"Is this your stop?"
I know it’s taken me forever to write my personal end chapter for the 2006 season. I’ve been making excuses and avoiding this for over 2 weeks. After the awful end to the Red Sox season I wanted to avoid writing about baseball all together. Yet, now that a truly horrible tragedy has prevented me from enjoying the Yankees bounce from the playoffs (they always manage to take my fun), I need to find some closure. If I don’t get it now then I won’t be able to enjoy the playoffs like Tommy Lasorda wants me to or dive into the “hot-stove” season like Scott Boras wants me to. I must dissect and examine before I can focus and move on. Also, I must make fun of and ridicule before I can accept and love. I just work like that.
I wouldn’t say they mailed it in, but the Sox didn’t look on the top of their game in the final month. Papelbon got hurt and shut down. Manny’s knee got his own daily column in the Boston Globe and Schilling even felt the effects of time. It was the perfect cap on a perfectly awful season. Forget 100 wins, they didn’t win 90. Toronto surged past the slumping Sox to give us the bronze medal for the first time in as long as I care to think about. Far be it from me to try and find the silver lining in the cloud of crap, but this does let me vent a little bit about the Red Sox Nation.
It’s not what you think. I know everyone is putting Theo and Co. on a spit for the lack of moves (rightly so), and everyone is taking shots at the coaches (sending 2 of them up the river in fact), and EVERYONE is bemoaning the injuries that the whole team endured (yeah yeah yeah)… but those aren’t the fleas biting my behind.
I have an axe to grind with the fans.
Not the diehards who knew Williams and Pesky personally, or the kids that grew up watching Boggs and Greenwell, or even the people who had to put up with Vaughn and Everett…
I am talking about all of those folks who show up in the 3rd inning. The girls who still list Johnny Damon as their favorite player (“Cause he’s so HAWT”). Morons who said “who’s that?” when Buckey Dent threw out the first pitch in game 4 of the 2004 ALCS. Folks you never saw in Fenway before 2003. You know… those chicks in FREAKING PINK HATS.
Now I am not trying to be sexist (as Brian Fantana said “Don't get me wrong, I love the ladies. I mean they rev my engine…”) cause there are absolutely some guys who are just as guilty and I’m not trying to be elitist either, but you have to admit that the fan base has gotten a little bloated. This is when a losing season is a good thing. It cuts the wheat from the chaff. I HARDLY think this will affect ticket sales, but it may just chase away those idiots who only ever watched the “Idiots”. People who were starting to jump ship in 2005 and were pretty much done watching by August of this season. This is exactly what we needed. A chance to be underdogs again (second highest salaried underdogs…but still).
Get off the bandwagon. We never wanted you and now maybe I can buy a ticket without slicing off an arm. Give the team a chance to rebuild. Theo HAS to make some moves now… and the young guys are only going to be better. Let us have an off-season and a summer of peace and quiet and then we can brace for the “jump back on” next September when the Sox are 4.5 games up in the standings. As for right now, don’t let the door hit you in the seat of those awful Rhode Island clam chowder colored warm-up pants that say “Red Sox” on the side. You walking eye sores.
Ahhhhh! The fan lounge has emptied out a bit… the ceiling is a little lower again… and the air smells that much cleaner.
So now it’s time to go into a slow down mode here at Keep Your Sox On (like I haven’t already) but we will be around with updates and commentary on big headlines, playoff news, trade rumor crap, and maybe even a book review or two. I like the smaller fan room… more intimate. GO SOX.
I wouldn’t say they mailed it in, but the Sox didn’t look on the top of their game in the final month. Papelbon got hurt and shut down. Manny’s knee got his own daily column in the Boston Globe and Schilling even felt the effects of time. It was the perfect cap on a perfectly awful season. Forget 100 wins, they didn’t win 90. Toronto surged past the slumping Sox to give us the bronze medal for the first time in as long as I care to think about. Far be it from me to try and find the silver lining in the cloud of crap, but this does let me vent a little bit about the Red Sox Nation.
It’s not what you think. I know everyone is putting Theo and Co. on a spit for the lack of moves (rightly so), and everyone is taking shots at the coaches (sending 2 of them up the river in fact), and EVERYONE is bemoaning the injuries that the whole team endured (yeah yeah yeah)… but those aren’t the fleas biting my behind.
I have an axe to grind with the fans.
Not the diehards who knew Williams and Pesky personally, or the kids that grew up watching Boggs and Greenwell, or even the people who had to put up with Vaughn and Everett…
I am talking about all of those folks who show up in the 3rd inning. The girls who still list Johnny Damon as their favorite player (“Cause he’s so HAWT”). Morons who said “who’s that?” when Buckey Dent threw out the first pitch in game 4 of the 2004 ALCS. Folks you never saw in Fenway before 2003. You know… those chicks in FREAKING PINK HATS.
Now I am not trying to be sexist (as Brian Fantana said “Don't get me wrong, I love the ladies. I mean they rev my engine…”) cause there are absolutely some guys who are just as guilty and I’m not trying to be elitist either, but you have to admit that the fan base has gotten a little bloated. This is when a losing season is a good thing. It cuts the wheat from the chaff. I HARDLY think this will affect ticket sales, but it may just chase away those idiots who only ever watched the “Idiots”. People who were starting to jump ship in 2005 and were pretty much done watching by August of this season. This is exactly what we needed. A chance to be underdogs again (second highest salaried underdogs…but still).
Get off the bandwagon. We never wanted you and now maybe I can buy a ticket without slicing off an arm. Give the team a chance to rebuild. Theo HAS to make some moves now… and the young guys are only going to be better. Let us have an off-season and a summer of peace and quiet and then we can brace for the “jump back on” next September when the Sox are 4.5 games up in the standings. As for right now, don’t let the door hit you in the seat of those awful Rhode Island clam chowder colored warm-up pants that say “Red Sox” on the side. You walking eye sores.
Ahhhhh! The fan lounge has emptied out a bit… the ceiling is a little lower again… and the air smells that much cleaner.
So now it’s time to go into a slow down mode here at Keep Your Sox On (like I haven’t already) but we will be around with updates and commentary on big headlines, playoff news, trade rumor crap, and maybe even a book review or two. I like the smaller fan room… more intimate. GO SOX.
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