The Red Sox Are Trying Their Best To Kill Baseball For Me

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Today marks the start of baseball season and I feel nothing. It used to be a day I talked about for months, a day I’d sometimes get to skip school for if the Sox were home, and just generally a day of excitement. It was the unscratched lottery ticket of summer. Yes I was still forced to wear my winter coat to Fenway, covering my Trot Nixon shirsey and thus ruining my outfit, but I didn’t mind. The very existence of the game meant that the weather was getting warmer and we, as a region, were blessed with another chance to rid the world of curses.

Today I wouldn’t know Opening Day was happening if Fanatics jerseys didn’t show everyone’s dick or if Shohei Otani’s translator could resist a rat line.

I can no longer be romantic about baseball. I am now stuck in a loveless marriage with baseball. 

Me and baseball, we used to be the hot couple. We were the ones who would drink too much then disappear to the bar bathroom together and our friends would whisper to each other, “they like each other too much, right? Or do they hate each other? Whatever it is it’s weird.” They didn’t even know if we were doing drugs or making love in there they just knew we were a dangerous mix.

Now I look across the dinner table, staring past a meal that was made out of obligation and not passion, and I don’t even recognize the person I agreed to spend my life with. John Henry, the man who used to have an open checkbook policy with every free agent on the market, lowers his glasses as his eyes slide up and down our monthly expenses and wonders not what I desire, but what’s the bare minimum he can do to make me stay. 

John Henry has seen that I, like many others in his harem of fans, have lost interest. He’s heard the boos at the Winter Classic and the boos at Red Sox Winter Weekend, he’s seen the headlines in his own paper (I’m actually not sure if those exist but they gotta) that say a once proud baseball town is on life support, and he’s chosen to ride it out. 

For years I’ve been hoping that John Henry would do something to get me interested in us again. Find some kind of flint and spark this relationship, but he’s opted to continue to let it wilt and die. Repeatedly going out of his way to lop off branches of trust to the point where what we once had is now unrecognizable.

I’m not without blame, my eyes have wandered and I have strayed, giving more of my passion to other interests and teams (including his own Liverpool) but now there’s nothing. Where I once could give you the stat line of every single player on the team, I’d now be hard pressed to name you five players on the Opening Day roster (Devers, Duran, Story, Casas, Yoshi… I’m not sure Jansen is still there? I know there were trade talks…) 

BUT I RESENT HIM FOR THAT!! WHY?! WHY CAN’T YOU BE THE WAY WE WERE?! Why can’t you see that I’m drowning and begging you to reel me back in? Today Forbes released their annual baseball valuations. The Red Sox are the 3rd most valuable franchise, fourth in revenue, and eighth in operating income. Yet I’m struggling to name half the lineup?? That’s on you, sir.

I’m reminded of when Cormac McCarthy passed last year and his second wife, Annie DeLisle, was asked about their time together. She said for eight years they lived in a barn in Tennessee. He was already, at the time, a very accomplished writer. Colleges would call and offer McCarthy thousands of dollars to come speak about any of his books. But he would tell the school, “Anything I have to say about the book I said in the book” and he would hang up the phone. Then him and Annie would go back to living off beans and bathing in a lake and living in a barn.

Now that story is AWESOME if you’re talking about an artist and not an owner of your sports franchise, yet still you will notice I called Annie DeLisle his “second wife” and not his “widow.” Because even if you signed up for life with a starving artist beans for dinner will eventually become unpalatable and unacceptable. 

Personally, I’d like a steak again.

PS - As I was writing this the Sox sent out a tweet that INFURIATED me. So at least I feel something now I guess? 

They got the conductor of the Boston Pops trying to make me feel like I'm a bad fan because I don't feel like investing my time in a team the owner has chosen to not invest in? "Tune out the outside noise" "the haters suck at baseball and could never make the league, fuck them" is the exact kind of disdain for a fanbase I was talking about. 

Look I have no idea how this team will do. I wouldn't have said they had a shot in 2013 and they won the World Series so there's every possibility I'm wrong and this season goes gangbusters. But what is undeniable is that the ownership has decided they're not worth it. The people making the decisions and writing the checks think the fan base will eat whatever slop they serve and there's no need to make real attempts to get fans excited. To try and make us, the people who are simply acknowledging the reality that the powers that be decided it was not a team worth investing in, the villains on Opening Day is insane.