Red Sox nation should thank these guys for losing now
The way the Boston Red Sox were put out of their misery on Wednesday night was the best thing to happen to two groups of people.
On one hand, baseball and baseball fans in general won. Without a doubt that was probably the greatest thing to happen to baseball since the (ironically) the Boston Red Sox came back and won the 2004 World Series. It felt like the most scripted four and a half hours of baseball I have ever seen live, and in this case, that’s a good thing because it was so unbelievable how everything just transpired. If I had told you that the following things were to happen, you would ask me “Damn, that sounds like a great movie”:
- First, the month of September. Let’s take a team that’s a virtual lock for the post-season (the Boston Red Sox) and have them play their worst baseball since the first month of the season after playing something like .700 baseball from May to August. Then, let’s take the team left for dead (the Tampa Bay Rays) and have them play slightly better than what they have been playing all season long. Then, going into the final week of the season, let’s have the ace of the Red Sox staff give up six runs to the worst team in his division forcing a tie in the wild-card with two games to play with that same team that was left for dead. Just for good measure, let’s have them remained tied going into the last day of the season. (By the way, this graph will give you fucking nightmares.
- Now that we have you suspended in disbelief, let’s give that stumbling team (stumbling might be too nice a word. It’s more like “kid coming out of his 21st birthday falling down on the side walk and smashing half his face” stumbling) a 3-2 lead while that other team goes down 7-0. For good measure, let’s just pretend that the team that made the run is playing the arch-rival of the team that is about to collapse forcing that team’s fans to have to pretend they like their rival for four hours.
- Just for good measure, we’re throwing in an hour and a half rain delay for the collapsing team, just to give their fans more time to think. During that rain delay, we’ll let the “storybook” team score 6 runs as all the collapsing team’s fans can do is sit and watch and yell at their arch-rival for not trying to win.
- Wait it gets better. In the bottom of the ninth, down one run, we’ll let that team who is trying to make history come down to their final strike, with a hitter hitting .087 for the season and hadn’t had a hit since April no less, hit a line-drive tying home-run down the right field line.
- Then, in the bottom of the ninth, we’ll give the collapsing team two quick outs and looking like they are well on their way to getting out with a 3-2 win and at least a game 163 on Thursday. Then, just to rip their fans hearts out, we will have the shitty team they are playing tie the game with two outs and two doubles and then have Robert Andino (who would hit 600 home-runs if he only played the Boston Red Sox) hit a sinking liner to left-field that bounces off the glove of the $142 million bust in left-field and let the winning run score.
- Finally, EXACTLY three minutes later, the star player of the chasing team hits a line-drive that sneaks over the left-field fence. Walk-off home-run, they win the wild-card.
That doesn’t even begin to kind of scratch the surface of what happened last night. So yes, it was the most exciting four and a half hours of baseball since, well, in a long time. It was a reminder to everyone about how great baseball can be. When we talk about romanticizing the sport of baseball and why it’s America’s past-time, that’s exactly what we are talking about. There are moments in baseball that just can’t be matched by any other sport. That’s what made last night so awesome for baseball fans.
There is another group of people that last night was good for, and it’s the last people you would probably think of benefiting from last night’s events.
That would be Red Sox nation.
Oh yeah, Red Sox nation benefited greatly from last night. Yeah I know a week ago I wrote that if the Red Sox just made it to the post-season that they would have been fine. Well you know what? I was wrong and the last week just showed me why. This baseball team needed to be put out of its misery for all of Red Sox nation, and I’m not talking about the Red Sox nation that Cowboy’d up and threw on pink hats and called themselves Red Sox fans. I’m talking about the real Red Sox fans. You know? The people who sit in bars, complain about that bum John Lackey and who the eff should be the fall guy for this collapse.
This Red Sox team was a disgrace to the Boston Red Sox organization. They didn’t care. They never cared. You could see it in their faces, you could see it in their press conferences. When they were struggling and asked if it’s time to panic, what did they do? “Yeah, I guess it’s time to panic”. You guess? How about you show some fight sometimes? It’s like the whole team was run by J.D Drew. No emotion. They didn’t care. Look at the reactions of this team when the ninth inning rolled around last night. They were scared shit-less! It’s the self-fulfilling prophecy. They thought they would fail and they did fail.
Being a Rays fan must be fucking fantastic right now. Look at their team. They believe, they are loving life, they’re having fun playing baseball. They don’t care what anyone says about them. They just go along doing their thing and playing baseball. The Boston Red Sox are more concerned about what fan is going to throw a brick at them when they are in the streets then playing the game, at least they should have, but oh yeah that’s right, they didn’t give two shits about anythings. All their post game press conferences yesterday was like “Yeah that sucked” or “It wasn’t in the plan”. If you acted like you cared and acted like you gave a rats ass about what was going on, maybe this wouldn’t have happened.
I hated having to root for effing John Lackey or Carl Crawford who get paid their dough and sit on their ass and make me hate myself for watching this baseball team. And John Lackey is wondering why someone in the media was getting on him. Give me a break.
This team was going nowhere. For the most part, they had zero heart, zero determination. This wasn’t our fathers Red Sox or anything, this was the goddamned Yankees (somebody had to say it). When the Boston Celtics lost to the Heat this year, I was devastated because that was one of my favorite teams of all time. Everything they did was done at 110%. When these Sox lost I stared at the TV and laughed. Here they were, supposedly the best team of all time and no one gave a shit. They didn’t care. Oh, we aren’t going to the playoffs. Well that’s cool, what time are we playing golf tomorrow, let’s see if fucking Jose Bautista wants to get together and play some tennis or something.
I’m happy we got punched in the nuts last night. We need to wipe the pink-hatters off this wagon and get back to simply working harder than other teams. Yeah, part of 2004 was because the Sox went out and got some nice pieces, but at the end of the day they wanted it more. They wanted to win. These guys didn’t want to win, and if they did they had a terrible way of showing it. It worked for the Boston Bruins it can work for the Red Sox.
At the end of the day, THAT was unacceptable. It was embarrassing. It’s not that we lost. It’s how we lost. This Red Sox team didn’t care and they deserved to be put down. Yeah, for our sakes it would have just been better had they gotten blown out or something, but at the end of the day, it’s over. These ass-holes that didn’t care need some sweeping changes, or else this is going to happen year after year.
Pink-hatters, get the eff out of here. It’s time us real fans who care right now more than this Red Sox team cares to take the ship back over.
Someone get me a beer.
~Benti
