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At this point, there is little use discussing the 2012 Boston Red Sox. There are better stories than an overpaid, overexposed team, spinning no place. In Washington, the Nationals are leading the NL East, close to delivering the city its first playoff baseball since FDR’s debut term. The Cincinnati Reds are rolling; there’s a narrow first place fight between the White Sox and Tigers; and the Baltimore Orioles?long a sad tin can, rattling around the trunk of the AL?are making noise in the wild card race. Meanwhile, there’s a renovated pizza and pasta place near my apartment, and the frozen yogurt store is still bustling like a nightclub. On Saturday my wife saw a cat catch a bird. We just came into possession of some delicious organic tomatoes. My friend Holloway has a birthday on Tuesday; his wife is taking him out for Chinese food. All of these developments are more interesting than the Red Sox.
But if we are going to go there, and dive deep into another Boston season of rage, I would like to take the controls of the Spaceship of Crazy, fly it briefly down to Planet Earth and remind Red Sox fans, so furious about this sub-.500 campaign, that they still don’t have a lot to complain about. Allow me to be a spokesperson for sanity. Boston’s past couple of years have been frustrating ones, to be sure ?2011 ended with a comical pratfall on the season’s final night?but the franchise is coming off its most prosperous decade-long stretch since the 1920s. You may remember that Boston won a World Series in 2004 and 2007 (Books were written; Jimmy Fallon was in a movie.) Boston has qualified for the playoffs six out of the last nine years, a rate eclipsed by only the Yankees. If someone had offered you this deal a decade ago, you’d have taken it, instantly. That’s why listening to a 21st century Red Sox fan moaning about poor performance is like hearing the Key West Chamber of Commerce whining about snow.
OK, we can get back into the Spaceship of Crazy.
Look, this misbegotten season is on the team. But it appears that these recent World Series titles have given rise to a new, imperious Red Sox Nation, one that doesn’t view itself as cosmically cursed, and expects to win, always. Where are the lovable old doomsayers? A culture of pessimism has been replaced by entitlement; a fan base once viewed as tortured has tasted the good champagne and is thirsty for more. Misery isn’t romanticized, it’s a civic emergency, and management, once steady, overreacts with dramatic moves. Terry Francona and his two trophies must go. Now Bobby Valentine must go. Bring in Jason Varitek! Never mind the main factor in this collapse: the Red Sox have been obliterated by injuries this season. Last week the city was roiled by a Yahoo Sports report that frustrated players had group texted (group texted!) ownership, which organized a clandestine Valentine roast. A franchise once lionized as a model feels like it’s collapsing in on itself. Not long ago, the Red Sox were a team of irresistible scruff-balls, now there is back-biting and snippiness and the acrid vapors of high expectations failing to be met. There’s a word for this condition. It’s Yankee-like. Cough.
But the Yankees smell like new cars and cinnamon rolls these days. On Saturday I attended the Yankees-Red Sox contest, the second game of a three-parter in the Bronx. The game had the trappings of significance?a packed house, national television, a concrete-shaking Air Force flyover?but as I walked around the park in the middle innings, it was obvious that something was missing. When times were good, Boston fans could be relied upon to invade Yankee Stadium, and they could get loud, like unwanted houseguests eating chips on the couch. But now Tampa Bay and the Orioles sit between the Red Sox and New York, and little was on the line. Yankee fans, comfortably in first place, seemed bored. You have been to noisier school plays. Some fans began leaving before it was over. Such disrespectful scoundrels! I joined them.
Before Boston arrived, the Yankees played a series with its recent playoff nemesis, the Texas Rangers, and it’s been proposed that Texas, not Boston, is now New York’s primary rival. There’s no doubt the Rangers are a better team than the Red Sox. But even if the Rangers beat the Yankees in 10 successive playoff series, and the Red Sox retire from the sport to start a bed-and-breakfast in Hyannis, could a Texas rivalry ever get as highly pitched as New York’s feud with Boston? Geography and a century of confrontation still mean something, even if the aggression feels diminished, in a down cycle. Yankee fans do not walk around wearing T-shirts that read MAKE THE WORLD A BETTER PLACE. PUNCH A RANGER FAN IN THE FACE. They do make shirts like that which say BOSTON FAN, though?I saw a gentleman wearing one near the concession stand on Saturday. Apparently, Red Sox fans can buy a Yankee fan version. So classy! Get one for grandma.
You could not buy that loathsome shirt at Yankee Stadium on Saturday. You could, however, purchase a T-shirt with Yankee and Red Sox logos that read, flatly, AL EAST DIVISION MATCH UP. This T-shirt had a certain factual, hyperbole-denied charm?one could imagine its scrupulous screen-printer, one eye turned to the AL East standings, taking a red pen and crossing out BATTLE, CONFLICT, SHOWDOWN, CLASH, and even FACE OFF. Division Match Up! Has a T-shirt ever done less to announce itself? Years from now, were you to wear it to a barbecue, would awestruck guests gather around and ask, sotto voce, “Were you really there for the ‘Match Up’?”
But this T-shirt is honesty. And this is also where the Red Sox, so triumphant just a few years ago, live in late August 2012. There is a month of meaningful baseball to be played, but barring a miraculous revival, none of it will involve Boston. Another season has fallen apart, perspective is lost, September will be for the zombies. By the way, the Red Sox won, 4-1, on Saturday. Division Match Up fever. Catch it.