I'm ready for some baseball. I'm just not ready for the Boston Red Sox.
We need to get this Boston baseball season over with as quickly as possible, and the conventional means are insufficient. There was once a tripleheader between the Dodgers and Pirates. The way I feel, that wouldn't be good enough. Too bad there can't be a 19-header. Why can't we have endless baseball, something like the old six-day bike races, or the marathon dances?
It is a lost season, a lost team, and a lost franchise. The team no longer serves a useful entertainment purpose. I would rather have been in Montreal, keeping company with the 4,000 baseball romanticists, than in Fenway last night. I felt like a conscripted enabler.
The Red Sox have lost their compass. It is as if there are 29 teams following a certain manual and one, the Boston Red Sox, following another. The Red Sox reek of arrogance and ignorance at the same time. That's a truly interesting parlay.
Oh, you might be interested to know that John Harrington, our answer to the Wizard of Oz, made a rare public appearance yesterday afternoon. He emerged onto the field around 3:30 or so, accompanying a couple of policemen with what we surmise were bomb-sniffing dogs as they made their way from the Red Sox dugout out to the bullpen. The highlight of the excursion, all of which was played to a half-dozen TV cameras, came when Harrington, doing his best Inspector Clouseau imitation, peered under the tarp. It all would have been funny if it weren't so sad and utterly transparent. The man now belongs in a New Yorker cartoon.
If Harrington really wanted to perform a public service, he would have been barricaded in a conference room in the company of lawyers and accountants, working on the sale of the team. For he can best serve the franchise by divesting himself of it, the sooner the better.
Sooner or later, it all will be over. We may then have in possession of this team a devil we don't wish to know, as opposed to the one we do, but let's find out. These people have all outlived their welcome.
What will we be missing when they're gone? Thanks to you, the baseball-loving people of New England, they have wads of cash to throw at stars such as Manny Ramirez and Pedro Martinez. But as far as producing talent on their own is concerned, be it known that the pre-September-callup roster featured as many organizationally developed players from the old regime (i.e. Lou Gorman) as the new one (i.e. Dan Duquette). It was Trot Nixon, Scott Hatteberg, and Lou Merloni vs. Nomar Garciaparra, Shea Hillenbrand, and Casey Fossum. Make of that what you will.
And ''regime'' is the appropriate description of the Dan Duquette era. It's a regime in exactly the same way countries ruled by powerful despots are regimes. The current Boston Red Sox are very much a team in Big Daddy Dan's dour image. Martinez aside, just about anyone with personality or spark has been expunged. Even in what could be referred to as good times, it was a joyless clubhouse.
And it is a completely bland organization in which every last employee, right down to the guy who does the laundry for the Gulf Coast Red Sox, is afraid to speak, burp, or attend to the call of nature without securing permission from the home office.
Duquette is constitutionally incapable of admitting he ever makes a error. With the benefit of 20/20 hindsight, isn't it time for the general manager to admit that he made, if not an outright mistake, at least a serious miscalculation by backing Carl Everett, as opposed to manager Jimy Williams, following the Everett blowup last July?
Guess again.
''No,'' he insists. ''We did the right thing then and we did the appropriate thing yesterday. There were some other issues and considerations.''
''Issues and considerations'' are baseball code words for, among other things, union repercussions, and sources maintain that while Duquette no longer wishes to see Everett back in a Red Sox uniform any more than any other rational person does, he faces enormous obstacles in accomplishing his aims.
I'm willing to buy this to a degree, but laying it all on the union - Duquette refuses to elaborate on the other ''issues and considerations'' - is a major copout. Union grievances or no union grievances, Duquette embarrassed and undermined his manager with his disgraceful public utterances. Other people in baseball would have found a better way to handle the situation. And now that Everett has blown up in his face, the general manager is trying to lay it all off on the easily available whipping boy: the union.
What a slapstick routine the Red Sox have become. I looked up from my computer last night just in time to see Izzy Alcantara, a pet Duquette project, giving the ole job on a bouncing ball that wound up in short right field. The end result was two unearned runs. You think Duquette ever would admit that Izzy isn't a major leaguer?
Ah, well. It all will be over soon. The team will be sold and the new owners will make immediate peace with the hallowed Yawkey stewardship by firing both Duquette and manager Joe Kerrigan.
The sad thing is that the skipper really has no clue about what's in store. He seems to think the fact that Duquette handed him a contract through 2003 really means he'll be sitting in that office for the next two years. He doesn't realize that whoever buys the team will be sufficiently wealthy to reach into the petty cash drawer and pay off both the GM and his unprepared manager. And he really hasn't been paying attention if he thinks there is even the remotest chance a new owner would wish to perpetuate the dreary regime that has made the Boston Red Sox both the most laughed-at and reviled organization in baseball.
If this were Japan, Duquette would know what to do. He would have the decency to place his resignation letter on Harrington's desk this morning. The only problem is that Harrington wouldn't have the good sense to accept it.
Nineteen games to go. Want some tickets?
This story ran on page E1 of the Boston Globe on 9/19/2001
© Copyright2001 Globe Newspaper Company