Last year I called fellow Guy and Red Sox enthusiast, Bryan McBournie in the middle of February. Normally I take on the reporting of pitchers and catchers as the return of baeball, and the kickoff of eight months of Red Sox games. This time, I didn’t care. I actually called my shot in December of 2011, after the Red Sox hired Bobby Valentine, and said it would be a disaster, but when I called McBournie I said “I don’t even want to watch a single game this year, it’s going to be bad dude, really bad.” It was then noted that this was the earliest I had ever given up on the Red Sox, and regrettably, I was right.
After the fried chicken and beer incident coupled with the worst September collapse in baseball history, the Sox could only do one thing to make things worse, hire Valentine. So, to prolong the misery, and remind Sox’ fans of what being a self-loathing baseball fan means, ownership brought in the one guy that could make things worse, traded off the guy we spent three years trying to acquire (Adrian Gonzalez), ran off or home grown All-Star and pissed him off enough to sign with our hated rival (Kevin Youkilis) and dumped the one pitcher on the roster that could still deliver a above-90mph fastball (Josh Beckett). So why watch? I couldn’t, every day I would recap our latest daily disaster on ESPN.com and just hoped that the season would end, the Yankees wouldn’t win and somehow Alex Rodriguez would get busted for something. Consider my 2012 season as a baseball fan 3-3 on that account.
This year though, with new management in Daisuke Matsuzaka off the books and only one more year of John Lackey’s “screw you guys, I’m out” of a contract that Theo Epstein left, this team, minus all the distractions should remain competitive enough to compete for one of those extra Wild Card spots that Bud Selig created just for the Red Sox and Yankees. I’m not even hoping for a World Series any more, but there is no way this team could follow up the disaster that was 2012 with anything worse than what has already happened. At least, I hope.