Mercifully Over!
well, the season ended like bookends. Lose at the start--lose at the end. In between, we've unfortunately seen the worst Sox baseball in over forty--that's NOT a typo--years! The last time the Sox lost this many games in a season was 1965--two years before the legendary 'Impossible Dream' pennant winning season. It was a combination of many things--the largest number of DL injuries in MLB history in the last 25 years; poor starting pitching, underperformance in other areas, and finally the glue that binds this unfortunate mess together--VEE. The injuries you can't help. The pitching you can trade or free agent toward improvement. But the manager....From the start, he got off on the wrong foot with his criticism of Youk. Maybe, as the season ultimately showed, Youk is on the downslope of his career, but a manager shouldn't take his beef to the media before the season's even really underway. As The Dustman observed at the time, "That's not the way we do things around here."  Then, we had the giveaway of the game in early season to the Stripes--after leading at one time nine zip! And so it continued from one game to the next, from one month to the next, to the merciful end of the season. Today we see that Vee apparently, so it's being reported on the web (and perhaps in a number of other locations), couldn't get along with his coaches.
There will always be next year, hopefully under someone else--John Farrell comes to mind. The team really isn't a last place team. Are they legitimate contenders, particularly now that in addition to Mr. Hankie's Yankees and the Rays, there are the reborn O's? Time will tell. But they have a good nucleus: Pedroia, Papi, Jake, Ciriaco, Ross, Podsednik and Salty (even with his sub-.230 BA--he does throw out a good number of base stealers and has good power). But, the guys in the front office--Cherrington and his new assistant, none other than Tek [WELCOME BACK, TEK~!]--have got to start by deciding they no longer want to have this Valentine. See you all in February. For now, I'm rooting for the 'other' Boston team--the Braves (check your history books!