Cursed To First - Sox and Pats forever.

Photos from Spring Training

Last week, my dad went down to Ft. Myers with his hetero life-mate, Woody, to take in Spring Training for a couple of days. He and another fan he met while at the park have generously donated their photos of the week to this blog. Below are some of the highlights--click to see captions. The full set can be found here.

Can't resist a caption here: This is Terry Francona introducing Dusty Baker to his father, the original Tito Francona.

OK, one more caption. There's a better closeup of Theo in the set, but I love my dad and Woody in this pic: not technically, maybe, supposed to be there, exactly... but grinning undetected at the back of Theo's head anyway.

WTF happened to Dougie?

Steve is aghast, originally uploaded by tekfiend33.

A series of questions about the reported release of Doug Mirabelli from the Red Sox.

1) Has anyone gotten Tim Wakefield's comment on this? I've seen him say in at least one interview that he doesn't want to pitch without Dougie. I'm worried about how Wake is taking the news right now.

2) Who's going to catch the knuckleball? Kevin Cash did ok with it last year...is that who they're having take over for Dougie?

3) Why did the Red Sox release Mirabelli? There's a fairly salient one. I guess it's a little sad (and telling) that it's my third question...

4) If they were going to release Dougie two weeks into Spring Training, why did they sign him this past offseason to "a salary of $550,000 which also included a $275,000 roster bonus, a $150,000 conditioning bonus and the possibility to earn $1.25 million in performance bonuses," to quote Cafardo on Extra Bases?

5) The official Doug Mirabelli Appreciation Night at Kow Loon in Saugus was broadcast well in advance to the public on the Internet. The Sox couldn't have come to this conclusion in time to save us all some bucks on Scorpion Bowls?

Beckett-blog?

Per Sam's comment on my previous Beckett post, yes. Yes, I am obsessed. Sam has asked (semi-)facetiously in the past if I plan to relaunch my blog as Beckett-blog, a la papel-blog (though the title would not be nearly so clever). Lately, I know this blog is looking more and more like it's moving in that direction.

But once again, the news I'm picking up on when it comes to the Sox and spring training is Beckett-centric. And it's the worst kind of Beckett-related news: injury.

He threw six warmup pitches on Saturday, apparently slipped on the mound (I want all groundskeepers who came into contact with that mound terminated immediately, with extreme prejudice) and suffered back spasms. He was scratched from his start and is now 'iffy' for Japan.

First of all: AUGH.

However, my mother has a conspiracy theory that I at least find comforting to contemplate: that the injury is of the million-dollar variety, designed to get Josh a reprieve from traveling to Japan. She notes the quickness of the "Japan / scratch" announcement following the slippage / spasms, along with the just-as-hastily-offered "he's looking way better than we expected" reassurances from Tito yesterday, as evidence of this.

Like I said, that's more comforting to contemplate than the prospect of a for-real sidelining, but I'm also going to have to expand my previous demands regarding lead and bubble-wrap lined storage containers for Jonathan Papelbon to include all pitchers on the Sox roster.

In the meantime, I hope to have something *not* purely focused on His Texasness for this blog soon, but I was thwarted in attempts to produce such content yesterday, when I spent four hours on the "Pretty Good Year" essay and got all the way through Game 6 of the ALCS before my computer ate the damn file. And I proceeded to throw a tantrum worthy of No. 19, which probably contributed to having him on the brain (even more than usual) today.

I'll be making my second attempt at it tonight. In between researching voodoo incantations that promote healing of the back muscles.

Pay Jonathan

The guys on my morning show were having a vociferous argument about this today. Apparently the Red Sox, true to form, have dragged out contract negotiations with a key player, though they're saying that Jonathan Papelbon will get a new deal soon (the deadline is March 11). I have to say I really dislike this tendency with the Sox--since the Pedro days, following player contract negotiations with this team has frequently been an anxious experience.

According to the Herald:

The Sox are believed to be talking to Papelbon about a pay raise much more modest than the nearly 100 percent increase he is seeking. Papelbon made $425,500 last season. Based on Papelbon’s save totals of 35 and 37 during the past two seasons, the club is believed to be considering a raise of about $100,000. That is far below the $900,000 figure Papelbon told the Providence Journal he is looking for.

I understand the following: that this is a business; that emotions have no place in it; that the Red Sox can't go around doling out 100 percent raises to all its players just because we love them; that even David Ortiz was signed for a relative song the first time his contract was renewed, and as a veteran player, too.

And yes, everybody knows his rookie salary is a joke, but that's the way the system works. I'm also aware he'll be eligible for arbitration next year, and could stand to receive ten times even the amount that's too rich for the Red Sox blood right now. So eventually, he'll probably get his due anyway.

Still, I wonder--when they have a choice, why would the Red Sox quibble over paying him a tenth of what he's probably worth? $900,000 is absolute chump change for the best closer in the game and a linchpin of the pitching staff that just won us a World Series. More importantly, I personally can think of few things more devastating than seeing Jonathan Papelbon in anything other than a Red Sox uniform.

They have an opportunity to lock Jonathan in right now, and I believe they should do everything possible not to alienate one of their most important players, regardless of when he's eligible for free agency (2013) or his age. He's the best in the game at his position, and his age means he could be a player the Red Sox cultivate and develop as a long-term employee of the team, rather than thinking short-term, as they appear to be doing right now.

For a big-league franchise to be quibbling with a player like Jonathan over half a million dollars strikes me as something that could come back to bite them down the road, and in this case, I don't think it's worth the risk, given what they potentially stand to lose.

Josh Beckett: the Man, the Myth, the Mystery Wrapped in an Enigma

Lately Josh Beckett has taken to shocking us all by...acting normally. The interview of a calm, relaxed Beckett playing catch with Chris Collins has been watched with riveted fascination by pretty much everybody at this point, including yours truly.

I first saw this kinder, gentler side of Josh on my World Series DVD, in the bonus footage of the World Series celebrations. A hand-held camera settled jerkily into its shot, and in the moments before the focus resolved itself I thought that the loud voice I heard speaking was Curt Schilling's. It had his barky tenor. But then I could see the player speaking clearly, and it was Josh. Curt stood with the milieu as Josh stood next to Papi--and was allowed to speak first.

Last season I thought I had him pegged as a stubborn, somewhat brainless frat boy with a few comical anger-management issues. I freely admitted that if he was on another team (and I paid attention), I would probably dislike him.

But seeing that, the position of respect his teammates put him in, made me reconsider. He can't be a total jerkosaurus and have his teammates treat him like that, can he?

My dad has always maintained that if they had Josh do press conferences the day after his starts, we would know a much different guy than the one who laces his postgame snarls liberally with profanity, who my dad maintains is the product of still-pumping adrenaline, fatigue, and pain, as indicated by the ice pack on his shoulder during many of his press conference faux pas.

The video of his game of catch with Collins seems to confirm this theory. In the middle of a regular Monday afternoon in the Florida sunshine, he seems quiet and intense, but calm. At times you know he's biting his tongue or steering himself away from a smartass answer, the same way you know he is bringing his right arm around slowly and deliberately when throwing the ball so as not to wound or maim his civilian catch partner. But yes, he is well-behaved, even kind and earnest.

This is Clark Kent Josh, so to speak, mild-mannered somewhat goofy alter ego of the Commander Kickass we've come to know and depend on in elimination games. Much like Cinco Ocho, Commander Kickass doesn't have full control of his faculties, much less social graces. Clark Kent Josh, meanwhile, seems like he'd have no trouble fitting in on John Henry's yacht.

I also believe that it's only been in recent years that Clark Kent Josh has even developed, as stories of the "Phenom" jacket and feet up on the coffee table of the owner of the Tampa Bay Devil Rays and various borderline-unprintable quotes from back in his Fightin' Fish days can attest. I don't think it's anything to do with the Red Sox necessarily, but it seems they have him at the right age--the age at which maturity is beginning to set in.

Out of this newfound gregariousness, several new little factoids about the Inner Josh have emerged, none more awesome to me than the revelation that he writes in a journal between starts as a way to steer himself mentally.

"I look back in my book and what I try to remember are the positive things,” said Beckett … “I write a really long entry the night before I pitch. It’s more of a building up to my start. The night before my start I write a bunch of stuff about myself that I like, such as things I did the previous four days that I like, the positive things such as attack the hitters, no walks, what I liked about my side session and what I need to work on before my side session. Stuff like that.”

That's my favorite image of Beckett yet--the image of him writing down 'attack the hitters' and 'no walks', with grim concentration, in a notebook. I wonder if he also writes such messages on his hands before starts, or sticks Post-It's with written affirmations under the brim of his hat. Or maybe Dustin Pedroia just lets him use his chest.

Papelbon dance takes a turn for the alarming

During yesterday's loss to the Minnesota Twins, we were graced with the first Rem-Dawg and Orsillo giggle fit of the season, this one over some truly jaw-dropping footage of the Red Sox dancing. Instead of hilarious drunken victory dances, though, the Sox, with the exception of Mike Lowell, were embarrassing themselves attempting to dance for real, with ballroom dancers shipped in for the occasion.

The NESN duo were obsessed with Dustin's insane shirtlessness, with the word DADDY spelled out on his chest in Magic Marker, which I'll grant was pretty out of control. But I reserved most of my horrified fascination for Mr. Papelbon.

Turning the Corner

Each year, it comes at a different time--my flip of the switch from football back to baseball, and from baseball back to football. Sometimes a particularly mind-blowing finish for the Red Sox has delayed my serious interest in football until late in the season, Christmastime in the dark post-Grady days of 2003. This year is the first time I have experienced a similar bittersweet combination in reverse.

I haven't been unenthused through as good a chunk of the Sox regular season as I was with the Patriots in '03, but then the end of baseball season also overlaps well into the beginning of football season. And I've still spent a good three weeks now in a funk about the Patriots, when not in a fury over some of the crazier invective being thrown around vis a vis Bill Belichick being the son of Satan, the stripping of trophies, etc.

I know a lot of people, like my dad, for instance, whose immediate response to the Patriots loss was "pitchers and catchers in ten days." I couldn't make the transition so fast, though. I couldn't take my mind off the loss, the same way I couldn't take my mind off the Red Sox for a while when they had lost, no matter how delightfully the Patriots might have been doing. The only way I can describe the feeling of such a loss, whether in 2003 at Yankee Stadium or 2008 in Phoenix, Ariz., is to quote one of the fans on the HBO Curse of the Bambino special talking about the '86 World Series: "It was like staring into the sun."

I've been accused of trying to rationalize certain things about the Patriots, and I may be guilty of giving them too much of the benefit of the doubt, but when it came to the game itself and the way it slipped away in the final seconds, that stuff I was facing full on, struggling to stare into that sun without blinking.

Ironically, I had braced myself for being mocked over the details of the game: how Tom Brady had been shown up by Eli freakin' Manning, legendary Super Bowl capping scoring drive for legendary Super Bowl capping scoring drive (because if the Pats had won that game, we'd have all been talking about how he threaded the needle to Randy Moss in the end zone to take the lead with 2 minutes and 40 seconds). How thoroughly the Giants defense had overwhelmed the offensive line. How cruelly they'd punished Brady throughout the night. How even with a lead and as early as halftime, I'd had a sick feeling in my stomach watching the Giants' D flat-out outplay the Pats, regardless of what the scoreboard said.

Instead, what I got was a whole lot of highly judgmental blather about cheating because of something that had happened months earlier and people wanting to offer their own personal condescending psychoanalysis of me as a Patriots fan, and of Patriots fans in general. I'd been expecting people to attack the team; I wasn't expecting them to attack me.

So there were two dimensions to the agony of the  Patriots' fall from grace this year,  which kept me for the first time moping about football this far into Spring Training--the gut punch of the loss and the swarmed-by-gnats feeling of the philosophical debates with my fellow fans afterwards.

But earlier this week, Thursday to be exact, I turned the corner. Football has begun to recede mercifully into the background and the Red Sox have caught my attention again.

The moment that first really got me going about baseball this year took place at the beginning of the SportsDesk highlights of the Sox thrashing the BC kids the other night. I know what you think--that it must've been seeing Josh take the mound like Godzilla compared to those college pantywaists (or so he'd be thinking in his head). But oddly enough, it wasn't. Instead, it was Manny, digging in at the plate.

It was, objectively speaking, a throwaway moment--not the outcome of the at-bat but this random image at the beginning of it, Manny with his hand to his helmet, settling it down over his dreadlocks, then planting his right foot and leaning back. But in just a few seconds, it made me turn the corner back to baseball again.

In that moment, a new nuance of contrast between football and baseball stood out to me, as usually happens during these transitional times: in baseball, you get to know the players' facial expressions and body language down to the last little tic and quirk, unencumbered by padding and face masks. And so in baseball, you have a particular kind of delight not found in football--watching Manny work his way into his stance during a meaningless at-bat in spring training can touch off the memory of the other times you watched him in meaningful games. Just seeing that particular angle of his foot to his hip to his shoulder made me start to get excited about baseball again.

So far, this weekend, the Red Sox have rewarded my attention with a win over the Minnesota Twins, a shelling for Jon Lester, a solid appearance for Papelbon wearing Manny's jersey, a shelling for Clay Buchholz, and the lovely relaxed sensation of watching games that mean nothing.

Welcome back, baseball. It's such a strange feeling for you to be my salvation this year.

First Robin of Spring

The Red Sox, led by Commander Kickass, were unleashed upon the hapless BC kids today, in the first official baseball action of the 2008 Boston Red Sox season. Final score? 24-0.

Also, Dustin Pedroia kicked off what's sure to be a season-ful of Happy Scrappy quotes with this mention in the AP:

Pedroia doubled in two runs in the second, then was replaced by Granadillo.

The scrappy Pedroia said he never played an exhibition game against a major league team when he was at Arizona State.

But, if he did, "we might have put a whupping on somebody," he said with a smile as he left the clubhouse. "That's how I'd have handled it."

And all's well.

An Ode to Tito

He's got creaky knees and a chewing-tobacco habit that just won't quit. He's been hospitalized over the last couple of years for possible heart trouble. And he's been ejected from more games than anyone else on the team. And yet, when the Red Sox signed him to a 3-year, $12 million contract with club options for a fourth and fifth year, I couldn't have been happier.

That's because he's the manager, and fortunately, in that job, what might be red flags for a player are acceptable byproducts of what has to be one of the most stressful jobs in the country.

I've written here plenty about how much I like Terry Francona, how his aw-shucks manner and witty quips never fail to give me a serious case of the warm fuzzies. I would still give just about anything to give him a hug--not only because he seems so sweet-natured, but also because it often seems like he really needs one. (Fortunately, he's got Big Papi to turn to if that's really the case).

But I think it's also worthwhile to point out what the cold, hard facts say: that Terry Francona isn't just one of the most likeable managers the Red Sox have ever had. He's also one of the best, if not the best ever.

You can quibble with his bullpen and sometimes with his pitching staff management--and plenty of people have. I have been known to shake my fist at him, still, for what almost happened to Jonathan Papelbon on his watch. But on the whole, in the midst of a pressure-cooker in which every move he makes is scrutinized by millions of self-qualified armchair managers, at the helm of a high-profile, storied, highly lucrative ballclub filled with quirky and sometimes difficult personalities, in a town that thought of itself as cursed when he first arrived, Terry Francona has done his job magnificently. As the first manager in 86 years to bring home a trophy, he'd earned himself a few mulligans--as the first manager since the turn of the 20th century to bring home two Red Sox World Series trophies,he's reached another level entirely. Especially when you factor in that in the course of both victories, his ballplayers have poured in their best performances at the end of their postseason journeys, resulting in not one but two Series sweeps.

He's done it all, and he's done it all without winding up in a strait jacket. Lots of us think--and loudly declare--we could do his job, but in reality, I don't know that most of us could hack four years on the hot seat in this town, let alone with such results.

Here's to another three years of lineups and one-liners from our Skipper. I truly believe there isn't a better man for the job.

Be right with you....I hope

I'm sick of this. The days are getting longer and the beginnings of baseball are blooming down in Ft. Myers, Fla., and I should be reveling in the upcoming ring ceremony at Fenway Park and the endless source of delight that is Jonathan Papelbon. On top of it, I am well and truly sick of bickering and name-calling and scandal! scandal! scandal! over the Patriots.

And yet, the continuing drama over the Pats is really all I can think about when it comes to sports. I spend more time ruminating on Spygate and the latest flame war over the Patriots than I do contemplating whether Clay Buchholz will make the starting rotation or what the deal is with Curt Schilling's shoulder. I'm poring over comments threads on Boston sports websites, tossing back and forth the various existential questions, thrown gauntlets and moments of cognitive dissonance that accompany the latest fresh bad news about Bill Belichick's reputation, instead of hunting for the latest bleeped-out sound-bite from Josh Beckett.   

Since I'm thinking about it anyway, I've thrown out my point of view on things over at MVN--detailed the admittedly uneasy resolutions I've come to for now on the whole mess.

I can't speak for other Patriots fans, nor do I intend to. I can't answer for other Patriots fans who may have been obnoxious in the past, and the issue of whether or not we deserve this as a fan base is a pointless argument I'd rather not continue to have. Right now there's enough complexity just sorting out the facts.

So here's how I see things...