Toeing the Rubber

Photo I took of Gabe Kapler at the 2008 "New Stars" event

Today is a funky, unique day in Boston.  This morning, the Jimmy Fund is hosting their annual “New Stars for Young Stars” event at Jillian’s.  Players who are scheduled to be appearing include Trot Nixon and Curt Schilling (not exactly NEW stars – but I’ll admit I’m absolutely giddy at the idea of meeting Trot Nixon and I enjoy the fact that they always throw in one or two players who AREN’T “new stars”) and for those of us wanting to meet a local, Manny Delcarmen.  (I think it’s in his contract that he has to appear at any local event the Red Sox are involved in.  He’s a wonderful representative for the team and always seems to be doing something for charity during the most of the off-season.)

This year’s list of “New Stars” is a pretty good mix:

# Luis Exposito — Red Sox top catching prospect
# Jeremy Hermida — Red Sox outfielder
# Casey Kelly — 2009 Red Sox Minor League Pitcher of the year
# Ryan Kalish — 2009 Red Sox Minor League Player of the Year
# Josh Reddick — Red Sox outfielder
# Ryan Westmoreland — SoxProspects.com #2 ranked prospect

It’s always fun to watch the young ones interact with the public – for most of them it seems to come quite naturally (I credit the team’s Player Development program for a lot of that) and I love that they get this first hand look at how passionate Sox fans are all the way in January.

After the Jimmy Fund event, there is a Sports Roundtable at Fenway Park that has become an annual part of the Hot Stove, Cool Music concert series.  Moderated by Peter Gammons, this year the guests will be Theo Epstein, Terry Francona, Omar Minaya, Carlos Pena, and Bronson Arroyo.  Attending this will accomplish two things for me:  I’ve never been to one of these roundtables and am really looking forward to it (being held in Fenway makes it all the more appealing!) and I’ll get my Bronson fix for the year, even if he isn’t singing.

Tonight, the Hot Stove, Cool Music concert will be taking place at the House of Blues on Lansdowne Street.  This will be the second year that I’ve missed it…which means I’ll miss Bronson Arroyo’s only concert appearance in the area this year.  A bit of a bummer for me but I have friends who will be going and I know they’ll have a great time.

The entire day is pretty much dedicated to the fans having contact with players and folks from the team in a fun and casual setting – and all the money that goes to it goes to charity – so it’s hard to find fault with such great events.  (And yet I do…the high prices for a lot of the events, the seemingly same list of musical acts year after year for the concert…these things I can complain about but I save it for another time!)

This day is the first day in a domino-like list of days that remind me baseball is coming back.  Today gets followed by a visit to Pawtucket for their annual Hot Stove party, followed by Truck Day, followed by Pitchers and Catchers reporting…it’s all going to come at us pretty fast.

A shot I took of Mike Lowell on Opening Day 2009...just to remind me that Opening Day 2010 will be here sooner than it feels!

So what do you want?  As a baseball fan, what are you looking for from your team?

I’ve lost count at how many people have bitched about the Red Sox not “doing” anything thus far, how many people are “unimpressed” with the few signings that have taken place and how many people are convinced that the Red Sox will “suck” in 2010 (and I’m talking about Red Sox fans here).

I’ll tell you what I’m looking for.  I’m looking for Theo to fill gaps that need to be filled and I’m hoping for the team to be competitive enough to entertain me all season long.  Would I love a “blockbuster” signing?  Sure would, if it was for the right player.  But I’m not going to lose sleep over the Yankees getting Curtis Granderson for a song while the Red Sox didn’t.  And I’m getting sick to death of people comparing what the Red Sox aren’t doing to what the Yankees are.  If you want to root for the Yankees, have at it, they’re waiting for more folks to jump on the already overflowing bandwagon (and, truth be told, I wouldn’t be so sad to see the Red Sox bandwagon lose a few annoying, fair weather fans).

Now I don’t consider everyone who criticizes the team a fair weather fan but I do question why you’d be bitching about the team this early in the off-season.  The Sox can’t make a move without another party involved and the moves their contemplating are going to take some time.  I’m good with this.  I’m also good with not hearing every day which player’s rep the team is or isn’t talking to.  Just because it isn’t being reported on doesn’t mean nothing is getting done (or attempted).  I know that most of the media likes to think that the world doesn’t revolve unless they’re writing about it but that’s just not true.  So, if you don’t mind, I’d like the hot stove to get a bit older before I start lamenting about how Theo has lost his touch and won’t be doing anything to improve the team for 2010, thanks.

Yesterday, Amalie Benjamin kept up her fan-baiting ways with this tweet over at Twitter:

Given Theo’s “bridge” year comments about the upcoming season, how are you all feeling about the #RedSox and about the front office?

Now, obviously she was hoping for a ton of “The team is going to suck! We’ll never beat the Yankees again!” responses. But our own KellyO gave (in my opinion) the best response:

I’d FAR rather hold onto our future; if that means waiting out 2010, so be it. We’ve been blessed in recent years.

Now I don’t think two WS wins in the 2000s means the team gets a free pass to go forward and be unsuccessful, but that hasn’t been the situation, thus far, and I don’t see it being the situation any time soon.  ESPECIALLY if Theo doesn’t trade away the future just for some instant gratification.  What those two World Series wins means to me is Theo gets a lot of leeway to play with the house money because, regardless of what some would like to think, the Red Sox are a successful team thanks in large part to Theo and a few early exits from the post-season won’t change that.  Good teams don’t always make the post-season and they don’t always win the World Series.  Be competitive and entertain me and that’s all I can really ask for.  There’s no way I’m calling this off-season a failure in the second week of December.  Hysteria isn’t my style.

For those of you who missed it – here’s Theo’s “bridge” comments as reported by Amalie Benjamin:

“We talked about this a lot at the end of the year, that we’re kind of in a bridge period,’’ he said. “We still think that if we push some of the right buttons, we can be competitive at the very highest levels for the next two years. But we don’t want to compromise too much of the future for that competitiveness during the bridge period, but we all don’t want to sacrifice our competitiveness during the bridge just for the future. So we’re just trying to balance both those issues.’’

I’m not sure how anyone can read anything negative into that but it seems to be Amalie’s M.O. lately (riling the fans up just for fun).

Tickets for the regular season go on sale this Saturday.  I’ll be at the Sistah’s annual Christmas gathering so I won’t be joining you all in the virtual waiting room, but I’ll be there in spirit!  It’ll be interesting to see if this uncertainty in the team that seems to be permeating the Internet over these last couple of weeks will be reflected in ticket sales on Saturday.  Something tells me it won’t.

Some folks would have him burned at the stake. I prefer acknowledging that he's human and obviously feels awful about the whole thing. (Grabbed from NECN video.)

So I spent most of yesterday with a large portion of my family.  We had a funeral mass for my uncle who passed away over a month ago, so while it was sad the sting of it all was off and we got to enjoy each other’s company for the day.  Except when the subject of the Red Sox came up.

My father, by most accounts, is an even-tempered, Irish Catholic, Red Sox fan.  Tough to find if  you believe the stereotypes.  We watch a lot of baseball together but we didn’t watch Sunday’s game because I was at the park and he was at a Christening (yes, I was supposed to be there.  The fates made sure it was held at a place it isn’t good for me to go into so it all turned out okay!)…so I didn’t get to see his reaction when the end came (there was a tv at this restaurant they were at).  We didn’t even really talk about it much yesterday.  But after everything was over and it was just the two of us he admitted to me that there were a few times he cursed Tito during the game on Sunday (Tito usually bears the brunt of any of my dad’s wrath) but that he, really, didn’t feel all that terrible about the Sox losing.  What was bothering him were the “naysayers” and all the negativity.  Must be genetic.    For the record, while everyone can acknowledge Papelbon’s huge part in the loss on Sunday, like me my dad agrees that one lost game by the closer was not what really brought this team down.  The did it together.  Just go back and read the box scores for the first two games of the series.

I took my dad to a game in 2005 where a good portion of the fans booed Mark Bellhorn’s every at bat.  In 2004, Bellhorn was the recipient of my father’s baseball anger – from the comfort of my dad’s couch.  When he is at the park, my father doesn’t believe in booing your own players (hell, he doesn’t even boo opposing players and he’s said things about some of the Yankees that I don’t dare print here!) and when he heard supposed fans giving Bellhorn hell it really upset him (not coincidentally, 2005 was the last year my dad went to Fenway.  He’s getting older and the trip in and all the walking sometimes gives him a little bit of a hard time the next day.  But I KNOW the main reason he doesn’t go through all the trouble of getting to Fenway is the fans.  The negative ones.).

So last night he waves the Boston Herald in front of me and asks if I saw the headline.  I hadn’t.  “‘PapelBOMB’”, he shouted at me, pissed.  “Can you believe, after all he’s done, the local paper calls hims ‘Papelbomb’?”  (It’s really a good thing my father doesn’t hit the Internet for his Red Sox news.)  He also went on to ask me if I heard the fans booing Paps.  Here’s the thing…I didn’t.  Now, usually when I say I didn’t hear booing people come back and tell me I’m either lying or I wasn’t paying attention.  So when it came out that there was booing I told some folks that I must have been so upset that I blocked it out.

Maybe that wasn’t the case?  According to Jon Lester, former Sox manager Joe Morgan and even Kevin Youkilis – a guy who in the past has gone out of his way to berate the fans for booing – all said that the booing wasn’t that bad and was somewhat understandable.  Out of a full house at Fenway maybe a “couple of thousand” people booed our closer.  (Incidentally, if you were one of those 2000, in today’s Herald Steve Buckley defends you.  Steve Buckley is on your side.  If that doesn’t make you want to scrape off your skin in an industrial shower than you have no soul.)

Yesterday, Theo was asked if the Sox were going into a “downward trend” (I’m guessing this question came from Tony Massarotti).  World Series in 2007, ALCS in 2008, ALDS in 2009.  Tell me that whichever reporter asked that question he/she wasn’t trying to bait Theo?  Theo’s response:

“No. The way I look at it, we’ve had sort of two three-year runs in the postseason. We swept the World Series twice. We’ve been eliminated in the ALCS Game 7 twice. And we’ve been swept in the first round twice. We couldn’t have predicted it any time. We were prepared to go on a nice long run.”

This isn’t just wishful thinking. The guy runs the team and knows what needs to be done to make them win.  A ‘downward trend’?  In 2004, the Red Sox won the World Series.  In 2005, they got swept out of the ALDS.  In 2006 they didn’t even make the post-season and then they won it all again in 2007.   Yeah, the team that  spent more time in the last 10 years in the playoffs than not is a team we should be worried about because they “only” made it to the ALDS this year.  Sorry, I’m not biting.

The teams I wanted to win in the LDS?  The Red Sox, of course, the Twins (of course!), the Rockies and the Cardinals.  What do all these teams have in common?

No one damn one of them is moving on to the LCS.  Not one.  THIS is why I don’t make predictions on this blog. 

So now I have to root for the Phillies and the Angels.  Because if we get a Yankees/Dodgers World Series the smugness of the baseball world just might suffocate us all.

It’s raining today.  Gray and lousy out.  Somehow, though, my attitude isn’t reflected in the weather.  I’m still bummed.  I’ll miss watching my team.  But it’s far from over for this franchise, ultimately.  All losing so quickly in the first round has done is given Theo more time to work on next year’s team!