Toeing the Rubber

Salty language alert in paragraph three...and I don't mean that I mention Jarrod! (Photo by Kelly O'Connor and used with permission)

Last night’s game was so painful I’m surprised I wasn’t there.  Seems I’ve seen way too many painful games and the Baseball Gods spared me.

Still, and maybe this is just me looking at the calendar and realizing we’re running out of Red Sox baseball soon, I enjoyed watching it. Sure the ending was a kick in the teeth but there was an awful lot to find exciting about it. I definitely dig me some good pitching but how often do you get to see a high-scoring, nail-biter? Not very often. If the Sox pull off the comeback in the 10th, we’re all talking about it being the best game of the season, in spite of the standings. Instead we get another day of hearing about how awful this team is on and off the field.

I’m done with that.  I really am.  Unless someone has video of Josh Beckett and Jon Lester taking turns beating up Big League Brian, I don’t want to read any more about what horrible people they are and how all Red Sox fans should just unilaterally hate the entire team and wish for it to be 2004 again.  This team has not been what you could call ‘good’ at all this season.  Wins are a luxury, it seems, and I accepted that months ago. Because of that, though, everyone else wants to dig deeper. There has to be a reason bigger than “this is baseball and shit happens” so in this case it has to be that the entire team turned into assholes over night and are doing everything they can to ensure the club fails.  Rooting for the Red Sox, for me, has become frustrating this year but more because of how people are reacting to the season (and by ‘people’ I mean the media who all have hard-ons for the failures of the team and those fans who follow those folks and eat up every word they say and then regurgitate it all over the Internet and sports radio).  Ever since John Henry, et al, took ownership of this Red Sox team, we as fans have enjoyed good fortune like no other Red Sox fans did for close to a century.  So when I see and hear the entitled bullshit being spewed it starts to wear on me.  I don’t expect folks to spread all sunshine and roses about the team but the hatred that is getting tossed out there…genuine hatred for the owners, the manger, the players…people we don’t know and who we rely on for ENTERTAINMENT…well, I’m not always the nicest person but the anger out there really gets upsetting at times and I refuse to be a part of it.

I hate that the team is doing so poorly. What I REALLY hate is that a player like Adrian Gonzalez says something like the quote below and he’s RIGHT.

“In Boston, there is always a novel — in here they never talk about baseball; it’s always the same,” Gonzalez told ESPNdeportesLosAngeles.com Thursday at Fenway Park. “That’s one of the reasons why I almost never talk to the press here. Very few times they ask me about baseball. But most of the time it’s about gossip, rumors, plots, well … a soap opera.

“When they talk to me about baseball, I’m available. But that does not happen often.”

And yet, I wish more players felt like Adrian because there are too many so-called sports writers out there who get their cues from the likes of “Inside Track” and “TMZ” and for a fan who wants to watch the games and try to get as much enjoyment out of baseball as she can before the season ends, it absolutely ruins the experience for me.

Some will argue that covering the team means covering all of it. For me there is a difference between covering the team and going out of your way to rumor monger or dig up dirt that might not even exist.  The latter happens much more often than the former around here.

Last night we watched a game where both teams got a collective 38 hits and scored 27 runs. The team I wanted to come out on top didn’t but made me believe they would right up until the last out was made.  That’s what baseball means to me and that’s why I’m not going anywhere.  Maybe the lighter the bandwagon gets the less entitled fans will become?  Well, I can dream, can’t I?