Boston Chicken

After reading and hearing all the stories that have come out about the Red Sox, I am left one big question?

What video game were Josh Beckett, and his minions Lackey and Lester playing in the clubhouse? I mean, admit it, you’d like to know right?

I also wonder if anyone screwed up at a critical moment because one of the controller buttons was greasy from all the fried chicken greasy fingers?

If there is anything I take away from this it’s that age-old truism that when a team is winning, all these stupid and selfish behaviors by players are never news, but losing spawns countless pieces of evidence why a team was doomed to fail.

Jack McKeon was interviewed about Beckett, having managed him in Florida during the Marlins championship 2003 season. Apparently McKeon had to chase Beckett out of the clubhouse with a bat that year, and later keep the clubhouse locked to prevent guys from flaking off during games. Does anyone think that Beckett wasn’t pounding Bud’s in the clubhouse every year while he was with Boston?

The thing about Terry Francona abusing painkillers really bothers me. The guy’s playing career ended very early due to operations on both knees, and (so you know) he was the NCAA College Player of the Year in 1980, so the man could hit. To think he suddenly started to abuse prescribed medications after close to 30 years of taking things to alleviate pain is the worst kind of journalism, in my opinion.

Sometimes, things just play out, you know…they just end. That’s what happened to the Francona era in Boston. A bad mix of personalities combined with a few too many injuries to a team that didn’t have a player or two capable of kicking some teammate’s asses when things started going bad.

The Boston media has many villains to blame in all of this, and the team will spin it the best way they can. The bottom line is that the players couldn’t figure out how to police themselves, and not one guy in the starting rotation was able to be a stopper down the stretch.

So, with Boston a no-show, the Phillies not nearly as good (no hitting) as most folks thought, and the Yankees exposed (no starting pitching) as a post-season fraud, we are left with perhaps Texas being the best team in baseball? We are also being treated to being able to watch the best hitters in each league (Cabrera – AL and Pujols and Braun – NL) play deep into October, and a very realistic chance that one franchise will win it’s first ever championship. If either Texas (spawned as the expansion Washington Senators in 1961) or Milwaukee (Seattle Pilots – 1969) win it, it will be the first time.

I continued to root for Tampa Bay, and whichever team is your favorite, wasn’t it hard to not root for those guys and their manager, Joe Maddon? How many managers would have had the guts to start a rookie (Matt Moore) with a total of 9 and 1/3 innings of MLB experience in a critical game #3, on the road versus Texas? Girardi may have done it, but then he’d bring in a reliever in the 3^rd, one in the 4^th, another 2 guys in the 5^th, etc., etc. Does anyone over-manager more than Girardi?

Answer: Yes!

And you wanna be my latex salesman?

Tony LaRussa does, but he does it in ways that are beyond our normal human intelligence, and Tony doesn’t have the time to explain anything to us dorks. I can’t stand the guy, I really can’t. He is so smarmy he makes wish I didn’t love baseball, with all his imperious crap.

It’s hard for me to believe that he and Jim Leyland are such good friends, the way Leyland is so down to earth, and so much of a throw back to the way managers used to be when I was a kid. My lips say Texas, but my heart says Detroit.

I really don’t have a take on Ron Roenicke, except that he was a fair-to-suck MLB player, and he seems like he’s on auto-pilot as a manager, which may not be the worse thing for that team?

Ron Washington looks like he’s still doing lines, all fidgety and jumpy. You’d think that incredible bullpen and all those great hitters would calm him down a bit, wouldn’t you?

In parting, I thought Francona was great fill-in for Tim McCarver, but then a lot of guys would be a huge improvement over Tim. I am liking A.J. Pierszynski a lot, though it’s easy to see why he’s pissed off so many teammates over the years – baseball players don’t like guys that are smart, critical, and talkative.

As Tony Plush would say, "Gotta go," but before I do, has anyone (aside from me) given any thought to the idea that Theo Epstein will hire Terry Francona as the new Cub manager? My only question is will the Cubs part with Ernie Broglio as compensation for hiring Theo?

Wouldn’t that be something? Only thing better would be those two guys celebrating a World Championship in Chicago in a year or three, with their star players, Prince Fielder and Jonathan Papelbon.

Remember where you first read that last part.