a decade of trust and goodwill was broken. It’s going to take a long time to rebuild.

I don’t hate the new Red Sox manager, but I’m also not convinced he’s the answer. I hate that spoiled brats who play a boys game for a living felt it was ok to abuse the privilege and admiration the fans bestowed upon them. They owe us their best effort, every game, every play. Without us they don’t exist. I want to see Dustin Pedroia and Jacoby Ellsbury emerge as leaders to help right the ship in 2012. I want Josh Beckett, Jon Lester, John Lackey and anyone else who chose a bucket of chicken and a beer over their team and their fans to issue a public apology over the public address system in Fenway Park on Opening Day. I want the 2012 Red Sox to rebuild the trust I had in April of 2011.

I’m not sure how long my apathy will last. I keep telling myself I’ll snap out of it by Spring Training, but I really don’t know.

The Red Sox find themselves in a similar position at the moment. We humiliated the Yankees at the beginning of last season. I would hope certain members of the Red Sox feel rather humiliated today. If you remove the inning horribilus (the 9th inning Papelbon nuclear implosion if you’ve been under a rock today) from last night’s game, and chose to overlook (once again) Dice K’s shortcomings, the game was not a complete disaster. It just happened to end that way. The club has the talent to be successful. Last night they were down early and rallied like champions. The ending sucked, but there were positive things that happened.

This team seems to have much more life and personality to it than last year, but overall, the offense was not really improved. Dropping Bay and adding Beltre was pretty much an even trade at the plate. The Red Sox didn’t have what was needed to get the job done last year and we’ve been prepared for this team being a possible failure. Or bridge, if you will. We were told to expect a sub par year over the winter by Theo Epstein himself.

I have largely ignored this evenings soggy proceedings, but saw Beckett got pulled with tightness in his lower back. Not good news, but not fatal. Lester and Lackey can anchor the rotation and Tim Wakefield can step back up to the starting role he never should have relinquished to Matsuzaka. I’m going to borrow the mantra used by Florida Gator football. Finish Strong. The season is far from over. We haven’t played ourselves out of contention for anything, yet. There are some tough series ahead in the next few weeks, it’s gut check time. This team will either find an X factor to stand up and fight for or collapse like the weak bridge it was built to be.

The Twitter rep was unable to remotely fix my problem, but gave me the local customer service numbers and assured me they would be able to take care of things. Naturally I procrastinated about this until April 6th when the Red Sox were again on MLB Network, now in the regular season, and playing the Yankees. Important viewing. A half an hour before the game I called my local TWC representative, very skeptical of the treatment I would receive. To my absolute shock, the lady who answered the phone was not only competent, but genuinely friendly and helpful. I can’t remember her name or I’d give her a shout out. Several reboots of my cable box later, she too was unable to remotely fix my problem, but scheduled a time for a tech to come out and take a look the next day. She also credited my account for a week of free service for my inconvenience. Well played TWC, well played. I then discovered the free MLB Extra Innings preview week and was able to enjoy a whole week of Red Sox coverage, not too shabby. (Not from the TWC rep, who, as we will discover later in this story probably wasn’t even told about this by her superiors, but from friends listening to me whine on Twitter)

Now, I feel I should disclose I was less than thrilled at having a tech come out the next day. I knew I was moving in about a month and it seemed silly to go to all this trouble for an account I would soon be canceling. However, having come this far in the process of trying to receive this channel, and after how helpful everyone had been, I also felt like I had to see the whole thing through. So I scheduled the time for the tech to come out the next day, between 3-5 PM, fully expecting to be home from work and the visit to possibly not even happen given the short notice of scheduling, notorious nature of cable service appointments, and my luck in general. I was shocked when my phone rang at 2:40 and I was informed the tech would be at my house promptly at 3 PM. Again, well done Time Warner. The tech was very polite and professional. However, after several technical adjustments to my old cable box, a new cable box, an adjustment to where the cable actually connected to my house, and many phone calls to TWC Tech Central (prolly not what they actually call it), my problem was still not fixed.

It turned out to be a communication problem. Time Warner Cable failed on the worst level imaginable. The very people in charge of trying to help me, and doing an exemplary job of it, were not informed of changes to cable packages made the previous week. The MLB Network had been removed from the basic digital cable package and was now part of the digital variety package. The tech informed me that getting this information was simply a process of coming across someone else in the company who had previously experienced (and somehow figured this out on their own? WTF?) the issue and now knew the packages had changed. HOW DO YOU NOT TELL YOUR PEOPLE THIS? At the very least send out a memo. How do you not inform me, YOUR PAYING CUSTOMER, that my channel lineup is changing and what I was previously paying for I will now have to pay more for. I now pay an extra $6.oo/month for MLB Network and 50 other channels included in the variety package. I ended up feeling so bad for the tech and everyone who had helped me along the way that I just signed up for the new package was instantly gratified with MLB Network appearing on my TV. I’m moving to New York and canceling my account this week anyway.

I won’t even get in to how I was supposed to be receiving the channel all along or NESN (of all things!) somehow magically appeared on my cable for 48 hours before the entire channel lineup was reorganized. I’m quite sure I was only prepared for reorganization because the tech miraculously new about that and told me it was coming. Had I not had this experience I would have been left wondering where MLB Network disappeared to, originally being channel 135 and now being 524. Maybe mail out a new channel list, or send an email Time Warner? After all of this extraordinary improvement in customer service, the individuals I dealt with were truly excellent, Time Warner Cable as an (un)organizational whole still left me feeling annoyed and wanting to switch providers. I appreciate the new effort TWC, but you still left me feeling frustrated and angry that you couldn’t handle the simplest of tasks.

But it is time we all sat down and had a serious chat about what, exactly, we should be allowed to expect from David Ortiz. I am not throwing him under the bus, I am not saying he should be pulled from the lineup, and I am not saying he won’t have a productive season. I’m just saying he’s not what he once was, and expecting him to come out and rake like he once did is more than a little unfair.  It would only be fair, to everyone involved, to have Mike Lowell or another guy share some DH time with him.

Terry Francona could have protected Ortiz from some of this undeserved scrutiny by saying he would share some DHing duties with Mike Lowell  (or whoever would have sufficed if Lowell were traded) on Day 1 of Spring Training. Would Papi have been happy about that? Probably not if all he heard was the surface statement, but Tito could have sat him down and told him that he would still get his playing time, Tito still had faith in his abilities, the DH spot was still primarily his job, blah, blah, blah. We all could have been spared this most obnoxious of situations if Tito had been a little cagey with the press. (Seriously Terry, if I was the Red Sox manager I’d lie like a mofo to the press. Can you imagine the fun you could have making up crazy shit and watching the Boston media lose it’s mind?)

As it stands today, if Francona plays Lowell for any reason it’s going to start a wave of speculation about his confidence in Ortiz. Having confidence in Ortiz to be productive and contribute has nothing to do with the fact Papi’s bat has slowed a bit, and maybe Mike Lowell would be the better choice against a lefty every now and then. The world is being placed on Ortiz’s shoulders when the Red Sox are no longer built around winning on his walk off home runs, though that would certainly be a welcomed event. The Red Sox are now built around an Ellsbury stolen base followed by a Pedroia double, steady production from VMart and Youk, pitching and defense.

Everyone also seems to have forgotten that for many years Ortiz had the benefit of hitting beside one Mr. Manuel Aristides Ramirez and was juicing in one form or another. Both of those factors were likely key ingredients to the rise of Big Papi. Hold on to those wonderful memories of walkoffs and glory, but take a good look at what is in front of us today. I adjusted my expectations for David Ortiz last season. I no longer expect him to be the feared clutch hitter he once was. I do expect him to be productive and I do expect him to benefit from sharing DH duties with Mike Lowell. Let go of the Big Papi Era, it’s gone forever.

I also feel I should mention Mark Teixeira is 0-12 on the season. Why isn’t anyone in New York panicking over that?

Oh, right. Because we’ve only played 3 games.

The players were home, all snug in their beds
While visions of championships danced in their heads.
And I in my jersey, still wearing my cap
Was just heading home for one last winter’s nap

When out from the Monster there arose such a clatter
I sprang up the dugout steps to see what was the matter
Out through the infield I flew like a flash
Into left field, my heart wildly did thrash

The lights came on in an old fashioned glow
Like rays of past sunlight on the field far below
And what to my wondering eyes should appear?
But a pitcher called Smokey and 8 players held dear.

Out after the players, to lead once again
I knew in a moment it must be Rough Carrigan
Then rowdy and proud, the Rooters they came
They whistled and shouted, Nuf Ced called out each name

Now Foxx, now DiMaggio,
Now Williams and Cronin
On Goodman, on Conigliaro,
On Speaker, on Collins

To the bag down at first
Stay right here by the wall
Everyone to your positions
We’re ready, play ball!

As dry leaves that before the wild hurricane fly
The players ran to their posts under a clear night sky
The Rooters went to the stands, their seats were not sold
For that lesson was learned, in the Fenway of old

From the visitors dugout, wearing an N and a Y
they went to the plate, but the ball did not fly
From high on the mound Smokey threw with finesse
Striking out the Iron Horse and the Clipper, no less.

From the very first pitch, the game was a duel
Lefty matched Wood, the bats were quite cool
Playing late in the game, not a run on the board
and in the 9th inning the visitors scored

The score held steady, down by only 1 run
In just 1 more out, the game would be done
A man was on base when he came to the plate
He was thin as a splinter, this lifelong teammate
His first swing was splendid, but he bellowed “aw shit”
And with a sly smile muttered “give me one pitch to hit”
The next ball he crushed, it flew straight over the wall
Landing on Landsdowne when from flight it did fall

The Rooters kept cheering, their team won the fight
I could hear strains of Tessie disappear in the night
After saluting the crowd each player went in
except for the Kid who delivered the win.

Taking an extra swing at home plate, he looked out at the park
And he gave a small sigh as the lights were going dark
A nod of the head, and just loud enough for me to hear
Said have a good night Johnny, we’ll see you next year.

The Face of Evil in NCAA Basketball

I don’t really follow NCAA basketball all that much, but North Carolina lives and breathes it so every March I fill out my bracket, drink lots of beer, and watch the whole tournament. I’m a Boston College fan by NCAA trade, but if the man pictured above is not enough to send you into battle flying flags of Carolina Blue, I don’t know what is. Mike Kyryzesky Kyrzeski Kerzyzewsky Kersheffsky (that’s how it should be spelled dammit, his name even requires an elitist asshole level of spelling skill) is a smug, tyrannical, bastard.

I was going to write a little post on how my time in North Carolina has resulted in my hating yet another elitist and douche bag team, see also: Yankees, New York,  but this brilliant article did all that and more, and far better than I ever could.

I’m hoping for a West Virginia vs. Michigan State championship game.

Update: Thanks to the friend who brought this video to my attention, I hope you enjoy it as much as I did.

On Tuesday, Clay Buchholz had a little relapse to the fragile and stressed out Clay Pidgeon of 2008. He gave up 6 runs in under 2 innings of work. Ordinarily that sort of thing pisses me off. I was a little annoyed, but mostly I just shrugged it off. Clay probably did too. In the same game, Dustin Pedroia sprained his wrist. I’m thinking Dustin is just as over Spring Training as the rest of us and is maybe faking so he can go spend some time on the beach while the rest of the team gets bussed around Florida for one last week. The good news is Pedroia says he’s fine. Nothing showed up as medically wrong when the docs checked him out, but he still gets time off. Smart move Dustin. Maybe Youk will sprain his goatee tomorrow.

My initial excitement at actually seeing live baseball being played has completely worn off and the kids of the future have been sent to the minor league camp. Spring Training is now a grinding death march of boredom as we all wait for games that actually matter.  This season needs to get going before some horrible freak injury takes out a key player. Jacoby Ellsbury could accidentally jump over a fence while making a fantastic catch and get eaten by an alligator or something. That sort of fluke thing is totally avoidable if we could just start the regular season already.

Enough Florida,  time to ship the boys back up to Boston.

After our unceremonious departure from the ALDS last October, and seeming lack of addition of any major offensive talent,  I was ready to hop on the gloom and doom train and ride that sucker straight through the 2010 season. I don’t really care about the loss of Jason Bay, he struck out way too much for my taste and while he was a solid player he wasn’t really lighting anything on fire. Yes, Beltre is a nice defensive upgrade to the broken remnants of the once great Mike Lowell, but his offense is slightly suspect. of once being juiced. He’s coming off injuries, blah, blah, we’ll see. Aside from the 2004 anomaly, his career numbers do not match up to Jason Bay’s, although he does seem to strike out less, so at least there’s that. Oh wait, I was being hopeful and optimistic. The Red Sox have a lot more talent than Seattle had to work with during Beltre’s stint with the Mariners. With a good surrounding cast he should rebound with another career year, n’est-ce pas?

Okay, okay, here’s where my real optimism kicks in. Enter Josh Reddick and Ryan Kalish, both outfielders. In a handful of Spring Training games they’ve dually impressed me. Hitting? check. Fielding? check. Put them next to Jacoby Ellsbury in a year or two and our outfield will be sick. They are the future and the future looks damn good right now. Like, bacon lollipop good. (That was a gratuitous reference for you bacon lovers, I don’t really like bacon. For realz.) I hope they’re with Sea Dogs all year so when I make my annual visit Maine this summer I can see them play. I want to see highly touted shortstop Jose Iglesias and pitcher Casey Kelly too. They are also having a nice little springtime visit to Florida this year. If everyone stays on their current course of progression the Red Sox are going to be mighty talented in 2012.

-Kevin Youkilis

I am not a numbers person. Statistics is the only C on my college transcript, if it hadn’t been required for graduation I wouldn’t have taken it. I passed because I found a Mathlete geek (and I’m truly grateful to this kid for pulling all the weight) to be my lab partner and the professor (who thankfully understood that some people just aren’t numbers people) felt sorry for me. I can balance my checkbook, that’s where my math prowess ends. So it’s kind of funny that my favorite sport is ruled by statistics and numbers.

Does anyone else think we’ve gotten slightly out of control with the Sabermetrics and statistics obsession?

Throw the ball, hit the ball, catch the ball.  Worry about your BA, RBIs, ERA, win/loss record and OBP, OPS and WHIP if you must. They’re easy to understand, fairly easy to calculate, and some of the most common stats by which players are measured. Baseball is a simple game until you make it complicated.

If you’re completely preoccupied with win expectancy or leverage index are you really enjoying the game? Do you think players actually care about stats like that? I somehow doubt it. If they did they’d probably go crazy. They have to be concerned with what’s going on directly in front of them. Statistics are useful for reviewing trends and patterns. They’re not a crystal ball into the future and they can’t play in the moment. I’m not arguing that stats aren’t important information to have, but sports are filled with intangibles and miracle moments that defy the statistical probabilities.

That’s why we watch.

I’m not entirely on board with calling it a sport as no real athletic activity looks to be involved. The stones weigh something like 42 pounds, but the players don’t actually have to lift them, just slide them across the ice, so no cardio or strength training appears necessary. Sport or not, it’s definitely a game of skill and very entertaining to watch once one picks up on the rules. I won’t take the time to explain the whole game, but there’s a nice little overview here. If you get a chance, check Curling out. Also, root for the Norwegian Olympic Curling Team and what I’ve dubbed the Argyle Pants of Victory, they’re in the semi-finals tomorrow at 5 PM EST. If they win they get to go to the gold medal game. They’ve gotten a whole truckload of attention they probably wouldn’t otherwise have gotten and they’re backing up their standout pants with standout play. I don’t know much about them, but any team wearing red argyle pants in a sport where color is largely frowned upon has got to have a fun personality and the way they’ve been playing they definitely have some great team chemistry.

I almost wish we had the Olympics to overshadow the start of all Spring Trainings. I’ve marked Truck Day and the player report dates with the same anticipation as every year, but aside from a few candid interviews, hats off to a super classy Mike Lowell yesterday, you really can’t make players running conditioning drills that interesting for very long. The first official ST game is March 3. The Olympics will be over then and the  Red Sox will once again have my undivided obsession attention. The new season is not without some new faces and some old questions.

Aside from hitting, which despite some reservations I’m starting to feel just a teensy bit hopeful about, I think the biggest question mark about this team is personality. Some try to deny it, but team chemistry and personality are important in assembling a championship caliber team. All the great teams have that “it” factor and there are countless examples of a scrappy, underdog team united in crede and purpose defeating a team that appears to be the shining example of what a championship winning team should be. Last year the Red Sox were billed as boring from the start. It’s one thing to be a quiet, professional team, it’s quite another to be so vanilla you belong on a waffle cone. As was proven in August, September, and a brief foray into October, the 2009 Red Sox were lacking in spark, and despite what they said over and over again in the press, there were no signs of the fighting spirit that made the 2004, 2007, and even 2008 teams so fun to watch. The team never really seemed to find their bearings or identity in 2009 and it showed in the end result.

Though a far cry from the idiots of yore, the current version of the Red Sox does have an interesting cast of characters. Pedroia, Papi, and Papelbon seem to provide the humor and occasionally launch some fireworks in the press. We also have the clubhouse elderstatesmen, Varitek, Lowell (for now anyway), and Wakefield providing a sense of leadership and stability. Youkilis and Beckett appear to fall somewhere between the Pedroia group and the Varitek group, they’re hardworking, very talented and have been known to provide a good sound bite here and there when their tempers get the better of them. We’ve got the young talent looking to cement their place, Ellsbury, Buchholz, and Bard. Last but not least, we have the ever stoic Drew and we had Bay, who I will place in the same category as Drew largely because he never really called attention to himself off the field. Last year it felt like all the pieces fit neatly together, but something was missing. We had a great group of individual personalities in need of a larger identity.

It will be interesting to see how Lackey, Cameron, Scutaro, and Beltre impact the team mojo.  Lackey is a sometimes cranky, loud mouth, Texas pitcher. Sound like anyone we know? Maybe he and Beckett will become BFFs and provide us with many hilariously awkward Heidi Watney interviews. That would make for a great season all on its own. Cameron seems to have a friendly easy-going personality and he also recognizes that at 36 he’s coming to the end of the ride. He finally has a legitimate chance at winning and the potential to bring fresh perspective to the team with an enjoy the moment attitude. No one on this team needs to be told to work harder, but they do occasionally need to be reminded that baseball is supposed to be fun. We haven’t really heard from Marco Scutaro yet this spring, but he made a statement by taking less money to sign with the Red Sox and after toiling away in Toronto for the past few years he must be happy to be in Boston. I’ve heard a few rumors about Adrian Beltre and an attitude problem, but I’m willing to give him the benefit of the doubt to start. I’d have an attitude too if I played for Seattle in the past few years. My biggest questions surrounding Beltre gets back to that pesky hitting thing.

It’ll be interesting to see how this team gels and if they can produce a few more fireworks (on and off the field) than last year.  They don’t have to be idiots, but they better come up with something. They’re going to have to if they want to go home happy in October. And while I abhor changes to the traditional Red Sox red B on navy hat, maybe they should wear these:

It's working for Norway...

(Seriously though, if they ever wear those on the field I’m sorry I even brought it up.)