Volume CCXXXIV, Number 43        March, 2004              Page 4


This was the year . . .

SPARE THE A-ROD AND SPOIL THE CHAMPIONSHIP

By Sisyphus
Baseball Editor

There are so many new faces around the Red Sox training camp, you won't be able to tell the players without a program, although if you've stood outside all night on Yawkey Way to snag a few ducats, you won't be able to afford a program and you certainly won't be able to grasp it in your frostbitten hand.

Welcome to New England's triumph of hope over experience, Red Sox Spring Training. The 2004 Sox have new pitching (Curt Schilling and Kevin Foulke), a new manager (Terry Francona), a new coaching staff and, courtesy of their minority owners, a new equipment truck driver (Howell Raines).

Until early February, even the dourest Dorchester barfly would grudgingly admit that the 2004 Red Sox looked like they might, might just might not fold this year in the seventh game of the Championship or World Series. That was then, and this is now: Futility 2004 is in full swing.

The hot stove has been stoked to cherry-red by the off-season acquisitions, whether completed or left dangling. A second first-rate pitcher, Curt Schilling. A first-tier reliever, Kevin Foulke. And the best player in baseball today – well, let's not go hog-wild here.

Just when you thought it was safe to go to the Bronx, or at least the well-patrolled acres surrounding Yankee Stadium, pardoned felon George Steinbrenner got away with yet another crime: not only did he steal baseball's best player, but he conned the dopiest franchise in baseball (hey, it was once run by George Bush) into paying him for the privilege. Up to then, the Yankees were beginning to look like the neighborhood in which they play: ravaged, ruined, burned-out.

Before several million of you tattoo RED SOX 2004 WORLD CHAMPIONS in scarlet on your torso, let's consider how the Red Sox match up against the Yankees.

If the Yankees are to send George's blood pressure into the 300's this summer, the starting pitching will bear the blame. On paper, Red Sox hurlers should bury the decimated Yankee corps. But . . . Pedro Martinez's wing usually starts flapping loose sometime in mid-August and as for the big ones, well, he hasn't won 'em yet. Curt Schilling is more of a traditional hoss, but he's 37 years old, and no pitcher staring at the big 4-0 can be regarded as a sure winner. Throw in a little sore elbow to Foulke and you've got the recipe for a mediocre pitching staff.

With A-Rod, the Yankees have the offensive edge. What, I hear you saying, about those mighty Sox bats? The supposedly mightiest of them, Manny Ramirez, certainly qualifies as bats. This is a guy who was too screwy for George Steinbrenner, itself a pretty scary thought. If Manny spends the season sulking, he could notch more K's than Jim Ed Rice.

Nomar Garciaparra, having been publicly dumped on the trash heap by baseball geniuses Theo Epstein and Larry Lucchino is perfectly capable of enjoying married life, injuring his wrist and in general punching well below his weight.

And the return of the Rim Man to Fenway brought a smile to our faces, but can his 40-year-old back really hold up in the chill of October?

This may sound glum even to long-suffering fans of the Old Towne Team. Maybe so, but the Sox labor under baseball's longest-running and most-pervasive curse and the A-Rod debacle doesn't exactly constitute a break from tradition. As we all know too well, the curse was brought down upon the Kenmores by the foolish sale of the best player in baseball circa 1919.

What, then, could be a more fitting exorcism of the curse than acquiring the best player in baseball, circa 2004? Well, it almost happened.

You might say it was only one strike away.

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Archives, in future issues and masthead

Take it from ol' Shill: this is the year


PAIL O' MUCK PARK, Florida  – As the Red Sox equipment truck lurches down I-75, ol' Shill is definitely walking on the sunny side of the street, or should I say the sunny side of the very commodious Palmetto Bug Groves Trailer Park, where your humble correspondent has parked his RV, with all connection and honey-wagon fees paid for by the classiest organization in baseball: the Boston Red Sox.

This grizzled veteran of many a diamond classic is ready to put all of his chips, cool ranch flavor or otherwise, on the Sox to go all the way this year. That's right; good-bye curse of the Bambino; hello, world championship.

Some of the young malcontents plaguing hard-working professionals like Howell and me have been second-guessing baseball gurus Theo Epstein and Larry Lucchino about A-Rod, Manny and Nomar. I've got just one thing to say to these young punks: make no mistake about it, but these guys are the savviest front office in baseball and I've seen the buffet [Surely, evidence? – Ed.] to prove it.

I'm fed up with all these overpaid crybabys complaining about how they almost had to play in Texas or California or someplace else west of Worcester. Boys, wake up and smell the Tang: if Nomar isn't willing to be publicly humiliated and shoved aside, then let him go pound Hamm!! [That can't be necessary, can it? – Copy Ed.]

As a source close to the Sox brain trust told me yesterday over a few tall cool ones at the Hooter's at the Mangrove Swamp Mall: "It's all part of our master plan. Another order of hot wings, Shill?"

Yup, the first-rate baseball minds of the Sox have thought of everything, including a couple of extra tickets to Pail O' Muck Park so the Shillmeister can bring his "special friends" from Hooters to some red-hot baseball action when the PawSox walk-ons take on the mighty Bentley College Bangers.

Tomorrow: Ace baseball columnist Shill Shamelessly checks out the views of spring training fans at the Pelican County East Public Health Clinic.

THEY MIGHT HAVE EXCEPT, AS IS WELL KNOWN OUTSIDE THE IVY LEAGUE, THE ARMY DOESN'T HAVE ANY BRIGS

Clark's aides have commented on his less-than-rhythmic clapping and have mocked him for his music preferences, which tend toward 1980s power ballad. One joked that if Clark were still in the Army, his subordinates probably would have wound up in the brig.

–  The Boston Glob, Jan. 25, 2004 at A20.